IDLEWILD CHURCH ACTIVITIES

I am beginning with some of my own poems essays on history, religion, books, travel, etc.. I invite replies, rebuttel or entirely new material from other members.                                               Ernest Kelly

“I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past.”   Patrick Henry

At the risk of sounding geezerly, I begin by observing that the historical ignorance of many American students is appalling. This is not unrelated to the fact that some of their teachers have a horizon that fades out in the 1960s, leaving five millennia of recorded history untouched. From a broader perspective, history is under attack from two directions. On the one hand, it competes with non-disciplines such as women’s studies and ethnic studies, which some colleges eccentrically regard as substitutes.

 Meanwhile, all the liberal arts have spen a century quaking before the mighty tread of science. Natural science is the one area in which our civilization unquestionably excels. Everyone wants to jump on the juggernaut and claim to be scientific. Sociology presents itself as a mathematical analysis of human behavior. “If we can run a regression analysis on it, it must be true.” Pseudo-sciences have never produced a Livy, a Toynbee or a Bede, much less a Thucydides. They are constitutionally incapable of doing so. Unfortunately, they are capable, of squeezing genuine history out of the curriculum.

 Now that my first batch of prejudices is out of the way, let’s talk about history.

 Patrick Henry is right that history is our only basis for judging the future, but history is not prophecy. The lamp of history flickers and its shadows dance. History is our guide not because it is infallible but because it is all we have. The brute fact is that history, like law, contains a large body of conflicting principles and analogies. The challenge is to select and apply the correct ones. In both disciplines the process is an art rather than a science.

 Machiavelli thought that he could distill the lessons of history scientifically and develop an infallible set of maxims, useful for all occasions. His book is brilliant though amoral. But for all his study of history, he chose an incompetent thug like Cesar Borgia as his hero-prince who would redeem Italy. So much for the hope of scientific judgments.

 History certainly proves that there are some times when armed resistance to a military threat is essential, and a weak-kneed response will actually produce war. The years from 1936 to 1939 will bear no other interpretation. But there are also occasions when a soft answer may indeed turn away wrath more effectually than a whiff of grapeshot. A timely show of generosity to the Weimar Republic might have stabilized Germany. Would Hitler have come to power at all if Weimar had been freely given a fraction of the concessions that he was to extort at gunpoint ten years later? We will never be certain. We can only know that there is a time for Churchill and a time for Gandhi, and there is no infallible guide to tell which is which.

 This may all sound like a reason for not studying history, but even though judgments remain fallible the student of history will have an advantage. At worst, he will consider a broader range of possibilities. If Chamberlain had pondered the careers of Attila or Genghis Khan, or even Napoleon, he might have been less certain that Hitler’s quirks were superficial. Instead he assumed that he was dealing with a flamboyant but rational politician--just seeking accommodations and deeply misunderstood. 

 History is also the corrective for two of our great delusions: determinism and anachronism. I openly admit to a hatred of determinism, whether in science, history, theology, psychology or anywhere else that it may rear its ugly head. It has been argued that determinism denies free will and human responsibility. This is true but inadequate. Determinism goes farther and denies humanity itself. Anyone who enjoys the God-given goodness of the world should celebrate by beating the nearest determinist over the head. If he is intellectually honest, he will not be able to blame you, since you have no responsibility for your actions.

 A recent book, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, seeks to explain the material and military success of Eurasian societies. As a biologist, Diamond attributes this to nature’s gift of beneficial species and to Eurasia’s east-west orientation, which permits extensive migration with minimum climate change.

He also argues that the greater wealth of domesticated animals helped Eurasians develop a more extensive immunity to disease—arming them with plagues that decimated the American cultures. The book is worth reading. His theories are intriguing, but the approach is completely inhuman. There is no consideration of the unforeseeable range of free choices, human genius, or even random accidents. If the whole process were to start over, the Eurasians would triumph again, predestined to do so because nature had dealt them the horse and the camel rather than the zebra and  giraffe--and a land mass with an east-west axis.

 I would be the last to deny the impact of geography. It is no accident that cities first arose in the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Indus rivers. Those were areas where a moderate advance in social organization and technology could produce the abundance which allows specialization, education and art. Later the Mediterranean was crucial, both defining separate cultures and serving as a highway to connect them. In fact I was surprised that Diamond neglected the unique significance of the “Inland Sea.”  In the end, however, history is a human process, not a laboratory demonstration, and it is ultimately subject to man’s free will.

 A study of the wild range of human events is the best corrective for determinism. Nothing preordained that the Greeks would see the cosmos as a logical place with rules that can be explored, yet all science hangs on that brilliant intuition. The equally brilliant insight of the Jews was the vision of a God who delights more in justice than in ritual. The world-transforming careers of Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed cannot be attributed to the alignment of continents or to the local inventory of animals. The immense changes made by the Protestant Reformation would never have occurred without the personal stubbornness of a handful of Renaissance popes. In our own time, no necessity decreed that Stalin’s criminal paranoia would coincide with Hitler’s criminal megalomania to produce the greatest bloodbath in history.

  There is no end to the list of truly decisive events that have turned on the unforced choices of human beings as well as on accidents and random circumstances. A study of history in all its glory and complexity is the best cure for the delusion that it is simply a mechanical unrolling of a script.

History is also the best cure for its other enemy, anachronism. In its milder forms, anachronism is merely amusing, as in Shakespeare’s gift of a mechanical clock to ancient Rome. The insidious form of anachronism is the projection of our own culture and concerns backward over the course of history. For example, we live in an age in which the nation-state so dominates the political landscape that we can scarcely imagine any alternative arrangement. Yet the nation-state—defined by its geographical borders and sovereign within them—is a newcomer by historical standards. When we project it backward, we misinterpret vast tracts of history from the Middle Ages, to Eastern cultures, to classical antiquity.

 The current mania for political correctness provides new scope for anachronism. In their eagerness to blame every historical conflict on the West, many teachers promote an uncritical acceptance of guilt by their students. Feelings about modern imperialism, for example, flow backwards onto the Crusades. There are in fact shameful episodes to lay at the crusaders’ doors. These include the pogroms of the Peasants’ Crusade, the sack of Jerusalem in the First Crusade, and the attack on Byzantium in the Fourth. But the crusades were neither an attempt to make converts by the sword nor an unprovoked attack on the Moslem world. Their immediate cause was Turkish aggression against the Byzantine heartland. Essentially the crusades were a counterattack by the West in the context of an ongoing Moslem onslaught against the entire Mediterranean world, and they were a direct response to a plea for help from the Byzantine emperor. That highly successful Moslem imperialism had begun in the 630s with the fall of Damascus and Jerusalem. It continued for over a thousand years, culminating at the very gates of Vienna in 1683. By some unhistorical process, however, the word “imperialism” has come to refer only to Western aggression. (Churchill wryly observed that if the Russians were to annex the Sahara Desert two things would surely follow: First socialist economics would produce a shortage of sand. Second the shortage would be blamed on the after effects of British imperialism.)

For myself, the final and most compelling reason to study history is that it is delightful in itself and a source of delight in other studies. Its tapestry of characters and events exceeds even the glories of Shakespeare. If history had not given us Anthony and Cleopatra, what dramatist could have conjured up such a mutual pair and such a wild career? No writer of fiction would have dared to present the life Hannibal or of “that great rogue, Alcibiades”  for fear of seeming ridiculously improbable. Our own country’s array of brilliant and eccentric founders would challenge the imagination of a Dickens.

 Moreover, an enjoyment of history breathes life into all other studies. Literature, philosophy and the fine arts are most rewarding in their historical context. My own greatest teacher, Dorothy Metz, was a historian who taught English. Both studies were richer in combination. The delights of travel are increased by scenes that evoke shades of the past. Despite his agony on Scotland’s primitive roads, Dr. Johnson exulted that, “The man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not grow warmer on the plain of Marathon or whose piety on the island of Iona.”  [I have stood in both places and can admire his point.]

Above all, there is the joy of shaking loose from academic texts and encountering at first hand the voices of the past. Bede and Herodotus are the best of story tellers. Nothing matches Thucydides’ grim account of the death march of classical Greece. We share Xenophon’s own excitement when the vanguard of the Ten Thousand catches sight of the sea and the cry of “thalatta, thalatta“ sweeps back through the ranks. Thanks to Plato’s literary genius, we can experience not only the brilliance of Socrates but also his delightful personality and impish humor.

 Another character who steps clear of the pages of history is Cicero. The Renaissance lionized him for his matchless prose and his martyrdom to the republic, but his letters show us the man himself: cultured, witty and proud of knowing the latest gossip; genuinely fond of Atticus, but glad to make use of his friend’s money and connections; vain about his former services as consul and alert for any excuse to drag them into the conversation; devoted to his daughter Tullia and crushed by her early death; alarmed by events in Rome and relieved to make his peace with Caesar. Across the gulf of two thousand years, he comes as a lovable and mildly irritating older friend. He always enjoyed having the last word in any conversation, and so I smile and bow and give it to him here:

                Not to know what happened before one was born                                                                     is to remain a child.