The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts

The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts 

A dispute between a small group of scholars and the authors of The New York Times Magazine’s issue on slavery represents a fundamental disagreement over the trajectory of American society. 

Adam Serwer  The Atlantic

WHEN THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE published its 1619 Project in August, people lined up on the street in New York City to get copies. Since then, the project—a historical analysis of how slavery shaped American political, social, and economic institutions—has spawned a podcast, a high-school curriculum, and an upcoming book. For Nikole Hannah-Jones, the reporter who conceived of the project, the response has been deeply gratifying. 

“They had not seen this type of demand for a print product of The New York Times, they said, since 2008, when people wanted copies of Obama's historic presidency edition,” Hannah-Jones told me. “I know when I talk to people, they have said that they feel like they are understanding the architecture of their country in a way that they had not.” 

U.S. history is often taught and popularly understood through the eyes of its great men, who are seen as either heroic or tragic figures in a global struggle for human freedom. The 1619 Project, named for the date of the first arrival of Africans on American soil, sought to place “the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” Viewed from the perspective of those historically denied the rights enumerated in America’s founding documents, the story of the country’s great men necessarily looks very different. 

The reaction to the project was not universally enthusiastic. Several weeks ago, the Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, who had criticized the 1619 Project’s “cynicism” in a lecture in November, began quietly circulating a letter objecting to the project, and some of Hannah-Jones’s work in particular. The letter acquired four signatories—James McPherson, Gordon Wood, Victoria Bynum, and James Oakes, all leading scholars in their field. They sent their letter to three top Times editors and the publisher, A. G. Sulzberger, on December 4. A version of that letter was published on Friday, along with a detailed rebuttal from Jake Silverstein, the editor of the Times Magazine. 

The letter sent to the Times says, “We applaud all efforts to address the foundational centrality of slavery and racism to our history,” but then veers into harsh criticism of the 1619 Project. The letter refers to “matters of verifiable fact” that “cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing’” and says the project reflected “a displacement of historical understanding by ideology.” Wilentz and his fellow signatories didn’t just dispute the Times Magazine’s interpretation of past events, but demanded corrections. 

In the age of social-media invective, a strongly worded letter might not seem particularly significant. But given the stature of the historians involved, the letter is a serious challenge to the credibility of the 1619 Project, which has drawn its share not just of admirers but also critics. 

Nevertheless, some historians who declined to sign the letter wondered whether the letter was intended less to resolve factual disputes than to discredit laymen who had challenged an interpretation of American national identity that is cherished by liberals and conservatives alike. 

“I think had any of the scholars who signed the letter contacted me or contacted the Times with concerns [before sending the letter], we would've taken those concerns very seriously,” Hannah-Jones said. “And instead there was kind of a campaign to kind of get people to sign on to a letter that was attempting really to discredit the entire project without having had a conversation.” 

Underlying each of the disagreements in the letter is not just a matter of historical fact but a conflict about whether Americans, from the Founders to the present day, are committed to the ideals they claim to revere. And while some of the critiques can be answered with historical fact, others are questions of interpretation grounded in perspective and experience. 

In fact, the harshness of the Wilentz letter may obscure the extent to which its authors and the creators of the 1619 Project share a broad historical vision. Both sides agree, as many of the project’s right-wing critics do not, that slavery’s legacy still shapes American life—an argument that is less radical than it may appear at first glance. If you think anti-black racism still shapes American society, then you are in agreement with the thrust of the 1619 Project, though not necessarily with all of its individual arguments. 

The clash between the Times authors and their historian critics represents a fundamental disagreement over the trajectory of American society. Was America founded as a slavocracy, and are current racial inequities the natural outgrowth of that? Or was America conceived in liberty, a nation haltingly redeeming itself through its founding principles? These are not simple questions to answer, because the nation’s pro-slavery and anti-slavery tendencies are so closely intertwined. 

The letter is rooted in a vision of American history as a slow, uncertain march toward a more perfect union. The 1619 Project, and Hannah-Jones’s introductory essay in particular, offer a darker vision of the nation, in which Americans have made less progress than they think, and in which black people continue to struggle indefinitely for rights they may never fully realize. Inherent in that vision is a kind of pessimism, not about black struggle but about the sincerity and viability of white anti-racism. It is a harsh verdict, and one of the reasons the 1619 Project has provoked pointed criticism alongside praise. 

Americans need to believe that, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, the arc of history bends toward justice. And they are rarely kind to those who question whether it does. 

MOST AMERICANS STILL learn very little about the lives of the enslaved, or how the struggle over slavery shaped a young nation. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that few American high-school students know that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, that the Constitution protected slavery without explicitly mentioning it, or that ending slavery required a constitutional amendment. 

“The biggest obstacle to teaching slavery effectively in America is the deep, abiding American need to conceive of and understand our history as ‘progress,’ as the story of a people and a nation that always sought the improvement of mankind, the advancement of liberty and justice, the broadening of pursuits of happiness for all,” the Yale historian David Blight wrote in the introduction to the report. “While there are many real threads to this story—about immigration, about our creeds and ideologies, and about race and emancipation and civil rights, there is also the broad, untidy underside.” 

In conjunction with the Pulitzer Center, the Times has produced educational materials based on the 1619 Project for students—one of the reasons Wilentz told me he and his colleagues wrote the letter. But the materials are intended to enhance traditional curricula, not replace them. “I think that there is a misunderstanding that this curriculum is meant to replace all of U.S. history,” Silverstein told me. “It's being used as supplementary material for teaching American history." Given the state of American education on slavery, some kind of adjustment is sorely needed. 

Published 400 years after the first Africans were brought to in Virginia, the project asked readers to consider “what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year.” The special issue of the Times Magazine included essays from the Princeton historian Kevin Kruse, who argued that sprawl in Atlanta is a consequence of segregation and white flight; the Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, who posited that American countermajoritarianism was shaped by pro-slavery politicians seeking to preserve the peculiar institution; and the journalist Linda Villarosa, who traced racist stereotypes about higher pain tolerance in black people from the 18th century to the present day. The articles that drew the most attention and criticism, though, were Hannah-Jones’s introductory essay chronicling black Americans’ struggle to “make democracy real” and the sociologist Matthew Desmond’s essay linking the crueler aspects of American capitalism to the labor practices that arose under slavery. 

The letter’s signatories recognize the problem the Times aimed to remedy, Wilentz told me. “Each of us, all of us, think that the idea of the 1619 Project is fantastic. I mean, it's just urgently needed. The idea of bringing to light not only scholarship but all sorts of things that have to do with the centrality of slavery and of racism to American history is a wonderful idea,” he said. In a subsequent interview, he said, “Far from an attempt to discredit the 1619 Project, our letter is intended to help it.” 

The letter disputes a passage in Hannah-Jones’s introductory essay, which lauds the contributions of black people to making America a full democracy and says that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery” as abolitionist sentiment began rising in Britain. 

This argument is explosive. From abolition to the civil-rights movement, activists have reached back to the rhetoric and documents of the founding era to present their claims to equal citizenship as consonant with the American tradition. The Wilentz letter contends that the 1619 Project’s argument concedes too much to slavery’s defenders, likening it to South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun’s assertion that “there is not a word of truth” in the Declaration of Independence’s famous phrase that “all men are created equal.” Where Wilentz and his colleagues see the rising anti-slavery movement in the colonies and its influence on the Revolution as a radical break from millennia in which human slavery was accepted around the world, Hannah-Jones’ essay outlines how the ideology of white supremacy that sustained slavery still endures today. 

“To teach children that the American Revolution was fought in part to secure slavery would be giving a fundamental misunderstanding not only of what the American Revolution was all about but what America stood for and has stood for since the Founding,” Wilentz told me. Anti-slavery ideology was a “very new thing in the world in the 18th century,” he said, and “there was more anti-slavery activity in the colonies than in Britain.” 

Hannah-Jones hasn’t budged from her conviction that slavery helped fuel the Revolution. “I do still back up that claim,” she told me last week—before Silverstein’s rebuttal was published—although she says she phrased it too strongly in her essay, in a way that might mislead readers into thinking that support for slavery was universal. “I think someone reading that would assume that this was the case: all 13 colonies and most people involved. And I accept that criticism, for sure.” She said that as the 1619 Project is expanded into a history curriculum and published in book form, the text will be changed to make sure claims are properly contextualized. 

On this question, the critics of the 1619 Project are on firm ground. Although some southern slave owners likely were fighting the British to preserve slavery, as Silverstein writes in his rebuttal, the Revolution was kindled in New England, where prewar anti-slavery sentiment was strongest. Early patriots like James Otis, John Adams, and Thomas Paine were opposed to slavery, and the Revolution helped fuel abolitionism in the North. 

Historians who are in neither Wilentz’s camp nor the 1619 Project’s say both have a point. “I do not agree that the American Revolution was just a slaveholders' rebellion,” Manisha Sinha, a history professor at the University of Connecticut and the author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, told me.* “But also understand that the original Constitution did give some ironclad protections to slavery without mentioning it.” 

THE MOST RADICAL thread in the 1619 Project is not its contention that slavery’s legacy continues to shape American institutions; it’s the authors’ pessimism that a majority of white people will abandon racism and work with black Americans toward a more perfect union. Every essay tracing racial injustice from slavery to the present day speaks to the endurance of racial caste. And it is this profound pessimism about white America that many of the 1619 Project’s critics find most galling. 

Newt Gingrich called the 1619 Project a “lie,” arguing that “there were several hundred thousand white Americans who died in the Civil War in order to free the slaves." In City Journal, the historian Allen Guelzo dismissed the Times Magazine project as a “conspiracy theory” developed from the “chair of ultimate cultural privilege in America, because in no human society has an enslaved people suddenly found itself vaulted into positions of such privilege, and with the consent—even the approbation—of those who were once the enslavers.” The conservative pundit Erick Erickson went so far as to accuse the Times of adopting “the Neo-Confederate world view” that the “South actually won the Civil War by weaving itself into the fabric of post war society so it can then discredit the entire American enterprise.” Erickson’s bizarre sleight of hand turns the 1619 Project’s criticism of ongoing racial injustice into a brief for white supremacy. 

The project’s pessimism has drawn criticism from the left as well as the right. Hannah-Jones’s contention that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country” drew a rebuke from James Oakes, one of the Wilentz letter’s signatories. In an interview with the World Socialist Web Site, Oakes said, “The function of those tropes is to deny change over time … The worst thing about it is that it leads to political paralysis. It’s always been here. There’s nothing we can do to get out of it. If it’s the DNA, there’s nothing you can do. What do you do? Alter your DNA?” 

These are objections not to misstatements of historical fact, but to the argument that anti-black racism is a more intractable problem than most Americans are willing to admit. A major theme of the 1619 Project is that the progress that has been made has been fragile and reversible—and has been achieved in spite of the nation’s true founding principles, which are not the lofty ideals few Americans genuinely believe in. Chances are, what you think of the 1619 Project depends on whether you believe someone might reasonably come to such a despairing conclusion—whether you agree with it or not. 

Wilentz reached out to a larger group of historians, but ultimately sent a letter signed by five historians who had publicly criticized the 1619 Project in interviews with the World Socialist Web Site. He told me that the idea of trying to rally a larger group was “misconceived,” citing the holiday season and the end of the semester, among other factors. (A different letter written by Wilentz, calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, quickly amassed hundreds of signatures last week.) The refusal of other historians to sign on, despite their misgivings about some claims made by the 1619 Project, speaks to a divide over whether the letter was focused on correcting specific factual inaccuracies or aimed at discrediting the project more broadly. 

Sinha saw an early version of the letter that was circulated among a larger group of historians. But, despite her disagreement with some of the assertions in the 1619 Project, she said she wouldn’t have signed it if she had been asked to. “There are legitimate critiques that one can engage in discussion with, but for them to just kind of dismiss the entire project in that manner, I thought, was really unwise,” she said. “It was a worthy thing to actually shine a light on a subject that the average person on the street doesn't know much about.” 

Although the letter writers deny that their objections are merely matters of “interpretation or ‘framing,’” the question of whether black Americans have fought their freedom struggles “largely alone,” as Hannah-Jones put it in her essay, is subject to vigorous debate. Viewed through the lens of major historical events—from anti-slavery Quakers organizing boycotts of goods produced through slave labor, to abolitionists springing fugitive slaves from prison, to union workers massing at the March on Washington—the struggle for black freedom has been an interracial struggle. Frederick Douglass had William Garrison; W. E. B. Du Bois had Moorfield Storey; Martin Luther King Jr. had Stanley Levison. 

“The fight for black freedom is a universal fight; it's a fight for everyone. In the end, it affected the fight for women's rights—everything. That's the glory of it,” Wilentz told me. “To minimize that in any way is, I think, bad for understanding the radical tradition in America.” 

But looking back to the long stretches of night before the light of dawn broke—the centuries of slavery and the century of Jim Crow that followed—“largely alone” seems more than defensible. Douglass had Garrison, but the onetime Maryland slave had to go north to find him. The millions who continued to labor in bondage until 1865 struggled, survived, and resisted far from the welcoming arms of northern abolitionists. 

“I think one would be very hard-pressed to look at the factual record from 1619 to the present of the black freedom movement and come away with any conclusion other than that most of the time, black people did not have a lot of allies in that movement,” Hannah-Jones told me. “It is not saying that black people only fought alone. It is saying that most of the time we did.” 

Nell Irvin Painter, a professor emeritus of history at Princeton who was asked to sign the letter, had objected to the 1619 Project’s portrayal of the arrival of African laborers in 1619 as slaves. The 1619 Project was not history “as I would write it,” Painter told me. But she still declined to sign the Wilentz letter. 

“I felt that if I signed on to that, I would be signing on to the white guy's attack of something that has given a lot of black journalists and writers a chance to speak up in a really big way. So I support the 1619 Project as kind of a cultural event,” Painter said. “For Sean and his colleagues, true history is how they would write it. And I feel like he was asking me to choose sides, and my side is 1619's side, not his side, in a world in which there are only those two sides.” 

This was a recurrent theme among historians I spoke with who had seen the letter but declined to sign it. While they may have agreed with some of the factual objections in the letter or had other reservations of their own, several told me they thought the letter was an unnecessary escalation. 

“The tone to me rather suggested a deep-seated concern about the project. And by that I mean the version of history the project offered. The deep-seated concern is that placing the enslavement of black people and white supremacy at the forefront of a project somehow diminishes American history,” Thavolia Glymph, a history professor at Duke who was asked to sign the letter, told me. “Maybe some of their factual criticisms are correct. But they've set a tone that makes it hard to deal with that.” 

“I don't think they think they're trying to discredit the project,” Painter said. “They think they're trying to fix the project, the way that only they know how.” 

Historical interpretations are often contested, and those debates often reflect the perspective of the participants. To this day, the pro-Confederate “Lost Cause” intepretation of history shapes the mistaken perception that slavery was not the catalyst for the Civil War. For decades, a group of white historians known as the Dunning School, after the Columbia University historian William Archibald Dunning, portrayed Reconstruction as a tragic period of, in his words, the “scandalous misrule of the carpet-baggers and negroes,” brought on by the misguided enfranchisement of black men. As the historian Eric Foner has written, the Dunning School and its interpretation of Reconstruction helped provide moral and historical cover for the Jim Crow system. 

In Black Reconstruction in America, W. E. B. Du Bois challenged the consensus of “white historians” who “ascribed the faults and failures of Reconstruction to Negro ignorance and corruption,” and offered what is now considered a more reliable account of the era as an imperfect but noble effort to build a multiracial democracy in the South. 

To Wilentz, the failures of earlier scholarship don’t illustrate the danger of a monochromatic group of historians writing about the American past, but rather the risk that ideologues can hijack the narrative. “[It was] when the southern racists took over the historical profession that things changed, and W. E. B. Du Bois fought a very, very courageous fight against all of that,” Wilentz told me. The Dunning School, he said, was “not a white point of view; it’s a southern, racist point of view.” 

In the letter, Wilentz portrays the authors of the 1619 Project as ideologues as well. He implies—apparently based on a combative but ambiguous exchange between Hannah-Jones and the writer Wesley Yang on Twitter—that she had discounted objections raised by “white historians” since publication. 

Hannah-Jones told me she was misinterpreted. “I rely heavily on the scholarship of historians no matter what race, and I would never discount the work of any historian because that person is white or any other race,” she told me. “I did respond to someone who was saying white scholars were afraid, and I think my point was that history is not objective. And that people who write history are not simply objective arbiters of facts, and that white scholars are no more objective than any other scholars, and that they can object to the framing and we can object to their framing as well.” 

When I asked Wilentz about Hannah-Jones’s clarification, he was dismissive. “Fact and objectivity are the foundation of both honest journalism and honest history. And so to dismiss it, to say, ‘No, I'm not really talking about whites’—well, she did, and then she takes it back in those tweets and then says it's about the inability of anybody to write objective history. That's objectionable too,” Wilentz told me. 

Both Du Bois and the Dunning School saw themselves as having reached the truth by objective means. But as a target of the Dunning School’s ideology, Du Bois understood the motives and blind spots of Dunning School scholars far better than they themselves did. 

“We shall never have a science of history until we have in our colleges men who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race,” Du Bois wrote, “and who will not deliberately encourage students to gather thesis material in order to support a prejudice or buttress a lie.” 

The problem, as Du Bois argued, is that much of American history has been written by scholars offering ideological claims in place of rigorous historical analysis. But which claims are ideological, and which ones are objective, is not always easy to discern. 

*An earlier version of this article contained an incorrect title for historian Manisha Sinha's book.

Living Mirrors: Infinity, Unity, and Life in Leibniz's Philosophy

Living Mirrors: Infinity, Unity, and Life in Leibniz's Philosophy 

Ohad Nachtomy, Living Mirrors: Infinity, Unity, and Life in Leibniz's Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2019, 219pp., $85.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780190907327. 

Reviewed by Justin E. H. Smith, University of Paris 

There are several billion microorganisms in a typical teaspoon of soil: not an infinite number, but more than any finite mind could hope to count one by one. Leibniz did not know the precise nature of soil microbes, nor did he have any empirical proof of their existence, but he was convinced that they, or something like them, must exist, and this for deep philosophical reasons. Whatever there is in the world must be underlain by real soul-like unities or centers of action and perception, analogous to whatever it is we are referring to when we speak of "me". But any such center of action must be outfitted with a body, and this body must be such that no amount of decomposition or removal of parts could ever take the being in question out of existence. Thus there is nothing in the physical world but what Leibniz called "organic bodies" or "natural machines", that is to say infinitely complex mechanical bodies. Considered together with the active, perceiving unities that underlie them, these organic bodies are best described as "corporeal substances", of which animals and plants are the varieties we here on the surface of the earth know best. Everything is alive, in short. 

Leibniz got quite a bit right, though he was wrong about some of the details. There is for example a difference between the bacteria-rich soil of an agricultural field, an alkaline lake inhabited by only a few extremophiles, and the surface of Mars. Much of our own planet is teeming with life, but lifelessness is a real possibility too. Empirical microscopy has borne out Leibniz's suspicions about swamps, cheeses, and other microbe-rich environments, but even here there is no possible empirical corroboration of his conviction that visible organic bodies are in the end the bodies of simple substances, of immaterial nodes of action and perception. There is no possible empirical corroboration, because this conviction of Leibniz's is a priori. As Leibniz is inclined to say of the discoveries of the microscopists, he appreciates them, but they do not teach him anything he did not already believe for "higher reasons". 

Ohad Nachtomy does not seek to assess Leibniz's theory of life in terms of how well it stands up by the standards of contemporary science, but rather within the aims and scope of Leibniz's philosophy as a whole. This means, most importantly, drawing out the full significance of Leibniz's importation into his theory of life of a concept borrowed from mathematics: the concept of infinity. 

At first glance, infinity would seem to be of little help in making sense of the living world. Again, there are indeed a lot of micoorganisms, but an exhaustive census of their kind is at least in principle possible. Yet the interest for Leibniz is not only in enumerating a total number of individual living beings, which he does indeed suppose to be infinite. It is also in analyzing the composition of any given individual corporeal substance, which Leibniz also supposes to be infinite. And to say that an organic body is infinite, for him, is not only to say that there is no end to the number of divisions that might be made in it, but, much more strongly, that it is already actually infinitely divided. This is a radical move to make, overturning in important respects the entire previous history of the concept of infinity: from a notion whose privative prefix in- was taken seriously, as designating a potential process that could never be brought to an end, to, now, the notion of a principle that is actually constitutive of reality, that needs to be invoked in order to truly understand the nature of the world around us, and every single thing in it. Nachtomy writes: "far from avoiding infinity, as others recommend, Leibniz seems to take infinity to be indispensable for an adequate description of nature" (9). 

The present reviewer wrote a book about Leibniz's account of living beings (a book accurately and rigorously discussed in Nachtomy's book) and there defended an account of the work that infinity did in Leibniz's account as amounting to a sort of "fudge factor". Earlier mechanical philosophers had struggled to account for the fact that, though animal bodies are machines, they nonetheless do so much more than the rough metal, wooden, and glass contraptions that we design. They reintroduced various form-like powers in natural bodies that they sometimes acknowledged they did not themselves fully understand: notably, Descartes attributed many vital functions to "fermentation"; Robert Boyle, who was the first to explicitly identify as a "mechanical philosopher", allowed the notion of textura to do the work that irreducible qualities might do for a non-mechanical philosopher. Leibniz was wary of allowing spirit-like forces in through the back door, as it were, in the explanation of the bodies of living beings, and he was quick to denounce the solutions that other mechanical philosophers provided as so many poorly disguised plastic natures, or to use one of his preferred expressions, as so many je-ne-sais-quoi's. Leibniz insisted he could get by without any such principle, and that he was able to do so because he came to understand, after trying out and then abandoning some alternative models, that what is truly special about the mechanical bodies of living beings is not that they are hydraulico-pneumatic, or fermentative, or any one of the many alternative options, but because they are characterized by an infinitely complex structure, that the machine bodies of living animals are the machines that remain machines ad infinitum. To say that infinity is a fudge factor for Leibniz is to say that it is really only doing the work for him here that, e.g., fermentation does for Descartes. But one of the great achievements of Nachtomy's work is that it shows why one is wrong to suppose this, i.e., implicitly, and gently, why I was wrong. 

Nachtomy's progress in the interpretation of Leibniz -- by which I mean his significant advancement of our understanding of what Leibniz believed towards something fairly close to a true understanding -- results from his approach to the question of life in Leibniz as inextricably linked to the question of infinity. Leibniz was moreover working on these problems as interlinked nearly from the beginning of his career. Nachtomy's book is the first study of Leibniz ever to show clearly and convincingly that when in the 1690s the philosopher eventually comes to propose his theory of the structure of natural beings as machines within machines to infinity, he is in fact building on a long concern to understand and master the mathematics of the infinitely large and the infinitely small. Leibniz's introduction of infinity into his philosophical reflection on life, in other words, is not a fudge factor, nor a loose appropriation of a metaphor from one field into another field where it has no real explanatory power. Rather, his mature theory of living beings emerges directly out of his earliest and most productive contributions in mathematics, particularly during his sojourn in Paris from 1672 to 1676, and his efforts there to distinguish between different kinds of infinity in the course of his work on the infinitesimal calculus. When Leibniz injects the concept of infinity into the theory of life, he does so in the belief that this is a concept of which he has true mastery, and therefore one that can do real theoretical work for him. This is therefore the opposite of a fudge factor. Even if Leibniz is wrong -- as he is, given that there is indeed a lower limit to the structural complexity not just of living beings, but of physical reality -- nonetheless his theory of life is what we may call a "mature" one, which is to say not one that is put forward as a stop-gap measure in the absence of knowledge the theorist himself recognizes to be necessary. 

Chapter 1 summarizes the key characters and conceptual problems to be treated in the book. Chapters 2 through 4 discuss Leibniz's early engagement with the problem of infinity in mathematics and theology, particularly in Paris and in his productive encounter with the work of Spinoza, Pascal, and Arnauld. In chapter 5 Nachtomy pivots to the connnection between infinity and life in Leibniz, while chapters 6 through 10 each go on to develop some aspect or other of this connection. A separate Conclusion reflects on Leibniz's unified account of infinity and life as part of a strategy on the philosopher's part to "re-enchant nature". 

Chapter 6 is particularly useful for understanding the various meanings of the idea of "machine" in Leibniz, as well as the conceptual pair of "the natural" and "the artificial". Here Nachtomy suggests that we may understand Leibniz's claim that an organic body "remains a machine in its least parts" in two ways: either structural or functional. On the former account, "what extends to infinity is not the number of organs or machines, but, rather, the whole structure of a natural machine" (124). Here, the infinite structure of an organic body is not a matter of the containment of machines within machines, but rather is more like a fractal, which is to say "a structure defined by a unique rule of generation, whose continuous application produces an infinite structure, such that each of its parts has the same structure as the whole" (125). This approach is contrasted with the one Nachtomy calls "functional", according to which for a machine to remain a machine in its least parts is "for each of its parts to contribute to the end of the whole machine by performing a certain function" (131), and this to infinity. It does not seem clear that these two accounts are incompatible or even in tension with one another. What makes the organic subsystems of my feet for example part of the overall functioning of my entire organic body seems to have something to do, for Leibniz, with the fact that they are with the program, as we say today, of whatever it is that makes my body my body. One of the most compelling ways Leibniz has to account for this is in terms of a pars pro toto principle. This is the same principle that makes regeneration of limbs possible in some lower species (which Leibniz likely had not observed), a power of which our own bodies' capacity to spontaneously heal when wounded is but a somewhat less spectacular instance (which Leibniz, like every human being in history, definitely observed). 

The structural account would seem to imply the principle of pars pro toto, which in turn would seem to underlie the functional account. So it is not entirely clear why Nachtomy seeks to separate the two of them from one another. He prefers the former as an interpretation of Leibniz's position, and somewhat loosely, but nonetheless intriguingly, identifies it as an anticipation in Leibniz of the idea of the fractal. (Leibniz did reflect on the idea of "recursive self-similarity", but did not discern a viable way to treat it in geometry.) The cover of the book even features a lovely photograph, by Nachtomy, of a head of Romanesco broccoli, whose buds branch into meristems forming logarithmic spirals. But of course not everything in nature has this form (consider, for example, regular broccoli or cauliflower, the comparable parts of which form not into spirals but amorphous "curds"), and even in this one remarkable case the fractals are only approximate, since they terminate fairly quickly. But in order for the structural account of natural machines to be fully compelling, the fractal nature of the organic body would need to be fully realized, and not approximate, and this is something that Leibniz seems to believe it must be, for reasons far deeper than any empirical investigation of any particualr species of vegetable could reveal. 

One might take issue with Nachtomy's concluding interpretation of Leibniz's theory of life as an attempt to "re-enchant nature" in the wake of its disenchantment by first-generation mechanical philosophers such as Descartes. After all, Leibniz insisted to the end, even as he was proposing his theory of the infinitely structured organic body, that he was doing so not in order to reverse the tide of mechanism, but in order to save mechanism from the dead-end that philosophers such as Descartes had created for it by proposing such a weak analogy between animal bodies and artificial contraptions, and then adding the je-ne-sais-quoi of fermentation or the like in order to account for the obvious difference between these two categories of entity. It is Leibniz's adversaries, with their plastic natures and so on, who "enchant" nature by filling it with spirit-like entities doing the work that, they believe, nature would not know to do on its own. These people give up too easily, Leibniz thinks, while Descartes does not give up, but also does not get very far with his austere version of mechanism. 

Leibniz, on this reviewer's understanding, would thus see reenchantment as a defeat, and is able to avoid that defeat by introducing infinity into his account of living nature. It is the remarkable achievement of Nachtomy's groundbreaking book to have shown us the deep theoretical interconnection of infinity and life in Leibniz's philosophy, so that it comes as at least a small disappointment to see, at the end, a somewhat exhausted cliché about the death of nature at the hands of the mechanical philosophers. But I could be wrong about this too, and a broad historiographical question of this sort deserves many different interpretations. Either way, moreover, the great contribution of this book remains the same with or without the concluding reflection on the larger historical significance of what Nachtomy has so masterfully expounded and analyzed.

Why we need religion

Why we need religion

Stephen Asma, an agnostic, argues powerfully that religion is natural and beneficial. Is it such a leap to believe that it is grounded in truth?

by Nick Spencer Prospect

It is a truth, though sadly not one universally acknowledged, that what you think of religion largely depends on what you think is religion. If you believe religion to be primarily a means of explaining the origins and processes of the world and of nature, you’ll measure it with a scientific yardstick and find it wanting. If you think it is a metaphysical enterprise, making propositional but untestable statements about human identity and destiny, you’ll assess it on more philosophical principles, and find it momentous or meaningless depending on whether you like your ideas falsifiable. If you think it’s a series of ethical guidelines for how to navigate the world, with little truth content in themselves, you’ll measure it on a moral scale, and find it inspiring or dispiriting, depending on which bits you’re looking at. And so on and so forth.

Stephen Asma is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College in Chicago and, once upon time, a happy inhabitant of the first of these camps. Most of his early publications were “strenuously” critical of religion. He wrote enthusiastically for various sceptical and secularist publications, and even found himself listed in “Who’s who in hell,” a publication of which I was heretofore blissfully unaware.

However, some challenging encounters, wider reading and deeper reflection began to change his mind. “I’m an agnostic and a citizen of a wealthy nation,” he confesses towards the end of his provocatively-entitled 2018 Why We Need Religion, “but when my own son was in the emergency room with an illness, I prayed spontaneously.” “I’m not naïve,” he goes on to say. “I don’t think it did a damn thing to heal him. But it is a response that will not go and that should not go away if it provides genuine relief for anxiety and anguish.”

We have been here before. Such a non-conversion to “religion” is the cue for a toe-curlingly patronising exercise in religious non-defence. Religion may be irrational and infantile, you know, but it’s good for the children, especially the adult ones.

This, however, is not the direction in which Asma heads. To be clear, he still sees religion as irrational, although his extended discussion of creationism rather suggests he’s going for the low-hanging fruit here. Rather, he now views religion—his focus is primarily on Christianity and Buddhism, but much of what he says applies more widely—as natural, beneficial, humanising, and, indeed, indispensable.

The key is the body. Why We Need Religion takes our embodied and affective nature very seriously and shows, in detail and with impressive supporting evidence, that religious commitment—beliefs, practices, rituals, etc.—help protect and manage our emotional life with unparalleled and probably irreplaceable success. Religion is, in effect, a management system for our emotional lives that helps the human organism stay healthy and well.

Take grief as an example. Human grief has both elaborate cognitive and neurochemical dimensions (not, of course, disconnected things). We ruminate on moments past, futures lost, hopes dashed, memories decaying. At the same time, human—like all mammalian—grief is a form of separation distress. Mammalian brains are hardwired for the calming comfort of a caregiver’s touch, and when that is denied us, especially permanently, the brain experiences a “major reduction in opioids, oxytocin and prolactin.” Religious belief attenuates the severity of that separation, and religious practices develop, codify, and authenticate grieving customs that serve to offer a kind of emotional surrogate for loss. Both cognitively and affectively, religion helps us cope with grief. That, of course, is one of the reasons why non-religious religions like Secular Humanism so often get into the funeral business. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Asma looks at grief, forgiveness, resilience, sacrifice, joy, fear and other deep emotions besides. Time and again, he shows how religion contains “cultural structures that enshrine and celebrate some important adaptive psychological” states, drawing on evidence that would have upset his younger, more muscular secular self. Empirical studies, he writes half way through, confirm our long held assumption that “religious people try more than others to overcome their grudges.” Similarly, the evidence that education increases forgiveness and reduces violence “is somewhat thin.” The second of these is eminently believable but even I have problems believing the former. If true, there are certainly some pretty powerful counter-examples.

The book differs from the “but isn’t religion helpful” genre, then, for reasons of its scientific rigour, but also on account of the author’s sensitivity and empathy. Not only does it take some courage to begin a book by confessing a change of heart (if not mind) as Asma does, but it takes more, for example, to emphasise with the religiously violent. “People who dismiss religious-fuelled rage as intrinsically evil or primitive,” he writes, “have usually never faced real enemies.” Asma is not, of course, legitimising such rage or violence; simply seeking to understand it. In prosperous western liberal democracies, like our own, it is easy to think of one’s enemy as “a misunderstood force, whom one can eventually negotiate with.” That being so, religious rage is intolerable and an obvious moral failing. “Would that such [western] circumstances were long-lived and ubiquitous,” he remarks. “But they are neither.” This is powerful, striking at the heart of what makes people like you, me and those likely to read his book feel so morally superior.

All that being so, it seems to me to be a natural step to move (or at least to edge) from religion’s affective importance to its cognitive reliability; i.e. from the kind of goodness (or at least usefulness) of which Asma writes, to its truth. Now, to be clear, this move need not be made. Just because something is (or can be) good, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true. However, we should, at least, pause here. You can make a very strong argument that religion has played a positive role in human evolution, enabling individual and group survival, strength and cohesion, thereby being selected for in the evolutionary process. True, evolution selects for survival, not truth… but the two are hardly independent.

Broadly speaking, an organism whose cognitive functions are capable of tracking “that which is the case” is likely to do better than one that doesn’t. Whether you are finding prey, sensing a predator, or responding otherwise to your environment, it helps if your evolved senses are trained on the truth. It strikes me that the same point can be made of the apparently ubiquitous human need for religion (or in some places now, religion-like substitutes). As Steven Pinker (of all people!) once remarked “we have colour vision because there are differences in wavelength in the world. We have depth perception because the world actually does exist in three dimensions. By the same logic someone might be tempted to say that if we have a ‘God module’ there must be a God it’s an adaptation to.” Pinker of course is not tempted to say that. Nor, it seems, is Asma. I am.

Nick Spencer is Senior Fellow at Theos

“Why We Need Religion” by Stephen Asma is published by Oxford University Press

It’s a Terrible Day in the Neighborhood, and That’s O.K.

It’s a Terrible Day in the Neighborhood, and That’s O.K. 

Fred Rogers’s belief that we should validate emotions, not suppress them, is wisdom for all ages. 

By Mariana Alessandri NY TIMES an associate professor of philosophy, at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. 

On the 51st anniversary of the first taping of the classic children’s show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” Google published an animated “doodle” commemorating him. It depicts Mister Rogers walking through the neighborhood interacting with a variety of people, including a small child with his head hung low. Rogers fashions a paper airplane for the boy, which instantly cheers him up. People commonly caricature Mister Rogers like this — a gentle man intent on making everyone happy — but that may be more a reflection of America’s discomfort with dark emotions than of the man himself. The last thing Fred Rogers would do for a sad boy is distract him from his sadness. 

Anyone who watched “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” would know that the host considered all feelings natural — including the dark ones — and believed they don’t need fixing. Many of the children raised watching the program are now parents, and a new appreciation for Fred Rogers has blossomed thanks to the 2018 documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” and the feature film “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” starring Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers. Today, Rogers’ philosophy of difficult emotions stands a chance of being heard and heeded. 

As a child I preferred the frenetic energy of “Sesame Street” to the dull pace of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” but that changed when I had children of my own and wondered how to raise them thoughtfully without depriving them of television. In my classroom, I regularly teach Neil Postman’s book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” in which he raises a critical eyebrow at attempts to put serious discourse on television, and especially at shows like “Sesame Street” that label themselves as “educational.” Mr. Postman implies that slow and even boring shows stand a better chance of teaching children important lessons than fast-paced, loud ones. 

My memory of that boring show made me curious to see whether it offered anything valuable. It did, and so began my awakening to Rogers. With (and sometimes without) my children, I’ve watched hundreds of episodes of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” over the last seven years. I’ve read everything written by and about Fred Rogers and seen all the footage I could find. I saw the 2018 documentary once in the theater and then went back again to take notes. I went into “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” skeptical, since it’s much easier to get him wrong than right — and it’s critical that we get Fred Rogers right — but I kept my fingers crossed. The film’s emotional depth surprised me; in direct contrast to the Google doodle, it thoroughly conveys Rogers’ philosophy of difficult emotions. It makes sense: the cast and crew had to study Rogers to make the film, which is what’s required to accurately represent the man, to animate the caricature. 

Despite his sweet pastor’s demeanor, Rogers was tuned into our soul’s darkest feelings. He had an uncommon appreciation for anger, fear, stress, sadness, disappointment and loneliness. He respected the range of emotions and encouraged children to accept all their feelings as natural. This conviction came early: As an only child to proper New England parents, Rogers was discouraged from acknowledging sadness. This, along with Rogers’ childhood experience of getting bullied for being overweight, made “Fat Freddy,” as he was called, acutely aware that too often, and usually inadvertently, adults silence children instead of showing them how to deal with troubling feelings. 

Rogers believed that variations of the “sticks-and-stones” adages intended to get kids to “shake it off” are stifling; they abandon children to their pain instead of teaching them how to process it. In contrast, Rogers encouraged children to face their dark feelings. Not a trained philosopher, Rogers would likely attribute his education in the emotional landscape of children to the psychologist Dr. Margaret McFarland at the University of Pittsburg, with whom he collaborated for 30 years. And yet there is a foundation for the sort of philosophy of feelings Fred Rogers practiced that can be traced back more than 2,000 years to Ancient Greece. 

In the “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle described our souls as being made up of feelings, predispositions and active conditions. Our predispositions name our go-to emotions, the ones we feel most often in response to certain stimuli. Some people are prone to sadness, others to anger, and the occasional few to genuine cheerfulness. Our feelings, like twigs, catch a spark every time we brush past life’s embers, but only ignite when they get stoked by our predispositions. Two individuals responding differently to the same event — getting fired, for example — Aristotle would attribute to their differing predispositions. 

I am predisposed to anger, which played better in New York where I grew up than in South Texas where I now live, and yet it humanizes me to students. Those who share my predisposition relax their shoulders when I tell them they’re not alone, and they laugh when I say I’m jealous of people who cry easily instead of wanting to punch somebody. 

Feelings and predispositions matter, for Aristotle, but more for the sake of self-knowledge than self-improvement. It’s helpful to know which feelings I am predisposed to as well as what I am feeling at any given moment, but these two categories are much harder to budge than the third. Aristotle described active conditions as “how we bear ourselves” in the face of our feelings. As a believer in right action, Aristotle suggested that we train our souls to react beautifully to an ugly mess. He was implying that we not fret too much over our troublesome feelings or stubborn predispositions. 

Indeed, Aristotle would discourage us from shaming ourselves over feeling sad when we “should” feel happy. He rejected “shoulds” altogether when it came to feelings, since he believed them to be natural and, without accompanying wrong action, harmless. All feelings, for Aristotle, are potentially useful in that they provide an opportunity to practice behaving well. Feelings alone can’t jeopardize virtue, he believed, but actions can and often do. Mister Rogers agreed: “Everyone has lots of ways of feeling. And all of those feelings are fine. It’s what we do with our feelings that matter in this life.” 

Rogers believed that all children (and adults) get sad, mad, lonely, anxious and frustrated — and he used television to model what to do with these difficult and often strong emotions. He wanted to counter the harmful message kids typically receive, some version of the ever-unhelpful you shouldn’t feel that way. 

In one episode, when he couldn’t get a flashlight to work, Mister Rogers expressed frustration in front of the camera: He admitted feeling disappointed at the fact that the trick that he had wanted to show his viewers didn’t work. In doing so, he validated his disappointment and showed his audience that talking about it helps. One of Rogers’ core beliefs was “what’s mentionable is manageable,” and he considered an urgent lesson for kids to learn to name their pain. Rogers believed that if children were encouraged to talk about feelings instead of being shamed for them, they could get to work finding appropriate outlets. One of Rogers’ recurrent lessons was on anger. Inspired by a child who asked him a question about anger, he wrote a song about it: 

What do you do with the mad that you feel 

When you feel so mad you could bite? 

When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong … 

And nothing you do seems very right? 

This song was Rogers’ way of teaching kids how to be angry, instead of how not to be angry. The first step is for the child to recognize their own anger as well as their temptation to bite, hit, kick. The second step the song suggests is to find appropriate outlets for that anger: 

What do you do? Do you punch a bag? 

Do you pound some clay or some dough? 

Do you round up friends for a game of tag? 

Or see how fast you go? 

Playing the piano as a child, Rogers wrote, taught him to express the whole range of his feelings. He recounts banging on the low keys when he got mad, and I imagine him exploring the minor keys when he felt sad. In multiple episodes, Rogers showed viewers how to tell their feelings through the piano. When he had famous musicians like Yo-Yo Ma or Winston Marsalis on the program, Rogers would ask whether they played differently when they were sad or angry. They always reported that yes, they did, and that playing their darker emotions helped. 

“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was purportedly a show for children. But I think Rogers also meant it for adults. We’d be better off if we’d stop negating children’s dark emotions with stifling commands like “don’t cry,” “calm down,” “be quiet.” If we are convinced by Rogers’ and Aristotle’s claim that feelings are not wrong and that “what’s mentionable is manageable,” then we should begin mentioning our own sad, lonely and disappointed feelings. In doing so, we would show children — and our grown-up selves — how to appropriately manage them. 

Can Religion be credible in a secular community

Liber contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem

by
Thomas Aquinas

translated by
John Procter, O.P.
in
AN APOLOGY FOR THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS
London: Sands & Co., 1902

Lo, your enemies have made a noise: and those who hate you have lifted up the head. They have taken malicious counsel against your people, and have consulted against your Saints. They have said: “Come, and let us destroy them, so that they be not a nation; and let the name of Israel be remembered no more” (Ps. lxxxii.).

CHAPTER 2
Can A Religion Lawfully Belong to A College of Secular Teachers?

THOSE who are hostile to religious make a malicious effort to prove that they ought not, in anything pertaining to study, to have dealings with seculars. Their object in thus acting, is to place obstacles in the path of such religious as are employed in teaching, if they cannot entirely hinder them in the exercise of that function. They adduce several authorities in support of their principles. 

1. First they quote the following words of xvii, cap. vii, In nova actione: “Those engaged in the same work, ought not to differ in profession. This was forbidden by the law of Moses, “You shall not plough with an ox and an ass together” (Deut. xxii), which means “You shall not associate in one office men of different professions.” The reason given is, “they whose aims and, desires are dissimilar, cannot unite nor coalesce.” Since then laymen and religious differ in profession, they ought not to be joined in the teaching office. 

2. Again, St. Augustine says, that every man ought to adhere to such a manner of life as befits him. Now it does not appear seemly, that the same man should, belong at one and the same time to a secular and to a religious establishment. For, the members of one institute cannot imitate the usages of the other. Hence a religious, belonging to his own community, should not be a member of a secular college. 

3. Again, a legal statute has ruled that, without a dispensation, the same man shall not belong to two lay associations. Much less then ought a religious, belonging to his own community, to be a member of a secular establishment. 

4. Again, all who belong to any society are bound to obey its rules. Now religious cannot conform to regulations drawn up for lay professors and scholars; nor can they promise to abide by those ordinances which laymen bind themselves to observe; nor to take the oaths which seculars take, for religious are not their own masters, but live under authority. Hence they cannot belong to secular societies. 

5. But, the malicious enemies of religious, in their desire to exclude them from any intercourse with seculars, strive, in default of legitimate arguments, to accomplish their purpose by calumny. They maintain that religious are a source of offence and scandal to the world; and they exhort their fellows to avoid all communion with them. They quote the words of St. Paul (Rom. xvi. 17), “Now I beseech you, brethren, to, mark them who cause dissensions and offences, contrary to the doctrine which you have learned, and to avoid them.” 

6. Religious are accused of living in, idleness. Therefore, according to the words of St. Paul (2 Thes. iii. 6) they ought to be shunned by good men. For, the Apostle says: “We charge you, brethren, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they have received of us.” St. Paul goes on to speak of the manual labour practised by the Apostles. He then continues, “For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us.” He concludes his exhortation by the following command: “If any man obey not our word,” (i.e. our injunction to manual labour), “by this epistle, note that man; and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed.” 

7. Religious are further denounced by their enemies as being the source of all the evils which are to flood the world in the latter days. Hence they must be shunned by all men. For, St. Paul, writing to Timothy, (2 Tim. iii), gives a most emphatic order on this head. “Know,” he says, that in the last days there shall come dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, etc., having an appearance indeed, of goodness (or of religion, as the Gloss says), but denying the power thereof. Now these avoid.” But, as in the same chapter St. Paul says, “Evil men and seducers shall grow worse and worse, erring and driving into error,” 

8. so these defamers of religious, not satisfied with calumny, try to make void the authority of the Apostle, saying that, not even at his bidding, are they bound to admit religious to their society. For, according to civil law, there is no obligation which can compel them to permit religious to associate with them, since society is established on the basis of free will. 

9. Hence the Apostolic authority is limited to ecclesiastical affairs. St. Paul himself said (2 Cor. x. 13), “We will not glory beyond our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God has measured to us.” 

10. Now ecclesiastical affairs include the collation of benefices, the administration of the Sacraments, and the like, but not association in studies. Hence secular students are not, by Apostolic authority, bound to admit, religious to their society. 

11. Again, power is committed to the ministers of the church, not “unto destruction, but unto edification” (2, Cor. xiii. 10). Hence as the enemies of religious consider that they have proofs that union between religious and seculars would be “unto destruction,” they hold, that the authority of the Apostles cannot compel them to form such an union. 

Body. This opinion, however, is censurable, mistaken and ill-founded. It deserves censure inasmuch as it detracts from that unity in the Church which, as St. Paul says (Rom. xii. 5), is based on the fact that “We, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” The Gloss interprets these words as meaning, that “we are members one of another, since we are of service to each other, and are in need of the assistance of one another.” This is true of all men alike; neither the greater, nor the lesser amongst us being excluded. Hence whosoever hinders one man from serving another, as far as he be able, impairs the unity of the Church. Now the work of teaching is one adapted to religious. St. Paul mentions this, saying, “he who teaches in doctrine.” Thereby the apostle means, says the Gloss, “He who has the gift of teaching, should, by his instruction, prove himself a member of another.” Hence it is a violation of ecclesiastical unity to hinder religious either from teaching others or from learning from them. It is likewise an infraction of charity. For, as Aristotle says (Ethics viii. and x.), “friendship is based on intercourse and by it is fostered.” These words are borne out by the saying of Solomon, “A man amiable in society, shall be more friendly than a brother” (Prov. xviii. 24). Anyone, therefore, who hinders intercourse, in scholastic matters between laymen and religious weakens charity and sows the seed of quarrels and dissensions. 

Again, obstacles thrown in the way of such intercourse, will tend to impede the progress made by students. In all social matters, the companionship of others is of great advantage. “A brother that is helped by his brother is like a strong city” says Solomon (Prov. xviii. 19). “It is better, therefore, that two should be together than one: for they have the advantage of their society” (Eccles. iv. 9). But in acquiring knowledge, that society is especially of use; for among many students some will know or understand that, of which others are ignorant. Hence Aristotle (I Caeli et Mundi) says “that the ancient philosophers, at divers meetings, investigated the truth concerning the heavenly bodies.” The exclusion then any class of men from the society of other students is a manifest injury to the studies of all. This applies, especially, to the exclusion of religious, who are peculiarly well adapted to make progress in learning, since, by their state of life, they are not distracted by worldly anxieties. “He who is less in action, shall receive wisdom” (Eccles. xxxviii. 25). 

By excluding religious from studying in common with laymen, an injury is committed against the community of faith, which is called Catholic because it ought to be one. Those who do not associate with each other by agreeing on religious matters, may easily end by teaching different, and even contradictory doctrines. St Paul says of himself (Gal. ii, 1), “Then, after fourteen years, I went up I again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me. And I went up according to revelation, and communicated with them the Gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but apart to them who seemed to be something: lest perhaps I should run, or had run, in vain.” We learn from the Decretals (distinct. XV. cap. canones), that Councils began to be convoked in the time of Constantine. Before that period, there was, on account of frequent and violent persecutions, very little facility for the instruction of the faithful; and, as bishops had no opportunity for meeting to debate together, the Christian religion was torn by many heresies. This fact proves, that there is great danger of schism in matters of doctrine, when the preachers of the faith are not able to assemble for purposes of discussion. Hence any attempt to exclude religious from intercourse with other teachers and students is highly to be condemned. 

The reason given for such an exclusion, is likewise ill-founded, being opposed to Apostolic doctrine which cannot err. St, Peter (1 Pet. iv. 10), writes in these terms: “As every man has received grace, minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” The Gloss thus comments on this passage: “The Apostle signifies by the word “grace” any gift of the Holy Spirit which may be used for the assistance of others, in things either temporal or spiritual. He exemplifies his meaning by the words which follow. “If any man speak, let him speak as the words of God.” The Gloss adds, “If any man knows how to speak, let him attribute his knowledge not to himself, but to God.” Let him stand in fear, lest he teach anything contrary to the will of God, the authority of Scripture, or the good of his brethren; or, lest he be silent, when he ought to speak.” Hence the assertion that Religious and laymen ought not mutually to communicate their gift of knowledge is patently, opposed to the teaching of the Apostles. 

Again, we read in Ecclesiast. xxxiii. 18, “See that I have not laboured for myself only, but for all that seek discipline.” These words, as the Gloss observes, apply to the teachers of the Church, who, by their writings and instruction, profit not themselves alone, but others also. The wise man, in the text that we have quoted, says, that he has laboured for all men, without exception. Therefore, both religious and secular teachers, ought, by their teaching, to labour for the benefit of all their brethren, whether laymen or religious. 

As the body is composed of several members, so in the Church there exist divers offices. This comparison we find in the first Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (xii.). Now as in the physical body there are eyes, so in the mystical body of the Church there are teachers. Hence the Gloss understands the text in the Gospel of St. Matthew (xviii. 9): “If your eye scandalises you” etc., to refer to ecclesiastical doctors and counsellors. Physical eyesight is useful to the whole body alike, and one limb subserves another in its functions. For, as St. Paul says (1 Cor. xii. 21), “the eye cannot say to the hand: I need not your help; nor again the head to the feet: I have no need of you.” Therefore, everyone who undertakes the office of teaching must perform it for the benefit of all men, of whatsoever condition they may be. Thus religious must assist laymen; and laymen must help religious. 

Again, any person who is competent to perform some special function has a right to be admitted to the society of those who are selected for the exercise of that function. For, an association means the union of men, gathered together for the accomplishment of some specific work. Thus, all soldiers have a right to associate with one another in the same army; for an army is nothing but a society of men, banded together for the purpose of fighting. Hence religious of a military order do not exclude from their society secular soldiers, and vice versa. Now an association of study is a society established with the object of teaching and of learning; and as not only laymen, but also religious, have a right to teach and to learn, there can be no doubt that both these classes may lawfully unite in one society. 

The objection made to intercourse between seculars and religious, on matters bearing on study and teaching, are altogether frivolous. They are based on wholly untenable grounds; and they only serve to show the ignorance of their authors. For, as we have already said, a society means a union of men, assembled together for one and the same purpose. Hence as everything ought to be judged with regard to the end for which it is ordained, the different societies which exist ought to be distinguished and judged according to the purpose for which they are formed. Aristotle, (VIII Ethics) classifies different “communications”. By this term he means associations formed for divers objects, wherein the members hold communication one with the other. The Philosopher distinguishes friendships according to these communications. He refers to the friendship of those brought up together, or that based on commercial transactions, or the friendship of men engaged in the same business, Hence arises the distinction between public and private societies. A public society is that wherein men assemble for purposes connected with the commonweal. Thus fellow citizens or compatriots form a public society and become one city or one kingdom. A private society is one established by a few persons for some private end. Thus two or three enter into partnership in a mercantile negotiation. Now each of these classes of society may be either temporary or perpetual. Sometimes a number of men, or only two or three individuals, band together in a perpetual society. This, is the case with those, who, when they become citizens of some city, form an association, choosing that city for their dwelling-place for ever. They thus establish a political society. Again, there may be a perpetual private society, formed between husband and wife, or master and slave, based upon the durable nature of the tie binding together the members of such a society. This is called an economical society. But, when men associate in order to engage in some temporary business, as, for example, to hold a fair, they form a temporary and public society. Or, when two friends are engaged in the management of the same inn, the society which they establish is private, and at at the same time temporary. 

Now these various classes of association, must be judged by different standards. To apply the name of association or society indiscriminately to all is to prove one’s own ignorance. 

For this, reason, we shall have no difficulty in answering the objections brought at the association of seculars and religious. 

Ad 1. We are told, first of all, that “men of different professions ought not to be associated in the same offices.” Then words are quoted, “you shall not join together men of different professions.” This objection is perfectly true if it be understood to mean that men of different professions should not be associated in matters upon which they differ. Hence laymen and clerics should not be associated in ecclesiastical matters. Therefore the following words are found before the words just quoted: “A bishop ought not to have a lay vicar; and the clergy ought not to be judged in lay courts of justice.” For the same reason, religious cannot associate with laymen in commercial and mercantile transactions, in which religious are forbidden to take part. “No man being a soldier of God entangles himself with secular businesses” (2 Tim. ii. 4). But, as we have seen, the exercise of teaching and of learning concerns both seculars and religious. Hence there is no reason against religious being associated with laymen in scholastic, affairs. For, men of different conditions, who, agree in unity of faith, form the body of the Church. “There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. iii. 28). 

Ad 2. It is objected that, although in an association of laymen and religious there are some points common, to both classes there are likewise some on which they differ. Thus, there may be a purely secular society, formed of members whose interests are limited to secular affairs. Or, there may be an exclusively religious institute, of which the system is directed towards the formation of the religious life. There is, however, one, point which is common both to laymen sad to religious. For, religious and seculars have this in common, viz., that. they belong to the society of the one Church of Christ, by that agreement in one faith whereby the unity of the Church is made perfect. Hence as teaching and learning are functions pertaining alike to seculars and religious, an association of study ought not to be known as exclusively either a lay or a religious college; but, rather, as a college including both seculars and religious. 

Ad 3. The objection that no one can belong to two associations is, for three reasons, untenable. First, because a part cannot be numerically accounted as opposed to the whole. A private society is part of a public society, as a house is part of a city. The fact that a man forms part of a family causes him to form part of a city, which is composed of many families. Nevertheless, he does not, on this account, belong to two distinct associations. Now as an association of studies is a public association, a man who forms part of a private society (be it secular or religious), wherein a few students meet together for the purposes of study, belongs on this very account to a general scholastic association. But he does not, for this reason, belong to two associations. Again, there is no law to prohibit a man from belonging to some public, perpetual association, and at the same time from forming part of a public or private temporary society. Thus, a man who belongs to some civic society may likewise form part of a military association; and the member of a family, may be associated with others in an inn. Now an institute of studies is a temporary, not a perpetual, association. For men attend it, not as a permanent residence, but they go and come at their own convenience. Hence there is no reason why a man belonging to a perpetual society, such as a religious, order, should not also attend a scholastic establishment. The third reason which stultifies the objection to the admission of religious to secular colleges is that this objection applies the particular to the general. The assertion, that a man cannot, belong to two associations was originally formulated about ecclesiastical societies. Thus, a man cannot be a canon in two churches, without a dispensation or a legitimate reason. We read (XXI quaest. I), “From this date, no cleric shall be attached to two churches.” But this rule does not apply to other associations. For, the same man can be a citizen of two cities. Therefore, as a scholastic association is not an ecclesiastical society, there is no reason why a man belonging to a religious or secular association, should not also be a member of a scholastic society. 

Ad 4. The fourth reason given for the exclusion of religious from association with secular students is that religious cannot either teach or study without the authorisation and permission of their superiors, who have the power to absolve their subjects from their oaths and other engagements in order to enable them to belong to such an association. Now we must remember that, as the perfection of a whole consists in the union of its parts, a whole cannot exist unless its parts agree. Hence any decrees drawn up for the welfare of a state and city ought to be formulated with a view to the advantage of all its members. Any statutes which would hinder the unity of a commonwealth ought to be abolished. For laws are established in order to preserve the concord of a state and not to promote internal dissension. In the same way, there ought not to exist in any scholastic association statutes which do not suit all students alike. 

Ad 5. The words of the Apostle, (Rom. xvi. 17), “Now I beseech you, brethren,” etc., quoted by our opponents in support of their objections, are no argument on their side. First because the words of St. Paul do not apply to religious, but to heretics, and to schismatics. This is clearly shown in the text, wherein St. Paul warns the Romans to avoid such as cause dissensions “contrary to the doctrine which they had learned,” learned that is, as the Gloss explains, “from the true Apostles.” Those against whom St. Paul gave this warning, were men who strove to impose the Jewish law upon the Gentiles. 

Ad 6. Again the words (2 Thes. iii. 6), “We charge you, brethren,” etc., were not uttered against religious, but against men who passed their time in idleness and misdeeds. Of these St. Paul says, “we have heard there are some among you who walk disorderly, working not at all, but curiously meddling,” or as, the Gloss says, “providing for their necessities by iniquitous means.” 

Ad 7. Again the words (2 Tim. iii. 1), “Know also this,” etc., were written not to religious, but to heretics, “blasphemers” as St. Paul calls them, “who by their heresy blaspheme God” (Gloss). “As Jannes and Manbres resisted Moses so these also (i.e. heretics) resist the truth,” continues the Apostle, “ men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith.” It is true that he says, that the heretics of whom he speaks, had an appearance indeed of godliness,” i.e., of religion; but religion in this passage signifies latria, which makes a profession of faith. In this sense, it is, as St. Augustine says, (X De civitate Dei), equivalent to piety. But even granted that all or some religious were as infamous as certain men consider them to be, that would be ho reason for excluding them from intercourse with others. The Gloss, referring to the passage of St. Paul (1 Cor. v.,), concerning the man guilty of. incest, wherein he bids the Corinthians not so much as to eat with such an one, observes that, “the Apostle’s words, ‘if anyone that is named a brother,’ show that men are not to condemn each other rashly and carelessly, but that it is only after judgment has been pronounced that any sinner is to be excluded from communion with the Church. If such a sinner cannot be judicially excommunicated, he must be tolerated.” We have no right to exclude any man from the society of his fellows, unless he be, by his own confession, found guilty of some crime, or be denounced and convicted by some secular or ecclesiastical tribunal. Hence a man may not be condemned on suspicion, or by someone usurping the office of judge. He must be tried, accused and convicted according to the law of God, interpreted by the Church. Hence even were religious as reprobate as they are said to be, they ought not to be excluded from intercourse with the laity, unless they have been brought to judgment, and have been condemned. 

Ad 8. The attempt to derogate from the authority of the Apostles, is not only based on false premises, but is closely akin to heresy. For we find in the Decretals (dist. XXII. cap. Omnes) the following passage: “Whoever endeavours to wrest from the Roman Church the privilege bequeathed to her by the supreme head of all the churches is undoubtedly guilty of heresy.” And again, “ He acts contrary to faith, who acts against her who is the Mother of the Faith.” Now Christ granted to the Roman Church the privilege of being obeyed by all, as He Himself is obeyed, in order, as says St. Cyril, bishop of Alexandria (II Thesaurorum), “that we may continue to be members under our Head, the Roman Pontiff, seated on the throne of the Apostles. From him must we learn what we are to believe and uphold. We are bound to revere him, and to entreat him for all things. To him alone does it belong to rebuke and to correct and to unloose, in the place of Him who has established him. To none other has this power been given, but to him alone, before whom all men do, by the divine command, abase their heads, and who is, by all the princes of the world, obeyed as if he were our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.” Hence it is clear that anyone who maintains that the Pope need not be obeyed is a heretic. 

Ad 9. The objection that, according to law, no one can be forced to join an association against his will, applies only to a private society, established by two or three members. But a man can be compelled to form part of a public association, which cannot exist without the consent of authority. Thus, a prince may force the inhabitants of a certain city to accept an individual as their fellow-citizen; and an ecclesiastical society can be compelled to accept a man as a canon, or a brother. Hence as any general scholastic association is, in a certain sense, a society, any man may be obliged, by the authority of a superior, to belong to it. 

Ad 10. The assertion that the Apostolic authority is limited to ecclesiastical affairs, is false. The president of a republic is bound to provide food for those over whom he rules, and to undertake the proper education and training of the young (X Ethic). He is likewise obliged to supervise the legislation of his republic, and to establish rules for the well-being of the citizens (I Ethic). Thus we see that the legislation concerning education is one of the duties of the president of a republic. It must, therefore, come under the authority of the Apostolic See, by which the whole Church is governed. 

Ad 11. The last objection is founded on an absolute falsehood. The association of religious with the laity in matters concerning education is not intended for the destruction, but rather for the advancement, of learning. Hence there can be no possible doubt that, by the authority of the Apostolic See, seculars may be compelled to admit religious into their scholastic societies.