Knowledge versus Wisdom, and Faith in the Crosshairs

[In this long and “heavy” journal entry, my father starts by discussing the distinction between knowledge and wisdom, but then moves into an assessment of religion as a particular — and at-risk — form of wisdom. His attribution of the 1940s information explosion to the availability of high-speed printing and cheap paper seems incredibly quaint when viewed from our Internet-powered age of instant access to almost any “fact,” scholarly paper or book. If anything, however, the adage he cites “that the modern age has more knowledge and less wisdom than all others which have preceded it,” seems more on target today than ever.

Later in the entry, my father explores the collision between intellectual speculation and inquiry and the institutionalized wisdom, or faith, of religion. This analysis is just one of the internal debates my father depicted in many of his early journal entries, as he sought to define and adopt a “personal faith” of his own.]

March 20, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.)

I think I remember it being said by someone who should know that the modern age has more knowledge and less wisdom than all others which have preceded it. There is a certain charm in the facility of this statement, and perhaps a certain amount of truth in it. At any rate, it needs considerable dissection into its roots before it can have much meaning.

The profession of scholarly research, with its offspring of popularized writing, has reached a proportion in our day sufficient to keep the book and magazine markets flooded with discussions, analyses, expositions, and criticisms of the details of life and thought in every culture which has preceded our own. Probably this phenomenon is due to the development of high-speed printing, combined with the mass production of cheap paper, but the cause doesn’t interest me as much as the effect.

This research ranges all the way through the mechanic trades and arts to the religious beliefs and practices of former civilizations, and while one individual will usually be interested only in a small segment of the whole span, these studies are easily available to almost anyone with the interest and the time to consult them, and this availability is common knowledge. People today live in a house in which the back door is perpetually wide open on all that has gone before, and there is no selectivity in displaying this vista of the past. People no longer look back through the carefully-oriented lens of myth and tradition, but through the clear, indiscriminate glass of historical fact. Though the many histories written from a nationalist bias must modify this analogy, it is not particularly such works which I have in mind here, but rather the objective studies of scholars in the myriad fields now open to research.

Apparently, then, there has been a vast and accelerating increase to common knowledge in our era. The popular quiz programs on the radio attest to a mania for the acquisition of diverse and often unrelated items of information. But whether wisdom has decreased in proportion to this increase in knowledge is another question, if we mean by wisdom the ability of a human mind to correlate the facts of experience and of history into meaningful patterns which may serve as a reasonably dependable guide to future action. When a certain pattern of wisdom comes to dominate a whole community, it may be called a religion, or, at least, an ethical system, if the ceremonial and supernatural accoutrements usually associated with a religion are lacking. We see that most communities in the past have, each in itself, been dominated by one special religion or ethical system, accepted without question by the majority of its members, and, furthermore, denying the right of all rival religions or ethics. Catholicism, for instance, held a practically exclusive grip on the peoples of Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It acted as a mold, determining the directional flow, within narrow bounds, of even the brilliant minds of the period. To all men it was both a discipline and a bond. It undoubtedly quickened the communal spirit, but it also bound society to the status quo by putting penalties on the speculative mind. The powerful predisposition to faith all but annihilated the habit of inquiry which had gained great strength in the classical civilizations. So if faith is equivalent to wisdom, the former faith-cultures have been wise far beyond our own, for faith and inquiry tend to exclude one another and ours is predominantly an inquiring culture, at least in those realms where faith has formerly held the upper hand; namely, in religion and ethics.

Even the Catholic church, which still adheres to the medieval insistence on the unity of faith, has many members who are beset with doubts. As for members of the Protestant sects, they have so long enjoyed the privilege of the individual interpretation of their faith that the discipline of communal faith has disintegrated in their churches to the vanishing point. There has probably never before in any civilization been so universal a disrespect for the exclusive claims to right which one faith makes over another. And no searching into religious faith, no reexamining of religious faith can hope to restore its former force in society, for the critical analysis of a faith is tantamount to an admission of its inadequacy under conditions of the present. If it filled the human need for faith, there would be no need to question or examine it. A living faith quite subconsciously determines the lines of intellectual development and material operation in the society of which it is the organic foundation; when a given faith must be submitted to objective study, it’s either dead or dying.

That there is a definite human need for faith is illustrated by the preoccupation of many of the best minds of our day with the formulation of a personal faith. First comes the feeling of estrangement from the traditional faiths of the past which are still artificially imposed on the majority of children at the same time that their secular schooling inculcates in them the rudimentary habits of inquiry and scientific skepticism, which, whatever their ultimate value, are consistent with the conditions of twentieth-century life. The average child, perhaps, comes to see the discrepancy between his imposed religious faith and his naturally-acquired habit of inquiry, but he pushes his discovery no further than the mediocre compromise which results in a dormant intellect and a sentimentalized faith. Those who are compelled to push on farther will almost inevitably run into a period of cynicism in which all values are questioned. Finally, the man whose creative impulses are thwarted by the sterility of cynicism, brings himself to the point of making a definite choice between scientific skepticism and traditional religious faith. It is now an exceptional case when the latter is not discarded in favor of the former. We are indeed a civilization between faiths, but not a civilization without faith, nor yet a civilization without wisdom. Widespread industrialization has long demanded a new faith, which has meant the spreading discredit and slow crumbling of the old faith, with all its giant reverberations in institutional life. Therein lies the high drama, both tragedy and comedy, of our times.

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Discipline as the Essence of a Meaningful Life

[If nothing else, my father was a disciplined man, as evidenced by his journal writing itself, as well as by the prodigious reading, writing and scholarship practices that his journal entries reveal. In this brief entry, he contemplates “discipline” in two senses of the word — as a field or philosophy to which one dedicates himself, as well as the efforts and practices that one expends in pursuit of that cause. He ends with an interesting take on the role of the artist, working in the space between the disciplines of religion and science. (My father wrote this entry at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where he had been transferred for additional infantry training.)]

January 23, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.)

The compelling need in every man’s life is for a discipline. The best-integrated and most productive lives are those which are built around the sternest disciplines. I thought of this tonight while watching Jose Iturbi play the piano in “Music For Millions.” “There’s a man,” I said to myself, “who’s[sic] life means something to himself and to many other people. That’s because it’s a disciplined life concentrated towards a well-defined end. It doesn’t waste itself.”

In religion, it isn’t this particular creed or that certain dogma which really matters, and those who see nothing but the creed and dogma have not grasped the essence of their religion. That essence is discipline, as it is also the essence of art, and the essence of scholarship.

Every life observes some discipline, but in most lives these are disciplines of a low order, the animal regimen of feeding and sleeping and sex release. These can almost be called reflexes, the biological habits by which life has maintained itself since its mysterious appearance on earth.

The higher disciplines are those which employ the human mind, or call for a conscious refinement and orientation of the emotions. At a middle stage are such disciplines as those of the military man, or the skilled technological worker. Minds which can no longer respect religion for its truth must still admire its discipline in the many great men and women who are still among its adherents. The scientist, after all, is basically at one with the profoundly religious man in his devotion to a system of laws. There is something in certain areas of science, however, which excludes certain religious experience, and in religion, likewise, something which will not admit all of science. The great artist, it seems to me, stands between science and religion, and is capable of using experience from both in his own greatest discipline, the discipline of creation.

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Conflicted Sentiments about Participating in the “Great War”

[My father’s perspectives about the war effort, about religion, about democracy and about politics continually mutated and evolved, so it would be a mistake to associate any point-in-time journal entry as a definitive statement about his life-long views. In this entry, he comes across as somewhat depressed and cynical — certainly with regard to a famous fighter pilot of the time, Eddie Rickenbacker, and his story of being saved from starvation by a seagull. In October 1942, Rickenbacker was a passenger on a B-17 which ran out of fuel and ditched in the open water of the Central Pacific.  On the eighth day adrift in a raft with the plane’s crew, a seagull landed on Rickenbacker’s head, he captured it, and it served both as a small meal for the survivors and as fishing bait. After 24 days adrift, the men were all rescued, and the seagull became a heaven-sent symbol for Rickenbacker, confirming his strong Christian faith. At the end of this entry, my father’s skill in prognostication proves a bit shaky; contrary to his closing statement, he never did marry Jeanne, despite their shared doubts about God.]

January 22, 1944 (Jefferson Barracks, Mo.)

… And when they ask me Were you in the Great War, I shall answer Yes little children I was in the Great War. And when they ask Were you brave, I shall say No I was not brave at all and I thought the Great War was a hell of a way to be wasting my time, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Besides, I figured a substantial service record might help me later in a political way, even though I would know that it didn’t mean a damn thing. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever even get into politics, but it was one of those things that could happen.

But weren’t you proud to be fighting for the American Way of Life and democracy? No, I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t proud. I was ashamed when I met Negro boys, and knew I was worrying about if they thought I held something against them on account of their color, and I was angry when I heard Southern boys talk about Negroes as if they were animals. I was disgusted when I heard the radio announcers plugging War Bonds “to keep the materials of war moving to the front lines.” I was perplexed when I saw the railroadmen and the steelworkers threaten strikes, and Congress refuse to tax adequately, refuse to support subsidies, and the President refuse to forget the Fourth Term and politics. I was hopeful when Roosevelt and Stalin and Churchill didn’t fail at Teheran, but I was apprehensive when the Polish border question festered and wouldn’t heal. I was disappointed when the little, insignificant men continued to stay in power in the Republican party. I was happy when letters came from my friends and from home. And I was lonely for the life at Middlebury, and for girls, – always lonely for girls. Yes, I was a lot of things in the Great War, but I wasn’t proud.

And they won’t ask me this, but some of them will wonder why I didn’t find religion in the Great War. Men are supposed to find God in times like war. Eddie Rickenbacker did, and God saved him from death in the Pacific wastes. (Of course, there were a lot of other fellows He didn’t save from the wastes of the Pacific, but they naturally couldn’t come back to stir up a fuss with their side of the story.) Eddie had the floor all to himself, and boy! did he get to feeling wonderful and full of loving kindness. He even went so far as to say that the Russians were fine people.

But I kept on thinking Eddie Rickenbacker sounded kind of silly, and I could almost scream whenever I heard about that goddam seagull.

Once in a while I’d say Well for christsakes I may as well make a stab at it, but nothing ever came of my momentary intentions, except maybe I’d go to Sunday chapel and get mad at different things the chaplain said.

When a letter came from Jeanne in which she said that she couldn’t see why a God was necessary, and wasn’t I surprised and shocked, I wrote back that I was surprised and delighted, and to myself I said that settled it, I’d marry Jeanne. (I’d already figured I’d marry her, anyway, but that settled it.)

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Impressions of Texas, Circa 1943

[The following is the last entry in my father’s third journal, and also his last before leaving Texas for another Army camp in Missouri. He uses the entry to reflect on his time in Texas, and on Texas itself. Nothing very consequential here, but a nice descriptive picture of the environs and of my dad’s passage through it. Judging from the last paragraph, some characteristics of present-day Texans were shared by their 1942 precursors.]

October 14, 1943 (Camp Fannin, Tex.)

Powerful circumstantial evidence has accumulated during the past two days which permits me to accept the conclusion that this is my last day in Texas. In the first place, I’m on orders to ship out of Fannin at 5 this afternoon, and in the second place, I’m shipping in OD’s [olive drabs]. OD’s are not yet worn in Texas. Those are the facts. The official rumor has us headed for Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. But that’s for the future. Right now I’m going to declare open season on all stray Texas memories and see how many I can rope in.

First impressions were unflattering. Dawn in railroad yards of Waco, the gray half-light giving hesitant shape to a drab neighborhood. Our train had stopped there sometime in the early morning. As soon as I was dressed, I walked out on the rear platform. “What place is this?” I yelled at a lone trainman up the tracks. I knew, and just wanted to hear him say it. “Waco,” he said, and swung along with his lantern without another word. Across the street a little eat-joint had a light showing through a dirty back window. A woman was in there, apparently washing dishes.

A couple of hours later the train chugged to a stop in what seemed to be a blank wilderness somewhere to the south and west of Waco, and then backed up onto a right angle spur. Five minutes later we slid into North Camp Hood. After four days on the train, I had that gritty feeling all over my body, and the reality of Hood there before me in the sun-baked valley put my mind in a similar condition…

I kept saying in my first letters to my friends and folks that I thought I’d make out OK with everything except the heat. I really didn’t know how I’d stand up under the Texas sun in midsummer, and the thought of it frightened me.

It got hot, all right, but I stood it, and with only a few bad days. I can remember only once that I hoped desperately that the sun actually would strike me down and put an end to the terrific burning. That was about the last week in June when we were practicing dry firing with the carbine just before going on the range. There were a couple of times when I got up from the prone position that things almost went black on me.

We began to learn something about going without water. It got so that the biggest moments in the day came for me at dinner and supper with the first swallows of the iced drink, no matter what it was. How we used to plead with the KP who was dishing it out. “Just a little more” or “Fill it up, chum” or “How about a piece of ice?” …

I’ve never yet gone on a real weekend binge, for the principal reason that such activity seemed to represent an expenditure of money, time, and body, without commensurate returns. This probably sounds too coldly calculated, but I have been on binges at other times, and, except in the unique case of fraternity beer parties, remember them as decidedly incomplete and unsatisfactory occasions. What I liked best at Hood was simply to stroll off a little way into the country with a congenial pal, preferably [Kal] Kaufer, and just doze or chat or read or write in the shade and breeze. This would be change enough after a tough week of basic. Kal was a good boy to talk with.

I spent a good many dreamy hours lying on a coal bin watching the night come on. There would always be brilliant stars in the clear purple sky, with usually a cool breeze, and, at the proper periods, a moon, slim retiring maiden in the west, or full bosomed matron striding up the east. It was a beautiful time to think thoughts not too profound, to muse, – and to fall asleep.

I liked the country around Hood, even though the unusually dry summer made it a little ragged and dusty by the end of July. There were a lot of flowers when we first came. I don’t know what they were, but they were for me a strong recommendation for the land that bore them. The wooded pasture land that had recently been farms was pleasant to wander through, though most of the time I spent in it was on night problems when opportunities for appreciation were at a minimum.

Here at Fannin my favorite spot is very definitely located. It’s the junction of four sturdy limbs near the top of a big walnut tree. These limbs have been my home for many hours during this last week. While reclining in their embrace, I’ve been able to see the troops go marching up and down the road, and to see them from a really detached position. This has been an escape from the Army without benefit of furlough… I’m really sorry to say goodbye to that tree.

I haven’t met many Texans, so I can’t declaim upon their mass characteristics, if any such exist. I hope that the two clergymen whom I observed in action aren’t representative, but I’m afraid they are. Texans apparently want plenty of blood and thunder with their religion, because that’s what they get. Their inordinate pride in their state is probably compounded about fifty-fifty of their ignorance of the rest of the country, and their state’s tangible assets, which are considerable. I’ve seen the cotton fields, and also had a look at the East Texas oil fields. If bigness counts, they’ve got plenty of it.

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Nazi Philosophy of Destruction versus Christian Morality

[The Nazi strategy of destroying towns and villages while retreating has my father contemplating the importance of Christian morality — and its emphasis on creativity — as a countervailing force. Although my father didn’t adhere to some of Christianity’s core faith beliefs and symbols, he recognized the importance to the war effort of the moral system that these beliefs promoted.]

October 8, 1943 (Camp Fannin, Tex.)

The shape of the Nazi scheme for the great withdrawal to the Fatherland begins to appear in the utter destruction they are leaving behind them in Russia and Italy. They will not return to the places they’re leaving now, and they know it. So they will attempt to stamp death indelibly upon all the places they have occupied, – to drag all of Europe down into hell, as Hitler has already threatened. We have heard for months of the rape of Russia, of the systematic destruction of all that represents civilization. There are no military objectives for the Germans. Just this morning we read that in Naples hundreds of tons of high explosive, planted in the basement of the post office, exploded yesterday, killing hundreds of people.

This is the way it will be all across Europe as the Nazis retreat. Towns will be completely blotted out, and great cities reduced to rubbish. The terror in Europe will grow more intense, as the advances of the Allied armies will come to mean not liberation, but torture and death. People will not dare to stay in their own homes, for fear that they will blow up. Water supplies will be polluted; there will be no food.

From our point of view this is senseless, and utterly criminal, but to the Nazi mind it probably appears as the supreme logic of their philosophy. For it would seem that that inner drive, which in most civilized human beings has been turned to creative ends, has been perverted in the Nazi mentality to a terrible force of destruction. It is possible that a Nazi commander surveys the ruins of a pillaged city with the same triumphant elation that Michelangelo feels as he stands before his completed David.

“Build thee more stately mansions,” someone says in the Bible. And so far as I can remember, the Bible is often stressing creation, even though metaphorically, as of the soul. Creation, and respect for those who create, for God, the supreme creator, are among the teachings of Christianity, and are in the foundation of the general morals of Christianity. If the Nazi terror is indeed the result of the deliberate destruction of Christian morals, that is reason enough for the preservation of these morals.

I have spent much time arguing with myself and with others over the technicalities of the Christian religion, – God, miracles, the true nature of Jesus. To me, these are matters of unimportance, because I believe that the moral system they are employed to inculcate is of major importance. But I guess I was wrong to argue, if for most people the moral system has meaning only through these symbols. And it is also true that a faith in the strength of these symbols is translated into a corresponding moral strength in the believers which otherwise might not be there.

So why continue arguing over nonessentials? The essentials themselves are being brutally challenged today, and my whole fight should be directed against the challengers. That bomb in Naples was not planted to kill men and women, but to kill beliefs and faith and morals and whatever else has been instrumental in the building of Western civilization. 

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“Dear John” Letter Ends an Engagement

[Although I’m primarily using this blog to post journal excerpts dealing with societal, political and other world-affairs-type topics, I decided the following personal entry also warrants inclusion. The entry was sparked by my father’s receipt of a “Dear John” letter from Dorothy “Dottie” Forsythe, with whom he had had an on-and-off relationship for about two years at Middlebury. After much back and forth, my father had given Dottie his fraternity pin in July 1942, and she had accepted it. Such “pinning” was essentially the equivalent of becoming engaged.

My father’s critique of “fickle” Dottie doesn’t make him sound particularly enlightened by today’s post-feminist standards. Despite his pain, however, he still acknowledges the good that came out of their relationship. He also admits to his own role in the relationship’s ultimate failure. In this sense, this entry is quite representative of many of the more-personal journal entries, in which my father never shied away from self-analysis and, sometimes brutal, self-criticism.

In the entry’s final paragraph, my father writes that he won’t be looking for a “good” girl the next time around. In large part that determination came from his frequent conflicts with Dottie on the subject of religion, with her fairly conservative and traditional faith often threatened by my father’s desire to discover and define a faith of his own.]

June 9, 1943 (North Camp Hood, Tex.)

… Yesterday was marked by the first letter from Dottie. It was to break off our engagement, such as it was. Tonight came a note saying that she was sending the pin parcel post, insured. So though I’m never a guy to call an end to something like this right off the bat, I’ll call this the end for the purposes of the story.

It’s quite a long story, too, in my young life. There’s enough of it in the pages of these journals to make this end not altogether surprising. I remember that I was fatefully predicting it as long ago as last fall. Though I’ve believed and hoped and dreamed the other way many times since then, it all looks now like a rear guard action to stave off final defeat.

The way she handled it is what really gigs me. A month ago I figured I saw my way clear to call the whole thing off. I wrote one letter and put it straight. But I’m too much of a sucker for any dame, and especially for one that I love. My cold and logical proposal to call it off, for stated reasons, brings a most unlooked for reaction. She throws herself at me, in her letters, and by the time I leave Devens, she’s saying she’ll marry me whenever I really think we’re ready.

Now I can’t figure it out. I don’t think that Dottie is an out and out liar. Perhaps the big mistake was in my coming as far away from her as Texas. But that wasn’t my fault. Anyway, within the space of a week she undergoes a complete metamorphosis. Jack, the childhood sweetheart, comes home on a five-day furlough, and she decides to marry him. Which is what I call really bouncing around.

Hell, I can’t argue. I tried to argue with Gloria once, for about half a year. It just kept me a sad boy, with no results.

Now be calm, my boy, and admit that two years ago the past May you set out deliberately to construct a romance around the innocent and unsuspecting person of Dorothy Forsythe. Innocent was the word for her, too. A sweet and pretty girl, but I can’t say that I loved her at first sight.

Listen, I can’t talk this way any more now, because I do love her, and it makes me weak through the chest and arms to talk about her this way. Whatever misery I caused her that first year, I’ve had it dished back this second year. I started out as Jonathon Swift, roping in my Stella. I end up a poor boob, cut through the heart. Dottie was a little too old to be made over into a second Stella. She did have some ideas of her own, though to me they seldom seemed the same from one day to the other.

 I learned a lot with Dottie. She drilled some respect for the social graces into me. She made me reconsider my attitude towards religion, and thereby opened up a great two months for me. We learned a lot about loving, though I think that she learned more than I did, for I was a little ahead of her when we started. I think I learned a little about getting along with a fickle woman, though I suppose there’s no guarantee on that. Not that Dottie was maliciously fickle, but, at this stage of her life, inherently so.

 I guess that a guy develops a habit for a girl after he’s been with her long enough. It cuts and burns a lot when that habit is exploded, especially when the girl does it. But there are other girls, and probably one, somewhere, who will love me for the simple reason of me as I am. Gloria couldn’t do that, and though Dottie came a lot closer, she couldn’t, either. Which is neither her fault, nor mine. We certainly gave it a good try.

Here’s a couple of things I know, anyway. The next girl mustn’t be a “good” girl because she was brought up that way. She ought to know something about drink, and, preferably, really enjoy her beer. I hope she doesn’t smoke, but if she does, so what. She should have once been very cynical about religion, and now have developed a real religion to meet her own needs. Some girl! But I’ll find her somewhere…

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Wendell Willkie, Liberal Republican, Backs the Liberal Arts

[Throughout his adult life, my father was a card-carrying Democrat and an unapologetic political liberal. Not surprisingly, as a college student in the 1940s, he was taken with the promise of “democratic socialism,” a subject that his journals of this period address several times. Nonetheless, he also found much to like in the ideas and speeches of a prominent Republican of the times — Wendell Willkie. Willkie, the Republican nominee for the 1940 Presidential election, lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to an historic third term. FDR later brought the philosophically compatible Willkie into his administration as a special ambassador-at-large, promoting “One World” internationalism and an end to imperialism and colonialism.

The following journal excerpt, which quotes Willkie extensively from a speech he delivered at Duke University (presumably reported in The New York Times), is an interesting window into the mind of a “liberal” Republican of the era. Not only are such Republicans an extinct breed today, also all-but extinct are politicians of any party who can articulate moral and philosophic ideas — rather than slogans and sound bites — with the sophistication and intelligence Willkie demonstrated. Even then, however, being a liberal Republican carried significant liability; Willkie dropped out of the 1944 Presidential race because his liberalism lost him the support of the GOP establishment.

As reported by my father, much of the content of Willkie’s speech involved the benefits of a liberal arts education, a conviction shared by my father throughout his life. Willkie’s proposal to defer some men from Army service so they could remain in college and meet future American needs, not surprisingly, finds a sympathetic ear in my father. Despite the ambivalence  about military service that he states in this entry, however, my father would go on to enlist in the Army several months later. One note about the end of this entry, where my father’s personal commentary is interspersed among various Willkie quotes. All of Willkie’s quotes, even if not so identified, are bracketed by quotation marks. ]

January 15, 1943 (Middlebury College)

… Last night Wendell Willkie spoke at Duke in defence[sic] of the liberal arts education. It was a most encouraging talk, and added considerable cement to my conviction that Willkie is the man who must be elected next president of the United States. He himself, of course, reiterated his previous statement that there must be no indispensable man in a democracy. And certainly I won’t go around calling him indispensable. When lined up against all other known aspirants to the presidential office, however, I will gladly call him invaluable.

His ideas were so well phrased that I shall quote some of them here, perhaps as handy material for the Emerson paper, certainly as invaluable material for any man who believes in democracy. “I am speaking of education for its own sake: to know for the sheer joy of understanding; to speculate; to analyze; to compare and to imagine.” He lists the conventional frivolous objections to the liberal arts: “When such arguments gain acceptance, that is the end of us as a civilized nation.”

“… there should be some provision in the manpower program for leaving a nucleus in the colleges of men when aptitudes qualify them as definitely for our long-range needs as, let us say, other men are obviously qualified for medicine.” This statement drew a light blast from the Times editorial, which was otherwise commendatory. The Times maintained that these specially qualified youths still ought to stand the test of fire, to be able to understand and speak the language of the returning veterans. I stick with Willkie. It’s not a matter of courage. Probably it would take more courage to stay in college. It’s a matter of waste. Why throw tomorrow’s leaders into the gamble of physical combat? God knows they are preparing themselves to enter an arena of conflict as demanding on the man as any Libyan battlefield. I feel it myself; certainly I could go into battle of arms, but I am not happy at the risk of losing my chance to fight in the realm that I am much better fitted for, the realm of ideas.

I’m looking for a lifetime battle. Today I can say that I believe. Democracy and Christianity are more than words. They are ideas planted deep in my mind, and now coming to first flower. I am happy in the thought of living for them, not of dying for them. My death on the point of a bayonet would contribute very little to the life of these ideas in the world, and I have the confidence to hope that in a lifetime of study, writing, and teaching, I can make a much greater contribution to these ideas that I love, one that might rank with Emerson’s.

There must be many like me, – eager boys who feel the electric shock of this new age zipping through their nerves, and long to be among its prophets, as I do. Is it timidity that holds us back from asserting what we want to do for our fellow men? Will we accept meekly the grasp of the hand that is drawing us into the Army? With me there is a balance of opinion in this problem that keeps me from declaring openly on Willkie’s side. I imagine that valuable experience will derive from service as a soldier in a great Army, though the few reports I’ve heard don’t lead me to expect too much here. Probably it means entrance into some technical training, which probably wouldn’t hurt any, but would it help? Meanwhile, as the deadline approaches, I have these last three months of college to push as far ahead as possible.

Willkie went on to a discussion of freedom: “It is true that a man cannot be free unless he has a job and a decent income. But this job and this income are not the source of his freedom. They only implement it. Freedom is of the mind.”

…Willkie speaks of the damaging influences of the German universities. “It has encouraged the sacrifice of methods that make for wide intelligence to those who are concerned only with highly specified knowledge; it has held that the subject is more important than the student; that knowledge is more important than understanding; that science, in itself, can satisfy the soul of man; and that intelligent men should not be allowed to concern themselves with politics and the administration of state. Such matters should be left to trained politicians.”

That’s a damning indictment… But on one thing I insist. That science is nothing new in the world, and that it is no more adequate by itself for man today than it has been in the past. Science is generally description and analysis of the workings of natural laws in the material and human worlds. The continued expansion of scientific knowledge can be tremendously valuable for our society, but only when applied to the problems of society by morally sound men. Such men are more than scientists; they are religious men.

“If the humanities, or the humanistic temper which they promote, are permitted to lapse now, we shall have lost the peace before we have gained it, and the real victory after the war will be to the way of life, inhuman, tyrannical, mechanical, of those whom we shall outwardly have conquered.”

Speaking of our trend towards leadership, “hero-worship,” “indispensable men,” he says: “Had we more faith in liberal institutions, we would have, I believe, more faith in ourselves – more faith in the great leavening processes of democracy, which forever pushes new men to the top.” The new men! Emerson yesterday. Willkie today. Tomorrow? I’m trying. “Education is the mother of leadership.”

“More and more the doctrine of telling us what we should know is being adopted… And what has won out In the long battle. Always the truth.” The greatest prize for which man may strive. Each discovery leads one to higher truth, and there is never an end for him who dares to pursue. Melville was one of these, until the climb became too steep even for him.

“We have seen the devolution of human aspiration. It is a tragedy as great as men have ever witnessed.” But men are aspiring even at the darkest hour. Aspiration? It’s becoming the keynote of my life.

“Too many of the planners, I feel, are trying to look ahead by looking backward. Too many are seeking the future in the past.” It is neither in the past nor in the future, but it is now! and not in other men, but in you! Let a man first discover those moral laws that are completely independent of time, and then he will know what his society demands of him.

“Open the books, if you wish to be free.” Better to say, open the books, that they may open your mind. 

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Education for All, Balanced Budget or Not

[This lengthy entry — pared down from a much longer original — followed an evening of caroling by my father and his two siblings while home for the Christmas holiday. After meeting a young farmer among the carolers, my father went on to discuss his belief that all people should have access to the highest educational opportunities of which they’re capable. In this sentiment I see a foreshadowing of his eventual work in university administration and development. My father argues that, if our country is able to pay whatever the cost necessary to wage war, it can also pay the cost of offering the best educational opportunities to all its citizens, regardless of their economic circumstances.

As in the previous posting, my father states his opinion based on lessons learned during the Great Depression — i.e. the need for government spending to address pressing societal and economic needs, regardless of “such bogies of finance as the ‘balanced budget.'” Our country today faces many of the same challenges and, unfortunately, it seems that the no-taxes/cut-spending crowd is prevailing over those (most economists included) who warn that cutting back on stimulus spending too soon could stall, and possibly reverse, the halting economic growth we’ve begun to achieve. My father’s youthful idealism that America’s values were shifting to emphasize “social success” rather than “money success” has since been shown, repeatedly, to be wishful thinking.]

December 23, 1942 (Underhill, Vermont)

…At nine o’clock Kent and his wife arrived, and we proceeded to the main business of the evening. Most of the people who appeared to acknowledge our singing were old folks. They seemed genuinely pleased.

Kent is a young farmer, 23 years old. The local board had deferred him because he’s running one of the largest farms in the vicinity. There’s nothing deceptive in his nature. His face is pleasant, broad featured, Yankee; his body is big and strong, his hands massive. I suppose you’d call him raw-boned, a typical farm type. Bashfulness is a quality completely foreign to him. He was well-acquainted with me from the moment of shaking hands. Before I left him at midnight he had given me a frank appraisal of his fortunes and hopes…

I don’t envy Kent. He reminds me of Thoreau’s farmer who went through life carrying his farm on his back, a slave to his occupation. Kent isn’t degraded yet to this unhappy state, but the time may come. I just can’t see how he has much chance. His wife is a good kid, willing to work hard… he seems quite proud of her, partly because she’s an “out-of-state” girl, partly because she’s had an education…

…There is certainly a formidable barrier between the well-educated and the uneducated which can’t be melted down by simple appeals to humanitarianism. This doesn’t offer an excuse for snobbishness on the part of the well-educated. It does mean that the channels for communication between the two levels are considerably circumscribed. What a democratic state needs is an educational system which offers an opportunity for the maximum development of native talent (mental ability) in whatever economic level it appears. We should not be much concerned for the existence of these economic levels, so long as those at the bottom can earn enough to live without suffering. What we must avoid is the freezing of these levels. We know that exceptional minds appear at the bottom as well as at the top of the economic heap. The economic factors, however, have thus far been given far too much weight in determining what minds shall come to fruitful expression in the world. When genius is allowed to starve to death behind economic barriers, this is one of the most disastrous expenses that any society can shoulder. If the expenditure of money can build an educational system that will make such starvation or malformation of genius highly improbable, no sum will be too large to spend.

This was the point which was emphasized in that supplement to Fortune which I read in Burlington yesterday at the library. The National Economy, it was called. We have come traditionally to exalt money to a position where it becomes our master, instead of keeping it where it should be, in subjection as a slave to help us achieve social profits. We have too long been tyrannized into poverty and national weakness and unhappiness by such bogies of finance as the “balanced budget.” It’s taking a terrible war to break the delusion. We are finding out that we can spend just as much money as we need to preserve our national existence under the hammer blows of enemies who learned the same lesson several years before we did. It doesn’t matter how many hundreds of billions our national debt runs into on the books, as long as we keep our national destiny in our own hands, – it doesn’t matter, if we apply the knowledge that we already have for the control of our financial system. This, of course, is the basic idea in the compensatory government spending theory of Keynes, Hansen, and their associates.

It is indeed, not only a new theory, but a new philosophy of economics, and marks the overall change from the last century’s focus on “money” success to this century’s focus on social success. It can’t be repeated too often that money is properly a tool, and not a tyrant, for men.

We do have the knowledge and the mechanical means now to assure every inhabitant of our country, and ultimately the world, freedom from economic insecurity. While this cannot be considered as the highest aim of man’s activity, it is essential to any permanent progress of man in his spiritual sphere. It is very important that economic security always be recognized as a means to a better life, and not as an end in itself, or as a guarantee of that better life. For life can be “better” only in a moral sense, and science, including economics, which we are using as a means to that better life, is in itself amoral. The Nazis are demonstrating that it can very well be used as a means to a worse life.

We don’t debase ourselves or jeopardize our ideals by studying our science as avidly as do the Germans. In fact, we criminally betray ourselves to destruction if we do not seize upon science for all it can show us about the waging of war and the building of the new world order. The significant difference comes if we use science as a weapon on the side of Christian morality. Joseph J. Thorndike, Jr. makes this point clear in an interesting exposition of the science of geopolitics in the Dec. 21^st issue of Life. We don’t damn ourselves by using what knowledge we can discover to make ourselves powerful, if we use our power to give our ideals of Christian morality expression in the lower but nonetheless necessary, level of economic life. The name of [Halford J.] MacKinder’s book on geopolitics was Democratic Ideals and Reality. He brought it out in England in 1918. Our trouble was that we wrote out a peace in which democratic ideals continued to be abstracted from reality.

What excites me now is that today there are a lot of men who know that we must not repeat this disastrous experience. Keats it was who maintained that the ideal can’t be separated from the real. Democratic ideals are just so much hot air until they are expressed as relationships of men to men, and men to goods in the marketplace.

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To Hell With Eternity

[In this, one of my father’s many entries dealing with his still-gelling thoughts about religion, he rejects the notion — and the appeal — of life after death.]

November 21, 1942 (Middlebury College)

I just killed a tiny spider, – crushed the life out of it with a snap of my finger. The thought came over me: Is there some power in the world greater than I which can as completely snuff out my life? And of course there is. The hand of society can just as unfeelingly snap down on me, and the chances of its doing so are greatly increased in a period of war like the present. I have no recourse; though conscious of my fate, I have not the power to oppose its coming. Nor has society, for that matter, the ultimate power, but serves only as the instrument which may direct my death in advance of the time when it would overtake me naturally.

Certainly it has ever been such a consideration as this which has led men to a belief in a beneficent power that stood on his side beyond death. If he could convince himself that death itself was but a passing mutation in a life that was eternally his, would not he have foiled the fate that otherwise seemed inescapable and all-powerful?

At this stage of the game, such reasoning doesn’t appeal to me. If you insist on calling it faith, I shall just as stoutly insist that I have no faith, at least, of that variety. The idea of life going on eternally is to me a repugnant idea, and one that takes the purpose out of the living that is surely now within my grasp. Today I am a man. I shall never have another chance to be a man. The elements of my body undoubtedly will continue in existence, but I shall cease to exist. This idea pleases me. Fear has no place in my thoughts of death. The only fear that I would keep alive is that I may fail to make as much of life here and now as is within my grasp. If I can do a good job now, according to the strictest measure that the morals of my society provide, I’m willing to say to hell with eternity.

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