CHAPTER 9: THE NEW YORK BRANCH OF THE NEW FELLOWSHIP
One of the first things that Davidson did when he reached New York was to found an American "Fellowship of the New Life"; not exactly a branch of the English society of that name, but one similar in character, aims, and tendency. It was founded in 1884, and as its prospectus contains a declaration of principles, differing in some points from that set down in the London programme, it may be reproduced with advantage, along with an official statement on the religion of the Fellowship, and a letter from its founder concerning the "Vita Nuova."
I. Declaration of Principles
Name and Domicile
The Name of the society shall be The Fellowship of the New Life, and its Domicile shall be wherever two or three persons animated by its spirit shall unite and meet.
Spirit
The Spirit of the Fellowship, in all its sayings and doings, shall be intelligent love, that love which Jesus meant when he commanded his disciples to love one another, that love whereof the fruits are "joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance," and perfect purity and simplicity of life.
Purposes
The Purposes of the Fellowship shall be the cultivation of character in the persons of its members, and the attainment of whatever follows from high character. The ideal of character shall be perfect purity or holiness, including perfect intelligence, perfect love and freedom — that freedom which springs from perfect obedience to the divine laws of the spirit. Truth and love alone shall have authority in the Fellowship, and in all cases the material and fleshly shall be subordinated to the spiritual.
Method
The Method of the Fellowship shall be cooperation for the ends of holiness. Unwilling to stand or fall with the success or failure of any practical undertaking, it shall not, as a body, identify itself with such, but shall seek to remain a center of religious life and inspiration. At the same time, it shall encourage its members to form, in connection with it, and in its spirit, societies which shall do practical work in the way of lecturing, teaching, discussing and in other ways aiding in the elevation of all whom they can reach.
Branches
The Fellowship may have branches wherever persons are willing to unite on the basis of its spirit, purpose, and method. Each branch shall regulate its own affairs.
II. The Religion of the Fellowship of the New Life
The Fellowship of the New Life is essentially a religious society, that is, a society whose members seek to order their lives in accordance with the Supreme Will (by whatever name it may be called — God, Holiness, Intelligence, Love), in so far as that can in any way be ascertained. Its religion, however, in contradistinction to other religions, is purely one of attitude; attitude of the whole human being, mind, affections, will. It seeks, through the persons of its members, to be receptive toward all truth, whatever its mediate source, responsive with due love toward all worth, and active toward all good. It believes that this triple attitude comprises the whole duty of man, and that this belief is at once the all-sufficient and unassailable creed. For, surely, no one can doubt that every human being ought to pursue all truth, to love duly all that is lovable, and to further, as far as he may, all good. And, again, the man who did these three things, would be performing his whole duty as a man. In one word, it may be said that the religion of the Fellowship consists of a determined endeavor to know well, to love well, and to do well.
In endeavoring to know well, the members of the Fellowship, far from depending solely on individual reason or experience, seek light and aid from every quarter; from every age and people; from religion, science, and philosophy; from nature and art; from reason and faith. Knowing that their own mental and moral status, the very conceptions by which they interpret experience, and the thought by which they unite them into a known world, as well as the language by which they express all this, are not their own products, but are the outcome of a process of mental unfolding dating back far beyond the dawn of recorded history, and are to be understood only through a knowledge of this process, they can look only with pity upon those persons who, having no comprehensive acquaintance with the history of human conceptions, rashly undertake, with their crude notions, to pronounce upon the great problems of life and mind. They are, therefore, neither dogmatists, skeptics, nor agnostics, but reverent students of the world of nature and of mind, seeking to supplement their own experience and conclusions with the experience and conclusions of the serious men and women of all time. Inasmuch as they are not called upon to accept any special beliefs, but only to be honest and circumspect with themselves in accepting any belief whatever, it follows that no honest belief or unbelief need prevent any one from being a member of the Fellowship. The man who finds cogent reasons for believing in the doctrines of transubstantiation and the immaculate conception, and the man who finds it impossible to attach any definite meaning to the word God, are equally in their place in the Fellowship, provided they are equally sincere. But sincerity is not possible apart from a living desire for ever deeper insight, and a sympathy with those who sincerely hold opinions different from our own. There is no sincerity in accepting or maintaining a belief that has not been tested to the limits of our powers. The proper names for such acceptance are credulity and fanaticism. Knowing how often it happens that old and long-exploded doctrines reappear in new forms and become for a time fashionable, by reason of popular ignorance, the members of the Fellowship are not liable to be found among the followers of new prophets, or the purveyors of patent remedies for social ills. Their aim is to stand firm on a basis of knowledge amid the tumultuous sea of conflicting popular prejudices.
In their endeavor to love well, the members of the Fellowship seek to love wisely, — not only to cultivate the power to love, but to distribute love in proportion to the spiritual worth of things. Just as only a feeling, thinking being can truly love, so only a feeling, thinking being can properly be loved; and the deeper and broader the feeling and thought which being has, the more it is a being, the more it is capable of loving, the more worthy to be loved. Mere indiscriminate loving, vague philanthropic sentiment, and enthusiasm for abstractions, such as humanity, law, etc., it rejects as unprofitable and wasteful. True love is that which seeks the highest good of its object, and rejoices in that good. It is merely another name for a desire to realize and abide with perfection.
By doing good, the Fellowship means acting in accordance with the best knowledge and the widest, most discriminating love. It is only when a man has his head and heart well trained that he can act well. Without a comprehension of the end of all action, and of the various tendencies of different actions, he will act blindly from prejudice, passion, or impulse; without well-regulated sympathies, all his actions will have a wrong emphasis and hence be abortive. Such wrong emphasis we see in all those philanthropic movements whose chief aim is men's physical comfort and the indiscriminate removal of that powerful natural corrective, suffering. With such movements the Fellowship, realizing how beneficial suffering may be, has no sympathy. Better to suffer and be strong, than to be comfortable and weak. While the Fellowship seeks to foster cooperation for good works, it hopes for its best results from individual character and effort. It seeks to avoid all publicity and to do its work quietly and unobtrusively in the hearts of men. It calls upon each of its members to be a living power for good, not only in one way or in one connection, but in all ways and in all connections, in the smallest things as well as in the greatest. Its ultimate aim is the good man and the good woman, the intelligent, loving, vigorous character, that seeks good and good alone.
Such is the Religion of The Fellowship of the New Life, such attitude its only bond of union.
III. Extract from a Letter from Mr. Davidson
CONCERNING THE NEW LIFE
The way to begin the New Life, I believe, is to try to forget oneself, one's sorrows, one's annoyances; to count oneself happy, if he can have the approval of a good conscience and the sense of having furthered the good. The New Life, as I conceive it, is a new attitude of the intelligence, the feelings, the will — a desire to lay aside all prejudice and to know the absolute truth, a wide, sweet sympathy, recoiling at no sin, no suffering, no hardness of heart, but only at selfishness and meanness and lying, a firm resolution to do the best, as far as that is known, in the spirit of love. Such a life, I know, is worth living. It is a life in which all wounds soon heal, and all scars are but brands of victory — legal tender for future blessedness.
But the New Life is, in its outward form, more than this. It is an association for the cultivation of true insight, boundless sympathy, and devoted helpfulness. It is the absence of these that makes the old life so blind, so dreary and lonely, so unblest. Every human being ought to be a providence to every other, ready, as far as his powers go, to solve every dark problem, sympathize with every joy and every sorrow, however deep and agonizing, and satisfy every need. We are still living in willful ignorance of our own nature and in barbarous isolation with respect to each other. We wither in silent pain because we have not confidence in each other. In our agony we invent a God to do for us what we are too miserable and selfish to do for each other. We are so sluggish that we try to make a virtue of faith, instead of laboring earnestly to find out and communicate the truth. We are so selfish that we allow our neighbor to suffer, when we have the means to help him. We are so low spiritually that we doubt the infinite possibilities of being, and sink down into a contented or discontented materialism. We do not rise to a firm and abiding sense of our own dignity and infinite worth. All this, I hope, will be altered in the New Life, whether I succeed in doing anything to further it or not. I have only a clear insight as to what is necessary and a desire to do the best I can. I see that, if ever life is to be again wholesome and inspiring, we must have a new social order and a new education; an order in which each shall feel the burdens of all, and all of each; an education which shall aim at producing perfect characters, rich in insight, in love, in energy, scorning selfishness, impurity, and wrong.
I see no way in which these things can be reached but through a strong, combined effort on the part of those that firmly and earnestly believe in them, through a society, realizing in itself and in the relations between its members, that ideal which it recognizes as the highest. Such a society cannot be formed in a day, nor by any general vote or resolution. It must be done slowly and quietly, through the gradual formation of a nucleus of earnest men and women, resolved to live a noble life and to make the redemption of humanity from ignorance, selfishness, and vice the end of all their efforts, and ready to search out and communicate the means whereby this may be done. In the great work we need association, with division of labor. There must be some to discover principles, others to apply them; some to teach, others to labor with their hands. What we can do at present is to keep these ends steadily in view and try to make them clear to others; to interest other people in them and to form little societies for the study of the highest things, for religious sympathy, for mutual aid. All this we can do now — to-day — before to-morrow.
And what if it be true that all great attainment calls for suffering, that such is the law of our being? Shall we slink back and tremble, and drug ourselves, like craven cowards? Never! The pure metal rings when it is struck, and the true soul finds itself and its own nobility often only in the throbs of pain and utter self-sacrifice. One true act of will makes us feel our immortality: alas! that we so seldom perform an act of will. In the face of an act of real will, heredity counts as nothing. What makes heredity tell is our own cowardice and sluggishness in not forcing children to conquer it, and also in not conquering it in ourselves. Heredity, like corruption, acts only when the soul is gone. It is utterly debasing to be bullied by heredity. The belief in its power "shuts the eyes and folds the hands," and delivers the soul in chains to the demon of unreality. The reason why people doubt about the freedom of the will is because they never exercise it, but are always following some feeling or instinct, some private taste or affection. How should such persons know that the will is free? Our time is dying of sentimentality — some of it refined enough, to be sure, but sentimentality — which destroys the will.
We are on our way to all that heart ever wished or head conceived. But the greater gods have no sympathy with anything but heroism. When we will not be heroic they sternly fling us back to suffer, saying to us: Learn to will! The kiss of the Valkyre, which opens the gates of Valhalla, is sealed only upon lips made holy by heroism even unto death.
The hosts of Ahura-Mazda are still fighting, and woe to us if we do not join them! It is the custom among the wise men of the world to laugh at all great heroism, all thirst for self-sacrifice; but we can afford to let them laugh. Somewhere in the shadow there are spectators who laugh at them, and will laugh when these have lost the will to laugh. The sons of Ahura-Mazda laugh forever, and there is no uneasiness in their laughter. Their laugh is the beauty of the universe.
But this will, perhaps, weary you and seem mere poetry to you. Poetry it is; but, as Aristotle said long ago, "Poetry is more earnest and more philosophical than history." The true poetry of the world is the history of its spiritual life, and is as much truer than what is called history as spirit is truer than outward seeming. When shall we learn this?
Several societies for study, instructions, and practical work in connection with the Fellowship were soon organized, and series of lectures arranged.
The prospectus of the seventh year gives a list of papers read, followed by discussion on "Theories of Ethics." Seven were devoted to ancient ethics, two to mediaeval, and sixteen to modern ethics. That of the eighth year gives a list of twenty-five addresses and discussions on the "History and Science of Religion."
Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar
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CHAPTER 10: THE SUMMER SCHOOLS AT FARMINGTON AND GLENMORE
To carry out the idea of summer study — in philosophy, literature, sociology, and religion — away from the turmoil and distractions of city life, Mr. Davidson selected the small New England town of Farmington, where he gathered together a few friends in the year 1888.
Farmington is thus described in the prospectus which he issued at New York:
The following is the prospectus for the third year (1890). The experiment lasted for three years. In 1891 it was absorbed in the school at Glenmore.
During the summer of 1889, while the work was going on at Farmington, Mr. Davidson and a few friends informally visited the district of the Adirondacks, above and beyond the village of Keene, in order to prospect the locality, and see if it was a more suitable place for the formation of a summer school of study, than Farmington had been. In the succeeding year (1890) the scheme matured, although it still remained in a tentative state, and the following prospectus was issued.
A Summer Course of Study in the Adirondacks
Last summer a small number of persons gathered at Glenmore, in the Adirondacks, and freely arranged their days in a way which was found to yield at once rational enjoyment, instruction, and physical exercise. The mornings were devoted to private study and reading, the afternoons to exercise — walking, driving, mountain climbing, tree felling, etc., and the evenings either to the discussion of some important work upon philosophy, art, ethics, or religion, or to music. Many of these evenings were spent round a camp fire. Among the works thus discussed in whole or in part were:
(1) Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
(2) Professor Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel.
(3) Professor Drummond's Philo-Judaeus, or the Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy, in its Development and Completion.
(4) Goethe's Faust (three lectures).
(5) St. Bonaventura's Soul's Progress in God.
(6) T. H. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics.
(7) Mr. Edward Carpenter's England's Ideal.
(8) Mr. W. M. Salter's Ethical Religion.
The advantages of spending the summer in this way were so great that it has been proposed this year to extend them to a larger number of persons, that is, to offer them to all serious students, and particularly to teachers, who may desire to pass an agreeable and profitable summer at a very moderate expense. The instruction will consist of private aid to study, and of lectures. The former will be given in the forenoon, or during walks in the afternoon; the latter on four evenings in the week, and on Sunday morning. Three evenings a week — Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday — will be devoted to music and conversation. For the present the subjects of study will be limited to what, in contradistinction to the natural sciences, may be called the culture sciences — philosophy, religion, ethics, economics, politics, art, language, and literature — and their history. The choice to be made this year among these will, in large degree, depend upon the wishes of intending students and the capacity of obtainable instructors. It will materially aid the directors in making out their programme if intending students will communicate their preferences to the secretary as soon as possible.
Provision has already been made for instruction in the theory and history of philosophy, religion, ethics, economics, politics, art (Greek sculpture and piano music), language (comparative philology, Greek, ancient and modern, Latin, Italian, French, German, Anglo-Saxon, and Old Norse), and literature (Homer, AEschylus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and the English writers of this century).
The summer course will be divided into two parts, one covering July and August, the other September and October. The fees for instruction and lectures will be low, but must depend somewhat upon the numbers who attend. About April a detailed programme will appear, giving all necessary particulars in regard to instruction, accommodation, travelling, camping out, etc. Meanwhile persons desiring further information are requested to communicate with Thomas Davidson, 239 West 105th Street, New York.
Glenmore
Glenmore is a farm of one hundred and sixty-six acres, on East Hill, in the north end of Keene valley. It lies in the wilderness, on the foothills of Mount Hurricane, about two thousand feet above the sea level. Of its very uneven surface two thirds are covered with forest, while one is under cultivation. The farm is traversed by a large trout brook of the most picturesque kind, and is remarkable for the number of cold springs which water it. The neighborhood offers every opportunity for healthy exercise of all sorts. The scenery of the whole region is grand, and much of it can be enjoyed from different points of the farm. The air is pure and bracing and the heat moderate. Mosquitoes are rare. Altogether, it would not be easy to find a more delightful summer retreat.
I have seen the prospectuses for the seasons 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, and 1894. It is unnecessary to extract anything from them except a portion of the statement issued for sessions 1 89 1 and 1892, the lists of "Lectures and Interpretations " (as they were called) by Mr. Davidson. The latter may be useful to many a lecturer of the future; they are therefore included in the appendix to this volume.
Glenmore School
The subject of culture is man's spiritual nature, his intelligence, his affections, his will, and the modes in which these express themselves. This culture includes a history, a theory, and a practice, a certain familiarity with which must be acquired by every person who seriously desires to know his relations to the world and to perform his part worthily in those relations. The aim of the school, therefore, will be twofold, — (1) scientific, (2) practical. The former it will seek to reach by means of lectures on the general outlines of the history and theory of the various culture sciences, and by classes, conversations, and carefully directed private study in regard to their details. The latter it will endeavor to realize by encouraging its members to conduct their life in accordance with the highest ascertainable ethical laws, to strive after "plain living and high thinking," to discipline themselves in simplicity, kindliness, thoughtfulness, helpfulness, regularity, and promptness. In the life at Glenmore an endeavor will be made to combine solid study and serious conversation with reinvigorating rest and abundant and delightful exercise. It is hoped that this may become a place of annual gathering for open-minded persons interested in the serious things of life, so that, being thrown together in an informal way, they may be able to exchange views and initiate sympathies better than in the class room or at the hurried annual meeting. The retirement and quiet of Glenmore seem especially favorable for such things, and the numerous picnics and evening bonfires in the woods offer provision for the lighter moods. Last year two plays were acted by members of the school, and it is hoped that a Greek play may be brought out this year. The members of the school will have access to a large, well-selected library. Every meal at Glenmore will be opened with a few minutes' reading.
In the Scottish Review for January, 1892, there is an article by Professor John Murray of Montreal, entitled "A Summer School of Philosophy," which gives an interesting account of the work at Glenmore. The first summer school, which was an American invention, was held at Concord, in Massachusetts, where the editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Mr. Harris, now the United States Minister of Education, took an active part, along with Thomas Davidson and others. It was pioneer work, and its success led Davidson to attempt a somewhat similar school at Farmington, in Connecticut. For several reasons the second experiment did not succeed so well; and a third was started, and carried on with fresh missionary zeal by its founder, at Glenmore, in the Adirondacks. Glenmore is some twenty miles west of Westport, on Lake Champlain, and two thousand feet above the sea level, at the northern end of the Keene valley. The attractions of the scenery were great, hill and dale, field and forest intermingled. The original farmhouse of Glenmore was bought, with extensive acreage around, and additional wooden cottage buildings were put up, while some of the students camped out in tents. Interesting descriptions of the place and its attractions are given by some of the students in these pages (see Chapters XI and XII). The teaching session lasted only for the two months of July and August, but arrangements could be made for earlier or later residence. It was a home of simple living, assiduous study, and bright fellowship. There was a morning call by horn at half-past seven, breakfast at eight o'clock, preceded by two or three minutes' reading by the dean. Lectures began at half-past nine. Two were given in the forenoon and one in the evening, each followed by half an hour's familiar discussion of the question that had been raised. The subjects of lecture were various; for example, Aristotle's Metaphysics and Politics, Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit, The Comparative History of Religion, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Tennyson's In Memoriam, The Psychology, the Ethics, and the Metaphysics of the Will. In the lecture room the following device was inscribed on the wall: [Greek] (Nic. Eth., VIII, i) (Without friends no one would choose to live, even with all other good things). Perhaps the chief characteristic of the teaching given in this school was the thorough discussion of the great books themselves — the books that were referred to and commented on, not the mere reading of a written commentary upon them. There were conversational lessons in French, German, and Italian. Then there were afternoon walks, Saturday rambles, and evening concerts. There was no pedantry of any kind. Unconventionality reigned. Students dressed in easy summer attire. There was no display and no flirtation. The stimulus of the life of the place was immense.
One of his student friends at Glenmore writes to me:
To carry out the idea of summer study — in philosophy, literature, sociology, and religion — away from the turmoil and distractions of city life, Mr. Davidson selected the small New England town of Farmington, where he gathered together a few friends in the year 1888.
Farmington is thus described in the prospectus which he issued at New York:
Farmington
Farmington is a quaint, old, shady New England town, overlooking the Farmington and Pequabuck rivers, and affording beautiful and extensive views in many directions. It is on the New Haven and Northampton Railroad, about 30 miles from New Haven, 46 from Northampton, and 10 from Hartford. The town is about two miles from the station. The rugged hills and broad valleys about Farmington afford excellent opportunities for pleasant walks, rides, and drives, while the rivers are very convenient for bathing and boating.
The following is the prospectus for the third year (1890). The experiment lasted for three years. In 1891 it was absorbed in the school at Glenmore.
Farmington Lectures on Philosophy and Ethics
1890 (third year)
The First Morning Course will be devoted to the Philosophy of the late Professor T. H. Green. This philosophy takes a bold stand against the agnosticism and materialism of the time, seeking to show their inconsistency and insufficiency, and to replace them by a doctrine of reason and spirit, offering a solid basis for religion and ethics.
The Second Morning Course will treat of Functions of a Church and its Relation to the State. The six lectures will be given by six different persons representing as many different views, and will form a kind of symposium.
The First Evening Course will be devoted to the Greek Moralists, — (i) AEschylus, (2) Socrates, (3) Plato, (4) Aristotle, — and will attempt to show how the Greeks gradually rose from the conception of a life governed by external fate and authority to that of a life guided by internal insight.
The Second Evening Course will deal with Some of the Primary Concepts of Economic Science, — (1) Wealth, (2) Value, (3) Property, (4) Land, (5) Labor, (6) Capital, — and will aim at clearing these of the vagueness which at present attaches to them, and showing that they involve a recognition of man's moral nature. It will follow from this that economics cannot be divorced from ethics.
After each lecture an opportunity will be given for free discussion in which it is hoped that all persons present will take part.
Morning Courses
I. The Philosophy of T. H. Green
June 17. Green's Theory of Cognition and its place in the History of Thought. By Thomas Davidson of New York.
June 18. Green's Treatment of the Relation of Feeling to Reality. By H. N. Gardiner, Professor of Philosophy in Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
June 19. Green's Ethical System. By Stephen F. Weston of New York.
June 20. Green's Ethical System viewed in its Relation to Utilitarianism. By W. Douw Lighthall, B.C.L., of Montreal, Canada, author of The Young Seigneur, Sketch of a New Utilitarianism.
June 23. Green's Political Theory. By Percival Chubb of London, England.
June 24. Green's Religious Philosophy. By John Dewey, Ph.D., Professor of Ethics, History of Philosophy, and Logic in the University of Michigan, author of Psychology, etc.
Memorandum Number Seven: The Order's Objectives For Education
We can deduce The Order's objectives for education from evidence already presented and by examining the work and influence of John Dewey, the arch creator of modern educational theory.
How do we do this? We first need to examine Dewey's relationship with The Order. Then compare Dewey's philosophy with Hegel and with the philosophy and objectives of modern educational practice.
These educational objectives have not, by and large, been brought about by governmental action. In fact, if the present state of education had been brought about by legislation, it would have been challenged on the grounds of unconstitutionality.
On the contrary, the philosophy and practice of today's system has been achieved by injection of massive private funds by foundations under influence, and sometimes control, of The Order. This implementation we will describe in a future volume, How The Order Controls Foundations. In fact, the history of the implementation of Dewey's objectives is also the history of the larger foundations, i.e., Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Peabody, Sloan, Slater and Twentieth Century.
How John Dewey Relates To The Order
John Dewey worked for his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University from 1882-86 under Hegelian philosopher George Sylvester Morris. Morris in turn had his doctorate from University of Berlin and studied under the same teachers as Daniel Gilman, i.e., Adolph Trendelenberg and Hermann Ulrici.
Neither Morris nor Dewey were members of The Order, but the link is clear. Gilman hired Morris, knowing full well that Hegelianism is a totally integrated body of knowledge and easy to recognize. It is a different from the British empirical school of John Stuart Mill as night and day.
John Dewey's psychology was taken from G. Stanley Hall, the first American student to receive a doctorate from Wilhelm Wundt at University of Leipzig. Gilman knew exactly what he was getting when he hired Hall. With only a dozen faculty members, all were hired personally by the President.
In brief, philosophy and psychology came to Dewey from academics hand-picked by The Order.
From Johns Hopkins Dewey went as Professor of Philosophy to University of Michigan and in 1886 published Psychology, a blend of Hegelian philosophy applied to Wundtian experimental psychology. It sold well. In 1894 Dewey went to University of Chicago and in 1902 was appointed Director of the newly founded -- with Rockefeller money -- School of Education.
The University of Chicago itself had been founded in 1890 with Rockefeller funds -- and in a future volume we will trace this through Frederick Gates (of Hartford, Connecticut), and the Pillsbury family (The Order). The University of Chicago and Columbia Teachers' College were the key training schools for modern education.
The Influence Of Dewey
Looking back at John Dewey after 80 years of his influence, he can be recognized as the pre-eminent factor in the collectivization, or Hegelianization, of American Schools. Dewey was consistently a philosopher of social change. That's why his impact has been so deep and pervasive. And it is in the work and implementation of the ideas of John Dewey that we can find the objective of The Order.
When The Order brought G. Stanley Hall from Leipzig to Johns Hopkins University, John Dewey was already there, waiting to write his doctoral dissertation on "The Psychology of Kant." Already a Hegelian in philosophy, he acquired and adapted the experimental psychology of Wundt and Hall to his concept of education for social change. To illustrate this, here's a quote from John Dewey in My Pedagogic Creed:"The school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends. Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living."
What we learn from this is that Dewey's education is not child centered but State centered, because for the Hegelian, "social ends" are always State ends.
This is where the gulf of misunderstanding between modern parents and the educational system begins. Parents believe a child goes to school to learn skills to use in the adult world, but Dewey states specifically that education is "not a preparation for future living." The Dewey educational system does not accept the role of developing a child's talents but, contrarily, only to prepare the child to function as a unit in an organic whole -- in blunt terms a cog in the wheel of an organic society. Whereas most Americans have moral values rooted in the individual, the values of the school system are rooted in the Hegelian concept of the State as the absolute. No wonder there is misunderstanding!
The Individual Child
When we compare Hegel, John Dewey, and today's educational thinkers and doers, we find an extraordinary similarity.
For Hegel the individual has no value except as he or she performs a function for society:"The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State."
John Dewey tried to brush the freedom of the individual to one side. In an article, "Democracy and Educational Administration" (School & Society, XVL, 1937, p. 457) Dewey talks about the "lost individual," and then restates Hegel in the following way: "freedom is the participation of every mature human being in formation of the values that regulate the living of men together." This is pure Hegel, i.e., man finds freedom only in obedience to the State. As one critic, Horace M. Kallen stated, John Dewey had a "blindness to the sheer individuality of individuals."
In other words, for Dewey man has no individual rights. Man exists only to serve the State. This is directly contradictory to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with the preamble "We the people." They then go on to define the rights of the state which are always subordinate and subject to the will of "We the people."
This, of course, is why modern educationists have great difficulty in introducing the Constitution into school work. Their ideas follow Hegel and Dewey and indirectly the objectives of The Order. For example:"An attempt should be made to redress the present overemphasis on individualism in current programs ... students need to develop a sense of community and collective identity." (Educational Leadership, May 1982, William B. Stanley, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, Louisiana State University).
The Purpose Of Education
What then is the purpose of education, if the individual has no rights and exists only for the State?
There was no need for Hegel to describe education, and so far as we know there is no statement purely on education in Hegel's writings. It is unnecessary. For Hegel every quality of an individual exists only at the mercy and will of the State. This approach is reflected in political systems based on Hegel whether it be Soviet Communism or Hitlerian national socialism. John Dewey follows Hegel's organic view of society. For example:"Education consists either in the ability to use one's powers in a social direction or else in ability to share in the experience of others and thus widen the individual consciousness to that of the race" (Lectures For The First Course In Pedagogy).
This last sentence is reminiscent of the Hitlerian philosophy of race (i.e., right Hegelianism).
And today's educators reflect this approach. Here's a quote from Assemblyman John Vasconcellos of California, who also happens to be Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education and the Education Goals Committee for the California State Assembly -- a key post:"It is now time for a new vision of ourselves, of man, of human nature and of human potential, and a new theory of politics and institutions premised upon that vision. What is that vision of Man? That the natural, whole, organismic human being is loving ... that man's basic thrust is towards community" (quoted in Rex Myles, Brotherhood and Darkness, p. 347).
What is this "widen(ing) the individual consciousness" (Dewey) and "thrust ... towards community" (Vasconcellos)?
Stripped of the pedantic language it is new world order, a world organic society. But there is no provision for a global organic order within the Constitution. In fact, it is illegal for any government officer or elected official to move the United States towards such an order as it would clearly be inconsistent with the Constitution. To be sure, Dewey was not a government official, but Vasconcellos has taken an oath of allegiance to the Constitution.
The popular view of a global order is probably that we had better look after our problems at home before we get involved in these esoteric ideas. Political corruption, pitifully low educational standards, and insensitive bureaucracy are probably of more concern to Americans.
It's difficult to see what the new world order has to do with education of children, but it's there in the literature. Fichte, Hegel's predecessor from whom many of his philosophical ideas originated, had a definite concept of a League of Nations (Volkerbund) and the idea of a league to enforce peace. Fichte asserted "As this federation spreads further and gradually embraces the whole earth, perpetual peace begins, the only lawful relation among states ..."
The National Education Association, the lobby for education, produced a program for the 1976 Bicentennial entitled "A Declaration Of Interdependence: Education For A Global Community."
On page 6 of this document we find:"We are committed to the idea of Education for Global Community. You are invited to help turn the commitment into action and mobilizing world education for development of a world community."
An objective almost parallel to Hegel is in Self Knowledge And Social Action by Obadiah Silas Harris, Associate Professor of Educational Management and Development New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico:"When community educators say that community education takes into consideration the total individual and his total environment, they mean precisely this: the field of community education includes the individual in his total psycho-physical structure and his entire ecological climate with all its ramifications -- social, political, economical, cultural, spiritual, etc. It seeks to integrate the individual within himself (sic) and within his community until the individual becomes a cosmic soul and the community the world."
And on page 84 of the same book:"The Cosmic soul ... the whole human race is going to evolve an effective soul of its own -- the cosmic soul of the race. That is the future of human evolution. As a result of the emergence of the universal soul, there will be a great unification of the entire human race, ushering into existence a new era, a new dawn of unique world power."
This last quote sounds even more like Adolph Hitler than Assemblyman John Vasconcellos. It has the same blend of the occult, the ethnic and absolutism.
In conclusion we need only quote the Constitution, the basic body of law under which the United States is governed.
The generally held understanding of the Constitution on the relationship between the individual and the State is that the individual is Supreme, the State exists only to serve individuals and the State has no power except by express permission of the people.
This is guaranteed by Amendments IX and X of the Constitution.
Amendment IX reads,"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People."
Note, the "retained". And,
Amendment X reads,"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
In brief, the proposals of John Dewey and his followers are unconstitutional. They would never have seen the light of day in American schoolrooms unless they had been promoted by The Order with its enormous power.
-- America's Secret Establishment -- An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones, by Antony C. Sutton
II. The Relations of Church and State
June 25. The Politico-Philosophical View. By Professor John Dewey, Ph.D.
June 26. The Free-Religious View. By Reverend W. J. Potter, D.D., of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
June 27. The Historical-Philosophical View. By W. T. Harris, LL.D., Commissioner of Education, Washington, D.C. Editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, etc.
June 30. The Humanitarian View. By H. D. Lloyd of Chicago, author of The New Conscience, etc.
July 1. The Scholastic or Roman Catholic View. By Brother Agarias of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, New York, author of The Culture of the Spiritual Sense, etc.
July 2. The Unitarian View. By the Reverend A. N. Alcott, of Elgin, Illinois.
Evening Courses
I. The Greek Moralists
(By Thomas Davids 011)
June 17. AEschylus. The Ethical Interpretation of Mythology.
June 18. AEschylus. Ethical Theory. Man's Relations to Family, Society, State, and God.
June 19. Socrates. The Relation of Intelligence to Moral Freedom.
June 20. Plato. The State as the Embodiment of Reason and Justice.
June 23. Aristotle. The Good. The Golden Mean. The Ideal Life.
June 24. Aristotle. The State as a School for Life.
II. Primary Concepts of Economic Science
June 25. Wealth. By Percival Chubb.
June 26. Value. By W. M. Salter, Lecturer to the Chicago Society for Ethical Culture, author of Ethical Religion, etc.
June 27. Property. By Percival Chubb.
June 30. Land. By Stephen F. Weston.
July 1. Labor. By Stephen F. Weston.
July 2. Capital. By W. M. Salter.
During the summer of 1889, while the work was going on at Farmington, Mr. Davidson and a few friends informally visited the district of the Adirondacks, above and beyond the village of Keene, in order to prospect the locality, and see if it was a more suitable place for the formation of a summer school of study, than Farmington had been. In the succeeding year (1890) the scheme matured, although it still remained in a tentative state, and the following prospectus was issued.
A Summer Course of Study in the Adirondacks
Last summer a small number of persons gathered at Glenmore, in the Adirondacks, and freely arranged their days in a way which was found to yield at once rational enjoyment, instruction, and physical exercise. The mornings were devoted to private study and reading, the afternoons to exercise — walking, driving, mountain climbing, tree felling, etc., and the evenings either to the discussion of some important work upon philosophy, art, ethics, or religion, or to music. Many of these evenings were spent round a camp fire. Among the works thus discussed in whole or in part were:
(1) Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
(2) Professor Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel.
(3) Professor Drummond's Philo-Judaeus, or the Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy, in its Development and Completion.
(4) Goethe's Faust (three lectures).
(5) St. Bonaventura's Soul's Progress in God.
(6) T. H. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics.
(7) Mr. Edward Carpenter's England's Ideal.
(8) Mr. W. M. Salter's Ethical Religion.
The advantages of spending the summer in this way were so great that it has been proposed this year to extend them to a larger number of persons, that is, to offer them to all serious students, and particularly to teachers, who may desire to pass an agreeable and profitable summer at a very moderate expense. The instruction will consist of private aid to study, and of lectures. The former will be given in the forenoon, or during walks in the afternoon; the latter on four evenings in the week, and on Sunday morning. Three evenings a week — Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday — will be devoted to music and conversation. For the present the subjects of study will be limited to what, in contradistinction to the natural sciences, may be called the culture sciences — philosophy, religion, ethics, economics, politics, art, language, and literature — and their history. The choice to be made this year among these will, in large degree, depend upon the wishes of intending students and the capacity of obtainable instructors. It will materially aid the directors in making out their programme if intending students will communicate their preferences to the secretary as soon as possible.
Provision has already been made for instruction in the theory and history of philosophy, religion, ethics, economics, politics, art (Greek sculpture and piano music), language (comparative philology, Greek, ancient and modern, Latin, Italian, French, German, Anglo-Saxon, and Old Norse), and literature (Homer, AEschylus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and the English writers of this century).
The summer course will be divided into two parts, one covering July and August, the other September and October. The fees for instruction and lectures will be low, but must depend somewhat upon the numbers who attend. About April a detailed programme will appear, giving all necessary particulars in regard to instruction, accommodation, travelling, camping out, etc. Meanwhile persons desiring further information are requested to communicate with Thomas Davidson, 239 West 105th Street, New York.
Glenmore
Glenmore is a farm of one hundred and sixty-six acres, on East Hill, in the north end of Keene valley. It lies in the wilderness, on the foothills of Mount Hurricane, about two thousand feet above the sea level. Of its very uneven surface two thirds are covered with forest, while one is under cultivation. The farm is traversed by a large trout brook of the most picturesque kind, and is remarkable for the number of cold springs which water it. The neighborhood offers every opportunity for healthy exercise of all sorts. The scenery of the whole region is grand, and much of it can be enjoyed from different points of the farm. The air is pure and bracing and the heat moderate. Mosquitoes are rare. Altogether, it would not be easy to find a more delightful summer retreat.
I have seen the prospectuses for the seasons 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, and 1894. It is unnecessary to extract anything from them except a portion of the statement issued for sessions 1 89 1 and 1892, the lists of "Lectures and Interpretations " (as they were called) by Mr. Davidson. The latter may be useful to many a lecturer of the future; they are therefore included in the appendix to this volume.
Glenmore School
The subject of culture is man's spiritual nature, his intelligence, his affections, his will, and the modes in which these express themselves. This culture includes a history, a theory, and a practice, a certain familiarity with which must be acquired by every person who seriously desires to know his relations to the world and to perform his part worthily in those relations. The aim of the school, therefore, will be twofold, — (1) scientific, (2) practical. The former it will seek to reach by means of lectures on the general outlines of the history and theory of the various culture sciences, and by classes, conversations, and carefully directed private study in regard to their details. The latter it will endeavor to realize by encouraging its members to conduct their life in accordance with the highest ascertainable ethical laws, to strive after "plain living and high thinking," to discipline themselves in simplicity, kindliness, thoughtfulness, helpfulness, regularity, and promptness. In the life at Glenmore an endeavor will be made to combine solid study and serious conversation with reinvigorating rest and abundant and delightful exercise. It is hoped that this may become a place of annual gathering for open-minded persons interested in the serious things of life, so that, being thrown together in an informal way, they may be able to exchange views and initiate sympathies better than in the class room or at the hurried annual meeting. The retirement and quiet of Glenmore seem especially favorable for such things, and the numerous picnics and evening bonfires in the woods offer provision for the lighter moods. Last year two plays were acted by members of the school, and it is hoped that a Greek play may be brought out this year. The members of the school will have access to a large, well-selected library. Every meal at Glenmore will be opened with a few minutes' reading.
In the Scottish Review for January, 1892, there is an article by Professor John Murray of Montreal, entitled "A Summer School of Philosophy," which gives an interesting account of the work at Glenmore. The first summer school, which was an American invention, was held at Concord, in Massachusetts, where the editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Mr. Harris, now the United States Minister of Education, took an active part, along with Thomas Davidson and others. It was pioneer work, and its success led Davidson to attempt a somewhat similar school at Farmington, in Connecticut. For several reasons the second experiment did not succeed so well; and a third was started, and carried on with fresh missionary zeal by its founder, at Glenmore, in the Adirondacks. Glenmore is some twenty miles west of Westport, on Lake Champlain, and two thousand feet above the sea level, at the northern end of the Keene valley. The attractions of the scenery were great, hill and dale, field and forest intermingled. The original farmhouse of Glenmore was bought, with extensive acreage around, and additional wooden cottage buildings were put up, while some of the students camped out in tents. Interesting descriptions of the place and its attractions are given by some of the students in these pages (see Chapters XI and XII). The teaching session lasted only for the two months of July and August, but arrangements could be made for earlier or later residence. It was a home of simple living, assiduous study, and bright fellowship. There was a morning call by horn at half-past seven, breakfast at eight o'clock, preceded by two or three minutes' reading by the dean. Lectures began at half-past nine. Two were given in the forenoon and one in the evening, each followed by half an hour's familiar discussion of the question that had been raised. The subjects of lecture were various; for example, Aristotle's Metaphysics and Politics, Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit, The Comparative History of Religion, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Tennyson's In Memoriam, The Psychology, the Ethics, and the Metaphysics of the Will. In the lecture room the following device was inscribed on the wall: [Greek] (Nic. Eth., VIII, i) (Without friends no one would choose to live, even with all other good things). Perhaps the chief characteristic of the teaching given in this school was the thorough discussion of the great books themselves — the books that were referred to and commented on, not the mere reading of a written commentary upon them. There were conversational lessons in French, German, and Italian. Then there were afternoon walks, Saturday rambles, and evening concerts. There was no pedantry of any kind. Unconventionality reigned. Students dressed in easy summer attire. There was no display and no flirtation. The stimulus of the life of the place was immense.
One of his student friends at Glenmore writes to me:
"When I first met Thomas Davidson he was interested in the Nationalist movement, a kind of socialism that had arisen from the publication of Bellamy's Looking Backward. He left it immediately afterwards, because his name had been published with regard to some action in connection with it, without his being consulted; and he afterwards became antagonistic to every form of socialism, considering that it was a return to militarism, and subversive of true liberty of the individual. . . .
There were inconsistencies in his likes and dislikes; e.g. I sometimes wondered why he objected to Marcus Aurelius, and to Matthew Arnold. Kind as he was to children, he was a stern disciplinarian; and nothing roused him more than to hear it said, 'Poor child, let her have a good time!' A time of laziness, a do-nothing-ness was a bad time. He occasionally made fierce attacks on frivolity in conversation as indicating low aims in life, and so unsparing was his censure of it that women students sometimes thought it scarcely polite!"
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar
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CHAPTER 11: RECOLLECTIONS OF GLENMORE BY MARY FOSTER
The work of Thomas Davidson in his Summer School of the Culture Sciences at Glenmore can best be recorded by those who were pupils, or comrades, in it. I therefore give that record very largely in the words of those who were members of that school, rather than weave their detached reminiscences together in a restatement of my own. Two of the women students — Miss Mary Foster and Miss Charlotte Daley — have sent me extensive notes from which I make extracts, Miss Foster's notes being concerned more especially with the daily life at Glenmore, and Miss Daley's with the teaching.
Miss Foster spent four summers at the school, and knew most of the people who surrounded Mr. Davidson in these years. From her paper, which she calls "Mr. Davidson and the Life at Glenmore," I take the following:
[quote]"I first met Mr. Thomas Davidson in New York in 1890, and at a meeting of the New Fellowship I made acquaintance with the friends who had entered actively into his endeavors after higher aims in life.
In the previous year Mr. Davidson had purchased a farm at East Hill, near Keene in the Adirondack Mountains, and a preliminary informal meeting had been held there that summer. He was now about to go up into the mountains to prepare the camp, which he had named “Glenmore,” for a more formal gathering of students; and with this in view the members of the Fellowship presented him with a large tent, for use until additional buildings should be put up and made available for such guests as desired outdoor life during their sojourn.
It was an interesting experience to come into contact with this group of people and their remarkable leader, devoted as they all felt themselves to be to high social and intellectual ideals. Their hope was by individual effort to promote simplicity of life, together with a sincere pursuit of truth, and by association to increase their capacity for such work. 'The Religion of the Fellowship consisted,' they said, 'of a determined endeavor to know well, to love well, and to do well.'
Mr. Davidson was in many ways eminently fitted to devise and carry out such a scheme, being endowed not only with a remarkable personality but with a power of influencing others intellectually which I have never seen equaled.
I have always felt that the first year at Glenmore (in 1889) must have had a peculiar charm of its own, the charm incident to pioneering. The community ' waited on itself ' to a much greater extent than in later years, and there seems to have been a very pleasant feeling of fraternity among them. The farmhouse parlor had to be used as lecture hall, dining room, and general sitting room; and I think that many of the guests slept in the barn on balsam boughs. The ladies often made pillows of the balsam needles, while reading was going on; and they all experimented in cooking and washing. In the afternoons they united in such undertakings as deepening the bathing basin in the brook, cutting through the fallen trunks on the Hurricane trail, and clearing certain spots in the woods of old stumps and underbrush so that social gatherings could be held, or tents erected there. There was also the whole surrounding region to be explored, and choice spots were to be discovered and opened out.
Many of the evenings were spent round a camp fire, and works on Philosophy, Art, Ethics, and Religion were freely discussed. Other evenings were devoted to music, or recitation; and all the proceedings were on a less formal scale than was necessary later on, when the number of students had increased.
It was in the third year of the work at Glenmore that I paid my first visit to the place. I went up the Hudson by boat, then by train from Albany to Westport on Lake Champlain; thence a drive of about twenty miles carried me into the heart of the mountains, through lanes thick with flowers and ferns, to the hearty greeting awaiting me at Glenmore.
The only buildings at first noticeable were the log farmhouse, a plain modern building opposite, — which was the dining hall, with four bedrooms over it, built in 1890, — and an old barn. Some friends, who were lodging in the farm- house, received me, while a servant blew a horn; upon which Mr. Davidson descended the hundred and twenty foot declivity, from his abode in higher regions, to add his warm welcome. I was immediately invited to ascend the hill to the lecture hall; this could be done by the steep face of the cliff, or partly by the road leading to the trail up Mount Hurricane.
One thus reached a level open space, in the front of which, and commanding a magnificent view of the mountain and valley, the lecture hall had been erected that spring. Like all the other buildings it was of wood. It contained a spacious room having a large open fireplace, with dogs for burning large logs, and a brick chimney. Behind this, on the south side, were two bedrooms, and stairs ascending to Mr. Davidson's private rooms, which opened on a large veranda, and also to seven other bedrooms designed for the accommodation of guests. On two sides of the building there was a wide piazza, where hammocks could be swung. From here, later on, we often watched the sunset clouds or the aurora borealis, and listened to the boys' singing of college songs. A few paces to the south, in the shade of the wood, was the simple two-roomed cottage in which Mr. Davidson had lived two summers with Mr. Percival Chubb.
The road by which I had come led immediately into the woods clothing the ravine (or gulf, as it was called) and made a gradual descent, crossing the stream below by a picturesque bridge; then, doubling upon itself, it passed in front of the Willey House, a local hotel, and descended parallel to the stream, until it reached the village of Keene — the post and shopping town — 1100 feet below.
Just above the bridge was the meeting place of two streams, and in the main stream further on was an island, the space round which had been cleared of underwood and fallen branches. Here, under high trees and among rugged boulders, with the brook leaping by in a series of small cascades, wooden seats had been constructed, and it was amid such surroundings that festive gatherings were held. Directly above this spot the bed of the brook had been deepened so that an excellent basin for bathing was formed. That it was not spacious enough to swim in mattered little, since even in the warmest weather the water, running under trees all the way from its numerous sources, was of so low a temperature that no one could remain in it for many seconds at a time. For a quick plunge, however, it was most invigorating and delightful, and the basin was a favorite resort.
I arrived on June 26, and found a fair number of guests already assembled. Several ladies had built cottages for themselves on the estate. There were two of these halfway up the hill, between the farmhouse and the lecture room, and at the top of a clearing on the north side was a hut, afterwards owned by Dr. W. T. Harris. Several more sprang up later and added much to the picturesqueness of the settlement. On the margin of the gulf Mr. Stephen Weston's tent was pitched. Two boys with their tutor occupied another, and Professor John Dewey had built a house on his own land low down on the other side of the stream.
The school opened on July 1, and lectures were given in the mornings of five days in the week at 10 and 11. 15 a.m., as well as in the evenings at 8 p.m. Meals were served in the dining hall, breakfast being at 8 a.m., dinner at 1 p.m., and supper at 6 p.m. Dairy produce, eggs, and wild fruit were abundant, but meat was sometimes difficult to get, and by many deemed unnecessary in the pure, bracing air of the mountains.
On the first Saturday — a day when no lectures took place — there was a housewarming at the lecture hall. This was decorated for the occasion, chiefly with various trailing species of club-moss common in the woods, and a bonfire was lighted outside.
Mr. Davidson's Sunday lectures were on Tennyson, Goethe, or Dante. He also gave some readings, and the singing of hymns or poems was arranged before the lecture. Sometimes at these Sunday gatherings he would expound a psalm, or other portion of the Hebrew Scriptures.
People staying at the Willey House, or summer boarders at any of the neighboring farms, would also attend, so that there was quite a large congregation. The inhabitants of the district were all either Roman Catholics, or Seventh-Day Baptists, and there were no places of worship except of these denominations. Even when the school was no longer in session, Mr. Davidson always gave some teaching on Sundays, generally in the evenings, to the smaller audience that still surrounded him.
On Saturdays, if there was no festive function at Glen- more, the guests could arrange excursions to the lakes, mountains, and waterfalls of the district. Lake Placid, Whiteface Mountains, Ausable Lake, John Brown's grave, and many other places of interest were within a drive; and a neighboring farmer had set up an extra ' team ' to accommodate the guests on these occasions, as well as to fetch them to and from the station.
The walks in the immediate vicinity were also very delightful. Opposite Glenmore, beyond the Willey House, were two round-topped hills, called Great Crow and Little Crow. Irreverent students of the first year at Glenmore had attempted to fix upon them the names of Soda and Potash, much to the disapprobation of Mr. Davidson, who suggested Ben More and Ben Ledi. On the edge of the woods that crowned Little Crow was a huge boulder as big as a small cottage, with wooden steps by which to ascend it.
On rare occasions a general walk or stroll would be taken, with the privilege of Mr. Davidson's company; and it was then amusing to notice the behavior of his beautiful collie, named Dante, who, true to his instincts as a shepherd's dog, did all he could to keep the party together, and objected to their straying or lagging behind.
In these regions very little wheat or barley is grown, but buckwheat and oats are common, and on every farm we saw long rows of Indian corn. Between these rows pumpkin vines flourished, and in the autumn left their splendid golden balls over the whole field.
The primeval forest still held full sway on the more remote slopes of the hills, but near the farms the younger growth consisted of the paper birch, the common poplar, spruce firs, and the sweet balsam firs. Pine trees were not so common. At the borders of the woods there were maples and other soft-wood trees.
By 1893 a new dining hall had been built, and on the walls were hung many interesting pictures, with portraits of people who had come into contact with Mr. Davidson. All these perished in the fire that destroyed the block of buildings a few years ago.
It was outside this building that we assembled for the eight-o'clock breakfast, and the guests were not often visible before that hour. Occasionally an early bather might be seen, or those few who invited health by walking barefoot in the dew, — a delightful practice inaugurated by a German doctor, who had been at Father Kneipp's sanatorium in Austria. In the first years a horn, as used on the farms around, and later, a bell, summoned the visitors from tent, cottage, and lecture hall to breakfast. All meals were preceded by a brief reading by Mr. Davidson from some work on Ethics, Philosophy, or Religion. By 8:30 we were away at our studies, or tidying up our dormitories, until 10 o'clock, when the lecture began, often with a second at 11 o'clock. Dinner was at 1 o'clock, after which Mr. Davidson and many of the party took a short rest before engaging in further study, or in the outdoor exercises of the afternoon. There were plenty of charming places for hammocks among the trees, and sometimes private-study groups met in the woods or at some one's hut. Supper was at 6 o'clock, leaving more spare time, which was often employed in watching the sunset, and in talking or singing until the hour for the evening lecture. The students were not expected to attend all the lectures, five a week being the minimum exacted of them. Young people, not sufficiently advanced for the courses in Philosophy and in the Culture Sciences, were expected to pursue other studies under the tuition of some of the older members.
In the short American summer evenings it was generally dark when lectures were over, so that lanterns were necessary. Dr. Mann proved himself a benefactor to the community by making a better path through the wood that lay between the lecture hall and the lane, and by adding a railing at one side. This bore the inscription at the foot, 'The Ascent of Man,' and at the top, 'The Descent of Man.'
After the session of the school was over, and while perhaps eight or a dozen guests still lingered at Glenmore, Mr. Davidson would give many delightful informal talks on matters philosophical. It is never to be forgotten how in those quieter times we sat listening to his conversation at the breakfast table, sometimes for two hours after that meal was really over, — a delight that was never ours when many guests were present.
The delivery and the dispatch of letters were irregular at Glenmore, and few cared whether or not they got any newspapers. For our mail we depended upon the convenience of the neighboring farmers, who frequently had errands to Keene; or upon the willingness of some guest to walk down the 1100 feet into the valley, and to return through the silent woods after nightfall, a weird and impressive experience.
Saturdays were, as I have said, our free days, and they were often devoted to long walks. A favorite excursion was the ascent of Mount Hurricane, the trail up which passed through Glenmore. There were three miles of walking along a narrow forest path with occasional crossings of a rushing stream, till you reached a height, often swathed in clouds, where the lichens hung thickly on the trees, and the mosses underfoot were deep. At the last spring, before leaving the woods to ascend to the summit, we used to stop to fill our water cans. Then we would emerge upon the open face of a mountain 3763 feet high, whence one of the finest views in the Adirondacks is to be obtained. Toward the north lies Canada; Lake Champlain and the hills of Vermont are to the east; while on the south, and west, a splendid range of local mountains stretches before you. The botanist can enjoy the Alpine vegetation which is to be found at this height.
Sometimes a party arranged to sleep on the summit of Hurricane, so as to see both sunset and sunrise. Blankets were brought up, and the boys collected fir branches for beds, and other wood to keep a fire during the night. There were several bonfires each summer on the island near the bathing place as an accompaniment to singing and other entertainment. A few concerts were also given in the lecture hall, at which the songs of Scotland were sung; and occasionally Mr. Davidson indulged us with his inimitable recitations of Scottish ballads. One year he gave a charming account of the life and poetry of Lady Nairne, illustrated with music. Discussions were also held on special subjects, such as free will, socialism, and vegetarianism. It was an interesting occasion when the boys at Glenmore gave a masquerade in the woods round the spring, near which Mr. Davidson's bungalow was afterwards built.
Mr. Davidson often entertained, under his own roof, friends from Keene valley or the Willey House, as well as the students at Glenmore; and there was frequent interchange of courtesies between our camp and friends near St. Hubert's, Keene Heights, twelve miles off, where many members of the ' Ethical Society ' surrounded Dr. Felix Adler. They had a lecture hall in which Mr. Davidson was in request, and he used to speak there at least once in the summer.
It was in the early summer of 1893 that Mr. Davidson's bungalow was built in a retired spot in the wood on the other side of the trail from the lecture hall. It was finished before the school opened, and those who were spending June at Glenmore helped him to carry across his extensive library. A path less abrupt than the very steep one to the farmhouse was needed, and another one diverging from it to the lecture hall. These works were undertaken by some of the residents. Trees were cut down, and the path along the sloping side of the hill was shored up. Large stones were found to bridge the rivulet that trickled down by the side of the lane, and pathways were soon made for philosophers to walk in.
An open glade stretches along the crest of the hill from Mr. Davidson's bungalow to the east, and it is on the border of this that his body now lies buried. In the autumn the place is a blaze of golden-rod, and there is a picturesque rock at the further end where harmless snakes make their home. Part of this glade is very swampy, and at night fireflies may be seen pursuing the small water insects that rise from it. The carriage way to Mr. Davidson's house crossed this swamp in an uncomfortable and unsafe manner; and it occurred to the members -of the school to build a wooden bridge, which would not only improve the road, but be a pleasant feature in the landscape. Large trees were felled by Mr. Davidson, Dr. Edward Moore, and others; while the ladies sawed smaller branches into lengths suitable to form crosspieces in corduroy fashion. The railing on each side was constructed in an elaborate pattern of the choicest branches of paper birch that could be found, and finally a Virginia creeper was brought up from the valley to grow over it.
It is not easy to sum up the methods and results of Mr. Davidson's teaching. Delightful as a lecturer, he was even more charming in conversation. A strong personal magnetism enabled him to become a welcome vehicle for the conveyance of truth and the disclosure of wisdom.
In the years 1891 to 1895, when I saw most of him, he discoursed much on the universality of Spirit, and on the necessity for each individual to evolve an ordered world in his or her own consciousness, the ethical life depending on the completeness and harmony of such a world.
His aim in organizing a school of philosophy was to impart the instruction of which he felt that the educated classes stood so greatly in need; and he wished to do this in healthy and beautiful surroundings, under simple conditions of life. He hoped that the good of the whole school would be striven after by each individual, and that through mutual helpfulness, and by pursuing work and pleasure together, an unselfish spirit would be fostered. He used to refer to the ideal of life among the Greeks, pointing out that this implied the free enjoyment of life apart from its practical side; which included such things as earning a livelihood, politics, education, and religious observances. On the other hand the ideal life was a contemplative one, and was to be distinguished from mere play and amusement; there was no phrase he objected to more than « having a good time.' All free enjoyment was to be rational. It was not easy to get together many people who were able to live up to this ideal; and it must be feared that the embodiment of his School of the Culture Sciences fell far short of his conception of what it should have been. But it is certain that, in the course of his busy life and frequent travels, he came into contact with many individuals who derived much inspiration from his teaching and conversation; and that they were by him imbued with a new, and higher, conception of their responsibilities in life."
The work of Thomas Davidson in his Summer School of the Culture Sciences at Glenmore can best be recorded by those who were pupils, or comrades, in it. I therefore give that record very largely in the words of those who were members of that school, rather than weave their detached reminiscences together in a restatement of my own. Two of the women students — Miss Mary Foster and Miss Charlotte Daley — have sent me extensive notes from which I make extracts, Miss Foster's notes being concerned more especially with the daily life at Glenmore, and Miss Daley's with the teaching.
Miss Foster spent four summers at the school, and knew most of the people who surrounded Mr. Davidson in these years. From her paper, which she calls "Mr. Davidson and the Life at Glenmore," I take the following:
[quote]"I first met Mr. Thomas Davidson in New York in 1890, and at a meeting of the New Fellowship I made acquaintance with the friends who had entered actively into his endeavors after higher aims in life.
In the previous year Mr. Davidson had purchased a farm at East Hill, near Keene in the Adirondack Mountains, and a preliminary informal meeting had been held there that summer. He was now about to go up into the mountains to prepare the camp, which he had named “Glenmore,” for a more formal gathering of students; and with this in view the members of the Fellowship presented him with a large tent, for use until additional buildings should be put up and made available for such guests as desired outdoor life during their sojourn.
It was an interesting experience to come into contact with this group of people and their remarkable leader, devoted as they all felt themselves to be to high social and intellectual ideals. Their hope was by individual effort to promote simplicity of life, together with a sincere pursuit of truth, and by association to increase their capacity for such work. 'The Religion of the Fellowship consisted,' they said, 'of a determined endeavor to know well, to love well, and to do well.'
Mr. Davidson was in many ways eminently fitted to devise and carry out such a scheme, being endowed not only with a remarkable personality but with a power of influencing others intellectually which I have never seen equaled.
I have always felt that the first year at Glenmore (in 1889) must have had a peculiar charm of its own, the charm incident to pioneering. The community ' waited on itself ' to a much greater extent than in later years, and there seems to have been a very pleasant feeling of fraternity among them. The farmhouse parlor had to be used as lecture hall, dining room, and general sitting room; and I think that many of the guests slept in the barn on balsam boughs. The ladies often made pillows of the balsam needles, while reading was going on; and they all experimented in cooking and washing. In the afternoons they united in such undertakings as deepening the bathing basin in the brook, cutting through the fallen trunks on the Hurricane trail, and clearing certain spots in the woods of old stumps and underbrush so that social gatherings could be held, or tents erected there. There was also the whole surrounding region to be explored, and choice spots were to be discovered and opened out.
Many of the evenings were spent round a camp fire, and works on Philosophy, Art, Ethics, and Religion were freely discussed. Other evenings were devoted to music, or recitation; and all the proceedings were on a less formal scale than was necessary later on, when the number of students had increased.
It was in the third year of the work at Glenmore that I paid my first visit to the place. I went up the Hudson by boat, then by train from Albany to Westport on Lake Champlain; thence a drive of about twenty miles carried me into the heart of the mountains, through lanes thick with flowers and ferns, to the hearty greeting awaiting me at Glenmore.
The only buildings at first noticeable were the log farmhouse, a plain modern building opposite, — which was the dining hall, with four bedrooms over it, built in 1890, — and an old barn. Some friends, who were lodging in the farm- house, received me, while a servant blew a horn; upon which Mr. Davidson descended the hundred and twenty foot declivity, from his abode in higher regions, to add his warm welcome. I was immediately invited to ascend the hill to the lecture hall; this could be done by the steep face of the cliff, or partly by the road leading to the trail up Mount Hurricane.
One thus reached a level open space, in the front of which, and commanding a magnificent view of the mountain and valley, the lecture hall had been erected that spring. Like all the other buildings it was of wood. It contained a spacious room having a large open fireplace, with dogs for burning large logs, and a brick chimney. Behind this, on the south side, were two bedrooms, and stairs ascending to Mr. Davidson's private rooms, which opened on a large veranda, and also to seven other bedrooms designed for the accommodation of guests. On two sides of the building there was a wide piazza, where hammocks could be swung. From here, later on, we often watched the sunset clouds or the aurora borealis, and listened to the boys' singing of college songs. A few paces to the south, in the shade of the wood, was the simple two-roomed cottage in which Mr. Davidson had lived two summers with Mr. Percival Chubb.
The road by which I had come led immediately into the woods clothing the ravine (or gulf, as it was called) and made a gradual descent, crossing the stream below by a picturesque bridge; then, doubling upon itself, it passed in front of the Willey House, a local hotel, and descended parallel to the stream, until it reached the village of Keene — the post and shopping town — 1100 feet below.
Just above the bridge was the meeting place of two streams, and in the main stream further on was an island, the space round which had been cleared of underwood and fallen branches. Here, under high trees and among rugged boulders, with the brook leaping by in a series of small cascades, wooden seats had been constructed, and it was amid such surroundings that festive gatherings were held. Directly above this spot the bed of the brook had been deepened so that an excellent basin for bathing was formed. That it was not spacious enough to swim in mattered little, since even in the warmest weather the water, running under trees all the way from its numerous sources, was of so low a temperature that no one could remain in it for many seconds at a time. For a quick plunge, however, it was most invigorating and delightful, and the basin was a favorite resort.
I arrived on June 26, and found a fair number of guests already assembled. Several ladies had built cottages for themselves on the estate. There were two of these halfway up the hill, between the farmhouse and the lecture room, and at the top of a clearing on the north side was a hut, afterwards owned by Dr. W. T. Harris. Several more sprang up later and added much to the picturesqueness of the settlement. On the margin of the gulf Mr. Stephen Weston's tent was pitched. Two boys with their tutor occupied another, and Professor John Dewey had built a house on his own land low down on the other side of the stream.
The school opened on July 1, and lectures were given in the mornings of five days in the week at 10 and 11. 15 a.m., as well as in the evenings at 8 p.m. Meals were served in the dining hall, breakfast being at 8 a.m., dinner at 1 p.m., and supper at 6 p.m. Dairy produce, eggs, and wild fruit were abundant, but meat was sometimes difficult to get, and by many deemed unnecessary in the pure, bracing air of the mountains.
On the first Saturday — a day when no lectures took place — there was a housewarming at the lecture hall. This was decorated for the occasion, chiefly with various trailing species of club-moss common in the woods, and a bonfire was lighted outside.
Mr. Davidson's Sunday lectures were on Tennyson, Goethe, or Dante. He also gave some readings, and the singing of hymns or poems was arranged before the lecture. Sometimes at these Sunday gatherings he would expound a psalm, or other portion of the Hebrew Scriptures.
People staying at the Willey House, or summer boarders at any of the neighboring farms, would also attend, so that there was quite a large congregation. The inhabitants of the district were all either Roman Catholics, or Seventh-Day Baptists, and there were no places of worship except of these denominations. Even when the school was no longer in session, Mr. Davidson always gave some teaching on Sundays, generally in the evenings, to the smaller audience that still surrounded him.
On Saturdays, if there was no festive function at Glen- more, the guests could arrange excursions to the lakes, mountains, and waterfalls of the district. Lake Placid, Whiteface Mountains, Ausable Lake, John Brown's grave, and many other places of interest were within a drive; and a neighboring farmer had set up an extra ' team ' to accommodate the guests on these occasions, as well as to fetch them to and from the station.
The walks in the immediate vicinity were also very delightful. Opposite Glenmore, beyond the Willey House, were two round-topped hills, called Great Crow and Little Crow. Irreverent students of the first year at Glenmore had attempted to fix upon them the names of Soda and Potash, much to the disapprobation of Mr. Davidson, who suggested Ben More and Ben Ledi. On the edge of the woods that crowned Little Crow was a huge boulder as big as a small cottage, with wooden steps by which to ascend it.
On rare occasions a general walk or stroll would be taken, with the privilege of Mr. Davidson's company; and it was then amusing to notice the behavior of his beautiful collie, named Dante, who, true to his instincts as a shepherd's dog, did all he could to keep the party together, and objected to their straying or lagging behind.
In these regions very little wheat or barley is grown, but buckwheat and oats are common, and on every farm we saw long rows of Indian corn. Between these rows pumpkin vines flourished, and in the autumn left their splendid golden balls over the whole field.
The primeval forest still held full sway on the more remote slopes of the hills, but near the farms the younger growth consisted of the paper birch, the common poplar, spruce firs, and the sweet balsam firs. Pine trees were not so common. At the borders of the woods there were maples and other soft-wood trees.
By 1893 a new dining hall had been built, and on the walls were hung many interesting pictures, with portraits of people who had come into contact with Mr. Davidson. All these perished in the fire that destroyed the block of buildings a few years ago.
It was outside this building that we assembled for the eight-o'clock breakfast, and the guests were not often visible before that hour. Occasionally an early bather might be seen, or those few who invited health by walking barefoot in the dew, — a delightful practice inaugurated by a German doctor, who had been at Father Kneipp's sanatorium in Austria. In the first years a horn, as used on the farms around, and later, a bell, summoned the visitors from tent, cottage, and lecture hall to breakfast. All meals were preceded by a brief reading by Mr. Davidson from some work on Ethics, Philosophy, or Religion. By 8:30 we were away at our studies, or tidying up our dormitories, until 10 o'clock, when the lecture began, often with a second at 11 o'clock. Dinner was at 1 o'clock, after which Mr. Davidson and many of the party took a short rest before engaging in further study, or in the outdoor exercises of the afternoon. There were plenty of charming places for hammocks among the trees, and sometimes private-study groups met in the woods or at some one's hut. Supper was at 6 o'clock, leaving more spare time, which was often employed in watching the sunset, and in talking or singing until the hour for the evening lecture. The students were not expected to attend all the lectures, five a week being the minimum exacted of them. Young people, not sufficiently advanced for the courses in Philosophy and in the Culture Sciences, were expected to pursue other studies under the tuition of some of the older members.
In the short American summer evenings it was generally dark when lectures were over, so that lanterns were necessary. Dr. Mann proved himself a benefactor to the community by making a better path through the wood that lay between the lecture hall and the lane, and by adding a railing at one side. This bore the inscription at the foot, 'The Ascent of Man,' and at the top, 'The Descent of Man.'
After the session of the school was over, and while perhaps eight or a dozen guests still lingered at Glenmore, Mr. Davidson would give many delightful informal talks on matters philosophical. It is never to be forgotten how in those quieter times we sat listening to his conversation at the breakfast table, sometimes for two hours after that meal was really over, — a delight that was never ours when many guests were present.
The delivery and the dispatch of letters were irregular at Glenmore, and few cared whether or not they got any newspapers. For our mail we depended upon the convenience of the neighboring farmers, who frequently had errands to Keene; or upon the willingness of some guest to walk down the 1100 feet into the valley, and to return through the silent woods after nightfall, a weird and impressive experience.
Saturdays were, as I have said, our free days, and they were often devoted to long walks. A favorite excursion was the ascent of Mount Hurricane, the trail up which passed through Glenmore. There were three miles of walking along a narrow forest path with occasional crossings of a rushing stream, till you reached a height, often swathed in clouds, where the lichens hung thickly on the trees, and the mosses underfoot were deep. At the last spring, before leaving the woods to ascend to the summit, we used to stop to fill our water cans. Then we would emerge upon the open face of a mountain 3763 feet high, whence one of the finest views in the Adirondacks is to be obtained. Toward the north lies Canada; Lake Champlain and the hills of Vermont are to the east; while on the south, and west, a splendid range of local mountains stretches before you. The botanist can enjoy the Alpine vegetation which is to be found at this height.
Sometimes a party arranged to sleep on the summit of Hurricane, so as to see both sunset and sunrise. Blankets were brought up, and the boys collected fir branches for beds, and other wood to keep a fire during the night. There were several bonfires each summer on the island near the bathing place as an accompaniment to singing and other entertainment. A few concerts were also given in the lecture hall, at which the songs of Scotland were sung; and occasionally Mr. Davidson indulged us with his inimitable recitations of Scottish ballads. One year he gave a charming account of the life and poetry of Lady Nairne, illustrated with music. Discussions were also held on special subjects, such as free will, socialism, and vegetarianism. It was an interesting occasion when the boys at Glenmore gave a masquerade in the woods round the spring, near which Mr. Davidson's bungalow was afterwards built.
Mr. Davidson often entertained, under his own roof, friends from Keene valley or the Willey House, as well as the students at Glenmore; and there was frequent interchange of courtesies between our camp and friends near St. Hubert's, Keene Heights, twelve miles off, where many members of the ' Ethical Society ' surrounded Dr. Felix Adler. They had a lecture hall in which Mr. Davidson was in request, and he used to speak there at least once in the summer.
It was in the early summer of 1893 that Mr. Davidson's bungalow was built in a retired spot in the wood on the other side of the trail from the lecture hall. It was finished before the school opened, and those who were spending June at Glenmore helped him to carry across his extensive library. A path less abrupt than the very steep one to the farmhouse was needed, and another one diverging from it to the lecture hall. These works were undertaken by some of the residents. Trees were cut down, and the path along the sloping side of the hill was shored up. Large stones were found to bridge the rivulet that trickled down by the side of the lane, and pathways were soon made for philosophers to walk in.
An open glade stretches along the crest of the hill from Mr. Davidson's bungalow to the east, and it is on the border of this that his body now lies buried. In the autumn the place is a blaze of golden-rod, and there is a picturesque rock at the further end where harmless snakes make their home. Part of this glade is very swampy, and at night fireflies may be seen pursuing the small water insects that rise from it. The carriage way to Mr. Davidson's house crossed this swamp in an uncomfortable and unsafe manner; and it occurred to the members -of the school to build a wooden bridge, which would not only improve the road, but be a pleasant feature in the landscape. Large trees were felled by Mr. Davidson, Dr. Edward Moore, and others; while the ladies sawed smaller branches into lengths suitable to form crosspieces in corduroy fashion. The railing on each side was constructed in an elaborate pattern of the choicest branches of paper birch that could be found, and finally a Virginia creeper was brought up from the valley to grow over it.
It is not easy to sum up the methods and results of Mr. Davidson's teaching. Delightful as a lecturer, he was even more charming in conversation. A strong personal magnetism enabled him to become a welcome vehicle for the conveyance of truth and the disclosure of wisdom.
In the years 1891 to 1895, when I saw most of him, he discoursed much on the universality of Spirit, and on the necessity for each individual to evolve an ordered world in his or her own consciousness, the ethical life depending on the completeness and harmony of such a world.
His aim in organizing a school of philosophy was to impart the instruction of which he felt that the educated classes stood so greatly in need; and he wished to do this in healthy and beautiful surroundings, under simple conditions of life. He hoped that the good of the whole school would be striven after by each individual, and that through mutual helpfulness, and by pursuing work and pleasure together, an unselfish spirit would be fostered. He used to refer to the ideal of life among the Greeks, pointing out that this implied the free enjoyment of life apart from its practical side; which included such things as earning a livelihood, politics, education, and religious observances. On the other hand the ideal life was a contemplative one, and was to be distinguished from mere play and amusement; there was no phrase he objected to more than « having a good time.' All free enjoyment was to be rational. It was not easy to get together many people who were able to live up to this ideal; and it must be feared that the embodiment of his School of the Culture Sciences fell far short of his conception of what it should have been. But it is certain that, in the course of his busy life and frequent travels, he came into contact with many individuals who derived much inspiration from his teaching and conversation; and that they were by him imbued with a new, and higher, conception of their responsibilities in life."
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar
by admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:32 am
CHAPTER 12: CHARLOTTE DALEY'S RETROSPECTS OF DAVIDSON'S TEACHING
Miss Charlotte F. Daley, West New Brighton, Richmond County, New York, was a student-friend of Mr. Davidson, and she has supplied me with reminiscences from which I make some extracts. She has voluminous notes of the lectures of her master, and has written an account of the manner and method of his teaching, as well as of what she has called the "psychological foundations of education and society." As I have made use of other accounts of his " manner and method," in this chapter I shall in part briefly summarize, and in part transcribe, what Miss Daley has sent me as to the matter of his teaching. He taught her, she says, that " a true Science and a true Philosophy are two phases of the same thing; and that we cannot have either the one or the other without having both, although they are neither identical nor separable." His first principle was "a fundamentally two-phased being and becoming-to-be; neither of which can be identified with the other, or divorced from it."
I have two letters from Miss Daley, from which I extract the most relevant paragraphs. Other passages I have summarized, as I could not print the letters as a whole.
In a second letter Miss Daley says:
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Notes:
1. See these in the appendix to this volume, page 215.
2. See Intellectual Piety; also Education as World Building. 3. He translated Bonaventura's Soul's Progress in God, and sent it to the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, July, 1887.
Miss Charlotte F. Daley, West New Brighton, Richmond County, New York, was a student-friend of Mr. Davidson, and she has supplied me with reminiscences from which I make some extracts. She has voluminous notes of the lectures of her master, and has written an account of the manner and method of his teaching, as well as of what she has called the "psychological foundations of education and society." As I have made use of other accounts of his " manner and method," in this chapter I shall in part briefly summarize, and in part transcribe, what Miss Daley has sent me as to the matter of his teaching. He taught her, she says, that " a true Science and a true Philosophy are two phases of the same thing; and that we cannot have either the one or the other without having both, although they are neither identical nor separable." His first principle was "a fundamentally two-phased being and becoming-to-be; neither of which can be identified with the other, or divorced from it."
I have two letters from Miss Daley, from which I extract the most relevant paragraphs. Other passages I have summarized, as I could not print the letters as a whole.
"Dear Mr. Knight:
I first met Mr. Davidson at the Concord School of Philosophy in 1884, and ever since that time I have been his pupil, though not his disciple. He refused to have disciples, insisting that every one should 'think whole-thoughts' for himself.
He was not a system-builder, and he purposely left no fully elaborated philosophy. 'There have been too many systems of philosophy already,' he said to me. ' In the very nature of things there can be nothing final. It is not my duty to draw conclusions for any one. What I want to do is to help people to think for themselves, and to think round the circle, not in scraps and bits.'
He was too scientific a scholar merely to memorize a book, or a system of philosophy, without self-verification, and he exhorted his pupils to work in the same spirit. He was the most truly religious man, and at the same time the freest thinker, that I have ever met. He was the one, because he was the other. I think that the first two chapters of his History of Education, read in connection with three other papers, the first on Intellectual Piety, the second on Education as World Building, and the third on American Democracy as a Religion, with a few abstracts from his Rousseau, will give a clear insight into his first principles, his psychological and theological foundation. Mr. Davidson was not trying to develop a new system of Philosophy, nor to establish himself as an authority, but to be a thinker and actor, and to help others to think and act. He held that every human being should be a philosopher; that is, should strive to know what is the ultimate ground of that which is, and not attempt to reason from insufficient knowledge."
In a second letter Miss Daley says:
"I can tell you something of what Mr. Davidson taught, and I send you a syllabus and bibliography of his conversation-lectures on The Origins of Modern Thought. [1] I speak of these because Mr. Davidson taught us that one of our chief needs to-day is the investigation, in a fearless and truth-revering spirit, of those ancient concepts on which the modern world is sustained.
In the lectures to his class, and in his conversations with the several members, Mr. Davidson outlined the history of thought in the western world, showing the source of much of it in the eastern. I am at a loss to say which was the more valuable side of his work in these lectures, the manuscript notes from which he read, or the oral commentary which accompanied them. In both he had no resemblance to the ordinary college lecturer, and he was the only teacher I ever had who did not condescend to the alleged incapacity of a woman's mind. Both in class and in conversation he brought out the fundamental characteristics of ancient and mediaeval life, and by contrasting these with the essential principle of modern life — especially that upon which the United States as a nation is based — suggested lines of social reform which our medievalism prevents us from either seeing or applying.
Mr. Davidson held, and taught, that society has reached a stage which demands not only a revision of economic concepts, but a restatement of all the concepts upon which its life is based, for we are in a new world. It is man as man, with a higher human and divine consciousness, that now demands consideration before the supreme court of reason. Our failure to deal successfully with our present conditions is due to an antiquated notion of what man is, and what he is destined to become; so that a radical reform, a complete upclearing is necessary. The best hope of our time is not in its existing philosophy. It is rather in the new interest that is taken in children (in whom we can study scientifically 'origins ' as well as ' developments '); and in psychology, although it must be admitted that we have a somewhat soulless psychology. But this is largely because most people will not ask fundamental questions.
In the course of a lecture on Goethe's Faust Mr. Davidson said: ' The great Mephistophelian error is to think the primitive condition of a thing is its true condition.' In stating his own view he frequently made use of Aristotle's conception of 'the what-it-was-ness' [Greek] . To find out what any- thing really is, is to find its 'what-it-was-ness.' But when engaged in this search, he would say to us, ' Don't throw upon the present the darkness of the past, but throw back upon the past the light of the present. It all comes to this: we find in the highest spiritual society that now is the developed essence, the evolved root-principle, the what-it-was-ness of the lowest. To say — as some psychologists do — that nature reveals no spiritual intent, while we arbitrarily exclude from nature its highest manifestations, is fatal alike to adequate knowledge and to a comprehensive view of education. We must always remember that the supernatural is the higher natural.'
Passing from theoretic to more practical matters, I have heard Mr. Davidson accused of arriving, in his later years, at negative conclusions. I saw him grow, from much with which he began to more with which he ended, through nearly seventeen years of advancing experience. He certainly reached conclusions which contradict the opinions of those who imagine it possible to make a final inventory of all that is embraced in self, or God.
On one occasion he said, 'Nothing can free the intellect and enable it to act with perfect liberty, except clear, unwavering insight; it is that which distinguishes worth from worthlessness. . . . Truth is entirely independent of you and me; it is our business to find it out.' Again, 'Truth is the correlate of knowledge; you can't know anything that isn't true, and yet intellect is the cause of truth itself.'
He wrote: 'By intellect as distinct from reason I mean the primitive faculty which grasps the essential and ideal unity of the universe, which makes it possible for us to transform our groups of sensations into things, and look at them as something distinct from and independent of ourselves; in other words, to look at them as objective. [2] Though Kant ruined the language of philosophy by putting reason above intellect, he was the founder of all modern thought that is worth anything. In the history of philosophy he was the successor of Socrates. Twist and turn as we please, there is no getting away from Kant's conclusion that without the power of the mind to make its world we could have nothing but chaos. . . . We make our world — not, observe, the world that the body lives in — when we have intelligence of, or predicate anything of, the outer world. We begin not with construction, but with reconstruction. When we have intelligence of ourselves we predicate being of feeling. Intellect says, This is, or this ought to be. Desire says, Would that this were. Will says, Let this be done. The will, as will, is not free, although freedom exists. Intellect is the freeing power; and it is folly to talk of free will, so long as we have not free intellect. Obligation constrains the good will through intelligence and love, or through love guided by intelligence.
Furthermore, note well that you cannot separate the human from the divine, and place them over against each other, as Xenophanes set the one and the many, the relative and the absolute; as Plato set the ideal and the real; as the Hebrews before Christ set God and man; and as dogmatic Christianity has tried to set them. God and man are correlates, and correlates, as I have repeatedly said, are neither identical nor separable. There cannot be a man without a God; and man is as necessary to God as God is to man, or there could be no revelation or manifestation of either. In the existence and the corelationship of the finite and the infinite, we have a fundamental dualism, but we have it also in that double concept of the self which runs through all the social world. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," our love for self being the form by which to measure what we owe in love to our neighbor; but we cannot do this unless in practice we obey the precept " Know thyself ! " We stand here between the personal — and more than personal — God on the one hand, and our neighbor on the other; and it is sheer hypocrisy to claim that we love God while we do not love our neighbor as ourselves.'
Although Mr. Davidson tried to show that in the very nature of things there can be no final system of Philosophy, he has left us a better psychological and theological basis than we possessed before; and in the forming of these fundamental principles he was helped by the great thinkers of all ages. He made use of Bonaventura's [3] fine philosophy, and Rosmini's keen insight, but he did not accept all their conclusions. He had received much from our ancient Jewish heritage, and seemed to know the Hebrew Scriptures by heart, as well as the New Testament. The pre-Socratics were not a ' rubbish heap ' to him. He knew them all, and used them step by step, as well as their mediaeval and modern successors.
I wish it were possible to follow the evolution of the world's thought as he unfolded it to us, but I am mainly anxious to emphasize his conclusion, which was this, that each one of us may say truly, ' I am a two-phased sensibility, modified in innumerable ways by influences which I do not originate.' The whole question of obligation and responsibility begins here. We do not originate these influences, but we react upon them. We do not construct the outer world, but we reconstruct it, and we begin to reconstruct it as soon as we perceive it. ' Strange is that blindness of the intellect,' says Bonaventura, ' that does not consider that which it sees, and without which it can know nothing! . . . '
Sincerely yours,
Charlotte F. Daley."
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Notes:
1. See these in the appendix to this volume, page 215.
2. See Intellectual Piety; also Education as World Building. 3. He translated Bonaventura's Soul's Progress in God, and sent it to the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, July, 1887.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar
by admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:37 am
CHAPTER 13: LECTURES TO THE BREADWINNERS
The aim of this experiment in New York to bring some culture into the lives of working men and women, "the breadwinners," as Davidson called them, is best unfolded in his own words. Referring to the lectures which he gave to the Russian Jews at the Educational Alliance in East Broadway, on the "Problems which the Nineteenth Century presents to the Twentieth," and the private discussions which followed the lectures, he wrote:
The class from which his pupils came were working tradesmen and tradeswomen of the Jewish community, some of them exceedingly poor; but, as one who knew them put it, they "represented the best element amongst the Russian Hebrews, who, though poor, have the scholarly instinct of the race, intense loyalty to their people, and an ideal beyond worldly success." The same chronicler writes, "He said to a friend a short time before his death that he thought the whole of his life had been a preparation for just this work."
The fact that a Thomas Davidson Society exists and flourishes in New York, and that it is even more ardent in the pursuit of the ideals he set before it than it was in his lifetime, is the best tribute to him that could possibly exist; nobler far than any temporary fame as a writer of books. The tie which united lecturer and audience was that of teacher and taught; and the teacher-friend used occasionally to invite these city pupils out to his summer home in the mountains, where their delight in nature, and the free, unsophisticated life of the place, was intense. One of them, writing to friends in the New York home he had temporarily left, dated his letter "Heaven, Aug. 14th, etc."
No better account of the New York experiment has been given, and no more authoritative one is possible, than that contained in an address on " Some Ideals and Characteristics of Thomas Davidson," delivered by Mr. Morris R. Cohen, the continuator of his work, at a memorial meeting held in East Broadway, on October 26, 1901. As it contains portions of letters written by the founder of the school to his classes, I cannot do better than republish part of it. Mr. Cohen wrote:
_______________
Notes:
1. A clear distinction should be drawn between manual training which should be imparted in the common schools to all children without distinction, as part of their general education, — and technical training which should be given, as a preparation for a special profession, to those intending to follow that profession.
2. I do not mean that any one should be shut out from erudition. I mean that erudition is not a necessity for the breadwinner. I think, too, that all distinction between liberal and illiberal professions should be blotted out.
3. I employed this method in my class last winter with considerable success.
4. Or on Sunday afternoon. There could hardly be any more religious work than this.
5. An excellent model for this is the London Polytechnic (in Regent Street), which owes its existence to the energy and generosity of one man, W. Q. Hogg. It has several rivals in London now.
The aim of this experiment in New York to bring some culture into the lives of working men and women, "the breadwinners," as Davidson called them, is best unfolded in his own words. Referring to the lectures which he gave to the Russian Jews at the Educational Alliance in East Broadway, on the "Problems which the Nineteenth Century presents to the Twentieth," and the private discussions which followed the lectures, he wrote:
"In these discussions I had come to know to some extent the character, aspirations, and needs of the young people whom I undertook to instruct. I saw that they were both able and earnest, but carried away by superficial views of a socialistic or anarchist sort, greatly to their own detriment and to that of society. My first object, therefore, in taking up this class was to induce its members to study and think out carefully the problems of sociology and culture, in accordance with the historic method, and so to impart to their minds a healthy attitude towards society, to do away with the vengeful sense of personal or class wrong, and to arouse faith in individual effort and manly and womanly self-dependence. I desired, moreover, to give them such an outlook upon life as could lift their lives out of narrowness and sordidness and give them ideal aims. Finally, I wished to train them in the use of correct English, both written and spoken. My method of instruction consisted in gaining their confidence, and making them do as much as possible. I also tried to impart impetus, and give direction. In spite of a little distrust on their part at first, I soon gained their confidence, and even their affection; while they performed the tasks set them with a will and perseverance that were really admirable."
The class from which his pupils came were working tradesmen and tradeswomen of the Jewish community, some of them exceedingly poor; but, as one who knew them put it, they "represented the best element amongst the Russian Hebrews, who, though poor, have the scholarly instinct of the race, intense loyalty to their people, and an ideal beyond worldly success." The same chronicler writes, "He said to a friend a short time before his death that he thought the whole of his life had been a preparation for just this work."
The fact that a Thomas Davidson Society exists and flourishes in New York, and that it is even more ardent in the pursuit of the ideals he set before it than it was in his lifetime, is the best tribute to him that could possibly exist; nobler far than any temporary fame as a writer of books. The tie which united lecturer and audience was that of teacher and taught; and the teacher-friend used occasionally to invite these city pupils out to his summer home in the mountains, where their delight in nature, and the free, unsophisticated life of the place, was intense. One of them, writing to friends in the New York home he had temporarily left, dated his letter "Heaven, Aug. 14th, etc."
No better account of the New York experiment has been given, and no more authoritative one is possible, than that contained in an address on " Some Ideals and Characteristics of Thomas Davidson," delivered by Mr. Morris R. Cohen, the continuator of his work, at a memorial meeting held in East Broadway, on October 26, 1901. As it contains portions of letters written by the founder of the school to his classes, I cannot do better than republish part of it. Mr. Cohen wrote:
"Those who knew Thomas Davidson will understand that it is utterly impossible to give anything like an adequate summary of his life or character. The life of a truly great man cannot be ticketed or labeled. Nevertheless, there are certain traits of his character which are especially significant for those of us who are trying to continue his work.
To my mind his most fundamental characteristic was that he lived philosophically on a truly large scale. He lived for the really great things of life; and stood far above the petty issues, and the petty rewards, for which the multitude is always struggling. He refused to be dragged into any of the insignificant muddles of the day, but constantly strove to be on the great streams of reality. None but the highest enjoyments and motives had any existence for him. Above all, he judged actions by their eternal results. He lived for eternity; and that is why the effects of his life cannot die.
The life of Thomas Davidson was essentially a heroic life. Though as I knew him, one of the most sympathetic souls that ever trod this globe, he had no sympathy with anything unheroic. He had a generous faith in human nature, believing that there are heroes and heroines now, more than ever before, to be found in every street and on every corner, and that it is only our own blindness that prevents us from appealing to the heroic in them. It was just because he led this large life, and expected it of every one else, that it was more than a liberal education in itself to have been intimately acquainted with him; and we cannot do better than attempt to continue his work, judging ourselves by the standards by which he would have judged us, and thus stimulating ourselves to ever greater hopes and tasks.
There is a tendency nowadays, especially among 'practical' people, to look down upon all attempts to grapple with the deep problems of existence. Mr. Davidson showed in clear and unmistakable terms that it is only sheer sloth and coward- ice that can urge us to declare certain problems insoluble, before we have exerted all our efforts to solve them. And he also showed how absolutely futile must be any attempt to solve our problems as 'East-Siders' without taking into consideration our problems as men and women. Now as ever the commandment holds true: ' Seek ye the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all the rest shall be added unto you.'
He taught that the highest reverence is due to human reason; that the highest duty is to search for the truth with unbiased mind; and that the highest courage is to follow the truth always and everywhere, regardless of where it may lead us.
With all his deep erudition he did not overestimate the value of learning. He was interested in knowledge only as a motive to right living. He insisted on our becoming acquainted with every branch of human knowledge, — Science, Philosophy, Art, and Literature, — but only because they help us to lead rational lives.
He also realized that mere knowledge alone will not enable us to solve the profound problems of life; that sympathy is an essential part of a right attitude to the riddles of the universe. You must tune up your heart to catch the music of the spheres. But above all he realized that we do not truly know until our so-called knowledge is tested in real life, that life cannot be learned merely in the study without experience in the arena of life itself, that wisdom is not to be obtained from text-books, but must be coined out of human experience in the flame of life.
This is what led him to the idea of establishing a Bread-winners' College. In his letters to the class he pointed out the great defect in the ordinary College and University education, viz. 'that it stops with knowing, and does not go on to loving and doing. It therefore never is really appropriated, for knowing that does not pass into act and habit is never ours, but remains an external thing, a mere useless accomplishment, to be vain about.' ' If every one of you,' he wrote to us, ' would translate his or her knowledge into love and work, [then] we should have an Educational Institute, a Breadwinners' College — call it anything you like — such as the world has never yet seen, an Institution which will teach men and women to become public-spirited, generously cultured, pure and high-minded, an institution which will help more than anything else to banish ignorance and moral poverty.'
Such an Institution Thomas Davidson wanted us to form, and such an Institution will be formed if we are true to ourselves. . . .
Our own little society already does something to combine the advantages of the College and the Church with those of the home. We form a School in so far as we help each other to master the world's wisdom and learning — a Church in so far as we encourage each other to form and to live up to the highest ideals — a Home in so far as we try to cultivate among ourselves those deep, cordial relations which unfortunately are seldom found outside of the home.
In one of his earliest letters to us Thomas Davidson writes: "There is nothing that the world of to-day needs so much as a new order of social relations, a new feeling between man and man. We may talk and teach as long as we like, but until we have a new society with ideal relations and aims we have accomplished very little. All great world movements begin with a little knot of people, who, in their individual lives, and in their relations to each other, realize the ideal that is to be. To live truth is better than to utter it. Isaiah would have prophesied in vain had he not gathered round him a little band of disciples who lived according to his ideal. . . . Again, what would the teachings of Jesus have amounted to had he not collected a body of disciples, who made it their life-aim to put his teachings into practice?' He was bold enough to think that the new view of the world, the modern scientific view, makes it possible 'to frame a new series of ethical precepts which should do for our time what the Deutronomic Law did for the time of Isaiah, and the Sermon on the Mount for that of Jesus.' And he was even more bold to state his conviction that ' it is impossible to reach a better social and moral condition, until we have rationally-adopted an entirely new view of life and its meaning; a new philosophy truer and deeper than any that has gone before.'
To those who are a little skeptical he says: ' You will perhaps think I am laying out a mighty task for you, a task far above your powers and aspirations; but it is not so. Every great change in individual and social conditions — and we are on the verge of such a change — begins small, among simple, earnest people, face to face with the facts of life. Ask yourself seriously, Why should not the coming change begin with us ? You will find that there is no reason why the new world, — the world of righteousness, kindliness, and enlightenment, for which we are all longing and toiling, — may not date from us, as well as from anybody.' 'A little knot of earnest Jews has turned the world upside down before now. Why may not the same thing — nay, a far better thing — happen in your day and among you ? Have you forgotten the old promise made to Abraham, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed"? ' Quoting from Lowell,We see dimly in the present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith, how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,
he added,'It may be our weak arm if we will it.'
It was this large outlook, based on history and philosophy, which made Thomas Davidson despise all our modern palliatives, and petty remedies, for social ills. He had no sympathy with the efforts of those who, not knowing how to educate the masses of the people, offer them petty amusements to keep them off the streets and away from the saloons. He did not believe in trifles. He stood for the highest culture for the breadwinners, for the people who have to ' go to work ' early. He was convinced that the way to lift the people above their degrading and vicious lives was to give them an intelligent view of the world, which will offer them an inspiring outlook on life. ' One intelligent glimpse of the drama of life,' he said, • will quench all the desire for the pleasure of the dive and the prize ring.' The whole history of education, according to him, points to the educational institution of the future as the Breadwinners' College, where culture will be learned by the great body of the people who are engaged in the actual business of life; and who, becoming early acquainted with 'life's prime needs and agonies ' are far better prepared for true education than the idle young men who attend our ordinary Colleges and Universities. The Breadwinners' College will be an institution which will teach a man to take an intelligent view of his surroundings, of what goes on in the world and has gone on in it, and will thus help him to lead a simple, upright life, useful, tasteful, and above all, self-respecting. Then only will he be fit for the various personal, domestic, political, and social duties demanded of the complete man. Without an intelligent outlook on society (based on the study of its history) it is impossible to take an intelligent interest in it, and hence our corrupt politics; without an understanding of the meaning of the great institutions under which we live, men are not fit to become their supporters. Only by dispelling ignorance as to the vital questions of life can we hope to make the lives of men possessed of meaning and dignity.
There is another characteristic of Thomas Davidson which ought not to be left out of sight, and that is his rare tact, — the skillful way in which he managed to hold the balance between opposing forces, between Individualism and Socialism, between freedom and order, between the old and the new. His expressions indeed sometimes leaned one way and sometimes another, but at bottom there was an unshaken equipoise. Some thought him an extreme individualist. And indeed he did champion the integrity of man against all idols. In this practical and scientific age there is a tendency to lose sight of the individual man amidst natural forces and scientific laws. He boldly- stood by that characteristically Hebrew saying, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.' He recognized that science, institutions, and doctrines exist for man, and not man for science, institutions, or doctrines. He regarded the individual man as a holy temple, and believed that nothing in the universe was holier. Yet he was the last man in the world to underestimate social action. He realized full well that every soul which has found what it deems higher truth must seek to form an association, to found a brotherhood, in order to realize that truth. Without such an organization little can be done, for unless we can stand strong in the sympathy of a band we are apt to fall back into accustomed paths.
He knew how to hold the balance between the old and the new. This is perhaps best shown with reference to our more immediate problems of the East Side. The most important practical question on the East Side is undoubtedly the strained, I might say the tragic, relation between the older and the younger generations. The younger generation has, as a rule, been brought up under entirely different circumstances from those of its elders, and therefore naturally entertains radically different aims and ideals. The older generation does not sympathize with these new ideals, and in the ensuing discord much of the proverbial strength of the Jewish family is lost. This is fraught with heartrending consequences. When the home ceases to be the center of interest the unity of life is broken, and the dreariest pessimism and cynicism may follow. Of course our elder and wiser friends tell us that the fault is entirely with the younger people — but that does not solve the problem. You cannot and must not expect the younger people to become false to their own best insight at the very entrance of life!
Thomas Davidson taught us to see in this conflict a manifestation of the feud between the old and the new which has shaped history. He impressed upon us the necessity of taking an honest position in this conflict, respecting the rights of both. He pointed out to us that we have no right to break away from the past, until we have appropriated what we can of its experience and wisdom; and he also taught us to recognize that there is a law of love besides the law of truth, and that the former has its rights even besides the latter. But while we must aim to understand the position of the old and to sympathize with it, we must hold on to what seems to us the higher truth. He taught us to be reverent to the past, but above all to be loyal to the future, to the Kingdom which doth not yet appear.
In the words of Tennyson:Not clinging to some ancient saw,
Not mastered by some modern term,
Not swift nor slow to change, but firm:
And in its season bring the law,
That from Discussion's lip may fall
With Life, that, working strongly, binds —
Set in all lights by many minds,
To close the interests of all."
In the memorial volume on Davidson by Professor Charles M. Bakewell, his friend and literary executor, entitled The Education of the Wage-Earners, a Contribution toward the Solution of the Educational Problem of Democracy, by Thomas Davidson, there is a very full account of this great experiment in New York City, the larger part of the volume (Chapters II, III, IV, and V) being in Davidson's own words. The fifth chapter contains an excellent introduction on his life and philosophy; and the sixth, and last, traces the story of the movement after its founder's death.
Before reading this book, the preface to which is dated August 5, 1904, I had received from Mr. Cohen a paper written by Mr. Davidson in September, 1899, which explains his aims and ideals; and, although much of it is stated in another form in Mr. Bakewell's book, those who are interested in the movement may welcome a briefer outline in the words of the founder. It is as follows:"The Higher Education of the Breadwinners
September, 1899.
It cannot be said of our people that they are backward or niggardly in the matter of education. In no country is so much money expended upon schools and colleges as in the United States. And yet our people are very far from being educated as they ought to be. Ignorance is still widespread, and not only the ignorant, but the whole nation suffers in consequence. In spite of our magnificent system of public schools and our numerous colleges and universities — over five hundred in all — the great body of our citizens lack the education necessary to give dignity and meaning to their individual lives, and to fit them for the worthy performance of their duties as members of the institutions under which they live. Our public schools stop short too soon, while our colleges do not reach more than one in a thousand of our population. Moreover, neither school nor college imparts that education which our citizens, as such, require — domestic, social, and civic culture. What is imparted is defective both in kind and in extent.
There are three kinds of education, which ought to be distinguished, but which at present we do not distinguish with sufficient care: (1) culture, that is, the education necessary for every human being, in order that he may be able worthily to fulfill duties as a member of social institutions; (2) professional training, necessary for the earning of a livelihood; (3) erudition, demanded by those who would advance science, or give instruction in it. It is regrettable that both in our schools and in our colleges these are hopelessly mixed up, and that the first receives but scanty attention.
Even more regrettable is the fact that our schools and colleges, for the most part, confine their attention to persons who have nothing to do but study, who are not engaged in any kind of useful or productive labor. This results in two evils: (i) education, for the great body of the people, must stop at an early age, since the children of all but wealthy families must go to work as soon as possible, few of them reaching the high school, fewer yet the university, or professional training school; (2) education is withheld just from those who are in the best position to profit by it; for every teacher with sufficient experience knows that people who have a knowledge of practical life and its duties are far better and more encouraging pupils than those who have not.
It thus appears that social and civic culture is largely neglected in our educational institutions, and that it altogether fails to reach those who are best fitted to profit by it. In a word, the culture calculated to make the wise and good citizen is almost nonexistent. We have good artisans, good merchants, good doctors, good lawyers, etc., in abundance, but we have few persons of liberal culture, and still fewer who can worthily fill important offices in society and state, or who can even cast an intelligent vote for such. Fewest of all, those who understand how their lives affect the general welfare, whence the money they earn comes, and whether or not it is an equivalent for benefits conferred upon society.
Thus it comes to pass that the lives of the great mass of our citizens are unintelligent, narrow, sordid, envious, and unhappy, and that we are constantly threatened with popular uprisings and the overthrow of our free institutions. Thus, too, it comes that our politics are base, and our politicians venal and selfish. The laboring classes are, through want of education, easily cozened or bribed to vote in opposition to their own best interests, and so to condemn themselves to continued slavish toil and poverty, which means exclusion from all share in the spiritual wealth of the race.
There is, at the present time, perhaps no individual problem in our country [so pressing] as that of the higher education — the intellectual, moral, and social culture — of that great body of men and women, who, from a pretty early age, have to spend the larger portion of their time in earning a livelihood. These include not only the working classes so-called — the skilled and unskilled laborers — but also the great majority of the wage-earners of every sort, and not a few of the wage-givers. All these need a larger world, a more ideal outlook, such as education alone can give, not only to impart meaning and dignity to their life of toil, but also to enable them to contribute their share to the well-being of society, and prevent it from falling back into violence and barbarism.
It is true that, in the last few years, considerable efforts have been made to provide the breadwinners with opportunities both for professional training and for higher culture. In our larger cities "university extension" has been introduced, training schools have been opened, and evening schools and lectures on a large scale established. Of these efforts there is nothing but good to say. They are, however, a promise rather than a fulfillment, a beginning and little more. They must be greatly extended and systematized before they can meet the needs of the breadwinners. The training schools are, of course, an unmixed good, and we only require more of them; but the university extension, to a large extent, imparts a sort of education that is not demanded, and fails to give much that is demanded, while both it and the evening classes and lectures are deficient in system and unity of plan. Neither has a distinct aim, and neither sufficiently controls the work of the pupils. Worst of all, both exclude from their programmes some of the very subjects which it is most essential for the breadwinners to be acquainted with — economics, sociology, politics, religion, etc.
Of the three kinds of education, the breadwinners need only two, — (1) technical training, [1] (2) intellectual and moral, or social training. [2] The breadwinner, if his work is to be effective, and equivalent to a decent livelihood, earnable with a moderate expenditure of time and energy, must have skill; other- wise he will have neither time nor energy left for any other sort of education. Spare time and energy are prime elements in the whole question. In any just order of society each member will receive from society a just equivalent for what he contributes to it. If he is so unskilled that his work is not equivalent to a livelihood, he has no right to complain when he suffers want. It must therefore be the aim of every one who would humanize and elevate the breadwinners to see that they have skill enough to earn their daily bread without depriving themselves of free time, and energy to devote to living and spiritual culture.
Supposing now that all the breadwinners were in this condition that, being able to earn a living in, say, eight hours a day, they had considerable free time; they might still remain uncultured and sordid, their tastes vulgar or depraved. They might still have little rest and joy in life, little inspiring outlook. They might still not be valuable members of society. We have not done our whole duty by the breadwinners when we have made them comfortable, — we must go further and make them cultured and wise.
Now what must be the nature of such culture and wisdom? We may answer, Such as shall enable their recipients to play a worthy and generous part in all the relations of life and to enjoy those high satisfactions that come of such worthiness. We may express this otherwise, by saying that they must be such as to enable a man to know and understand his environment; to take an intelligent interest in all that goes on, or has gone on in the world; to enter into lofty personal relations, and to live clean, tasteful, useful, self-respecting lives. The relations for which culture should prepare are: (1) personal, (2) domestic, (3) social (including economic), (4) political. It would be possible to arrange a system of education on the basis of this classification; but it is not necessary to do so. The different relations, however, ought to be kept in view in arranging any course of culture studies.
Perhaps the following curriculum, extending over three or four years, might meet the needs of the breadwinners in the present condition:
1. Evolution: its theory and history.
2. History of civilization.
3. The system of the sciences.
4. Sociology.
5. Political theory and history.
6. History of industry and commerce.
7. History of education (psychology).
8. History of science and philosophy.
9. History of ethical theory.
10. Comparative religion.
11. Comparative literature.
12. History and theory of the fine arts.
In following out this curriculum the greatest care should be taken to avoid any imposing of any special theory or doctrine — religious, political, economical, etc. — upon the pupils. All theories should be freely discussed without bias, party spirit, or passion, and every effort made to elicit the truth from the pupils themselves. The important thing is that they should learn to think for themselves, and thus become morally free. With a view to this the work of the teacher should consist mostly in direction and encouragement. The less he does himself, and the more he makes his pupils do, the better. Lecturing should be resorted to only by way of introduction; then the seminary method should be followed. As a rule, some handy, compact, epoch-making book should be made the basis of work, for example, Aristotle's Politics for political theory and history; then a list of books should be given for the pupils to analyze, epitomize, and criticise in written essays, to be read and discussed before the class. Then when difficult points come up or deeper researches have to be made these should be assigned as subjects for special essays. In this way a wide knowledge of each subject and of its literature will be gained and a deep interest aroused. [3]
The curriculum as a whole will impart just the unitary views of the world and its agencies which will give meaning and zest to the individual life and make the good citizen.
At the close of each study the pupils should be asked to sum up, in a brief essay of not more than five hundred words, what they have learned from it. This will take the place of an examination.
Having settled what kind of culture is necessary for the breadwinners, we must next consider how it may be best brought within their reach. For this, two things above all are necessary: (1) that they should know what is proposed, and recognize its value; (2) that they should have spare time, energy, and convenience for continued study.
The former of these aims may be reached through the public press — newspapers, magazines, etc. — and through lectures, which are here in order. It is needless to dwell on the efficiency of the press in bringing things before the public; but a few words may be said about lectures. It would be of the utmost moment to arrange for a course of ten lectures, covering as many weeks, and given on some convenient evening [4] when most of the breadwinners of the neighborhood could attend. The following are suggested as titles for such lectures:
1. The present state of education among the breadwinners, and their opportunities for obtaining higher education. What the schools do.
2. The education needed by the breadwinners, and how it must differ from school and college education.
3. The education needed by the individual, in order to lift him above narrow, sordid ends.
4. The education needed for the ends of the family.
5. The education needed for the ends of civil society, for the tradesman, the merchant, etc. (1) Technical education. (2) Moral training.
6. The education needed by the citizen.
7. The need of unity, system, and aim in education. The defects of our present education in this respect.
8. How can education be carried into the home?
9. The state's duty in regard to the culture of the breadwinners.
10. A scheme for a breadwinners' culture institute, to be established in every township and in every city ward, to supplement our public schools.
I cannot but think that, if such a course of lectures were given at a convenient time by competent persons, carefully reported in the daily newspapers, and afterwards printed in the form of a cheap book, it would meet with a hearty response from the breadwinners.
It is necessary, not only that breadwinners should be brought to desire higher culture, but also that they should have the time, energy, and convenience to acquire it. How this is to be done is one of the great social questions of the day, and one that I do not purpose to answer here; but of two things I am morally certain: (1) that it cannot effectually be done by any legislation in favor of an eight-hour working day, or anything of that sort; and (2) that, if the breadwinners made it evident that they desired free time in order to devote it to self-culture, from which they are debarred by long hours of labor, public sentiment would soon insist that such time should be accorded them, and provisions made for such culture. One main reason why the demand for shorter hours meets with comparatively little response from the public, is the prevalent belief that a very large number of bread- winners would make a bad use of the spare time, spending it in saloons and other coarse resorts. Labor, it is said, is better or more profitable than idleness and saloon life. And there is some reason in this. Spare time demanded for culture would most certainly be accorded, and it will, I think, hardly ever be obtained on any other plea. I need hardly add that spare time would bring with it spare energy; for it is the long hours that exhaust the energies.
Along with time and energy the breadwinners must have home conveniences for study. Many of course have these, but many have not. In crowded rooms or apartments in tenement houses it is hard to find a quiet corner for study, and the public libraries and reading rooms offer conveniences for but a small number. This state of things must be remedied, and, I think, would be remedied as soon as there was any genuine desire for culture. Persons inspired by this would refuse to live where they could not have conveniences for study, and would thus be brought to demand a higher standard of living, a thing altogether desirable. At the same time public reading rooms would doubtless increase.
At the present time we hear a great deal about saloon politics and the corruption that results from them; and manifold efforts are made to start rivals to the saloon, which a very reverend bishop has told us is the poor man's clubroom. It is sad to think that the bishop is right, and that the poor man has not been able, thus far, to establish any other sort of club room. It is my firm belief that the successful rival of the saloon will not be the coffee room, the reading room, the pool room, or the concert room, but the lecture room and the school room, with their various appurtenances and opportunities. I believe that we shall never be able to put a stop to the deleterious effects of the saloon upon individual, domestic, social, and political life, until we establish in every city ward and in every village a culture institute for the great body of the people who are engaged in business during the day, — an institute composed of three parts: (1) a technical school, [5] (2) a civic-culture school, and (3) a gymnasium. Such institutions must sooner or later be established by the state, and supported by public funds as part of the system of public education; but at present it is well that they should be undertaken by private effort, and their utility, yea, their necessity, clearly shown. The Educational Alliance is in a position to take an important step in this direction, and it can do so by establishing a system of evening classes with a programme such as I have sketched, and appealing to the breadwinners by a course of lectures of the nature I have indicated.
[Signed] THOMAS DAVIDSON."
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Notes:
1. A clear distinction should be drawn between manual training which should be imparted in the common schools to all children without distinction, as part of their general education, — and technical training which should be given, as a preparation for a special profession, to those intending to follow that profession.
2. I do not mean that any one should be shut out from erudition. I mean that erudition is not a necessity for the breadwinner. I think, too, that all distinction between liberal and illiberal professions should be blotted out.
3. I employed this method in my class last winter with considerable success.
4. Or on Sunday afternoon. There could hardly be any more religious work than this.
5. An excellent model for this is the London Polytechnic (in Regent Street), which owes its existence to the energy and generosity of one man, W. Q. Hogg. It has several rivals in London now.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar
by admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:42 am
CHAPTER 14: LETTERS FROM DAVIDSON IN REFERENCE TO HIS WORK ON MEDIEVALISM
So far back as December 7, 1882, long before we met, I had a letter from Mr. Davidson in reference to his book on Rosmini, which he sent from 75 Via Nazionale, Rome, and in which he said:
I was unable to include Rosmini in the series of books on the philosophers which had attracted Davidson's eye, while Heraclitus and Parmenides lay outside its province as designed by me. But when I was trying to organize another and a larger series, on Philosophy in its National Developments, I tried to enlist his services, and offered him the subject of " Mediaevalism." The following was his reply.
His subsequent letters to me on the subject of this work were as follows:
It is unnecessary to explain how this book on Mediaevalism, and the series of which it was to have formed a part, never appeared. It is rather a long story, and is scarcely relevant to Davidson. But students of philosophy will be interested in the glimpses which these letters give of the rise and progress of a great undertaking; and the general reader will obtain some side lights on the nature of the problem, as it gradually shaped itself in the mind of the writer. I may mention, moreover, that I have seen and examined in manuscript the notes of a series of thirty-seven lectures on the "Philosophy of the Middle Ages," delivered at Glenmore, and taken down by a very competent student. They could not be printed as they now stand; but if other students took down similar ones (as many doubtless would), and if all were submitted to a competent editor, — as the manuscript notes of the lectures on "Logic" and "Metaphysics," by Sir William Hamilton at Edinburgh, were handed over to Professor Veitch and Dean Mansel, — a work of real and lasting merit might be constructed.
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Notes:
1. The series of Philosophical Classics for English Readers, which I organized and edited, and of which Messrs. Blackwood were the publishers.
2. The volumes were to be more than double that size; and as the subject grew on his hands, Mr. Davidson wished two volumes for it.
3. His visit was for the purpose of speaking Arabic, while studying Arab and Eastern life, as much as for examining manuscripts or consulting books.
4. Stockl, A., Geschichte der Philosophic des Mittelalters.
5. Ueberweg-Heinze, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie.
So far back as December 7, 1882, long before we met, I had a letter from Mr. Davidson in reference to his book on Rosmini, which he sent from 75 Via Nazionale, Rome, and in which he said:
"... I am really very desirous that the system of this philosopher should be brought to the attention of men fitted to judge of its value. A life of Rosmini is about to appear, and this new essay in English is more than half printed. I am now engaged on a translation of the Psychology, which I think is Rosmini's most important work. This will appear, I trust, in the course of next year.
Could you not find a place for a Rosmini among the great names of your philosophical series? [1] If you could, this would bring the system within the reach of a wider public than could be done by any means I can now think of. Will you, at your leisure, tell me what you think of the suggestion?
I should like also to make another. I have for many years been working up Heraclitus (see my article on him in Johnson's Encyclopedia), and I should be very glad if you could give my work on him a place in your series. It is considerably advanced and could be ready for the press in six months. I have also collected materials for a work on Parmenides, whose fragments I translated (in hexameters) and published many years ago in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. ..."
I was unable to include Rosmini in the series of books on the philosophers which had attracted Davidson's eye, while Heraclitus and Parmenides lay outside its province as designed by me. But when I was trying to organize another and a larger series, on Philosophy in its National Developments, I tried to enlist his services, and offered him the subject of " Mediaevalism." The following was his reply.
"Keene, Essex County, New York,
September 8, 1894.
Your letter of August 28 reached me yesterday, and nothing could have been more opportune. My book on The Education of the Greek People, and its Influence on Civilization will be out in a few days, and I sail for Europe on the 25th of this month. Although I am at work on a little volume on Plato, intended as a companion to that of Wallace on Aristotle, there is no hurry about that, and I can probably write you a volume of the size of those in the Philosophical Classics Series [2] before I return home.
I have been working for fifteen years on Mediaevalism, and indeed had planned a volume such as you propose. My aims this winter will bring me to the libraries of London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome, and I shall therefore have the best opportunities for reaching original sources of information. I shall therefore be glad to undertake the volume you suggest.
But I shall have to obtain more details with regard to the limits of my task: how it is to relate itself to that of Wellhausen, for example, and whether I am to say anything about Patristicism.
My book on Rosmini, chaotic as it was, has not been without its effects, I think. But there is a mine there which has never been fully worked, and which well deserves working.
In my lectures I am always emphasizing the view that philosophy, education, etc., cannot be studied apart from the entire life of the people among whom they arise and live. I am therefore in entire sympathy with your general idea, and shall carry it out con amore.
Are you to have a volume on modern Italian philosophy? It will deserve treatment, I think. . . ."
His subsequent letters to me on the subject of this work were as follows:
"10 Craven Street, Strand, London,
October 12, 1894.
... I reached this Babylon on the 3d, and have been toiling away in dirt and fog ever since. . . .
I have with me a delightful young friend, a Ph.D. of Harvard, the ablest philosophical student they ever had there. May I bring him to see you?
I have brought a box of mediaeval books with me, and shall soon settle down in Berlin to write my book. But I cannot begin till I know my limits, e.g. whether I am to include Patriotism or not. . . ."
"Eden Hotel, Rome,
December 25, 1894.
. . . My book has been progressing, and I have collected numerous important documents on medievalism, both here and in Berlin. I find I must become thoroughly acquainted with Arabism before I can go any farther. Fortunately, a good many books are appearing on that subject; but I am going to Cairo next week to make myself directly acquainted with it. [3]
I saw a good deal of Pfleiderer, Von Hartmann, etc., in Berlin, and here I am seeing Ferri almost every day. . . ."
"Hotel Suisse, Rome,
April 12, 1895.
... I hope I shall be allowed to produce a book in two volumes, since in less than that it is impossible to do justice to mediaeval thought.
Though I have been ill all winter, my book has made some progress, and I have collected many books that will be of great value to me. . . ."
"Keene, Essex County, New York,
May 30, 1895.
... I shall divide my subject pretty much as you suggest. It goes naturally into two well-defined parts, sundered by the introduction of the complete Aristotle into the West. But I shall tell you more of this later on. I am now at work on the earlier part, and it interests me intensely. It is only now, when we are coming to know the Arab thinkers, — through the publication of Dieterici, Muller, etc., — that its full significance, and bearings, can be seen. My Arabic studies are doing me yeoman's service now."
[After mentioning, and characterizing, seven writers who might be intrusted with a volume on the Philosophy of America, he continues:] " Come to America, and let me entertain you for a few weeks in the mountains; but do not come in March. Even April is too early for this part of the continent. You might spend a couple of months in Florida, and then come here in June, when the mountains are in all their glory. March is too late for comfort in Cairo. It was hot enough even in February, when I left. ..."
"Keene, Essex County, New York,
October 6, 1895.
. . . My book is growing very satisfactorily. . . . Inasmuch as the presence of dogma, or foregone conclusions about the highest things, is what distinguishes mediaeval thought, taking the place of natural spirit, I am obliged to account for dogma, and the fact of its authority; and this will occupy a good part of the first volume, which cannot, I am sure, reach further than Charlemagne or Abelard. That volume, therefore, might be entitled Mediaeval Thought up to the Rise of Rationalism in Abelard; and the second, Mediaeval Thought from Abelard, and the Rise of Rationalism down to Descartes. I may add a brief chapter on Rosmini and modern media; valism. Alas ! that the philosophic value of the classical mediaeval philosophy stands in sad disproportion to its literary bulk. The achievements of Thomas Aquinas, for example, can be dismissed in a few pages; while Roscelinus, and William of Ockham will require a good deal of attention. . . .
Perhaps I ought to warn you that much of my book will necessarily be deemed heterodox. I am dealing with philosophy, not with theology, and therefore* of course with simple historic truth. I shall treat Hebrew and Christian thought with the same freedom as that with which I treat Greek thought; sympathetically, but unawedly. . . .
[In this letter — in answer to a question by my publisher as to his principal works, to be mentioned in the prospectus of writers for the series — he gives a list of nine of them to choose from, as follows:]
(1) Rosmini's Philosophic System. (2) The Parthenon Frieze, and other Essays. (3) Prolegomena to In Memoriam. (4) Aristotle, and the Ancient Educational Ideals. (5) The Education of the Greek People, and its Effect on Civilization. (6) The Fragments of Parmenides: translation and commentary. (7) The Grammar of Dionysius Thrax: translation and commentary. (8) The Eleventh Book of Aristotle's Metaphysics: translation and notes. (9) The Place of Art in Education."
"Hurricane Post Office,
Keene, Essex County, New York, U.S.A.,
September 6, 1896.
. . . My book progresses, but it grows terribly on my hands, and the condensing is no easy matter. I must include in it a brief account of Arab thought, if I am to make the second period of scholasticism intelligible. I am not sure but you would do well to let me expatiate on Oriental thought, exclusive of the Hindu, even if I should need another volume. I have given most of this summer to Arabism, its nature and sources, and am thereby enabled to present the whole course and character of scholasticism in a new light. I am indeed enabled to show the meaning and necessity of the entire movement. In any case please don't arrange for an Oriental volume until I explain farther to you how much I am forced to include in my work, in order to give it meaning. My book, as I think I told you, will practically be a History of the Rise and Fall of the Principle of Authority in Thought. In medievalism authority, or dogma, takes the place of national spirit; and so I am bound to account for it. . . . It is difficult to say when my book will be finished, but I am working on it as hard as I can. It is a big subject; and the Vorarbeiten are not numerous, or good. The ordinary histories are mere congeries of facts, without internal connections.
I shall be extremely glad to see you in America, and to welcome you to Glenmore. I come here in May and leave in November, and you shall be very welcome any time in between. The best-known « philosophers ' often find their way here, and one or two of them have summer houses. The Adirondacks are superb in scenery, and the air is unequaled. I am two thousand feet above sea level. May is the worst month in the year for you. September is not much better. And it is against the law for you to come on an arrangement made abroad. That, even in the case of the clergy, is construed as an < importation of foreign labor'!
One New York congregation was fined a thousand dollars for infringing this law!"
"The Mansion House, Brooklyn, New York,
February 12, 1896.
... I have written out a first draft of my whole book in the form of lectures, so as to get its articulation clearly before me; and have also elaborated the first part of it. But the material and the interest grow as I proceed; so that I do not get on so fast as I wish. The result will be all the better for that, however. ..."
"Keene, June 16, 1896.
. . . For the real understanding of mediaeval thought a great deal has to be done at both ends of it. We have plenty of descriptions of mediaevalism, but not one of them tells us why it was what it was; and yet that is the important thing "
"Keene, Essex County,
June 6, 1897.
... I have been almost completely used up with the 'grippe' (I have now had it eight times), but my book is progressing. Certain parts of it are well advanced; but until I undertook it I had no notion of the difficulties besetting the task, nor the amount of research and labor involved in it. I have bought and read hundreds of books in the last two years, and the bottom is not reached yet. The fact is, there are no Vorarbeiten; indeed, there is no single book that really gives an intelligent, enlightening view of mediaeval thought. I could easily abridge Stockl, [4] or expand Ueberweg-Heinze, [5] but that would be useless hack work. What I am trying to do is to give a living picture of dogma-limited mediaeval thought in all its relations and ramifications, showing its connection with Greek, Roman, Patristic, and Arabic thought, and its influence on modern thought. I wish to do something that will be a lasting contribution to science, and a basis for farther work. The subject is extremely interesting, and well worth all the labor expended on it.
I fear I must spend a month in the British Museum before I can finish the first volume. I am thinking of, coming over in October. I came near paying a thousand dollars for a copy of Migne the other day, but it escaped me. . . ."
"Pelham Manor, Westchester County, New York,
February 13, 1898.
[Explains delay. The working part of the establishment at Glenmore was burned to the ground in the summer of 1897, entailing very considerable loss. To make this up Mr. Davidson was obliged to do "some immediately paying work " during the following winter, and accordingly he wrote a book on Rousseau's educational system. Resuming work on the History of Medieval Thought, he restates his difficulty.]
The truth is, this history has never been written in any intelligible way, and I am trying to do that thing. It requires patience, both on your part and on mine. ..."
It is unnecessary to explain how this book on Mediaevalism, and the series of which it was to have formed a part, never appeared. It is rather a long story, and is scarcely relevant to Davidson. But students of philosophy will be interested in the glimpses which these letters give of the rise and progress of a great undertaking; and the general reader will obtain some side lights on the nature of the problem, as it gradually shaped itself in the mind of the writer. I may mention, moreover, that I have seen and examined in manuscript the notes of a series of thirty-seven lectures on the "Philosophy of the Middle Ages," delivered at Glenmore, and taken down by a very competent student. They could not be printed as they now stand; but if other students took down similar ones (as many doubtless would), and if all were submitted to a competent editor, — as the manuscript notes of the lectures on "Logic" and "Metaphysics," by Sir William Hamilton at Edinburgh, were handed over to Professor Veitch and Dean Mansel, — a work of real and lasting merit might be constructed.
_______________
Notes:
1. The series of Philosophical Classics for English Readers, which I organized and edited, and of which Messrs. Blackwood were the publishers.
2. The volumes were to be more than double that size; and as the subject grew on his hands, Mr. Davidson wished two volumes for it.
3. His visit was for the purpose of speaking Arabic, while studying Arab and Eastern life, as much as for examining manuscripts or consulting books.
4. Stockl, A., Geschichte der Philosophic des Mittelalters.
5. Ueberweg-Heinze, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar
by admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:44 am
CHAPTER 15: PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES'S REMINISCENCES
Cambridge, Boston,
October 21, 1903.
My dear Professor Knight:
You ask me to contribute to your book something reminiscential about Thomas Davidson, and I am glad to do so. It will do him no honor not to be frank about him. He handled people without gloves himself, and one has no right to retouch his photograph until its features are softened into insipidity. He had defects and excesses which he wore upon his sleeve, so that every one could see them immediately. They made him many enemies, and if one liked quarreling he was an easy man to quarrel with. But his heart and mind held treasures of the rarest. He had a genius for friendship; money, place, fame, fashion, and other vulgar idols of the tribe, had no hold on his imagination; he led his own life absolutely, in whatever company he might find himself; and the intense individualism which he stood for and taught always, is the lesson of which our generation stands perhaps most in need. All sorts of contrary adjectives come up as I think of him. I will shrink from none, extenuating nothing, but trying also not to exaggerate.
To begin with, there was something rustic about him, which suggested to the end his farm-boy origin. His voice was sweet and its cadence most musical, and the extraordinary sociability of his nature made as many friends for him among women as among men; he had, moreover, a sort of physical dignity; but neither in dress nor in manner did he ever grow quite "gentlemanly" or "Salonfahig" in the conventional and obliterated sense of the terms. He was too cordial and emphatic for that. His broad brow, his big chest, his bright blue eyes, his volubility in talk and laughter told a tale of vitality far beyond the common; but his fine and nervous hands and the vivacity of his reaction upon every impression suggested a degree of sensibility which one rarely finds conjoined with so robustly animal a frame.
The great peculiarity of Davidson did indeed consist in this combination of the acutest sensibilities with massive faculties of thought and action. It is a combination apt for experience and suffering; but when the thoughts and actions are important it gives to the world its greatest men.
Davidson's native mood was happy. He took optimistic views of life and of his own share in it. A sort of permanent satisfaction radiated from his face; and this expression of inward glory (which in reality was to a large extent structural and not "expressive" at all) — strangely enough, the slight intermittent strabismus outwards with which one of his eyes was affected added to it — was displeasing to many new acquaintances, who held him, on account of it, to be intolerably conceited. This impression of self-conceit was not diminished in their eyes by the freedom with which he contradicted, corrected, and reprehended other people. I recollect that a lady, who found nothing in her with which to meet this radiancy of his, said that he affected her as if he were a red-hot stove in the room, and always made her wish to get away from his presence. A longer acquaintance invariably diminished this impression of conceit, but it must be confessed that Davidson never was exactly humble-minded, and that the solidity of his self-consciousness withstood strains under which that of weaker men would have crumbled. The malady which finally killed him (a complication of bladder troubles) is notoriously one of the most exhausting to the nervous tone to which our flesh is subject, and it wore him out before it ended him. He told me of the paroxysms of motiveless nervous dread which used to beset him in the night watches. Yet these never subdued his stalwart individualism, or made him a "sick soul," in the theological sense of that appellation. "God is afraid of me" was the phrase by which he described his well-being to me one morning, when his night had been a good one, and he was feeling so hearty that he thought he might recover.
There are men whose attitude is always that of seeking for truth; and men who, on the contrary, always believe that they have the root of the matter already in them. Davidson was one of the latter class. Like his countrymen, Carlyle and Ruskin, he felt himself to be in possession of something, whether articulate or as yet unarticulated by himself, that authorized him (and authorized him with uncommon openness and frequency) to condemn the errors of others. I think that to the last he never fully extricated this philosophy. It was a tendency, a faith in a direction, which gave him an active persuasion that other directions were false, but of which the central insight, never fully formulated, remained in a state which Frederic Myers would have called subliminal. He varied to a certain extent his watchwords and his heroes. When I first knew him all was Aristotle. Later all was Rosmini. Later still Rosmini seemed forgotten; and I never learned just what point of view replaced that synthesis for Davidson. Thomas Davidson was ever and always individualistic and pluralistic, yet never the sort of empiricist which, to my mind, pluralists and individualists ought by right to be. He knew so many writers that he grew fond of very various ones, and had a strange tolerance for systematizers and dogmatizers whom in consistency he should have disliked. Hegel, it is true, he detested; but he always spoke with reverence of Kant. Of Mill and Spencer he had a low opinion; and when I lent him Paulsen's Einleitung in die Philosophie (then just out), as an example of the kind of eclectic empiricism that seemed to be growing, and with which I largely sympathized, he returned it with richer expressions of disdain than often fell even from his lips: "It's the shabbiest, seediest pretence at a philosophy I ever dreamed of as possible. It's like a man dressed in a black coat so threadbare as to be all shiny. The most poverty-stricken, out-at-elbows thing I ever read," etc. The truth is that Davidson, brought up on the older classic traditions, always kept near them. He was a Platonizer. His acquaintance with physical science was almost wholly due to later "popular" literature, and he never outgrew those habits of judging by purely aesthetic criteria, which men fed more upon the sciences of nature are so willing to dispense with. Even if a philosophy were true, he would fail to relish it unless it showed certain formal merits and pretensions to finality.
His own philosophy was, I think, what to the last he set most store by; more than by the prodigious erudition which came to him so easily. The erudition probably interfered with the articulate working out of the philosophy. Associations came in such abundance when he thought of anything that he got diverted by them; and, although up to a certain point his writing was always admirably clear, I used to think that I could recognize the very page where he had ceased to think perspicuously, and the end of his articles was often, to my taste, anything but transparent. His intellect in any case was not analytic, and perhaps analysis is what is most required in pure philosophy.
But I am describing him too much from the standpoint of my own profession. It is from the point of view of a vessel of human life that he ought to be taken. I first heard about him in 1873 from Mr. Elliot Cabot, who praised his learning and manliness and great success with pupils. In another year he came to Boston, ruddy and radiant, and I saw much of him, though at first without that thoroughness of sympathy which we afterwards acquired, and which then made us overflow, on meeting after long absences, into such laughing greetings as "Ha! you old thief! Ha! you old blackguard!" — pure "contrast effects" of affection and familiarity overflowing their limit. At that time I saw most of him at a little philosophical club which used to meet (often at his rooms in Temple Street) every fortnight. Other members were W. T. Harris, G. H. Howison, J. E. Cabot, C. C. Everett, B. P. Browne, and sometimes G. H. Palmer. We never worked out unanimous conclusions. Davidson used to crack the whip of Aristotle over us; and I remember that whatever topic was formally appointed for the day, we almost invariably wound up with a quarrel about space perception. The club had existed before Davidson's advent. The previous year we had gone over a good part of Hegel's larger logic under the self-constituted leadership of Messrs. Emery and McClure, two young business men from Quincy, Illinois, who had become enthusiastic Hegelians; and, knowing almost no German, had actually possessed themselves of a manuscript translation of the entire three volumes, made by an extraordinary Pomeranian immigrant named Brockmeyer. They were leaving business for the law, and studying at the Harvard Law School; but they saw the whole universe through Hegelian spectacles, and a more admirable homo unties libri than Mr. Emery, with his three big folios of Hegelian manuscript, I have never had the good fortune to know.
I forget how Davidson was earning his subsistence at this time. He did some lecturing and private teaching, but I do not think they were great in amount. In the springs and summers he frequented the coast and indulged in long swimming bouts and salt-water immersions, which seemed to agree with him greatly. His sociability was boundless, and his time seemed to belong to any one who asked for it.
I soon conceived that such a man would be invaluable in Harvard University; a kind of Socrates, a devotee of truth and lover of youth, ready to sit up to any hour and talk with any one, lavish of help and information and counsel, a contagious example of how lightly and humanly a burden of learning might be borne upon a pair of shoulders. In faculty business he might not run well in harness, but as an inspiration and ferment of character, and as an example of the ranges of combination of scholarship and manhood that are possible, his influence among the students would be priceless. I do not know whether this scheme of mine would under any circumstances have been feasible. At any rate, it was nipped in the bud by the man himself. A natural chair for him would have been Greek philosophy. Unfortunately, just at the decisive hour, he offended our Greek department by a savage criticism of its methods (originally drawn up, I believe, as a report to our overseers) which he had published in the Atlantic Monthly. This, with his other unconventionalisms, made advocating his cause more difficult, and the university authorities never, I believe, seriously thought of an appointment for him.
I think that in this case, as in one or two others like it which I might mention, Harvard University lost a great opportunity. Organization and method mean something, but contagious human characters mean more, in a university. A few undisciplinables like Davidson may be infinitely more precious than a faculty full of orderly routinists. As to what he might have become under the conventionalizing influences of an official position, it would be idle to speculate. As things fell out, he became more and more unconventional, and even developed a sort of antipathy to academic life in general. It subdued individualism, he thought, and made for philistinism. He earnestly dissuaded his young friend, Bakewell, from accepting a professorship; and I well remember one dark night on East Hill, after a dinner at Mr. Warren's, the eloquence with which, as we trudged downhill to Glenmore with our lantern, he denounced me for the musty and moldy and generally ignoble academicism of my character. Never before or since, I fancy, has the air of the Adirondack wilderness vibrated more repugnantly to a vocable than it did that night to the word "academicism."
Yet Davidson himself was always essentially a teacher. He must give forth, inspire, and have the young about him. After leaving Boston for Europe, returning to New Jersey, and founding the Fellowship of the New Life in New York, he hit upon the plan which pleased him best of all. In 1892, 1 or thereabouts, he bought a hundred or two acres on East Hill, which closes the beautiful Keene valley in the Adirondacks on the north, and founded there, at the foot of Hurricane Mountain, his place Glenmore and its Summer School of the Culture Sciences. Although the primeval forest has departed from its immediate vicinity, the region is still sylvan, the air is sweet and strong and almost Alpine in quality, and the mountain panorama spread out before one is superlative. In organizing his settlement, Davidson showed a business faculty which I should have hardly expected from him. He built a number of houselets, pretty in design and of the simplest construction, and disposed them well for effect. He turned a couple of farm buildings which were on the ground into a lecturing place and a refectory; and there, arriving in early April and not leaving till late in November, he spent the happiest portion of all his later years, surrounded during the summer months by colleagues, friends, and listeners to lectures, and in the spring and fall by a few independent women who were his faithful friends, and who found East Hill a congenial residence.
You will no doubt have received an account of the workings of Glenmore from some one who frequented it in summer. My own visits were too early or too late for the school to be in session. Twice I went up with Davidson to open the place in April. I well remember leaving his fireside one night with three ladies who were also early comers, and finding the thermometer at 8° Fahrenheit and a tremendous gale blowing the snow about. Davidson loved these blustering vicissitudes of climate. In the early years the brook was never too cold for him to bathe in, and he spent hours in rambling over the hills and through the forest.
His own cottage was full of books, whose use was free to all who visited the settlement. It stood high on the hill in a grove of silver birches, and looked upon the western mountains; and it always seemed to me an ideal dwelling for such a bachelor scholar. Here in May and June he became almost one with the resurgent vegetation. Here in October he was a witness of the jewelled pageant of the dying foliage, and saw the hillsides reeking, as it were, and aflame with ruby and gold, emerald and topaz. One September day in 1900, at the "Kurhaus" at Nauheim, I took up a copy of the Paris New York Herald, and read in capitals: " Death of Professor Thomas Davidson." I had well known how ill he was, yet such was his vitality that the shock was wholly unexpected. I did not realize till that moment how much that free companionship with him every spring and autumn, surrounded by that beautiful nature, had signified to me, or how big a piece would be subtracted from my life by its cessation.
Davidson's capacity for imparting information seemed endless. There were few subjects, especially humanistic subjects, in which at some time or other he had not taken an interest; and as everything that had ever touched him was instantaneously in reach of his omnipotent memory, he easily became a living dictionary of reference. As such all his friends were wont to use him. He was, for example, never at a loss to supply a quotation. He loved poetry passionately, and the sympathetic voice with which he would recall page upon page of it — English, French, German, or Italian — is a thing I shall always like to remember. But notwithstanding the instructive part he played in every conceivable conversation, he was never prolix, and he never "lectured."
From Davidson I learned what immunities a perfect memory bestows upon one. I never could discover when he amassed his learning, for he never seemed occupied. The secret of it was that any odd time would do, for he never had to acquire anything twice over. He avoided stated hours for work, on principle. . . . Individualist a outrance, Davidson felt that every hour was a unique entity to whose claim on one's spontaneity one should always lie open. Thus he was never abstracted or preoccupied, but always seemed when with you as if you were the one person whom it was then right to attend to. It was this individualistic religion that made Davidson so indifferent, all democrat as he nevertheless was, to socialisms and general administrative panaceas. Life must be flexible. You ask for a free man and these Utopias give you an "interchangeable part," with a fixed number, in a rule-bound social organism. The thing to aim at is liberation of the inner interests. Given a man possessed of a soul, and he will work out his own happiness under any set of conditions. Accordingly when, in the last year of his life, he proposed his night school to young East Side workmen in New York, he told them that he had no sympathy whatever with the griefs of "labor," that outward circumstances meant nothing in his eyes, that through their individual wills and intellect they could share, just as they were, in the highest spiritual life of humanity, and that he was there to help them severally to that privilege.
The enthusiasm with which they responded speaks volumes both for his genius as a teacher, and for the sanity of his position. Leveller upwards of men as Davidson was, in the moral and intellectual manner, he seemed wholly without that sort of religious sentiment which makes so many of our contemporary democrats think that they ought to dip, at least, into some manual occupation, in order to share the common burden of humanity. I never saw him work with his hands in any way. He accepted material services of all kinds without apology, as if he were a born patrician; evidently feeling that if he played his own more intellectual part rightly, society could demand nothing further.
His confidence that the life of intelligence is the absolutely highest made Davidson serene about his outward for- tunes. Pecuniary worry would not tally with his programme. He had a very small provision against a rainy day, but he did little to increase it. He would write as many articles and give as many lectures, talks, or readings every winter as would suffice to pay the year's expenses, but would thereafter refuse additional invitations, and repair to Glenmore as early in the spring as possible. I could not but admire the temper he showed when the principal building there was one night turned to ashes. There was no insurance on it, and it would cost a couple of thousands of dollars to replace it. Excitable as Davidson was about small contrarieties, he watched this fire without a syllable of impatience. Plate d' argent n'est pas mortelle, he seemed to say, and if he felt sharp regrets he disdained to express them.
No more did care about his literary reputation trouble him. In the ordinary greedy sense he seemed quite free from ambition. During his last years he had prepared a large amount of material for that history of the interaction of Greek, Christian, Hebrew, and Arabic thought upon one another before the revival of learning, which was to be his magnum opus. It was a territory to which, in its totality, few living minds had access, and in which a certain proprietary feeling was natural. Knowing how short his life might be I once asked him whether he felt no concern lest the work already done by him should be frustrate from the lack of its necessary complement, in case he was suddenly cut off. His answer surprised me by its indifference. He would work as long as he lived, he said, but would not allow himself to worry, and would look serenely at whatever might be the outcome. This seemed to me uncommonly high-minded. I think that Davidson's conviction of immortality had much to do with such a superiority to accidents. On the surface and towards small things he was irritable enough, but the undertone of his character was remarkable for largeness and equanimity. He showed it in his final illness, of which the misery was really atrocious. There were no general complaints or lamentations about the personal situation, or the arrest to his career. It was the human lot and he must even bear it, so he kept his mind upon objective matters.
But as I said at the outset the paramount thing in Davidson in my eyes was his capacity for friendship. His friends were innumerable, — boys and girls, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, papists and protestants, married and single, — and he cared deeply for each one of them, admiring them often too extravagantly. How can we describe those recurrent waves of delighted laughter which characterized his greetings, beginning from the moment he saw you, and accompanying his words continuously, as if his pleasure in you were interminable ? His hand, too, stretched out to you when yards away, so that a country neighbor said it reached farther than any hand he ever met with. The odd thing was that friendship in Davidson seemed so little to interfere with criticism. Persons with whom intercourse was one long contradiction on his part, and who appeared to annoy him to extermination, he none the less loved tenderly. " He 's the most utterly selfish human being" (I once heard him say of some one) "whom I ever knew, and comes from the most illiberal and narrow-hearted people, — and yet he's the dearest, nicest fellow living." His enthusiastic belief in any young person who had a promise of genius was touching. Naturally a man who was willing, as he was, to be a prophet, always finds some women who are willing to be disciples. I never heard of any sentimental weakness in Davidson in this relation. They warmed themselves at the fire of his personality, and he told them truths without accommodation. " You 're farther off from God than any woman I ever heard of." " If you believe in a protective tariff you 're in hell already, although you may not know it." "You had a fine hysterical time last night, didn't you, when Miss B was brought up from the ravine with her dislocated shoulder?" To Miss B herself he said, "I don't pity you. It served you right for being so ignorant as to go there at that hour." Seldom did the recipients of these deliverances seem to resent them.
What with Davidson's warmth of heart and sociability I used to wonder at his never marrying. Two years before his death he told me of the reason, his unfortunate young love affair at Aberdeen. Twice in later life, he said, temptation had come to him, and he had had to make his decision. When it came to the point he had felt each time that the earlier tie was prohibitive. "When two persons have known each other as we did," he said, "neither can ever fully belong to a stranger. So it wouldn't do! It wouldn't do! It wouldn't do!" he repeated, as we lay on the hillside, in a tone so musically tender that it chimes in my ear still, as I write down his confession. It can be no breach of confidence to publish it; it is too creditable to the profundity of Davidson's moral nature. As I knew him, he was one of the purest of human beings.
If you ask me what the value of Thomas Davidson was, what was the general significance of his life apart from his particular work and services, I shall have to say (for personally I never gained any very definite light from his more abstract philosophy) that it lay in the example he set to us all, of how — even in the midst of this intensely worldly social system of ours, in which every interest is organized collectively and commercially — a single man may still be a knight-errant of the intellectual life, and preserve freedom in the midst of sociability. Extreme as was his need of friends, and faithful as he was to them, he yet lived mainly in reliance on his private inspiration. Asking no man's permission, bowing the knee to no tribal idol, renouncing the conventional channels of recognition, he showed us how a life devoted to purely intellectual ends could be beautifully wholesome outwardly, and overflow with inner contentment. Fortunately this type of man is recurrent, and from generation to generation literary history preserves examples. But it is infrequent enough for few of us to have known personally more than one example. I count myself happy in having known two. The memory of Davidson will always strengthen my faith in personal freedom and its spontaneities, and make me less unqualifiedly respectful than ever of "civilization," with its exaggerated belief in herding and branding, licensing, authorizing, and appointing, and, in general, regulating and administrating the lives of human beings by system. Surely the individual person is the more fundamental phenomenon, and the social institution, of whatever grade, is secondary and ministerial. The individual can call it to account in a deeper sense than that in which it calls him to account. Social systems satisfy many interests, but unsatisfied interests always remain over, and among them interests which system as such violates. The best commonwealth is the one which most cherishes the men who represent the residual interests, and leaves the largest scope to their activity. I may say that Davidson seemed to find the United States a more propitious commonwealth in this regard than his native land, or other European countries.
Yours always truly,
William James.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar
by admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:46 am
CHAPTER 16: RECOLLECTIONS BY WYNDHAM R. DUNSTAN
_______________
Notes:
1. See Appendix D, page 231.
Davidson and I first met in London in 1881, when a few of us were actively engaged in promoting the study of philosophy in London by founding the Aristotelian Society, a project in which Davidson took great interest, although he was debarred from taking much part in our proceedings owing to his few and infrequent visits to London. The friendship thus begun continued, in spite of separation for periods of years, until his death in 1900.
Davidson was one of the most learned and versatile of men. His knowledge ranged over general philosophy, metaphysics, art, archaeology, and literature; and was bounded by no language. His linguistic powers were remarkable. He had no difficulty in conversing in Latin, ancient and modern Greek, Italian, German, and French. He was so conversant with Greek and Latin literature and ideals, and his discussion of these subjects was so intimate and complete, that he gave the impression of having lived in those ages. There were moods in which he himself lost all touch with the modern world, and his thoughts occurred to him in the ancient tongues. At one period of his life he was subject to something in the nature of catalepsy, and those about him have told me that on recovering from these states he invariably spoke in Greek or Latin; and on one occasion he was found walking with merely a blanket round his shoulders. He explained that he had put on his toga to go to the bath. I mention this incident in order to emphasize one of the chief characteristics of the man, namely, his intense sympathy with ancient life and thought.
The extent of his philosophical reading in all languages was remarkable. He had no mean knowledge of archaeology, as is evidenced by his essays published in 1882 on the Parthenon frieze and other subjects, and his contribution to the discussion which arose on the restoration of the Venus of Milo proposed by Kossos {Academy, 1882, pp. 273-274).
His knowledge of English Literature, both in verse and prose, was as considerable as his appreciation of that of other nations. He knew Shakespeare as well as he knew Dante; and no one who had heard him read Shakespeare could fail to be impressed by his mastery of every shade and intricacy of meaning. Keats was one of the English poets in whom he delighted; and his marvellous memory enabled him to recite without hesitation those pieces of literature which had made the greatest impression on his mind. I shall never forget his giving me during a walk the greater part of King Lear, and on a subsequent occasion an impressive rendering of Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes and the Ode to a Grecian Urn.
He knew Dante intimately and wrote a translation and commentary of Scartazzini's Hand Book, which was published in 1887. His knowledge of the history of education is not to be measured by his small though excellent work on this subject. He was deeply interested in educational progress, and especially in the development of the Froebelian system.
Simple music gave him great pleasure, but he was not musical in the ordinary sense. Politics had little interest for him. His views on current subjects were strongly liberal, and individualistic. He had no belief in socialistic schemes, and was a strong opponent of the later German socialism. He took great interest in scientific work, especially when it touched philosophy; but except from the mathematical side he knew little of its detail.
In personal appearance he was tall, broad, and of heavy build, with reddish hair and complexion, and a flowing red beard, careless in matters of dress and appearance, but brimming over with geniality. Born in Aberdeen, he exhibited many of the physical and mental characteristics of the northern Scot, though, probably from residence abroad, he had lost nearly all trace of the familiar accent. Warm-hearted and generous alike to the good qualities and deficiencies of his friends, he was forcible in stating his opinions and strenuous in argument, especially when opposed, on which occasions a hot temper might reveal itself; but he had no touch of malice or uncharitableness in his nature. As a friend he was devoted and self-sacrificing. Although not attached to any church, Davidson was a deeply religious man, with a firm belief in God in a somewhat pantheistic sense, and an equally firm conviction as to immortality. Writing to me from Capri in 1883 he said: "To me, for one, the eternity of the individual soul is no dogma, but a fact as clearly demonstrated as any in mathematics. And not only so, but it is the most important of all facts, and the one we can least afford to be in doubt about. False philosophy, subjectivism, materialism, and the rest, have rendered the demonstration of the eternity of the individual so difficult that it has become a sort of mark of intellectual superiority either to scout the question altogether, or to talk about it in a jargon which is nothing less than dishonest. It seems strange that while so much attention is being given to the laws of forces which are only of doubtful existence — such as those of the atoms and molecules of gases, — so little should be done to understand that force of which we are directly conscious, the force which is our own soul."
Those who are familiar with Rosmini's restatement of the doctrine of the actus purus of the schoolmen will recognize Davidson's acceptance of this view, to which, so far as I am aware, he adhered to the end of his life.
In 1881 Davidson was a recent convert to the philosophy of Rosmini, an Italian priest who was a reformer within the Church of Rome and in this connection best known in this country, his work entitled The Seven Wounds of the Holy Church having been translated into English with a preface by Canon Liddon. Rosmini was, however, also a metaphysician of a high order. His System of Philosophy and Psychology was translated into English and edited by Davidson. The philosophy of Rosmini may be regarded as a restatement of the scholasticism of St. Thomas and the schoolmen, in the light of Hegelianism and later German philosophy. Such a system had every attraction for Davidson. Deeply versed as he was in Greek philosophy, with a profound knowledge of Aristotle as well as of St. Thomas Aquinas and the schoolmen, and thoroughly imbued with the classical spirit, Davidson welcomed Rosmini' s system as a means of reconciling the older philosophy and the later German metaphysics, which he had also mastered, and whose subtlety he fully appreciated and admired; though he refused to accept them as a system of philosophy capable of being made the basis of ethical and practical action.
The following extracts from some of Davidson's letters to me are characteristic and interesting, as showing his philosophical position.
"I am interested to hear that you are reading Spinoza's Ethics. It is the most wonderful piece of dogmatism perpetrated in modern times. Hegel calls it der wesentliche Anfang alles philosophisches. ... I do not find any difficulty with Spinoza's "substance," but this comes from my familiarity with the Greek [x] and [x] and the scholastic actus purus. In my opinion it is the want of power to grasp the concept — this concept of an immanent nontransient act — that leads modern thought so wildly astray into all the vagaries of relativity. Get once into your mind the thought that being is an act (not an action) and all the talk about universal relativity becomes pure nonsense. The questions how we come to cognize substance, and what substance is when it is cognized, are very different although they are almost always confused. It is entirely true that without light I should never become conscious of darkness, but after I am conscious of darkness I can think of it perfectly well without thinking of light at all. In the same way, though it requires one or more of those transient actions which we call properties or accidents to make me conscious of the immanent act we call substance, nevertheless, once I am conscious of substance I can think of it perfectly well without the notion of accident. The transient exists only to make us conscious of the eternal. . . . Hegel's account of Spinozism is not bad. Have you read what Goethe says about the effect on him, in Dichtung und Wahrheit?"
As to Kant he writes: "I am rather amused that you could read so much of the Kritik. After one has discovered its fundamental error the rest are seen to follow naturally and are hardly worth going into. Since the world began there never was such a piece of huge, solemn humbug as German philosophy. The land of beer never did produce but one great thinker and that was Leibniz."
A metaphysician who had read deep and widely, and an acute dialectician, Davidson's guiding motive in later life was, nevertheless, the practical one of founding a new society on an intellectual basis. In earlier life he had made himself acquainted with the best that had been said and done in religion, philosophy, art, and literature, and his rare intellectual ability, his remarkable power of memory and exposition, and his attractive personality combined to make him feel that he might be able to bring into existence a new brotherhood which in time might grow and exercise a profound influence for good. Ultimately this lofty ambition actuated all that Davidson undertook. He surrounded himself with a group of young men of intellectual distinction to whom he looked for aid in this work, and he rallied about him some of his older friends who in various ways were to give him help. Impatient of traditions and conventionalities of all kinds he ultimately saw his best chance of success in America, a country to which he had always been much attracted. He writes to me: " A few of us are seriously thinking of attempting to unite on the highest grounds for mutual help toward a rational life and for the bringing about of the conditions necessary in order to make that life possible for people generally. Don't be frightened if the theory at first seems Utopian. That word is generally pronounced with a sneer; but after all it is a Utopia that we want. I, for one, utterly despair of reforming men by legislation which at best only takes from one selfish horde and gives to another. What we ought to do is to let all reasonably liberal government alone and make use of the freedom and protection they afford in order to unite for the purpose of making life what it should be. I know of nothing so well worth doing, nothing that would give life so much elevation, as the formation of a society for the purpose of making every man as far as possible the heir of all the moral, artistic, and intellectual property of the race."
And again in a later letter: "I think the time has come for formulating into a religion and rule of life the results of the intellectual and moral attainments of the last two thousand years. I cannot content myself with this miserable blind life that the majority of mankind is at present leading and I do not see any reason for it. Moreover I do not see anything really worth doing but to show men the way to a better life. If our philosophy, our science, and our art do not contribute to that, what are they worth?"
Davidson's attachment to Rosmini's philosophical views had led some to suppose that he might eventually join the Church of Rome, which he respected and in a sense even venerated, and which had given every encouragement to his work on Rosmini. It was certainly an" interesting spectacle in the early eighties to find Davidson in friendly communication with the Pope and the Cardinals in Rome and received literally with open arms by the priests and votaries of the Rosminian order throughout Italy. I spent the summer of 1882 with him at his villa above Domodossola, near the Rosminian monastery to which we constantly went to discuss philosophical questions with the learned fathers of the order, with whom Davidson was on the most friendly terms; though, so far as I am aware, he never attended any of their religious services. Between him and Pope Leo XIII there was much common intellectual ground. Both had consummate knowledge of Aristotle and the schoolmen, both were anxious to influence through philosophy the materialistic trend of current thought, and both had been influenced by the Rosminian philosophy. During my visits to Davidson in Rome and in Domodossola I saw much of those who represented the intellectual movement in the Roman Church, to whom Davidson was a persona grata as a layman who understood and sympathized with the philosophy to which they looked for a justification of the doctrines of the Holy Church. I have, however, no reason to believe that the idea of accepting the religious doctrines of Rome was ever present to Davidson's mind. Certainly no one who knew him could consider such an event even as a possible contingency. However this may be, ten years later, in 1894, he writes to me: "Have you read the Pope's last Encyclical on the reunion of Christendom ? If not, do so; it is wonderful in its way and may mean something. I shall be in Rome in the spring. And how good it would be again to play cicerone to you in the 'eternal city'! Many of my old friends there are dead and gone; but enough are left, I trust, to make a stay pleasant and profitable in social ways. I am afraid I shall be less popular than I used to be in Catholic circles, seeing that I have not been converted within the proper time limits. But there are circles of far greater interest in Rome. Since I came here I have written an article on the 'The Democratisation of England ' for the Forum. I rather think you will like it. I have tried to be very fair. I am soon going to write one on the present condition of Germany — and it will not be flattering!"
We were in Rome together in 1895. Davidson was again full of his plans for the formation of an intellectual brotherhood. His lectures in the States during the winter had been well attended, and the summer school he had started at Glenmore in the Adirondacks was growing in popularity, and was rallying round him thoughtful men and women from the American cities. "America," "Intellectual free thought," and " Individualism " were now his watch-words. Two years later, in the summer of 1897, I stayed with him at Glenmore when the summer school was in full activity, Davidson living in a wooden house on the summit of a hill, surrounded with his books, whilst in and around the village visitors from various parts of the States had taken primitive accommodations for the summer. The community met daily in a large building where meals were taken together, lectures were given by Davidson and his friend, and readings and discourses took place. Our host was at once the philosopher, friend, and counsellor, and evidently exerted a great influence on those who thus came into close contact with him. The photograph of Davidson sitting outside his home at Glenmore was taken about this time, and was given to me as a memento of my visit.
To me, as to several of his friends, it seemed that Davidson's striking abilities might have found expression in a more suitable environment, and that the work he was doing might have been left to others to do. Efforts to induce him to return to university life, where his great knowledge and influence would have been turned to the best account, were of no avail. His aversion to tradition and convention had become more intense and he felt that university life was no longer possible for him. With his great and] versatile learning and his rare intellectual distinction there was associated a paltry nomadic tendency as well as a strong desire to be influenced by as well as to influence current thought at all its centers. His life for years had been divided between New York, London, Rome, Paris, and Berlin. In these and other places he had his friends who always welcomed his periodical visits and were glad to hold converse with his vigorous mind. For money and worldly position he had no concern whatever. His permanent means were very slight indeed, and his simple tastes enabled him to depend upon the precarious and small pecuniary results of lecturing and writing.
Davidson wrote a clear and forcible style, but those who know only his more serious contributions to philosophical literature would scarcely believe that he could also write with brilliancy in a lighter vein. For some years he was an occasional contributor, often anonymous, to a large number of magazines and reviews both in this country and in the United States. The article now reprinted, entitled "A Summer Solitude in the Italian Alps," appeared anonymously in 1882 in the Pall Mall Gazette. [1] It gives a delightful description of his life at Domodossola. Another article, "A Lodging with a Greek Priest," appeared in the same place in the same year. I have selected these two articles as representing Davidson's versatility and the charm of his style, as well as his power of picturesque description. Davidson was a voluminous and delightful correspondent. For many years he and I corresponded with regularity, and I have given some excerpts from his numerous letters.
Reference has been made to Davidson's wide acquaintance with poetry. He himself wrote verse occasionally and some of it was printed anonymously. The sonnet appealed to him as a mode of expression, and in concluding this brief sketch I cannot do better than quote a sonnet Davidson wrote soon after the death of Arthur Amson, a young student to whom he was devotedly attached, and whom he took with him to Leipzig, to study archaeology under Overbeck, where he died at the age of twenty. This sonnet was printed in the front of the volume called The Parthenon Frieze and Other Essays, which has a touching dedication to Amson.Upon a broken tombstone of the Prime,
When youths, who loved the gods, were loved again
And rapt from sight, two human forms remain.
One, shrunk with years and hoary with their rime,
Gropes for the hand of one who sits sublime
And, calm in large-limbed youth, prepares to drain
The cup of endless life. In vain! in vain!
He cannot reach beyond the screen of time.
So, Arthur, as our human years go by,
I stand and blindly grope for thy dear hand,
And listen for a whisper from thy tongue.
In vain ! in vain ! I only hear Love cry:
"He feasts with gods upon the eternal strand;
For they in whom the gods delight die young."
_______________
Notes:
1. See Appendix D, page 231.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar
by admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:48 am
CHAPTER 17: THE MORAL ASPECTS OF THE ECONOMIC QUESTION: A LECTURE READ BY MR. DAVIDSON BEFORE THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE NEW LIFE, IN NEW YORK
In considering this subject, I shall set out with two assumptions: first, that human life does not consist in material possession; second, that it does consist in free spiritual activity, of which, in this life at least, material possession is an essential condition.
If there be any one here who does not admit these postulates, any one who holds that human life consists in having and holding, and not in being; that man lives to eat, and does not eat to live a human, that is, a rational life; if there be any one who holds that political economy is the whole science of human life, then no conclusion at which I may arrive will have any meaning or cogency for him.
There are certain great advantages in the division of labor, and especially of scientific labor; but there are also certain great disadvantages. If we look closely at these, we shall find that the former are mostly in the way of material results, the latter in the way of spiritual ones. There can be no doubt that by dividing labor — whether industrial, artistic, or scientific — we obtain larger and, to some extent, better immediate results than we should if every man performed every kind of labor. Ten men devoting themselves each exclusively to one trade will produce more and better results than if each undertook to exercise all the ten trades. So likewise ten scientific men, devoting themselves each exclusively to one branch of science, will attain greater and more accurate results than if they scattered themselves each over ten branches of science. But in both cases these manifest advantages will necessarily entail certain disadvantages. The man who devotes himself exclusively to one trade will have a much narrower range of developed capabilities, a much dimmer notion of the relation of trade to trade, and be much less independent of social arrangements than if he could exercise ten trades, even in an indifferent manner. So likewise the scientific man who spends his whole life in studying one branch of science — say astronomy or mathematics — will have a much narrower culture, a much vaguer notion of the whole range of science, and of the interrelation of its various parts, than if he were fairly well conversant with ten branches of science. I know a man who has ladled tar for over thirty years, and he does it to perfection; but, if there were no tar ladling to do, I doubt whether he could make his living. On the other hand, I once knew a man in a wild region of Minnesota, who built his own house, having first made his own bricks, and felled and sawed his own wood; who dug his own well, made his own pump and put it in, built his own barn, cultivated his own farm, caught his own fish, built the steamer that crossed the neighboring lake (all but the engine), made sets of teeth, was dentist and physician to the people for leagues around, and preached every Sunday to his neighbors. This man was, of course, intelligent, shrewd, and independent. He did nothing supremely well, but he did everything fairly well; and lived a good, healthy, active, manly, human life. I need not say that he was a Yankee. In like manner I know a man who, though one of the first astronomers of our day, is in reality an intellectual child and a boor, with no broad or humane notions about anything; and I could name another man who, though knowing no science supremely well, has so much knowledge about all the sciences that his opinion regarding any scientific question, whether in the region of physics, morals, or metaphysics, is of great value. He is a man of culture.
It appears then that by division of labor, while there maybe much economic gain, there is considerable intellectual and moral loss. Such division, while adding to man's possessions, tends to dwarf and cripple him. It is perhaps worth while to inquire at what point the loss exceeds the gain, and to stop division of labor just short of that point. . . .
Political economy has thus far begun at the wrong end. It has assumed certain economic conditions, and asked what is their natural result; afterwards accepting the result, and the conditions, as if they were necessary. A true political economy will begin by stating what sort of possible result we wish to reach, and then inquiring under what economic conditions this result can be best realized. For political economy is a practical science, and not merely a theoretical one. It is a deontologic science, a science of what ought to be, and only indirectly an historical science, a science of what is or has been. Political economy is a branch of Ethics, not a branch of natural science like zoology, with which a certain superficial and arrogant school of thought classes it.
One of the avowed and cardinal assumptions of the political economy of selfishness is this, that every man tries to obtain as much of the means of satisfaction as he can, with the smallest possible amount of labor. Along with this it makes the tacit assumption that means of satisfaction are wealth, and that the more material wealth a man has the greater is his power of satisfying his desires. It makes also the further assumption that trouble and labor are synonymous terms, and hence that labor is pain, submitted to only for the sake of subsequent pleasure.
Now all these assumptions rest upon a mere fundamental assumption that man is simply an animal whose sole desire is to satisfy his animal appetites. But I set out with the contrary assumption that man is a rational being whose true satisfaction is found in spiritual activity. Spiritual activity, let me now add, consists of three things, — first, pious intelligence; second, unselfish love; third, practical energy; guided by intelligence and love to universal ends. Upon my assumption all the three assumptions of the economy of selfishness fall to the ground, being entirely incompatible with a moral element in man's nature. Let us consider these assumptions, beginning with the second.
Is it in any sense true that, to a moral being, the only means of satisfaction is wealth, and that the more wealth he has, the more readily he can satisfy his desires? Is it true that all satisfactions can be obtained for material wealth? Is it true that even any of the highest satisfactions can be bought for it? Will wealth buy a pure heart, a clean con- science, a cultivated intellect, a healthy body, the power to enjoy the sublime and the beautiful in nature and in art, a generous will, an ever helpful hand; these deepest, purest satisfactions of human nature? Nay, not one of these things can be bought for all the wealth of ten thousand worlds; and not only so, but the very possession of wealth most frequently stands in the way of their attainment. It is easier for a loaded camel to pass through the little night-gate, called the Needle's Eye, than for a man loaded with wealth to enter the city of true, human, spiritual satisfaction. The material will not buy the immaterial, for they have no common measure; and all man's deepest satisfactions are drawn from the immaterial. There is not a virtue, or a high human satisfaction, that has not been attained without wealth, and very few of them have been attained with it. This is an old story, taught as a lesson for thousands of years; but we have hardly yet begun to learn it. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and be a mean, contemptible, human pig, finding satisfaction only in varnished swinishness? My God! I had rather be a free wild boar, basking and battening in the breezy woods, without a soul and without a mind, than, having a soul and a mind, prostitute them in grovelling for wealth, and craving the satisfactions which it can give. It is not true, then, that wealth is the only means of satisfaction, or that true human satisfaction bears any ratio to wealth.
Again, is it true that labor is necessarily trouble and pain? Let us see. I know of no sadder and more humiliating reflection upon the position of labor in our time and country, no clearer proof of the moral degradation entailed by our present economic system, than the prevalent conviction that labor is pain and trouble. We hear a great deal declaimed about the honorableness of labor, as if that were a fine new sentiment instead of being something which it is a disgrace ever to have doubted; but we hear hardly a word about the delights and satisfactions of labor. And the reason is, alas! that there are no delights or satisfactions in it.
But is this state of things a necessity? Or is it only a temporary result of an evil system? There is not a shadow of doubt about the matter. Labor is not in itself pain and trouble, and it is only a wicked and perverse economy that now makes it so. Labor, on the contrary, under a wise economy, is to every rational being a pleasure; not something to be avoided, but something to be sought. Labor with a view to good ends is rational man's natural occupation. . . .
To say that wealth is whatever is useful or agreeable, or to say that wealth is whatever has an exchange value and satisfies desires, is no human definition of wealth. The former is a foolish, the latter a mere animal, definition. There is no definition of wealth possible save in terms of man's moral nature. That, and that alone, is wealth which contributes to develop and elevate that nature. If we confine the term "wealth" to material things, its true definition will be this: Wealth is the sum of those things which possess exchange value and which contribute directly or indirectly to increase man's spiritual and moral power. This it is, and neither vague usefulness, nor the power to gratify desires indiscriminately, that constitutes true wealth.
The whole of our current political economy is vitiated by this initial animal, immoral definition of its subject. Some strange results follow from it. Wealth being in the last analysis that which satisfies desires, the man who seeks wealth is simply seeking to satisfy his desires; but, inasmuch as that is the characteristic of animal nature, it follows that man, in laboring to obtain material] possessions, has no aim higher than the animals have. In so far as a' man 'seeks the means of satisfying his desires, and not the means of furthering ends which he clearly sees to be good and universally beneficial, in so far he is an animal and a slave, and not a man at all. . . .
What, think you, is the fundamental cause of all our present economic troubles, — our strikes, our boycotts, our socialisms, our anarchisms, etc.? Is it not the simple fact that wealth, being regarded either as an end in itself, or as a means of satisfying desire, is pursued for purely selfish ends, without any regard to public well-being, or to spiritual and moral progress, which is inseparable from public well-being? . . .
Had men holding an exalted and spiritual view of man's nature not been so much occupied with the next world as to lose sight of the interests of this, but had early taken to the study of political economy, as they are now being compelled to do at this late hour, the science might have been developed on the true basis of man's entire nature, instead of upon the animal basis of selfishness. . . .
When the new political economy comes to be applied human life will concentrate itself, first of all, about the school — not the school of to-day, but the school of the future, in which not merely the memory and the tongue, but every faculty of heart, head, and hand will be trained, exercised, and developed. Closely connected with the school, and, indeed, forming its public hall, will be the church, wherein the God worshipped — worshipped with rational, heartfelt admiration, and not with slavish, formal lip-service — will be the trinity of justice, love, and helpfulness. Opening out from this church will be an art gallery containing the noblest and most inspiring works of human genius, and a theater wherein the deepest and most moving problems of human life will be presented by art, in living forms, to eye and ear. Secondary and subordinate to all these will be the factory and the store, yea, even the court of justice.
Cities whose centers are schools, and which are built not with a view to wealth-making so much as with a view to health and beauty, will stand not upon low, marshy, malarious ground, but upon heights swept by bracing winds, and commanding a free outlook into the great world. . . .
The remedy for our present evils, and for many others that must come upon us sooner or later, lies in enlightening the public mind; and the first step towards this will be the casting aside of our present immoral and selfish political economy, our present views regarding the nature and uses of wealth, and the replacing of them by an economy which places in the foreground the moral aspects of every economic question, and considers wealth solely as a means for the advancement of man as man, in all human virtues and perfections. . . . In other words capital will no longer be the mother of wealth, and labor of poverty.
In considering this subject, I shall set out with two assumptions: first, that human life does not consist in material possession; second, that it does consist in free spiritual activity, of which, in this life at least, material possession is an essential condition.
If there be any one here who does not admit these postulates, any one who holds that human life consists in having and holding, and not in being; that man lives to eat, and does not eat to live a human, that is, a rational life; if there be any one who holds that political economy is the whole science of human life, then no conclusion at which I may arrive will have any meaning or cogency for him.
There are certain great advantages in the division of labor, and especially of scientific labor; but there are also certain great disadvantages. If we look closely at these, we shall find that the former are mostly in the way of material results, the latter in the way of spiritual ones. There can be no doubt that by dividing labor — whether industrial, artistic, or scientific — we obtain larger and, to some extent, better immediate results than we should if every man performed every kind of labor. Ten men devoting themselves each exclusively to one trade will produce more and better results than if each undertook to exercise all the ten trades. So likewise ten scientific men, devoting themselves each exclusively to one branch of science, will attain greater and more accurate results than if they scattered themselves each over ten branches of science. But in both cases these manifest advantages will necessarily entail certain disadvantages. The man who devotes himself exclusively to one trade will have a much narrower range of developed capabilities, a much dimmer notion of the relation of trade to trade, and be much less independent of social arrangements than if he could exercise ten trades, even in an indifferent manner. So likewise the scientific man who spends his whole life in studying one branch of science — say astronomy or mathematics — will have a much narrower culture, a much vaguer notion of the whole range of science, and of the interrelation of its various parts, than if he were fairly well conversant with ten branches of science. I know a man who has ladled tar for over thirty years, and he does it to perfection; but, if there were no tar ladling to do, I doubt whether he could make his living. On the other hand, I once knew a man in a wild region of Minnesota, who built his own house, having first made his own bricks, and felled and sawed his own wood; who dug his own well, made his own pump and put it in, built his own barn, cultivated his own farm, caught his own fish, built the steamer that crossed the neighboring lake (all but the engine), made sets of teeth, was dentist and physician to the people for leagues around, and preached every Sunday to his neighbors. This man was, of course, intelligent, shrewd, and independent. He did nothing supremely well, but he did everything fairly well; and lived a good, healthy, active, manly, human life. I need not say that he was a Yankee. In like manner I know a man who, though one of the first astronomers of our day, is in reality an intellectual child and a boor, with no broad or humane notions about anything; and I could name another man who, though knowing no science supremely well, has so much knowledge about all the sciences that his opinion regarding any scientific question, whether in the region of physics, morals, or metaphysics, is of great value. He is a man of culture.
It appears then that by division of labor, while there maybe much economic gain, there is considerable intellectual and moral loss. Such division, while adding to man's possessions, tends to dwarf and cripple him. It is perhaps worth while to inquire at what point the loss exceeds the gain, and to stop division of labor just short of that point. . . .
Political economy has thus far begun at the wrong end. It has assumed certain economic conditions, and asked what is their natural result; afterwards accepting the result, and the conditions, as if they were necessary. A true political economy will begin by stating what sort of possible result we wish to reach, and then inquiring under what economic conditions this result can be best realized. For political economy is a practical science, and not merely a theoretical one. It is a deontologic science, a science of what ought to be, and only indirectly an historical science, a science of what is or has been. Political economy is a branch of Ethics, not a branch of natural science like zoology, with which a certain superficial and arrogant school of thought classes it.
One of the avowed and cardinal assumptions of the political economy of selfishness is this, that every man tries to obtain as much of the means of satisfaction as he can, with the smallest possible amount of labor. Along with this it makes the tacit assumption that means of satisfaction are wealth, and that the more material wealth a man has the greater is his power of satisfying his desires. It makes also the further assumption that trouble and labor are synonymous terms, and hence that labor is pain, submitted to only for the sake of subsequent pleasure.
Now all these assumptions rest upon a mere fundamental assumption that man is simply an animal whose sole desire is to satisfy his animal appetites. But I set out with the contrary assumption that man is a rational being whose true satisfaction is found in spiritual activity. Spiritual activity, let me now add, consists of three things, — first, pious intelligence; second, unselfish love; third, practical energy; guided by intelligence and love to universal ends. Upon my assumption all the three assumptions of the economy of selfishness fall to the ground, being entirely incompatible with a moral element in man's nature. Let us consider these assumptions, beginning with the second.
Is it in any sense true that, to a moral being, the only means of satisfaction is wealth, and that the more wealth he has, the more readily he can satisfy his desires? Is it true that all satisfactions can be obtained for material wealth? Is it true that even any of the highest satisfactions can be bought for it? Will wealth buy a pure heart, a clean con- science, a cultivated intellect, a healthy body, the power to enjoy the sublime and the beautiful in nature and in art, a generous will, an ever helpful hand; these deepest, purest satisfactions of human nature? Nay, not one of these things can be bought for all the wealth of ten thousand worlds; and not only so, but the very possession of wealth most frequently stands in the way of their attainment. It is easier for a loaded camel to pass through the little night-gate, called the Needle's Eye, than for a man loaded with wealth to enter the city of true, human, spiritual satisfaction. The material will not buy the immaterial, for they have no common measure; and all man's deepest satisfactions are drawn from the immaterial. There is not a virtue, or a high human satisfaction, that has not been attained without wealth, and very few of them have been attained with it. This is an old story, taught as a lesson for thousands of years; but we have hardly yet begun to learn it. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and be a mean, contemptible, human pig, finding satisfaction only in varnished swinishness? My God! I had rather be a free wild boar, basking and battening in the breezy woods, without a soul and without a mind, than, having a soul and a mind, prostitute them in grovelling for wealth, and craving the satisfactions which it can give. It is not true, then, that wealth is the only means of satisfaction, or that true human satisfaction bears any ratio to wealth.
Again, is it true that labor is necessarily trouble and pain? Let us see. I know of no sadder and more humiliating reflection upon the position of labor in our time and country, no clearer proof of the moral degradation entailed by our present economic system, than the prevalent conviction that labor is pain and trouble. We hear a great deal declaimed about the honorableness of labor, as if that were a fine new sentiment instead of being something which it is a disgrace ever to have doubted; but we hear hardly a word about the delights and satisfactions of labor. And the reason is, alas! that there are no delights or satisfactions in it.
But is this state of things a necessity? Or is it only a temporary result of an evil system? There is not a shadow of doubt about the matter. Labor is not in itself pain and trouble, and it is only a wicked and perverse economy that now makes it so. Labor, on the contrary, under a wise economy, is to every rational being a pleasure; not something to be avoided, but something to be sought. Labor with a view to good ends is rational man's natural occupation. . . .
To say that wealth is whatever is useful or agreeable, or to say that wealth is whatever has an exchange value and satisfies desires, is no human definition of wealth. The former is a foolish, the latter a mere animal, definition. There is no definition of wealth possible save in terms of man's moral nature. That, and that alone, is wealth which contributes to develop and elevate that nature. If we confine the term "wealth" to material things, its true definition will be this: Wealth is the sum of those things which possess exchange value and which contribute directly or indirectly to increase man's spiritual and moral power. This it is, and neither vague usefulness, nor the power to gratify desires indiscriminately, that constitutes true wealth.
The whole of our current political economy is vitiated by this initial animal, immoral definition of its subject. Some strange results follow from it. Wealth being in the last analysis that which satisfies desires, the man who seeks wealth is simply seeking to satisfy his desires; but, inasmuch as that is the characteristic of animal nature, it follows that man, in laboring to obtain material] possessions, has no aim higher than the animals have. In so far as a' man 'seeks the means of satisfying his desires, and not the means of furthering ends which he clearly sees to be good and universally beneficial, in so far he is an animal and a slave, and not a man at all. . . .
What, think you, is the fundamental cause of all our present economic troubles, — our strikes, our boycotts, our socialisms, our anarchisms, etc.? Is it not the simple fact that wealth, being regarded either as an end in itself, or as a means of satisfying desire, is pursued for purely selfish ends, without any regard to public well-being, or to spiritual and moral progress, which is inseparable from public well-being? . . .
Had men holding an exalted and spiritual view of man's nature not been so much occupied with the next world as to lose sight of the interests of this, but had early taken to the study of political economy, as they are now being compelled to do at this late hour, the science might have been developed on the true basis of man's entire nature, instead of upon the animal basis of selfishness. . . .
When the new political economy comes to be applied human life will concentrate itself, first of all, about the school — not the school of to-day, but the school of the future, in which not merely the memory and the tongue, but every faculty of heart, head, and hand will be trained, exercised, and developed. Closely connected with the school, and, indeed, forming its public hall, will be the church, wherein the God worshipped — worshipped with rational, heartfelt admiration, and not with slavish, formal lip-service — will be the trinity of justice, love, and helpfulness. Opening out from this church will be an art gallery containing the noblest and most inspiring works of human genius, and a theater wherein the deepest and most moving problems of human life will be presented by art, in living forms, to eye and ear. Secondary and subordinate to all these will be the factory and the store, yea, even the court of justice.
Cities whose centers are schools, and which are built not with a view to wealth-making so much as with a view to health and beauty, will stand not upon low, marshy, malarious ground, but upon heights swept by bracing winds, and commanding a free outlook into the great world. . . .
The remedy for our present evils, and for many others that must come upon us sooner or later, lies in enlightening the public mind; and the first step towards this will be the casting aside of our present immoral and selfish political economy, our present views regarding the nature and uses of wealth, and the replacing of them by an economy which places in the foreground the moral aspects of every economic question, and considers wealth solely as a means for the advancement of man as man, in all human virtues and perfections. . . . In other words capital will no longer be the mother of wealth, and labor of poverty.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar
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CHAPTER 18: EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS SENT BY THOMAS DAVIDSON TO MORRIS R. COHEN AT THE BREAD-WINNERS' COLLEGE, NEW YORK
In the preface to this volume, and in Chapter XIII, reference has been made to Davidson's interest in the breadwinners of New York. His chief friend and assistant among the Russian Jews who formed the center of that organization was Mr. Morris R. Cohen, through whose kindness I have received the following amongst other letters, written to him by Mr. Davidson.
In the preface to this volume, and in Chapter XIII, reference has been made to Davidson's interest in the breadwinners of New York. His chief friend and assistant among the Russian Jews who formed the center of that organization was Mr. Morris R. Cohen, through whose kindness I have received the following amongst other letters, written to him by Mr. Davidson.
"Hurricane, Essex County, New York,
May 7, 1899.
. . . The man of reflection is not apt to be the man of action; and yet it is just he who ought to be so. It is the philosopher who ought to be the king. And yet just because philosophers have not been careful to cultivate their wills, they have always been bad kings; and kingship has been usually left to men deficient in insight and power of thought. But I do not believe that this need be always so. The difficulty arises from the fact that our philosophies, thus far, have been too abstract, ideal, and Platonic; concerning themselves with things and conditions too far remote from human experience, instead of with experience itself. This again has been largely. due to the fact that all original thinkers have found the world in possession of certain ancient and traditional ideals, which it was regarded as impious to disturb, and that, therefore, they have had to betake themselves to unreal regions, philosophical and social Utopias. Even to this day there is no philosophy of actual experience, no working theory or norm of life, based upon the results of carefully digested science. Indeed, such philosophy is the great desideratum of our time, and the future will belong to the man who can furnish it. Such a philosophy will make men of strong wills, just because it will make them realize that thought, apart from action, is mere impotent flapping of wings in vacancy.
The philosophers of the future will, like the early Greek philosophers, be men of action, the founders of societies, the chief agents in all social reform. They will be loyal, not to the past, but to the future — to the social order that is to be.
Fourteen years ago I found Mr. very much where you are now. He was much of an ascetic, had read a great deal in a desultory way, and was very open-minded. His difficulty was that he had never applied himself sternly to accurate hard work. I said to him: 'You will never be of much use in the world till you discipline yourself, and pursue some course of study with unflinching tenacity until you have mastered it.' And I quoted to him Goethe's words: ' Do one thing well, and that will be to thee the pattern of all things that are well done.' He took my advice, went to college, living on next to nothing, and did four years' work in three. I need not tell you the rest. He has for several years been professor of Ethics in University, and has now come away, casting off his academic shackles, and preparing to enter the great field of toil for humanity. Go and do thou likewise; there is nothing to prevent you. G -- is not the only young man whose whole life I have changed by a word spoken in season.
What you say of college study is but too true. It is mechanical and formal, and does not build up in the soul an ideal world, realizable in life. It leaves that to the rabbi and the priest; and they, for the most part, try to build up an ideal that is no longer realizable. All the more need for a new sort of education, a need which you may help to satisfy.
You see where I am trying to lead you. First you must discipline yourself by accurate and continuous study. For this purpose there is nothing better than Latin or Greek. Next you must get a comprehensive view of man's nature and of the whole course of his evolution, so that you may be able to recognize your own part in the great human drama as well as the plan of that drama generally. You must avoid all one-sidedness, all over-devotion either to past or to present. You must correct Karl Marx by Isaiah, and vice versa. If you do this loyally and persistently, the meaning of life will gradually break upon you, and you will find yourself filled with a hope, and animated by a courageous purpose which will make earth a heaven to you. If we cannot make heaven here, I see no guarantee that we shall be able to make it anywhere. When you have reached this point you will be fit to teach, that is, to create a new heaven and a new earth in the souls of your pupils: for that is the true meaning of teaching.
Your friend,
Thomas Davidson."
"Hurricane, Essex County, New York,
May 14, 1899.
My dear Fellow:
It was very good to get your long and serious letter, and I have read and re-read it with care. I am glad to have you look upon me as a father. . . .
I recommended Latin as a study, not on account of its literature, but because it is the best study I know for disciplining the mind, for imparting to it grasp, accuracy, and persistence. For you it would be an admirable study. . . . And, after all, if we use the term in a broad sense, Latin has a splendid literature. Think of the Roman historians and, above all, of the jurists! The Code of Justinian is one of the greatest works in the world. Then, nearly all of mediaeval literature is in Latin. To the man who does not know Latin, one of the greatest ages of the world, the age of growing humanism, is a closed book. . . .
It is a great mistake to think that any modern language can take the place of Latin. And you can still learn it. You are young, and brave; and even if you are ' constitutionally nervous,' that will pass away when you can be persuaded to take plenty of vigorous outdoor exercise, which, indeed, for you is an absolute necessity, if you mean to do anything in the world. Twenty-five years ago I adopted a Jewish boy of genius, and sent him to Leipzig to study. He had a brilliant career, but died at the end of two years, mainly, I believe, because he refused to take the necessary exercise. One of my books is dedicated to him. I hope a man so loyal to truth as you, so willing to abandon prejudices, is not going to cling blindly to old, monotonous habits, however inveterate. Here is a fine chance for the exercise of redeeming will.
It is well that you should feel strongly about the injustice which prevails in the world. There is much of it; but, unless your feeling takes form in study and in action, it will only make you an unhappy, querulous misanthrope. All feeling that does not issue in action is morally injurious. It is always wrong to brood in sloth. Every feeling of injustice ought to be supplemented by a resolution and an effort to right the injustice. Otherwise the soul becomes morbid. Railing at wrong is a melancholy business. Let us fight for right.
Let me kindly counsel you not to study Spanish now; it is not worth your while. Spanish literature has no single work of the highest order. Priestcraft and superstition have paralyzed Spain, and now she is dying. Don Quixote is a much overpraised book, and can be read in English as well as in Spanish. If you wish, and have time to learn a modern language, let it be Italian, which has a glorious literature and is the most beautiful of languages.
I am afraid that the study of the history of philosophy may, for a time, confirm you in a feeling which you now seem to have, and which is not unnatural, namely, that philosophy is, mostly, a mere collection of discordant opinions, none of which have any claim to scientific truth. This is not so. Philosophy has a real history, but it is not easy to dig it out, and very few ever come to grasp it. Yet to the patient student who, setting aside names and popularities, persists in following the gradual evolution of human thought, there finally comes the insight that, despite all apparent contradictions and confusions, dogmatisms and scepticisms, thought has steadily developed; and that we are progressing toward a comprehension of the world, that is, toward a production in consciousness of unconscious processes. ...
There is not the slightest need for scepticism, dogmatism, or 'will to believe.' These are merely the refuges of sluggish and inaccurate thinking. The human mind is quite capable of solving all its own problems, and reaching truth and joy. But before such solutions can have a value for humanity, or be the means of doing away with the injustice which so tries your soul, there must be a new apostolate, a new race of prophets. . .
Then you will see the element of truth there is in your plea for extremists. There are two elements necessary for the truly great man, the permanent benefactor of the race: (1) a vision of truth applicable to his own time; (2) enthusiasm for the spread of that truth. Hitherto these elements have rarely, if ever, been combined in one man. The great thinkers have rarely been enthusiasts; the enthusiasts, like Isaiah, Mohammed, etc., have not been great thinkers. This is the reason why their work has been good but for a short time, and then has become evil. You need not be told that Judaism and Islam are, in our day, the greatest obstacles to civilization and universal justice. They bar the way to enlightenment by encouraging sluggishness of intellect, and the belief either that we cannot solve our problems, or that their solution has been miraculously revealed. And yet these religions were once of great benefit to the world. The enthusiast — extremist, if you like — of the future must combine his enthusiasm with clear intellectual insight and wide knowledge, and then his work will endure without becoming an obstacle to progress. Good-bye.
Ever yours affectionately,
Thomas Davidson."
"Hurricane, Essex County, New York,
May 29, 1899.
My dear M --:
. . . That you are attached to socialism neither surprises nor disappoints me. I once came near being a socialist myself; and, indeed, in that frame of mind founded what afterwards became the Fabian Society. But I soon found out the limitations of socialism, and so I am sure will you, ' if you are true to yourself.' I have not found any deep social insight, or any high moral ideals, among the many socialists I know. I believe that your views and mine are not widely different, all the same. We both believe that the present economic and moral condition of society is bad and needs reforming. We both believe that this can be done only through an increase of social sentiment, of brotherly relations. We both believe that economic improvement bought with moral deterioration or with loss of freedom is undesirable. We both see, I take it, that when society is social enough to adopt socialism it will be ready to adopt something better, if such presents itself. Further, I suppose, we both see that mere economic socialism — that is, the owning of all the means of production by the state — would not necessarily insure economic well-being, that Crokerian socialism, for example, would be sure to do the opposite. Socialism could not abolish 'bossism,' but would rather increase its opportunities and power. Lastly, we both hold, I trust, that any social or economic arrangements which do not carry with them the assent of the great mass of the people, but are octroyes from above, are enslaving. I am free in a social order only when it is the expression of my rationality, and gives me scope for the fullest exercise of all my powers. What you believe in relation to socialism more than this, will you kindly tell me?
Historically, nations have been great, I believe, in proportion as they have developed individualism on a basis of private property. ... If socialism once realized should prove abortive, and throw power and wealth into the hands of a class, that class would be able to maintain itself against all opposition, just as the feudal chiefs did for so long. Feudalism was socialism; that is often forgotten.
But one fact must strike you forcibly, that economic well-being does not insure moral nobility. Our wealthy classes are a standing proof of this. In fact, I think that wealth is more fatal to morality than poverty is.
My own belief is that the way out of our difficulties is not through any increase of state functions, but through a slow growth of the moral sense, and the social spirit. Having these, we shall easily get socialism, or anything else that is desirable; without them, never. . . .
I should like you to ask yourself how you are certain that there existed a world long before you were born, and what sort of a world there would be if you subtracted from the world that you know and can talk about, all that is your feeling. It will be well to answer the second question first. Here again the 'tyranny of ideas' is playing a part and concealing from you the great truth of personal immortality. You must come to see that there is no world at all without you. Your grandfather, whom you have made interesting to me, is not a mere memory, but an external, living soul, a god in the making, as all gods are. And you must not confound feeling with consciousness, which is distinction among feelings. You have existed from all eternity, else you wouldn't exist now, but you have not been conscious from all eternity. You are not conscious in deep sleep; yet you are and feel, else you couldn't be waked. The child in the womb is not conscious, yet it is very busy building up a body. And even now you digest, breathe, make your blood circulate, etc., without consciousness. Nay, you often walk unconsciously. ' Before Abraham was, I am,' said Jesus of Nazareth. It is a great satisfaction to be thoroughly convinced of one's immortality; and one may easily be so who thinks logically. I don't know what Weltschmerz is, and I have no fear of death, or of anything that may come after. I am! As Manto, in Faust, says: Ich harre mich umkreist die Zeit. ... I am sure that if the conviction of immortality would make your life 'full of joy,' I can procure you that joy. It must be dreary to go through life feeling that it ends in a hole in the ground; that how- ever noble a character one may have built up, with pain and sore toil, it all goes out like a blown candle. I am glad to say I know that view is not true; and I know that no great soul has ever held it. If I have drawn out a spark of your affection I will guard it as the most sacred of things. I can say in return that you are very dear to me, and that I am
Your loving friend,
Thomas Davidson."
"Hurricane, Essex County, New York,
June 12, 1899.
My dear --:
Your good letter is here, and I have read it with great pleasure. I like your defense of your views, though I cannot share them. Honesty and sincerity are the first of virtues, and it is better to be a little over-ready than to be timid and backward. After all, each one has to work out his own world in his own way. It would be a great pity if you should drop a placard so long as you feel justified in wearing it. I shall be surprised, if the experiences of the years to come do not make you feel that the tyranny of ideas is, for the most part, the result of placard-wearing, or sectarianism.
I have for years been at work on a History of Medieval Thought, and have come to the conclusion that all the good in Christianity came from its ethical principles, all the evil from the placard-wearing of its professors. And I know many placard-wearing socialists who openly declare they would persecute, if they had the power; persecute wealth, individualism, and Christianity.
It does not seem to me that you have quite answered some of my questions in regard to the external world. The assertions you make are correct, but they do not touch the real points, which are: How do we come to assume an external world? What does that world consist of when we subtract from it all that is due to our sensibility? To what is that world external?
You are altogether mistaken in thinking that I am an idealist. I have fought idealism for forty years with all my might.
You are still bothered by the notion of matter, and you are in good company. I suggest that you try to formulate to yourself not what matter is, but what you know it to be. Subtract from it what is your subjective feeling, then tell me (1) what is left, (2) how you know it is left, (3) whether the process by which you know it is a valid one. You confess you do not know what matter is: how do you know that it is?
I feel that it is a little unfair to fire these questions at you, before you have read Hume and Kant, and fully grasped their problem, but I am so anxious that you should have the joy of believing in the immortality of the individual that I allow myself to do so. Perhaps I might ask another question: How do you distinguish between the world and your experience of the world?
I have no difficulty in understanding your antipathy to certain 'types' and institutions; but I am sure that antipathy and hatred are not comfortable or profitable inmates of the human soul. They are very blinding, and they do not help us in dealing with their objects. Croker and his crowd are undoubtedly bad men; but for that reason they need our help. Such help may indeed take the form of punishment, but that should be inflicted in love, and not in hate. I have never found anything gained by hatred. After all, even Croker is our brother man, and many others would do just what he does if they had the ability. The great difficulty is that what Croker wants everybody wants. One reason why the Christians succeeded was that they showed contempt for what other people wanted. They said to the rich: 'Keep your riches and take ours; we have treasure in heaven.' They discredited wealth, and in the end made the rich ashamed of themselves. Now although a certain amount of property is necessary for a healthy, full life, yet overweening wealth should be despised; and the man who hoards should be unpopular. We are all to blame for the estimation in which wealth is held. We place the economic too high.
Your friend, Thomas Davidson."
"Chatwold, Bar Harbor, Maine,
October 24, 1899.
Dear Morris:
Your letter made me very happy. I am so pleased to think that your class begins to-day, and I trust that it will meet your highest expectations. You have now an excellent chance to show what you can do, and I hope you will do it.
It will be great if you can show what progress really is: advance in being, that is, in insight, sympathy, and helpful will.
You know, of course, that the true teacher is not an apostle, or an advocate; that he keeps his own views in the background, and strives merely to help his pupils to insight of their own. In the end, as Carlyle said, 'It does not so much matter what a man believes, as how he believes it.'
Be willing that your pupils should contradict you, and come to conclusions entirely different from yours, even on points that seem to you essential.
Don't be too anxious to make them come to conclusions. Allow facts to simmer in their minds, till time and reflection can do their work. I am,
Yours affectionately,
Thomas Davidson."
[No date.]
" . . . ' What is the rational basis of morality?' Like you, I have never found an answer to that question in any book. I have, however, worked out one for myself, which I think satisfies all reasonable demands, and rests upon a basis of pure fact: I, as I know myself, am a permanent feeling, which, through experience, gradually differentiates itself into a world. But the feeling which I am has another side, namely, desire. I am a desire, which desires to be — to be ever more and more, — that is the active, creative, free aspect of me. Now, my well-being, which means my ever-greater-being, depends upon the extent and harmony of my world. But that extent and that harmony depend upon the satisfaction of the desires of all those other beings, or ' substantial feelings,' which I recognize as entering into and affecting my world. I cannot attain the fullest being unless they do the same. Therefore I must love my neighbor as myself, since his well-being is my well-being. Thus the completest egoism and the completest altruism are identical, and rigorism is reconciled with Hedonism. But to love one's neighbor as oneself, when properly understood, is the substance of all morality. Hence morality rests upon a perfectly rational basis, if you like. Here again I might quote from Wordsworth:If thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure,
Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy.
Translated into prose, this means that we maim ourselves by shutting out anything from our sympathy and love. But is not this a completely rational ethics? I have put it into practice for many years, and can testify that it is, for me, completely effectual. I have found that Unheil uben ist eigenes Elend, as Jordan says. In wronging another I am damning myself. I could talk a long time about this; but perhaps I have said enough to start you on the right track, or rather, on what seems to me the right track. I am greatly interested in your experience with the lowest class of men and women; it will be very valuable to you in the future. But now, ask yourself, have they a large world? Can they have a large world, without altering their whole lives? The answer is not doubtful. The « clam at high tide,' and the well-fed cow are, doubtless, happy; but what a happiness! Would you exchange places with them? You will say 'No,' but perhaps add, 1 Nor would they exchange with me.' I say they would, if you could make them realize your world. So of the low, selfish men of whom you speak. They are where they are because they cannot realize any larger world. They may live and die in this condition, and others of their sort may envy them; but death is fortunately not the end. The same principles upon which I rest my ethics furnish the grounds for a proof of immortality. Ethical life and immortality, I see plainly, are forever inseparable. It needs no faith, no 'will to believe,' to tell me that. It is a scientific fact. But we will speak of this great question later. To be taught by my good friend, Baralt, is certainly a great temptation to learning Spanish; but yet I think Latin would be more to your purpose. When you know that, Spanish and Italian can be learned, each, in a month. There is nothing of value in Don Quixote that you cannot get in a translation. The refinements of Spanish are for Spaniards alone.
You do well to attack Kant's problem; it lies at the foundation of all modern thought. To be sure, he did not solve it, and that because he was afraid of the logical results of his own premises; but that does not prevent us from solving it by the application of his principles. By insisting upon the existence of the Ding an sick — which, by its very definition, lies outside of experience — he paved the way for a new agnosticism or skepticism, and a new dogmatism or faith. Hence the systems of Spencer, Balfour, James, etc. He also paved the way for such hollow schemes as those of Schelling and Hegel, which for half a century deluded the world, and to some extent delude it still. They functioned with the forms of thought, disregarding the content, without which the forms have no meaning (as Kant saw); and of course they arrived at a sort of Vedantic or neo-Platonic mysticism, which played into the hands of the clergy and obscurantists, as indeed Hegel meant it should. He called his system a Restaurations-philosophia! It is thoroughly insincere, and time-serving. It has distinct merits, however, but they are not philosophical merits. Caird, as I found out in a conversation with him, is a reactionary; and Watson has recently shown himself to be the same. Their positions made this almost necessary. Things are not true because big men believe them.
I am glad you do not believe in the 'vanity of philosophizing.' Your last letter seemed to say you did, but we need not mind that. You never will refute Zeno's arguments against the reality of motion as usually conceived. They are perfectly valid, as Rosmini — the acutest thinker of the century — was forced to admit. (See my translation of his psychology, §§ 1208 sqq.) Had Zeno — the ancient Kant, only more acute — been followed, and his proofs taken seriously, we should have been spared twenty-three hundred years of mythical thinking. We should have seen that all our common-sense ideas of the phenomenal world are utterly self-contradictory, and should have been forced to the conclusion that spirit, or 'substantial feeling,' is the one reality, through and for which all things are. You might try your hand at the puzzle of Achilles and the tortoise. Had Aristotle fully grasped that, he would have added to his logic of Being a logic of Becoming, as Hegel blunderingly tried to do, starting his treatise with the notion of Being!! What we really need is a logic recognizing that Being is Becoming, when properly understood. There can be no change in time, except for that which is above time. Rosmini has admirably demonstrated this, showing that mind (my mind) is eternal and ubiquitous. This may throw a ray of light upon your problem of the 'I,' which is not so very difficult, after all. We make a complete mistake when we substitute the categories whereby reality is articulated, for reality itself. All reality is feeling; categories merely distinguish it. This is the reason why all abstract science fails to reach the truth of things. Knowledge is but one element of truth; feeling and desire are the others. A feeling, and the notion of a feeling, are widely different things. Action is the true expression of truth, I mean moral action. 'I had rather feel compunction than know the definition of it,' says Thomas a Kempis. I need not say that Faust's entire effort is to feel, instead of to know. You remember he substitutes for " Im Anfang war das Wort" "Im Anfang war die That"; and elsewhere he says, "Gefuhl ist Alles," "Name ist Schall und Ranch" which is not true either. . . .
Your joyful hope of one day coming to see the truth, and to discover what things in life are really great, will — I am sure — not be disappointed, if you are only true to yourself. And I believe you will be. You will battle against the tyranny of ideas, and insist that ideas must conform to reality, not reality to ideas. Before Plato men believed that reality must correspond to the divine will (superstition, religion). After him they held that it must correspond to ideas (metaphysics). We are learning to-day that it has not to correspond to anything but itself, that gods and ideas are mere abstractions from it. I should be much pleased to hear or see your oration, and also your talk to your club. Are they written down?
I hope you will long continue to hold your own against all teachers and all authorities, no matter how imposing. In the pressure of the world it is not easy to do this; but it can be done, and great is the reward thereof. By being loyal to truth you can be of infinite service to mankind, and at the same time prepare yourself for loftier spheres of activity.
I was much interested to hear that you had spoken to the class on dialectic philosophy. I do not know what attitude you assumed to it. There is dialectic and dialectic. Have you read Trendlenburg's criticism of Hegel's dialectic in his Logische Untersuchungen? It is well worth reading. My friend, Chiappeli of Naples, has shown the connection between the dialectic of Hegel and that of Marx.
I expect to extend the scope of my work at the Alliance next year, and to get Bakewell, Griggs, and others to help me. Perhaps you will be able to take a hand. When do you graduate?
Political economy is not a science; that is certain. It is far too abstract, and omits too many of the essential elements of human nature. It must widen itself out into a study of man as a social being. And to that you should devote yourself. For one thing is certain: all future reforms must rest upon a new conception of the social man. The old notions, due to religion and metaphysics, have had their day and are no longer available. We must come to see that man is eternal and divine in his own right, and that he is working toward the only possible and conceivable heaven, — a republic of pure, wise, loving, energetic spirits, rising to ever completer harmony and closer intimacy with each other. To aid in realizing this heaven I believe you are called. Good-night!
I am, with faith, hope, and love, ever yours,
Thomas Davidson."
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