GISSONG. mn TEACHER Cc lea ete 4 On The dati a co aes BU Uratts oN atts enna aus ae Ea LR f r= r IVTSV CO) AN Rath BO6% LETTER FROM THE EDITOR oo Why Books Are Important by Martin Cothran author Anne Parrish was visiting Paris. She left her husband at a cafe to visit one of the city’s many bookstores. There she found a copy of Helen Wood's Jack Frost and Other Stories, a favorite of hers from childhood. She returned to the cafe, sat down, and showed her husband what she had found. He opened the book, turned a couple of pages, and paused, He handed it back to her, opened to the flyleaf. There, in the hand of a child, she read, "Anne Parrish, 209 North Weber Street, Colorado Springs, Colorado.” ‘The book she had found half a world away turned out to be her very own childhood copy. It was as if she had found a long-lost friend. A book is just a physical object. And yet, as every book lover knows, itis something more than that. A book is not merely a vehicle for the transmission of abstract ideas. There is something about the tactile nature of a book that seems to embody what it tells us. It somehow incarnates the words written on its pages. A book is something we hhave seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled. Lam talking, of course, about paper books, not a Kindle or an iPad. These are not things we will ever happen upon later in life, in a far-off place, years after we have lost them. And if we did, they would be long obsolete. A real book is never obsolete. Any true book lover will tell you that itis not only the sight of a book, or the feel of it, but that even its smell can affect your soul. When I wasa child, my father had a set of Collier's Encyclopedias that he had bought with what little money he had when he wasa student at Clemson University in [ 1929, children's book Letter from the Editor the mid-1950s, They were among the few books we had in our house. They had a peculiar but pleasant smell that hit your nose when you opened up a volume. It is said that among the senses, itis smell that you remember the longest. ‘Tome, the smell of those encyclopedias was the smell of learning and knowledge. I will remember it until the day I die Books are artifacts: They are important for the ideas they relate, but they also have a life and a history of their own, (One of the books in my library is an old hardback edition of R.G. Collingwood's ‘The Iden of Nature. tis one of the great accounts of the shift from ancient to modern thought. But, beside the quality of the book's content, it, has bookplate on the inside of the cover bearing the name of Richard Neibuhtr, brother of the philosopher Rienhold Neibuhr. Richard was famous in his own. right for Christ and Culture, one of the great books about how Christians should relate to the culture in which they live. In this copy of Collingwood’ book, once a part of Richard's library, are Richard's marginal notes fon what Collingwood had to say. I bought it for $3.00 from a careless bookseller. I mark in all my books, including this one. When one of my sons saw me marking in it, he protested and accused me of desecrating an otherwise valuable book. [looked at him calmly and said, "This book will now not only bear the marks of Neibuhr, but the marks of your august father. ‘And since this book will one day be yours, [know my marks will only increase its value in the eyes of my devoted children.” ‘What could he say? MemoriaPress.comTHE CLASSICAL TEACHER CONTENTS | wines [Pyuie eee 2. Leer from the Editor ty Manin Catren 17 Book Review: The Abolition of Man by C, 8. Lewis 18 Elysian Fields: Why Seadents Should Leara Grek byitenst Haty 28 Philosophers 1, Scents O by Main Coren 32. Words on Paper by ck rage 40 The Thing About Books by Se ors 48 The Danger of Discovery ray Supe 54 Why Read Literature? by DM Wight 60 Going ro the Library by bc Cul Reyna 64 On the Incarnation of Words by Mar Conan a ORE CURRICULUM Bi A Carriculum Packages & Supplements 5 Read-Aloud Programs 34. Curtculum Map Yearly Outlook PATO 43 Alphabet, Numbers Enrichment 44 Reading & Phonics A5 Spelling AG New American Cursive 47 Copybooks & Journals RAYA Omer e ear REIS) 27 Classical Composition, IEW, & English Grammar 56 Literate 59 Poenry CLASSICAL / CHRISTIAN STUDIES. 50 D'Aulare’ Greek Mythe 8 Famous Men Series 51 Dorothy Mills Histories 52. Clasical Literature & Supplements 67 Christian Seudice NEW! Sign up for the Simply Cla: Ce ere Meee ea iar rea nreica ee eects My Side of the Mountain ¢. s+ Hamlet 5 + A Tale of Two Cities « Jane Eyre ¢.1)+ King Lear ss)+ Henle Latin Vocabulary Flashcards 2 Latin Grammar Recitation Program 23+ English Grammar Recitation Flasheards 27 Looking for programs for students with special needs? ical Journal today at MemoriaPress.com/SCJoumal. Cernig ogee jesigners | Aileen Dela OTTO WANE 38 American Saudis & Madem European History 39° Geography Rolromaeenns 63 Science & Nature 68 Arithmetic & Math LATIN, GREEK, & FRENCH 20 Prima Latina & Supplements 21 Latina Christiana & Supplements 22, Fits Form Latin Series & Supplements 24 Upper School Lain & NLE Prep Guides 25. Grammar School Greck, Latin and Grock Supplements, & French 26 Fisse Form Greet LOGIC & RHETORIC 30. Tiaditional Logic &e Supplements 31. Classical Rhetoric & Supplements 31 Arisole's Material Logic Oar 62. Are Posters, Ar Cards, Creating Art, Music Appreciation, Exploring America's Musical Heritage, Barly Sacred Music, & Discovering Music Rouen 16 Classical Education Resources 26 Memoria Press Online Academy NEW! MEMORIA PRES! Cee Chariton ONLINE ACADEMY eta a°oeo, ELYSIAN FIELDS Why Students Sh uld Learn Greek Ira) eae) ‘hy should the student learn Greek? No shortage of pragmatic reasons comes to mind, and parents and teachers will delight to know that Greek has utilitarian value, although it seems uncouth to speak of it as such. While usually a hybrid of Greek and Latin influence, most existing English words come from the Greco-Roman vocabulary. Even though Medieval and Renaissance scholars wrote in Latin, they largely relied on a Greek vocabulary to communicate technical terminology. As a result, most technical and scientific terminology derives from Greek—no lawyer, doctor, or scientist will ultimately escape the clutches of the Greek language. Also, English prefixes like pro-, prato-, poly, hypo, hyper, micro-, macro-, chrmo-, and photo-, and suffixes like ology, -thesis, meter, -nomry, and -ism developed from Greek influence on English. Therefore, students who learn Greek vocabulary also grow in their knowledge of English vocabulary. And if we're talking utilitarian value, the student with a knowledge of Greek possesses the capacity to learn from the greatest canon of literature the world has ever produced—authors like Aristotle, Homer, Plato, Plutarch, Thucydides, Xenophon, and many others from the Hellenistic heritage. Mathematics, pecalist ter eight yeas of reek vocabulary. philosophy, politics, literature, science, medicine, and art have al been parsed, categorized, and analyzed by the ancients, and modern contributors to these fields must interact with the Greeks and the intellectual bedrock upon which the Western world was built. For example, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene and John Milton's Paradise Lost follow the structures that were already established by the grand epic poems of Homer and Hesiod. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales bears a remarkable resemblance to Aesop's Fables. Many of these later authors feasted at the table of their Greek progenitors and carried Greek influence through the centuries. While translators have brought some of the Greek masterpieces into English, history reminds us that every translation will betray the original, and the translator is always the betrayer. During the Renaissance, the French and Italian intelligentsia engaged in arguments over who had the best opéra, among other things. Rich, bourgeoisie Italians criticized French translations of Dante, claiming the translations concealed the beauty of the original. A disdainful phrase emerged to describe these French dissenters, tradultore traditore: "Translator, traitor” Greek authors often wrote about an Edenic, heavenly country called Elysium like this from Pindar's, (Odes: "There, the ocean blows a breeze over the island of the blessed and the golden flowers are radiant: However, the English conceals Pindar's artistic prose, which depicts golden flowers blowing in the wind likea flickering wildfire across the countryside. Hesiod also describes Elysium in his Works and Days: “Dwelling without sorrow or frustration, happy heroes live on the island of the blessed, alongside the deep edge of the outward sea.” Even the best translation would fail to capture the sophisticated wordplay and the creative poetic tempo of the original dactylic hexameter—indeed, poetry is almost untranslatable. While both Christian and classical literature can be read in translation, a translation will inevitably betray the original. Christians, especially, will benefit from learning Greek. Hellenized Jews in Alexandria translated the Jewish scriptures from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek around the third century B.C, and their translation dominated the Jewish and Christian world until Jerome's Latin translation in the fourth century A.D. The New ‘Testament authors wrote entirely in Greek, and they most frequently quoted or referred to the Greek Old Testament, called the Septuagint. Early Christianity developed a theological and liturgical vecabulary based entirely on the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. For example, in the Septuagint the Hebrew term for “covenant” (bireth) was most often translated by the Greek word diatheke (Bian), a term which later came to mean “covenant” but more closely refers, toa “last will or testament” The use of diateké to translate the Hebrew bireth meant that the Greek term became synonymous with the Hebrew term denoting the covenants of God, and that diatheké began to communicate more the idea of “covenant” than "last will” or “testament.” Both the author of Hebrews (in Hebrews 8-10) and the Gospel of Luke (in Luke 22) play with this double meaning to portray the death of Christ asa new covenant and new testament, in contrast to the old covenant and old testament. Only Greek students will recognize this subtle conflation of “covenant” and. testament” because it comes from the New Testament’s adoption of the Septuagint term diatheke, which eventually led to the nominal division between the Old and New Testaments. Nevertheless, Greek is not primarily a descriptive tool, but a creative instrument that shapes and forms for its speaker how the world is seen, felt, tasted, and touched. As students grow in their understanding, of Greek, it begins to shape their understanding of the world and change their expression of it. Arthur Schopenhauer explores the capacity of language to create new ways of perceiving the world in his essay 1-877-862-1097 ARTE Tt Sal Mel sieec yaad original, and the PUM Nach} Siitomoceenyo “Uber Sprache und Worte" "On Language and Words’). In this essay, he explores the many ways a new language roquires the mind to map new conceptual worlds and. new ways of understanding the relationship between things, all of which previously did not exist. He explains, "Now from this it follows that a person thinks differently in each language; therefore, by learning each one, our thinking receives a new modification and coloring” By learning a classical language, the mind learns multiple perspectives on the same phenomena. Asan example, unlike English, the tense of a Greek verb is less important than its aspect. Aspect refers to what kind of action occurs (eg, ongoing or completed), ‘but tense communicates when an action occurred (eg, in the past). A student who learns Greek understands reality and his own language better. He learns that English also has grammatical aspect (he walked vs. he tos toalking), and that verbs convey intrinsic aspect (hit vs. sing are two present tense verbs, but hithasa completed aspect and sing an ongoing aspect) Aspect is an important part of any language, but without exposure to a language like Greek, one might never grasp it Similarly, i ‘verschiedenen Methoden des Ubersetzens (‘On the Different Methods of ‘Translating’), Friedrich Schleiermacher develops the idea that languages frame how the world is perceived: "Every human is in the power of the language he speaks; he and the whole of his thinking isa product of it” Greek, and the learning of Greck, constitutes a new way of seeing and understanding the ‘world because it employs a new taxonomy that organizes, the world differently than other languages. And, unlike any other language in the history of civilization, Greek carries with ita lexicon of the best of human knowledge and wisdom, and the student of Greek benefits from this articulate culture when he learns Greek’s contours. So why should the student learn Greek? Because by acquiring Greek, the student learns grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. He receives eyes with which to see a new world, and he acquires a rich corpus of literature. In this collection, the stuclent will read tales of exotic adventures in Xenephon, plays saturated with irony in Sophocles, and lyric poetry in Sappho and Pindar—the likes of which the ‘world will never see again. The student will also discover Elysium, the pristine paradise of Peloponnesian poetry, ‘where the things of life come easiest for mankind. There ‘sno falling snow, heavy storms, or even rain, but there is always a whistling blast of west wind—Ocean reaching ‘out to refresh mankind!” (Homer, Odyssey 4565-65). Elysian Fields 1928 PHILOSOPHERS: 1 SCIENTISTS: 0 by Martin Cothran here are some questions we ask of science that it | is ll-equipped to answer. The question of how human beings are different from animals is one. thought about this when I read Kevin Laland’s article in a recent issue of Scientific American, "[H]ard scientific data have been amassed across fields ranging from ecology to cognitive psychology affirming that humans truly are a remarkable species," he says. So we read on in the expectation that we will gain some insight into this difference. The title of the article is "What Made Us Unique: Our ability to think, earn, communicate and control our environment,” he says, "makes humanity genuinely different from all other animals” But, alas, Laland spends the whole article undermining this point. The bulk of the article is spent trying to establish that evolution is a plausible explanation for the differences between humans and animals, but invoking evolution only undermines the argument that humans are unique. In fact, one of the main points of Darwinian evolution—the primary reason it was controversial when Darwin articulated it and the reason it remains controversial today—is that it denies human uniqueness By appealing to Darwin, Laland implies that the differences between humans and animals are only Martin Cothran she editor of The Classical Traditional Logic Books I I Material Logi. Philosophers: 1, Scientists: 0 differences in degree, not in kind, So much for being unique. In fact, Laland says several times that animals do many of the things that humans do—think, learn, communicate, and control their environment—it’ just that humans do them better. But how does that tell us anything about human uniqueness? You cant explain why humans are unique by studying behavior that is not unique. If you are going to say something meaningful about human uniqueness, then you are going to have to talk about what humans do that animals can’t do. Furthermore, when we ask the question, "How is man different from an animal?" we are looking for something essentially different between us and the rest of nature. There are many non-essential or accidental differences between the two. When Plato jokingly called man a “featherless biped,” he was voicing a definition of man that did, in fact, distinguish him from every other animal. But neither being featherless nor being a biped says anything essential about the difference between man, and animal. The featherless biped kind of definition is the only kind of definition science can give to account for the difference. Science doesn't deal in essential differences, Science can only treat quantifiable or behavioral differences, and essential differences between man and the rest of creation are metaphysical. MemoriaPress.comSo where, if not to science, do we go for an explanation of how humans are fundamentally distinct from animals? In the fourth century BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle articulated the difference quite clearly. Man, he said, was a rational animal. This designation was part of his larger division of substances—non-material substances, bodies, organisms, animals, and man- each of which had something that made it essent different from what came before. Life rendered organisms different from other bodies, sentience made animals different from other organisms, and rationality ‘made man different from other animals. In A Guide for the Perplexed, E. F. Schumacher gives a simple explanation of these differences by appealing to "Levels of Being.” The first level of being is the mineral level. Minerals are non-living stuff—inanimate matter. Itis the lowest kind of thing, But when we add life to this mineral, we get something completely different. We call this a “plant” ly exe aU eon zct mineral + life = Plant Schumacher points out that this difference—the difference of life—is not physical, but ontological. Itis not a ‘matter of what humans and animals and plants do, but rather of what they are. Itis a matter of philosophy, not of science. ‘We dont really have an adequate scientific explanation of what life is. The great physicist Richard Feynman once said, "If you can't create it, then you can't explain it” This may not apply to everything, but it applies to life. Life is not physical, but metaphysical, and yet it touches the physical world. We know when itis present and we know when itis absent, but we can‘t really say what it is. But even though we cannot explain what life is, we can understand the difference it makes, A thing with life is radically different from a thing that does not have life and there are no intermediate steps between them, They are worlds apart. ‘The next level of being is avoareness. A plant, which. isa mineral plus life, does not have it, but an animal does. An animal is: mineral + life + awareness = Animal A being that has life plus awareness is radically different from a being that only has life. It has senses a plant does not have. It can move itself in accordance with its own will. It can have emotions; it is actively conscious of things around it. 1-877-862-1097 Sent Pei Ret scientists begin with eS nE ee M eRe ty ies; philosopher Tee a Ra ed Erected ‘And here again, science is confounded. Science may tell you what happens in the brain when consciousness is happening, but brain activity is not what consciousness is. Neuroscience can tell us what happens physically when consciousness is happening, but that is very different from consciousness itself, which is non-physical ‘Then there is another level, one that gets us to our main point: mineral + life + awareness + self-awareness = Man Man is not only aware, like animals are, he is self-aware. Not only can he think, he can think about thinking, Animals are conscious, but not conscious about their consciousness. They do not reflect, back on themselves as humans do. They are themselves, but they do not think about themselves as selves. Since self-consciousness (like life and awareness) is not scientific, scientists have no way to account for it. So instead, they must look for something other than self- awareness to try to explain human uniqueness, as in the Scientific American article We have such a high view of science that we think it can answer questions that cannot possibly be answered using scientific tools. Philosophy, and, we should add, theology, are the only disciplines that have the tools to address these kinds of issues, which is why the difference between humans and animals was well-known to and understood by philosophers as ancient as Plato and Aristotle. Philosophers and theologians do not pretend they can. explain life, or awareness, or self-awareness. These things are mysteries, But, by resorting to the metaphysical, philosophers can see more deeply into the essential differences between different kinds of creatures, As G. K. Chesterton pointed out, scientists begin with explanations and end up with mysteries; philosophers begin with mysteries and end up with explanations. ‘We didn't have to wait until an evolutionary biologist wrote an article for Scientific American to find out what the key differences are between humans and animals. So even if science were able to answer questions like this, it would already have been beaten to the punch, To borrow a phrase from astronomer Robert Jastrow, even if a scientist could scale this particular ‘mountain of ignorance, and had conquered its highest peak, he would pull himself over the final rock and be greeted by a band of philosophers and theologians ‘who have been sitting there for centuries. with Philosophers: 1, Scientists: 0 29worrisome, petty, mundane. In late afternoon, as the weak winter sun begins its slide, pale yellow light washes through the west-side window of my office in Fairhope, Alabama, and something like Rick Bragg contributes to several publications, including ‘magic floods the room. I sit in a big, soft chair, and the Southern Living, where he writes the popular Southert ‘words that are bound here come loose all around me. French cavalrymen on white horses charge through shifting shadows on the wall above my I | cere, between the shelves, Tescape everything ‘won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writ 18 desk, as Lord Nelson, Fletcher Christian, and Soret rprees ee ueentyd sees Captain Horatio Hornblower set sail across the Narrative Nonfiction. floor. In one corner, Bedouins glide on camels 32 Words on Paper ‘MemoriaPress.comacross a void of Sheetrock, while, in another, Sherlock Holmes grapples to the death with Professor Moriarty on the lip of a high shelf. Here, Willie Stark sits with Atticus Finch, Ishmael Jeans against Ignatius Reilly, and the Snopeses rub elbows with Shakespeare. It lasts only a little while, this glow, until the sun descends toward the dark trees somewhere across the Mississippi but not before Woodrow Call keeps his promise to Augustus McCrae, George Smiley sends one more spy into the cold, and Elmer Gantry does a hook slide for Jesus in the last, fading light of the day. 1-877-862-1097 T know that the world of reading has forever changed, that, in this cold winter, many people who love a good book will embrace one that runs on batteries. I know that many of you woke up Christmas morning to find that Santa graced your house with an iPad, or a Kindle, or a Nook, or some other plastic thing that will hold a whole library ona doodad the size of a guitar pick. Some of you may be reading one of my books or stories on one today, which is, of course, perfectly all right, and even a sign of high intelligence. Someday, I may have to read The Grapes of Wrath on the side of a toaster myself, | am hopeful when young people , "Tread you on the Kindle,” because it means they are at least reading, and reading me, which ‘means my writing life is somehow welcome in whatever frightening future awaits. But I hope I will never have a life that is not, surrounded by books, by books that are bound in paper and cloth and glue, such perishable things for ideas that have lasted thousands of years, or just since the most recent Harry Potter. Ihope Tam always walled in by the very weight and breadth and clumsy, inefficient, antiquated bulk of them, hope that I spend my last days on this Earth arranging and rearranging them on thrones of good, honest pine, oak, and mahogany, because they just feel good in my hands, because I just like to look at their covers, and dream of the promise of the great stories inside. Here, not far from the shores of Mobile Bay and. the white sands of the Gulf, is a limitless world of Gallipoli; Sanctuary; Go Down, Moses; Tennyson's Poetry; The Comedians; Riders of the Purple Sage; For Whom the Bell Tolls; Of Mice and Men; The Last of the Mohicans; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; A Christmas Carol; Brave Men; ‘An Outside Chance; Cold Mountain; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Blood Meridian; The Prince of Tides, a dog-eared edition of Salem's Lot I read in high school with a BB gun by the bed, and a slightly molded flea market copy of Dixie City Jam. It is not just the stories, but the physical book, the way I feel when I see the spines, when T read the titles, the very feel of the paper under my fingers as I turn the pages. I see the words Lonesome Dove and I sce the beauty and great cost of true friendship, played out in a wild, wild West. Every book comes alive in my mind. [ike to be in that company. Cicero said a room without books is like a body without a soul, but I dontt know about that. I just know Like to have them close, when the sun goes down. Words on Paper 33History must be consta moderated by the seeing Hilaire Belloc here are many reasons to collect books: I admiration of an author, fascination with a tubject or time period, love of the physical beauty of specially-printed or what are called "press books,” beautiful bindings, illustrations, even because it was a childhood favorite, to name a few. There are scholarly reasons, too. A wonderful discipline called “critical bibliography," as one scholar explains, provides a kind of "grammar of literary investigation,” especially on questions of textual problems and. authorial intent. In a day (a far better day than today) when an author's intention was considered at least somewhat helpful in determining what a book is about, critical bibliography was foundational to the question, And it was book collectors—amateurs, and often very learned amateurs—who, through their intelligence and diligent sleuthing, acquired and eventually bequeathed to scholarly posterity the physical objects, the artifacts, of the scholar’ task. The premise is kind of a lovely one: the physical book and all the elements comprising it—editing, printing, binding, illustrating, indeed all the "book arts’—can have either an intentional or an “accidental” impact on the transmission of the intellectual content. tly corrected and ud handling of things. Stee Ayers ts educated at St. Martin's College, Regent Callege, ‘and Coluabia University. Afr about ten years selling rae boos and rncrpts for several rin Chicago and New York, he entered the publishing industry. Forte lst nineten years i has ben the sles hae for Bao aden and Breas Prose. He sree onthe school bord (of The Sacred ler of sus Classical Academy in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 40 The Thing About Books eo Se ae This applies to modern machine-printed books as much as to letterpress, or hand-set, books. It is ahistorical enterprise with its own methods and. terminology (as witness the large bibliographical manuals), beginning with the examination of objects (books) and arriving at a narrative pertaining to the chronological story and vagaries of a given text. But my own collecting didn't begin there. I began by collecting content. Iwas a young man, probably nineteen, when I read for the first time Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis. It changed my life. This is a (happily) common story, know: I was a young fundamentalist, Christian, and when Lewis showed me that as a Christian I could, in a sense, own all the great literature and that all truth, beauty, and goodness were mine, I was transformed. Or at least, potentially transformed. I needed "eyes to see,” so I compiled a list of works from what he read and determined to read them all so that I, too, might be C. S. Lewis. And of course, not being anything like C. S Lewis I didn't get far beyond George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton, especially, proved an education for me. He fired my imagination. He turned the world upside down and, as he says, what better way to see the world in all its wonderment than upside down. I started with his novel, The Mart Who Was Thursday, and then his magical collection of essays, Tremendous Trifles—titles I found in a local used bookstore. After that I couldn't get enough Chesterton. scoured used bookshops, Salvation Army stores, Goodwill, and all varieties of thrift shops, antique shops, library sales, junk shops—these were the hills in which I searched for gold. MemoriaPress.com(Over time I've compiled a fairly respectable collection of Chesterton first editions, many in dust jackets, some of them signed or inscribed. Recently Tacquired a copy of The Napoleon of Noiting Hill inscribed by Chesterton to aman named Hubert Paynter, someone he met in 1916 when Paynter was recovering from war wounds, and to whom Chesterton later served as godfather upon his reception into the Roman Catholic Church, That touches me. An artifact of friendship and faith. A couple of years ago in London I found Prime Minister Arthur Balfour's ‘own copy of The Club of Queer Trades. It's fun to wonder what the impact was on this politician of this book's curious observation “how facts obscure truth ... [he Do you really admit—are you still so sunk in superstition, so clinging to dim and historic altars, that you believe in facts?” mere fact A favorite of mine, and what served at the time as.a spur to my imagination toward the artifactual value of books, is a wonderful copy of Chesterton's St Francis of Assisi. Its a first edition in its original dust jacket. [found it while studying at Regent College in Vancouver, BC, some forty years ago. On Saturdays I worked in a downtown second-hand bookstore, sweeping floors, stocking shelves, packing books, I found this copy on the shelf and it was inscribed "For my dear Lizzie / from Aunt Marie” There was a name, "L. Firmin,” at the top of the front free endpage. Tknew exactly who that was. It was Chesterton's childhood friend, Lizzie Firmin—one of two sisters mentioned in the second chapter of his Autobiography "Aunt Marie," I knew, was Chesterton's mother! And. it found its way here because the Firmin family had moved from London to Vancouver, BC. I showed my 1-877-862-1097 discovery to the bookseller, who promptly doubled the price, putting it well beyond my reach, Some days later Dr. James Houston, professor of spiritual theology at Regent College, visited the store, When I showed him the Chesterton volume, he looked at it and said, “Steve, you should own this book. I want to buy it for you. It is an artifact rich in associations connected both to Chesterton and his childhood and his family, and for me with the sweet generosity of a holy man. As you can see, books can be artifacts in several respects, including artifacts of relationships, events and occasions, and intellectual influences. An interesting example is a book I found locally. It was a copy of Anthony Powell's Agents and Patients (1936), inscribed, "For Scott Fitzgerald / from / Anthony Powell / Hollywood / July 20th 1937 / with admiration” Powell was an important English author whose twelve-volume sequence A Dance to the Music of Time is broadly recognized as a modern masterpiece of upper class manners, and some have hailed it as one of the best works of literature of the twentieth century. His narrative technique is commonly compared to that of Fitzgerald's. This book turned out to be an artifact of the only meeting between the two authors, Powell being at the time one of the very few British admirers of Fitzgerald's work, especially The Great Gatsby, which he read every year. It happened at the commissary at MGM Studios where both were employed writing screenplays. In Powells autobiography he says that after their meeting he sent Fitzgerald a copy of his book, From a View to a Death, only after, he writes, first asking Fitzgerald if he wouldn't mind. Powell mentions nothing about this particular gift, dated the actual day of their lunch, which leads me to wonder if he ‘The Thing About Books 41forgot about it or perhaps was slightly embarrassed by his presumption and invented a different account. Ipurchased it, and since I collect neither Powell nor Fitzgerald soon after “flipped it to a London dealer for ten times what it cost me, which enabled me to purchase books for my various collections that I could have never otherwise afforded. Collectors do that sort of thing from time to time to fund their passion. Until about a year ago I was acquiring some extraordinary books from the library of Julian Jebb, a grandson of the writer and controversialist Hilaire Belloc. Julian, unlike his siblings (one became an abbot, another a nun, and the third an architect of sacred structures) rejected his Catholic faith, resented his grandfather, and chose a life of worshipping "beauty and beautiful people" Sadly, he became an alcoholic and killed himself at age fifty in 1984, But he was greatly loved by a lot of eminent writers and artists, and was himself somewhat accomplished as a journalist and filmmaker. I acquired a lot of interesting items from his collection that are inscribed or signed by Graham Greene, TS. Eliot, Ezra Pound ("From Ezra Pound! A Slave is a man who waits for someone to come and set him free!"), Truman Capote (I own Breakfast at Tiffany's and Imake no apology), and more. My favorite item from his library is indeed a remarkable artifact. I's a record of a significant meeting and a hilarious exchange between the twenty-eight-year-old Jebb and the complicated personality and writer Evelyn Waugh. In April of 1962 Jebb interviewed Waugh for The Paris Review, which was significant not just for understanding Waugh, but it was one of the few cooperative interviews the great- but-often-cantankerous writer would ever give. In the letter he wrote in advance, Jebb promised that he wouldn't bring a tape recorder, imagining from what Waugh had written in his highly autobiographical novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957), that he had 42 The Thing About Books a phobia of tape recorders. They met in the lobby of a London hotel, and the first thing Waugh asked was, "Where is your machine?" Jebb explained that he hadn't brought one. Waugh proceeded to needle him as they headed toward the elevator: "Have you sold it?” Well yes he had, but three years earlier when moving overseas. How much had he paid for it? How much had he sold it for? Whom did he sell it to? "Do you have shorthand, then?" Jebb answered no. “Then it was foolhardy of you to sell your machine, wasn't it?” The interview began after Waugh changed into pajamas, lit up a huge cigar, and got into bed. Tt turned out to be a brilliant, if short, interview, and it's clear from Waugh’s letters and subsequent meetings that he was fond of Julian Jebb. He later signed a copy—the copy in my collection—of The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold for Jebb and inscribed it, "You sold your machine because of Gilbert! Too bad! Best wishes, Evelyn Waugh 10/11/63." There are, of course, pitfalls to collecting books, moral and otherwise: greed, idolatry, debt, boorishness ("Let me show you just one more delicious, morsel from my collection ..."). But [think book collecting in itself is a Good Thing. It's not about mere accumulation, it's about a host of disciplines: the scholarly disciplines; the disciplines of taste, technique, and study; and even financial discipline (or so I'm told.) And its about passion, and about love. And imagination. Any one of us, on almost any financial level, can participate in curating a small portion of Christian civilization. There are writers out there who are outstanding but under-collected. It can be a lot of fun putting together a significant collection for relatively little cost. The key to good collecting is a guiding idea or principle that arises out ofa passionate interest, and is rooted in an intelligent understanding. And in this age of gnostic abstraction, solipsism, and the pervasive illusion of mastery of one's own universe—if we don't do it, who will? MemoriaPress.com48 ASSICAL THE DANGER OF DISCOVERY by Cheryl Swope ne of the most heartbreaking things I hear is fatigued resignation from a parent: "Tloved the curriculum, but I gave up after the first few weeks of trying to make my child like it. Maybe he would do better wi ha non-traditional approach, like ‘discovery learning’ Such a homeschooler has often spent months researching and approving the underlying vision, the tested efficacy, and the beautiful design of our curriculum; yet she allows an eight-year-old child to cast it aside. She acquiesces to a child's adamant—or even tepid—dislike of being taught and guided in favor of letting him seek easier pursuits on his own through self-guided exploration. Yet research indicates that students, especially those with difficulties, perform better with explicit instruction than with discovery learning Contrast the first mother's resignation with this powerful response wehearfarmore often: “Lam so grateful I persevered. The progressin my child's reading, Ianguage, confidence, and overall academics has been remarkable. We are now in the third year of the curriculum and we are amazed at how far he has come.” When we as parents and teachers trust the promise of the long-range view rather than the fleeting instincts of a child, we do not bow to the laissez-faire notions of education that are advocated by discovery learning theorists and rooted in the romanticism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Give him absolutely no orders of any kind. Do not even let him imagine that you claim any authority over him... Itis a mistake to try to get him to approve of things he dislikes, If our own educational philosophies stem only from popular books, homeschooling blogs, or teacher Cheryl Supe is 1 of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child aud Memoria Pres” Sinply Classical Curriculum, as ell, as editor ofthe Simply Classieal Journal The Danger of Discovery training programs, we may be more influenced by these discovery-based approaches than we would like. Yet, when examined more closely, the absurdity of the pure theory might surprise us, Consider this from Rousseau's Emile Let us lay it down as an incontestable principle that the frst impulses of nature are always right. There isno original perversity in the human heart. Ifthe child manages to upset things and break some useful articles, do not punish or scold him... Do not even let him guess that he has annoyed you. Behave as if the furniture had got broken of itself Consider you have done very wel if you can avoid saying anything. Such romanticized writing impacted influential thinkers in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Piaget and Kant, whose resulting, philosophies were melded with the new “science” of pragmatic psychology. All of this became embodied in America in John Dewey, whose emphasis on discovery learning and "learning by doing” gained vast pedagogical sway across the country when Dewey became head of the department of philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy at the University of Chicago in 1894. Dewey's Laboratory School urged plenty of child-initiated, "hands-on! discovery with child-centered teacher training, resulting in consequences that we still feel today. Delight vs. Discovery When parents say they want discovery learning, perhaps they should seek instead the more classical term—"delight.” The Memoria Press motto is dacere, delectare, movere (to teach, to delight, to move), drawn from Cicero and Augustine. One dramatic distinction in the difference between delight and dit lies in this first element of the triad: to teach. We do not take a hands-off approach to teaching in order to instill a hands-on approach to learning: MemoriaPress.comrather, through teaching we seek to delight and move students. Until the arrival of modern notions, the formative principle of education was largely unquestioned, as was the central and invaluable role of the teacher: to teach, When this changed, the child became the center point, Likening himself to Copernicus, Dewey institutes this monumental shift in 1899 in The School cared the Society: Iisa change, a revolution, not unlike that introduced by Copernicus when the astronomical center shifted from the earth to the sun. In this case the child becomes the sun about which the applications of education revolve. Dewey elevated discovery-based projects, resulting in a child-initiated school day: The ideal home would naturally have a workshop where the child could work out his constructive instincts, It would have a miniature laboratory in hich his inquiries could be directed .... Now; if ‘we organize and generalize all of this, we have the ideal school. Many educators heard this dogma in college. (Our training directed our gaze away from our purpose as teachers and shifted it toward the child's own discoveries. As Dewey wrote, we were to be occupied less with clear, teachable, academic content and more with "the immediate instincts and activities of the child himself” What Can We Do? Through teacher-led instruction we can reclaim the calling of teaching as a noble vocation. We can pursue depth rather than scattered dabbling, From the gentle kindnesses of Litle Bear to the great ponderings of the liad, we can study great literature deeply. We can choose the literature the child should read, and we can avoid skimming through towering piles of literature every year. We believe that a guided, penetrating approach cultivates mastery, concentration, and reflection. French philosopher Antonin Sertillanges encourages our efforts: We must always sacrifice extent to penetration .. A ‘danger lies in wait for minds that spread themselves ‘over too many subjects: the danger of being easily satisfied. Content with their voyages of discovery in every direction, they give up effort. Sidestep the Danger By 1902, even Dewey knew the dangers of the extremes inherent in his own teachings. He began to ‘warn against the inevitable indulgence that comes from, placing undue emphasis on the interest of the child: Appealing to the interest means. playing with a [power so as continually to sti it up without directing, ‘ttoward definite achievement. Continuous initiation, continuous starting of activities that do not arrive, is for all practical purposes, as bad as the continual repression of initiative. tis as ifthe child were forever tasting, and never eating; always having his palate tickled ‘upon the emotional side, but never getting the organic satisfaction that comes only with the digestion of food and transformation of itinto working power. Let us devote ourselves to perseverance in our calling as parents and teachers. If we face moments of doubt or discouragement that come from a student's grumbling, we can rest in knowing that we are providing for him the gradual, well-earned satisfaction of depth, mastery, and true nourishment, and working toward definite achievement. Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child by Cheryl Swope Text $24.95 | eBook $22.00 “This book guides parents and teachers in implementing the beauty of a dassical education with special- rnceds and struggling students. The love of history, music, literature, and Latin instilled in her own children by a classical education created in Cheryl the desire co share the ‘message that classical education offers benefits to any child. Simply Classical Journal Sign up today: MemoriaPress.com/SCJournal Do you wish there was a Clasial Teacher magarine devoted entiely to special-needs cducation? Well now there is. The Simply Clescal Journal, edited by Cheryl Swope, author of Simply Clasical: A Beautifil Education for Any Child, bas the same features as the Clasical Teacher—insightl, informative aries, and descriptions of new and existing programs—but geared toward you asa parent or teacher trying to provide a assical education to your student with special needs. Areata Si MPLY CLASSICAL| ClassicalSpecialNeeds.com ‘Cheryl Swope isthe author of Simply Classical: Beautiful Education for Any Cid and Mernoria Press’ Simply Classical Curriculum 1-877-862-1097 The Danger of Discovery 49Why midst the gushing river of popular culture, Asesinas or questions exists Why read erature? Of whet iis pl to think about the role itertarein the conte uta prblemsforiterturehas flay often chaotic world. Assured Wordswosts The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ous ‘We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! Mi Wright fe the director um at Memoria Pres, Literature Read Literature? by David M. Wright ‘we have given our hearts a ourselves from God, nature, and —but literature has the capability of providing a restorative cure. So then, what kind of literature holds such power? The answer is the Great Book. Samuel Johnson said in his "Preface to Shakespeare” that "the only test of literary greatness is length of duration and continuance of esteem.” Moreover, a book may be considered great if it meets three criteria. The first is universality. A great book speaks to people across many ages—affecting, inspiring, and changing readers far removed from the time and place in which it was written, Second, it has a Central One Idea and themes that address matters of enduring importance And third, it features noble language. A great book is, written in beautiful language that enriches the mind and elevates the soul Now that we have established what kind of literature to read, let's consider why we should read literature. Here are six reasons: lemoriaPReading great literature exercises the imagination, We enjoy stories; itis a pleasure to meet characters and to live in their world, to experience their joys and sorrows. In a practical sense, an active imagination helps us perceive truth, make value judgments, and deal with the complexities of life in creative ways. It even aids in our ability to use logic and to reason well Reading literature transports us out of our current context and into other ages and places. Interacting, with characters across space and time diminishes our ignorance. Mark Twain once remarked, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, narrowmindedness, and bigotry. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one's lifetime.” Because most of us cannot pilot a steamboat along the Mississippi River, or travel to many parts of the world as Twain was able to do, literature serves asa worthy guide and vessel for our exploration. ite Cea toie 3 Ronding toate naan us to see the world through the eyes of others, It trains the ‘mind to be flexible, to comprehend other points of view—to set aside one's personal perspectives to see life through the eyes of someone who is of another age, class, or race. Reading literature nurtures and develops the power of sympathetic insight. Great works of literature have played a fundamental role in shaping society. For example, ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh initiated the archetypal narrative of the hero embarking on an epic quest, which became a popular and influential blueprint for literature the world over. Some other landmark texts include Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Divine Comedy, Shakespeare's ‘Hamlet, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which is credited as the first novel in the Western world, creating a genre that has since become the dominant form of literature in the modern era. A little later, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther was deeply influential (though not necessarily in positive ways); Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads initiated the Romantic cera in English literature, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabint helped push a divided nation into civil war over slavery. In the early twentieth century, Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle exposed the horrors of America's meatpacking industry and caused many 1-877-862-1097 literature we learn Puma Coen pEten eet en eae reforms in the mass production of food. Books have the power to shape culture and history. (Reading literature fosters contemplation and reflection, and improves our facility with language and vocabulary. Interacting with these texts requires deliberate, conscious thinking in order to understand and retain longer units of thought. The average number ‘of words per sentence in the sixteenth century was 65.70 words, but, not surprisingly, that number has steadily declined through the modern era to about 15 words today. Likewise, the average number of letters per word has declined, revealing a decrease in the use of longer, higher-level ‘words, The continual exposure toelaborate, elevated syntax and diction develops not only our thinking abilities, but our speaking and writing skills too. We begin to conceive of sentences in the manner of the great writers, imitating their techniques in style and vocabulary. In his poem Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot prophesied that we would be “distracted from distraction by distraction.” Alas, wwe are unabie to retain and reflect upon an idea for any meaningful length of time. Reading great literature is an active push against this tendency. and most 6 Really ing erature helps us to kaw ourselves—in short, to understand man, For the subject of literature is man. In its pages, we learn about our creative and moral faculties, our conscience, and most importantly, our soul. We see man at the height of his glory and the depth of his folly—with every heartrending thought, action, emotion, and belief in between. In other words, literature holds a mirror up to human nature, revealing its inner depths and complexities, its array of virtues and vices; and moreover, it holds a mirror up to a cultural age, illuminating its shape and ethos. Long ago, inscribed on the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was the maxim, "Know thyself” Reading literature remains the surest means to do just that—to live the life Socrates declared the only one ‘worth living: the examined life. Afterall, literature may simply be the creative expression of metaphysics and being: In some mysterious way, each life is every life, and all lives are one life—there is something of ourselves in each and every character we meet in the hallowed pages of a Great Book. Why Read Literature? 55Going to the Library ‘emories of graduate school flood my mind at the University of North Carolina marked the beginning of my life as a scholar. had painfully figured out how to study as an undergraduate, but the fervid quest to learn, the burning desire to piece together difficult or obscure information, the yearning to cultivate knowledge and use it as a basis of one's understanding—these things I learned between 1975 and 1979 at Chapel Hill. Much of it happened through a tripartite process called "going to the library.” Three parts, you say? Going to the library not? Let me explain. sounds like one action, does it isa widely-aclaimed author, speaker, url lends arts tours drought Eur andthe tly partnership withthe Sthsonian Institute ph by Guaray Vaidya, CC BY 2.0 License) by Dr. Carol Reynolds First, you had to prepare yourself to go to the library, a out your tea mug and finding your shoes. Prepare meant hours of gathering up questions, formulating ideas and goals, making lists of needed material, d "prepare" meant more than rinsing and identifying potential stumbling blocks. In short, it meant creating a master plan for each visit to the library. Second, you actually had to go. I lived outside of Chapel Hill down a dirt road. My paradise was a single-wide trailer with the name Flamingo emblazoned across its forehead. Today that area has been gentrified and overflows with half-million-dollar homes. To me, that's sad, particularly as I remember my neighbors—people who worked on farms, in stores, or at garment factories nearby—who saved my sanity on a day- to-day basis.Be that as it may, the fact is, Ihad to leave my cozy trailer, bid farewell to my orange tabby cat, Maxim Gorky, and drive ten miles into town. And I had to park. Even then, parking on campus was tricky. As I recall, we graduate students parked ina lot buried in the trees near the stadium, past the historic carillon. The walk from the lot, while surely shorter than students today have to make, was still something—especially in ice storms (which North Carolina has!) Like every Ph.D. student in that program, I spent huge swaths of time in the legendary basement of Hill Hall, otherwise known as the music library. ‘There, underneath a threatening web of low-hanging pipes on which you would bang your head every time, lay one of the country’s best music collections. Today that collection lives in a new library, and while I'm sure it’s wonderful, it can never evoke the kind of contradictory affection we had for that magnificent basement. But my deeper sense of library” was formed in a different building: the impressive Wilson Graduate Library, a neo-classical library built in 1929 (now repurposed for Special Collections). Its limestone steps, stately columns, and hushed rotunda proclaimed, "Treasures of Western Culture Ahead: Enter Ye with Awe.” So now we have part three: We've actually gotten into the library! Part three begins with sitting, ‘on the cool floor of the Reading Room, a circle of thick tomes stacked around me. The process went like this: Drag the books down, figure out their organization, scan their contents and indices, and decide. The volumes were heavy, so you had to be sure you wanted them before dragging them to your cubicle Ah, the cubicle! A little, airless, windowless space with an uncomfortable desk and chair, set against the back wall of the stacks. Today's students may not know the thrill of going deep "into the stacks,” but it’s similar to entering C. S. Lewis’ Narnia through a wardrobe. ‘And whatever resource you worked with, you had to paraphrase, hand copy, and otherwise record information tediously and accurately. No copy and paste keystrokes here. Nor could you double-check data from the comfort of your sofa TEN aC 1-877-862-1097 Bone Mtoe eta that today's student fh tong ce) Beek PTET mec Toa CO library has brought for centuries. at home. Instead, you put in your time, chose carefully, and copied it right Hours went by. Half-days went by. There was no. cute café for a retreat either, as in some of today’s, libraries. A water fountain and a handful of forbidden chips kept us going, It was hard. It was tiring, And it was heaven. Absolute heaven. Today, every time I work online, I still fast- forward through that three-part process in my mind. It still forms my structure, my foundation. I wish I could assert that we are better off with today’s online system of research, but I cannot assert that. I fear that what we "learn" today is as superficial as the proce: For one thing, what I learned in those marathon library sessions did not flee my mind the minute I closed the book. Too much effort had gone into it. Information circulated as I trudged back to the parking lot and drove back out to my little trailer. It continued to grow as I filed through my hand-written notes. It laid the basis for the next time I would "go to the library.” Yes, the technologies for today’s research are astonishing, but the process does not satisfy me nearly as much. Sometimes I feel as if lam more in touch with the cords that charge my devices than with the strands of material I've just learned. Themoan the fact that today’s student may never experience the visceral rewards that going to the library has brought for centuries: that marvelous physical process of preparing, anticipating, physically laboring, and painstaking fulfillment. These stages are no longer intrinsic to the cyber-learning world. I also fear (let me get this out of my system) that the degree of inquisitiveness found in today’s restless young students, impatient to get it done, will fade into a kind of bland soup. How will they develop the skills to ask the hard questions and wrestle forth the answers? The wrestling is gone. There is a particular type of nostalgia for a childhood and life gone by. Is this worry about the lost art of learning simply a misplaced nostalgia? Many would say: “Get with it Carol. That world is gone and we dontt need it, or buggy whips, any longer. The new way is better.” I wish they were right. But I know they are wrong. erent Going to the Library 64ON THE INCARNATION {OF WORDS} Etre R@tete Ty[issn tin eer ts lenmed to appre he chlaraton anc heartbreak of Chas Des the vibrancy of ifeand creeping human vision of Leo Toby, hc human Gham and poutisinsight of Shakespeare the whimsical humor oF Wodehouse “he has tes pleasure noua his youth and to colace his ol age atthe peasureof reading a book attended and actuated by thing about books which donot dine have to do with eadng sell Tam inking hereof the pica aspect of Dok Its someting we dont alle think about oe much anymore inthis ge ofthe interct and dig tent People ike me who srebacksh somehow hveitin thirds tat word taken pete olin rendered into physical form. That is why many of us prefer a real, physical book to, say, an eBook, and are prouder of our physical libraries than the collection of eBooks we have on our Kindles. Tcan remember many times when have shown off my library to guests. had an NBC Nightly home several years back, and when they saw my library they took their camera and panned the stacks. One of them (I believe she had been an English major) said something like, ‘You must have books from every important writer who ever existed." I affected a knowing look and solemnly said, "Quite possibly. Ifthad told them how many audiobooks Thad on my smartphone, it wouldn't have had the same effect. Those of us who love books tend to think that the writing or printing of them in some way commemorates the ideas they express. This is why we think that the better and more important the words of the book, the better the book itself should be. Ihave a lot of paperback books, and for most books that are published, that is just fine. But when it comes to the really great books, it seems more appropriate that their physical expression should ‘match the greatness they express. Inhis great work Moby Dick, Herman Melville makes a similar point: screw inmy One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? ... Give mea Martin Clan the itor of Tre Classical Teacher and shor of Traditional Logic Books II, Material Logic nd Classical Rhetoric ferret are rendered more Sretittia sa teats Peter eres ts Saat condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts ofthis Leviathan, they weary me... Such, and so ‘magnifying, isthe virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk He argues here that the greatness of his style should be commensurate with the greatness of his subject. But could this be true, not just of the heavy style of the words, but of their physical manifestation? Is there not some important similitude in the fact that the book, Moby Dick, should also be physically heavy? My copy of The Awakening of Miss Prim, a somewhat light and charming book, is physically light and charming. That is as it should be. But my copy of Plato's Collected Dialogues, heavy and rich in content, is itself heavy and rich in size and appearance. The same is true of my copy of Aristotle's Complete Works. My copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is an imposing, blue, clothbound volume, with dignified illustrations to match the exalted text. Its tangible form is a work of art worthy of the beauty of the words. Tolstoy's War and Peace should be heavy: Ifit were not, the universe would be thrown out of balance, Itisnot that it is wrong to buy a paperback copy of a Shakespeare play or The Brothers Karamazov. lonce bought a paperback copy of Moby Dick because the introduction was Irving Howe's great essay on Melville's masterpiece—the essay that convinced me it was a truly great book and that I should read it. And yet even now Tam eyeing a nice hardbound edition of Melville's classic, not because | will necessarily read it again, but just because it deserves to be between beautiful covers The physicality of a book is, to a book lover, one of its virtues. For at least two millennia we have seen the physical act of writing as a kind of embodiment. Our thoughts are rendered more significant by being incarnated on the written page. There is what philosophers would calla phenomenology toa physical book unachievable by anything purely digital. We tend to think abstractly about language is the thought,” we say, "that matters.” When Marshall McLuhan uttered his famous maxim, “The medium is the message,” he invoked the principle that the form something takes cannot be divorced from its content. It is not just what is said that matters, but how—and, we could add, on what—itis said. Tt Onthe I66 McLuhan’s maxim is only another version of one of Aristotle's central principles. Aristotle said that anything that exists in the world must have both form and matter. This same idea can be seen in the opening chapters of Genesis, where God creates the world by forming its structure ang filling it with material things. The act of creation, in other words, necessarily involves physicality, a principle that is made problematic in digital information, which is material only in the barest sense. ‘Words expressed in a physical book give a kind of benediction to the paper on which they are printed, and their having been printed bestows some greater ontological significance to their meaning, The words and the physical book that contains them form a sort of union, a union which, once sundered, results in a loss. And yet all this—the love of physical books, and the trouble we take with them—does not make much sense in light of our modern tendency to see value in things only in terms of their practical utility. The utilitarian philosophy of life dictates that we should do those things that are most practically useful. In this view, convenience and efficiency are the watchwords, A true book lover is not bothered by the lack of convenience of going to the bookstore or the problem of obtaining the book once he Ev gets there. In fact, we only invoke convenience and efficiency on the things that we find least desirable. ‘When it comes to the things we most like to do, these considerations are beside the point, and, in many cases, detrimental altogether. We take time with the things that we like. We fuss over them needlessly. Ifyou love books, going to a bookstore was never a matter of convenience or efficiency. The best bookstore was never the one nearest my home. In fact, Iwill go long distances to get to a good bookstore. And a good bookstore was never the one I spent the least amount of time in. In fact, quite the opposite. I will spend hours in a good bookstore, and the length of time Tam willing to spend there is a measure of how good itis. Going to the bookstore is a ritual, a pilgrimage. T think the decline of the bookstore is related to the decline of the road trip. You go on a road trip because getting there is hall the fun. I go to a good bookstore because the effort expended in finding a book is part of why I do it My wife used to give me a hard time about taking side roads on our annual trip from our home (On the Incarnation of Words ee ten ree ysical book give a kind of benediction to Bee eee Repeat in Kentucky to my mother’s farm in Kansas. She would say, “If we took the interstates, it would take only ten hours to get there.” [would look at her and say, "Yes, but it would be ten hours of, boredom. Taking the side roads may take five hours longer, but the drive is pleasurable. Under what circumstances would I choose ten hours of boredom over fifteen hours of pleasure? She has since been cured of her addiction to efficiency and convenience, Being married to me, she claims, necessitates it. And she now thanks me for taking the side roads and enjoys them as much as I do, When we go to the beach on a warm summer day, do we bring a stopwatch to see how fast we can swim in the waves, walk on the beach, and sun ourselves? And, of course, the best life is not necessarily the shortest T would far rather take my time living a pleasurable life than speeding through an efficient one. ‘A book lover not only cherishes individual books, but knows that two books—even if they are the very same edition—are different from one another. Each has a different history and personality Thave a copy of Wendell Berry's The Way of Ignorance which the author gave me asa gift. He inscribed it, "To Martin Cothran— for kind help and good company, many thanks, Thanksgiving, 2006. Having your Kindle signed by the author of one of the books it contains would not only be physically difficult, but conceptually impossible. Signing a book requires that there be a book—an individual, singular, solitary thing. A digital book has no history, no permanence. it has no personality When I read a book, I annotate it. I summarize each page at the top. I write notes in the margin. | even draw pictures in it. In doing so, I make it mine. A young woman I work with, about my own children’s age, loves books as much as I do. Every few days I will stop by her desk and ask her what she is reading. In the course of our conversations, Twill often mention some book I just read, one she has read too. She will say, “Oh, I love that book!” When she says this, she will hold her arms to herself, as if she was actually holding the book. I think this is not insignificant, that when we have a true love for something, our very gestures should suggest a real, physical thing. MemoriaPress.com