Review: The Scholar’s Mission

• Title: “The Scholar’s Mission” in The Works of Orestes A. Brownson Collected and Arranged by Henry F. Brownson Volume XIX pages 65-87.
• Author: Orestes Augustus Brownson
• Published: New York: AMS Press Inc., 1966. An oration pronounced before the Gamma Sigma Society, of Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H., July 26, 1843.

Preamble

I was introduced to Brownson in The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk.  Since then, I bought the twenty-volume collection of his works assembled by his son.  I am surprised I had never heard of him before, but what usually happens after I find someone like this, is his name will suddenly start appearing in other works I read.  It is just the fact that now I am aware of him.  That is true with so many other things in life.  Think of many of the great discoveries made throughout history, once they are known, then it is easy to see.  It is like the old tale about Christopher Columbus and the egg.  Supposedly he was sitting around with some other people after he discovered America and they were saying how it was not really a big deal.  He asked for an egg and requested that they each try to stand it on its end without falling over.  After several attempts they admitted they could not.  He then slightly crushed the end of the egg and very easily placed the egg standing up.  His point was made clear and as they now knew the answer, any of them could accomplish it.  However, it was the initial idea that allowed him to come up with the result.

About the Author[1]

Orestes Augustus Brownson was an American writer who focused on theological, philosophical, and sociological issues.  He was born September 16, 1803 in Stockbridge, Vermont and died April 17, 1876 in Detroit, Michigan.  He was a self-educated man.  His religious journey started Presbyterian, then a Universalist minister (1826-31), followed by pastor of the Society for Christian Union and Progress (1836-42), and ending with becoming a Roman Catholic in 1844 for the remaining thirty-two years of his life.

My Perspective

Reflecting on Brownson’s life, I am reminded that our life of faith is a journey.  He sought after the truth his whole life and this is what I define as a true philosopher.  In this oration about the scholar’s mission, Brownson encapsulates the essence of what I think a philosopher should be.  He says scholar, I say philosopher.  The essay can be broken down into three major parts: what a scholar is or is not, his general calling to instruct and inspire his race, and his duty to identify the pertinent problems of his current time and place in history.

Brownson exaggerates in his description of a scholar when he states, “not merely the one who has mastered some of the technicalities of a few of the more familiar sciences, but the one who has, as far as possible, mastered all the subjects of human thought and interest, and planted himself on the beach at the farthest distance as yet moistened by the ever advancing wave of science.”  I wonder whom he thought qualified to claim this title?  I cannot think of anyone throughout all of history that would be able to fill those shoes.  By this definition, a scholar is a title that is something you strive for, but never attain.  An ideal scholar would know these things, be master of them, but I tend to think of the scholar as one who pursues truth. “He may be a theologian, a politician, a naturalist, a poet, a moralist, or a metaphysician; but whichever or whatever he is, he is it with all his heart and soul, with high, noble—in one word, religious—aims and aspirations.”  Religion and the scholar.  For Brownson they go hand in hand, you cannot have one without the other.  I agree with him, for a mortal mind alone without the help of a higher power cannot comprehend the great truths.

The normal innovations of a scholar is someone who is intimate with Classical literature, ancient languages, and writes great literature.  “We study the classics as scholars only when we study them as the exponents of Greek and Roman life, of the humanity that then and there was, lived and toiled, joyed and sorrowed, came and went; and from deep sympathy with that humanity acquire a deeper sympathy with the humanity that now is, and strengthen our hearts and our hands for the necessary work of attaining to a nobler humanity hereafter.”  It is not just the knowledge of the past that is important for its own sake, but rather that this knowledge provides us with truths about who we are as humans.  My great love of studying the ancients is because of the basic truths that are revealed in a way that I tend to understand.  But what about writing great literature? “It comes, if it come at all, only on condition that brave and true-hearted men engage in some great and good work for their country or their race, to the performance of which literature is indispensable; and it will be true and noble, rich and varied, living and profound, just in proportion to the nobleness of the work, and the zeal, purity and ability with which they have labored in its performance.”  Brownson is arguing that the desire for writing great national literature should not be an end in itself, but rather the means that we use to accomplish our goal as scholars.  If our hearts are truly focused on inspiring and illuminating truth, then our writing will naturally come to express this.

A vital understanding of Brownson is his insistence that all we do must be based with God in mind.  “The sooner we put away the folly of believing that it is religion that needs us, and not we that need religion, the sooner shall we cease to be children, and enter upon our career as men.”  The idea that a scholar would be secular is totally alien to him.  He cannot conceive of the idea.  For the scholar’s mission is intimately interlinked with God.  “It will suffice, then, for our present purpose to say that the end for which God made us, and placed us here, is progress, growth, to be eternally approaching the infinite God, communion with whom is the consummation of the soul’s good.”

The individual is vitally important to society.  Certain individuals must always rise up and accept the responsibility they have been given to aid humanity.  “The scholar is always one who stands out from and above the mass, to instruct them as to what is their duty, and to inspire them with zeal and energy to perform it.”  The notion of society or rather humanity itself being one body or one organism, is one I am familiar with in the Catholic Church.  Brownson was not yet a Roman Catholic when he delivered this oration, but the ideology is already there.  “Here is the broad and solid foundation of society and the social virtues on which society becomes, not a mere assemblage or aggregation of individuals, held together by that rope of sand, enlightened self-interest, but a living organism, with a common center of life, and a common principle of vitality; a one body with many members, and all the members, members one of another.”  I have the theory also that this organism extends from the past to the future.  Like ourselves, we are composed of many cells.  Our body is constantly generating new cells as the old ones die off.  But this entity, is us.  Likewise, the entity that is the human race, it has many people that are constantly being born as others die off.

Scholars are not made.  “No one can say beforehand, who shall be the distinguished. No rank, no wealth, no facilities rank and wealth can command, will assure us a scholar in our dearly cherished son. All the training in the world may be bestowed in vain. Up from some obscure corner, out from some Nazareth, from some carpenter’s shop, blacksmith’s forge, or shoemaker’s bench, from some uncheered hut of misery and wretchedness, may start forth the true scholar; make his way through the crowd that close up against him; over the rich and proud that with armed heel would crush him; baffle poverty and want; and finally stand up in the serene majesty of the soul, an acknowledged chief and leader of his race; a nobleman, with the patent of his nobility written, not on parchment, but with God’s own hand on his heart.”  I am reminded of Plato’s Noble Lie, where we all come from the earth.  Some bronze children are born of gold parents and some gold children come from bronze parents.  It is this concept that lineage, possessions, position, cannot determine our true character.  There is a factor that is determined by Nature that Nuture alone cannot make up for. “Never measure a man’s capacity, attainments, or virtues, by his apparent rank, wealth, or education.”

Equality, as it is generally recognized today, was not something that Brownson believed in.  We need those that can stand out and excel to become true leaders.  Stop promoting the idea of the most popular ideas are the best.  The masses need to have those that can rise up above and help us.  We would do best to help identify and acknowledge those among us who have been gifted with extraordinary abilities.

 There are, and it is worse than idle to deny it, labors indispensable to the progress of mankind, under its moral, religious, intellectual, and social relations, which can be performed only by men who stand out, and are distinguished by their capacity, virtues, and attainments, from the multitude. The most ordinary questions concerning man’s destiny, or mere everyday ethics, can be answered only by the light of a metaphysical and theological science, which the many do not, will not, and cannot be made to understand. Popular passions, popular prejudices, popular ignorance, popular errors and vices, are often to be withstood; but who will there be to withstand them, if there be none among us, who rise above the level of the mass? For who, not rising above the level of the mass, but must share them? Who among us, having only the wisdom and virtue common to all, for the sake of truth, justice, love, religion, country, humanity, will throw themselves before the popular car, and with their bodies seek to arrest its destructive career?

This next paragraph hits the nail on the head.  When those that have been given the opportunity and special gifts to lead us and then abuse that power, we have a problem.  I had always heard it called noblesse oblige. Or as we sometimes hear, with great power comes great responsibility.

No man is really offended that there is inequality in men’s capacities, attainments, and virtues. But the prejudice grows out of the fact that our educated men are exceedingly prone to forget that their superior capacities and attainments are to be held by them, not for their own private benefit, but as sacred trusts, to be used for the moral, religious, social, and intellectual advancement of mankind. They for the most part look upon their superior capacities and scholastic attainments, as special marks of Divine favor upon themselves personally, conferred for their own special good, because God perchance loves them better than he does others. This is a grievous error. God is no respecter of persons; and if he gives this man one capacity, and that man another, it is not because he loves one man more or less than he does another; for it is always while the children are yet unborn, before they have done either good or evil that it is written, “the elder shall serve the younger.” But it is because he has so ordered it that his purposes in regard to humanity, are to be carried on only by a division of labor, by establishing among men a diversity of gifts and callings, by assigning to one man one work, and to another man another work. The mortal sin of every aristocracy, whether literary, scientific, military, or political, is by no means in the inequality it implies, produces, or perpetuates; but in the fact that it regards itself as a privileged order, specially endowed for its own special benefit. Hence, every aristocracy seeks always to consolidate itself, and to secure to itself all the advantages of the state, or of society. It seeks to make itself a caste, and to rule, not as the servant of others, but as their master. But to whom much is given, of him much is required. If more is given to the few than to the many, it is that they may bear the heavier burdens; as says Jesus, “let him that is greatest among you, be your servant”. Greatness is conferred not to be ministered unto, but to minister. He is the greatest, who best serves his race; and he proves himself not great, but little, who seeks to serve not his race, but himself.

Our Lord, Jesus Christ, gave this message to the Apostles when he washed their feet.  “The notion, then, which scholars sometimes entertain that their scholarship is a personal immunity, a sort of personal luxury, which they have the right to indulge for themselves alone, and that this is wherefore in God’s providence they have been blessed with the capacity and means to be scholars, is false, mischievous; and whoso entertains it, and acts on it, will assuredly fail in discharging his mission as a scholar.”  Those that have sold their talent for fame and money, instead of developing and using it for the higher good, can be considered contemptable.  What do we do with the talents entrusted to us?  Do we bury them, sell them, or do we use them as they were intended?  “The scholarship that rests with the scholar that seeks only the scholar’s own ease, pleasure, convenience, or renown, is worthy only of the unmitigated contempt of all men. Of all men, the scholar is he who needs most thoroughly to understand and practice the abnegation of self; who more than any other is to be laborious and self-sacrificing, feeling himself charged to work out a higher good for his brethren; and that wherever he is, or whatever he does, the infinite Eye rests upon him, and his honor as a man, as well as a scholar, is staked on the wisdom and fidelity with which he labors to execute his mission.”

The scholar has been identified and his general mission, now we move on to how does it apply contemporaneously.  The most common mistake is for the scholar to attempt to reclaim the past.  The past is the past and the scholar needs to be pragmatic according to Brownson.  “No; it never is, it never can be, the mission of the scholar to do over again for the progress of his race, what has already been done; but that which has not as yet been done, and which must be done, before another step forward can be taken.”  The next issue is the temptation to be popular instead of loving.  When we love our children we do not give in to their every demand.  No, instead we do what we think is right for them, even if they tell us they hate us at the moment.  This is the same way with the true scholar, he must do what is best for the people, even if they may hate him and want to kill him.  He must remember to always do it out of love.

The scholar, I repeat, is one who stands out from and above the mass, as it were, a prophet and a priest to instruct and inspire them. He is not, then, and cannot be, one who joins in with the multitude, and suffers himself to be borne blindly and passively along by their pressure. Do not mistake me. The scholar is not one who stands above the people, and looks down on the people with contempt. He has no contempt for the people; but a deep and an all-enduring love for them, which commands him to live and labor, and, if need be, suffer and die, for their redemption; but he never forgets that he is their instructor, their guide, their chief, not their echo, their slave, their tool. He believes, and proceeds on the belief that there is a standard of truth and justice, of wisdom and virtue, above popular convictions, ay, or popular instincts; and that to this standard both he and the people are bound to conform. To this standard he aims to bring his own convictions, and by it to rectify his own judgments; and having so done, instead of going with the multitude when they depart from it, swimming with the popular current when it sets in against it, he throws himself before the multitude, and with a bold face and a firm voice commands them to pause, for their onward course is their death. He resists the popular current, he braves popular opinion, wherever he believes it wrong or mischievous, be the consequences to himself what they may. This he must do, for Providence, in giving him the capacity and means to be a scholar that is, a leader and chief of his race, has made him responsible, to the full measure of his ability, for the wisdom and virtue of the multitude.

The levelling issue of today appears to have also been a problem almost two-hundred years ago.  The dumbing down of America.  Let’s face it, this problem is spread throughout the world.  This is what the scholar must combat. He will be threatened with acting pretentious, or a know-it-all, literati, or some other name calling.  This is what bullies and ignorant people will use against the scholar.  Today they will also accuse you of hate.  But the scholar must realize that they must persevere for the public’s good.  Even if they may crucify you.  Keep love in your heart and their best interest in mind.  Do it for Good, Truth, Beauty, and God, and you cannot go wrong.  If God is for you, who can be against? “Here is the law that must govern the scholar. He must labor to lead public opinion where right, and correct it where wrong. Keeping this in view, we can without difficulty comprehend what, in these days and in this country, is the special work for the scholar. The tendency of our age and country is a leveling tendency. This is seen everywhere and in everything; in literature, religion, morals, and philosophy— in church and in state. There is no mistaking this fact. In literature the tendency is to bring all down to the level of the common intelligence, to adapt all to the lowest round of intellect. What is profound we eschew; what requires time and patient thought to comprehend, we forego. For why should we publish what the mass do not readily understand?”  One of my pet peeves is the eroding of the meaning of words.  I am also guilty of it.  One of the most obvious discoveries of Socrates was that the people did not understand the meaning of the words they used.

Brownson is orating this in 1843 and he is talking about how this problem has infested the pulpit.  How surprised would he be today to learn that it has only worsened?  My own Church, the Catholic Church promotes that a sermon should only be 5-8 minutes long at most.  The argument goes that if you have something to say and can’t say it in that much time you don’t know what you’re talking about. With that logic, no book should be longer than a few pages, and no movie longer than five minutes.  No, the reason they say that is that they are ignorant.  They do not know and do not want to know what is good for them.  A truly good speaker can go on for quite some time.  I love listening to Fulton Sheen sermons.  “The pulpit is thus forced, instead of proclaiming, with an authoritative voice, the word of God, our Supreme law, to echo popular convictions and prejudices, popular passions and errors, and to vary its tone with the varying moods of the congregation. It loses its power to maintain the form of sound words, and is driven to study to be attractive, entertaining, so as to rival the assembly or the theater.”  This is a discussion we have at Church.  Most traditional churches are having problems with attendance as our world becomes more secularized.  They see the huge attendance at a mega-church and think maybe we could be more like them.  We need to entertain them more.  No!  Do not give into the popular passions.

How did we get into this predicament?

(T)here is a shallow, but reckless spirit, abroad, rashly at work with whatever is sacred, affirming and denying all with equal levity and equal reason. In the church itself, as it exists with us, all seems loosed from its old moorings, and is afloat, and floating— no one can say whither. All opinions are broached, asserted, denied, from the well-defined Catholicism of Anselm and Hildebrand, down to the feeble echo of Strauss, in the “Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion,” in which naturalism and no-churchism are baptized, and it is virtually maintained that it is a matter of no moment to the truth of Christianity, whether there was or was not such a person as Jesus Christ. We are in the midst of complete religious anarchy. No education that is not religious is worth having; and yet our legislatures are forced to exclude religion from our common schools, so as not to let in sectarianism. We are agreed in nothing. Some of us contend earnestly for the church, and yet contend that men can be saved without, as well as within its pale; others assert that it is a Divine institution, founded by the Lord himself, purchased with his own blood; and yet are not a little afraid that if it should have power, it would be tyrannical and oppressive; just as if God could tyrannize, or as if anything Divine could be otherwise than on the side of right and freedom!

In order for us all to get along we should not hurt anyone’s feelings.  All opinions are equal.  All religions are equal.  Good is relative.  Truth is subjective.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Lies.  All Lies.   Those that promote peace do not always have the best interest in mind.  Most of this has just led to people becoming more and more disenfranchised.  Our leaders and so-called scholars have led us into this entanglement.  They start by removing religion.

In the midst of all this confusion and anarchy, a large class among us, who would be thought friendly to religion, stand in our way, and do all they can to prevent any thorough discussion of great and fundamental principles. They dislike controversy; persuading themselves that they are promoting peace, they block up our path, so that we cannot “follow after the things which make for peace”; under plea of religious liberty and toleration, they promote religious indifference, and bring about religious death. Among these we may reckon no small number of our statesmen and politicians, who applaud themselves that they take no interest in religious discussions, and are able to look down upon the contests of churchmen, from their serene heights of indifference, as upon the contests of a family of ants, thrown into confusion by the recent overturn of their hillock. Thus while overrun with churches and consecrated ministers of religion, we are virtually an atheistical people, struck with the curse either of fanaticism or indifference, and dying of spiritual inanition.

I have a little argument on wording.  I tend to define statesman as doing what is good for the people and politicians as being public panderers.

Our politicians want votes, and the votes of the various religious communions; and must therefore attach themselves strongly to none, and studiously avoid whatever might be offensive to any. Our authors want heterodox as well as orthodox, orthodox as well as heterodox, readers; and must therefore strike out whatever might be offensive to one or the other, and publish only the residuum. All comes from this tendency to defer to the mass, to make all depend on the favor of the multitude; or, as we say in this country, public opinion, the virtue and intelligence, the honesty and good sense, of the people!

 

Hence the chief merit of a public officer is said to be, to find out and conform to the will of his constituents, without inquiring whether that will is constitutional, just, or not; of a politician, to float on the surface of his party, and to obey any direction the political passions for the time may give him. The land, therefore, swarms with miserable demagogues, whose sole worth consists in the energy and distinctness with which they are able to vociferate, “I am the servant of the people; I bow to the will of the people; I have no will but the will of the people. O the people, the dear, dear people, how I love them! How wise and virtuous they are! Their voice is the voice of God!”

When reading that last sentence, I regret to say that I shook my head in sad acknowledgement.  I know this does not need to be this way.  History has shown other courses to follow.  God gives us guidance.  We cannot do it without reverence to God.

We have broken down the old nobilities and hierarchies; we have abolished all that was formerly held to be noble and venerable, and made the scholar, the moralist, the politician, and last but not least, the minister of religion, responsible to the people; that is, to public opinion. Whether we write, preach, moralize, or politize, we do it with the fear of the people before our eyes, and with the desire to obtain their approbation. In a word, it has come to this, our study is to follow, to echo the public opinion, not to form it.

Fear.  We become paralyzed with fear and we let evil prevail.  The public does not know what is best for itself.

Who knows not that if you would save the people, you must often oppose them? No advance has ever yet been made, but it has been opposed by them, especially by those they follow as their trusted leaders. Every true prophet and priest is at first martyred by them. They were the people who condemned Socrates to drink hemlock; they were the people who cried out against one infinitely greater than Socrates, “Crucify, crucify him.” The real benefactor of his race is always calumniated as a public enemy. Nor does it help the matter by saying this is not the fault of the people themselves, but of those who have their confidence; for if the people were themselves as discerning, and as virtuous, as is contended, how should they come to confide in leaders who would induce them to crucify their redeemers?

As a true scholar, one must be prepared to be a martyr, a witness to Truth.  One does this not by keeping an eye on the populace and being concerned if they approve or not, but, by looking heavenward.  “Look always to a higher and a nobler plaudit, than that of the multitude, and for a more terrible execration than its. Seek the plaudits of the saints and martyrs around the throne of God, and fear only the terrible execration of Him, who is judge both of the quick and the dead.”  The song “The Impossible Dream” pops into my head as I think of this.  To fight for the right, without question or pause, to be willing to march into Hell, for a heavenly cause.

Brownson tries to come up with an explanation of why the quality of writing has deteriorated.  He uses the argument that the change from a single patron to the approval of the masses may be a culprit.  “A few well-turned phrases might sometimes conciliate your noble and wealthy patron, and leave you free to speak out, in strong and manly tones, your honest convictions, or the deep and thrilling experience of your life; but when it comes to the public, you can only ask, how much truth is the public prepared to take in? How much of what is deepest, truest, holiest in my experience, will the public heed, or appreciate? How much will the public buy? Ay, and pay for, in solid cash? Here is the secret of the thin, watery, vapory character of modern English and American literature. I must write for the public at large, and the public at large has no ability to sit in judgment on what is really rich, profound, and original in science or philosophy.”

You must take “high and noble views of the scholar’s mission, of the scholar’s duty, and responsibility, by ascertaining your own special work in the general progress of your kind, and then to go forth and do it; and to do it, if with the public approbation, well and good; if without the public approbation, just as well and good. He to whom solitude, poverty, social martyrdom, death on the scaffold, or the cross, has anything appalling, has no right to ask to be enrolled as a free citizen in the republic of letters. … Ask not what your age wants, but what it needs; not what it will reward, but what, without which, it cannot be saved; and that go and do, do it well; do it thoroughly; and find your reward in the consciousness of having done your duty, and above all in the reflection that you have been accounted worthy to suffer somewhat for mankind.”  This is Brownson’s implicit warning to the graduating scholars, are you sure you know what you got yourself into?  It is a call to do the right thing.

The evil is not in our devotion to the welfare of the mass; nor, indeed, in the fact that we believe power may be diffused even yet wider through the mass with advantage to the commonwealth; but in the tameness, servility, time-serving and cowardly spirit, of the great body of those, whose education, position, and means, should make them deep thinkers, enlightened guides, heroic defenders of truth, justice, freedom, humanity, and against mobs, no less than against kings, hierarchies, and nobilities. The remedy must be sought in the increase of the number of genuine scholars, in raising up an army of thoroughly educated men, gifted with a brave, heroic, self-denying spirit, with no will but that of their Divine Master, and knowing only to obey, to the spirit, and to the letter, even the least and the greatest of his commands, let obedience cost what it may.

Too many so-called scholars and leaders and not enough truly dedicated scholars.  He leaves us with a warning of why people may be cynical.  The public has suffered from those that have abused the sacred trust that was imparted to them.  It will not be easy, but it must be done.

Your profession as scholars, has fallen into disrepute, and colleges and universities are regarded among us with no friendly eye; for it has been felt that young men are educated, not that they may the better serve the people, but the more easily, and in a more respectable way, get their living out of the people. Redeem the sacred character of the scholar, I beseech you, from this reproach, by devoting yourselves, heart and soul, to the progress of your race, to the moral, intellectual, and social elevation of all men, especially of the poorer and more numerous classes. In so doing you will magnify your profession as scholars, fulfill your mission, do honor to your country, and receive the approbation of your God.

As I finish, I wonder again at the fact that I had not heard of Brownson before now.  I am very thankful I stumbled upon him.  I hope my introduction to his cause will perhaps motivate you, I know it has motivated me.

 

[1] The New Encyclopaedia Britannica 15th Ed. Micropaedia Bk. II, (1983) s.v. “Brownson, Orestes Augustus,” 312-3.