Of all the things that inspired Dr. James Patrick, perhaps nothing was more central than the love of learning which led him through the course of a long life to a profound understanding of human existence as ordered to God.  He saw so clearly and embodied this insight so completely in his own person: that being human is to be embarked on a metaphysical quest “to know and love God, to serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him in the world to come.”  It is a quest that begins with identifying those things that are the most important to know and of pursuing wisdom with steadfastness, diligence, and perseverance. 

As we know, it’s not an easy task; it involves the complex challenge of arriving at an appreciation of the genuine principles, insights, and facts necessary for a genuinely human life.  It involves delving into the study of theology, philosophy, and history, taking inspiration from the imaginative visions of the poets, and considering the factual claims, counter-claims, and implications of experience put forth by politics and economics, biology, chemistry, physics, and astrophysics.  And it entails identifying a comprehensive world-view of consistent and mutually implied great and small truths locating man in the vast metaphysical cosmos of reality.

To think about these things is to think about the subjects of the liberal arts, the studies which examine why things are as they are, as Aristotle explains, “…why the fire is hot, not simply that the fire is hot.”  These are the studies undertaken just for the sake of knowing the answer, knowledge, that is, which is sought for its own sake.  These studies are different from those seek knowledge for some practical purpose or need like how to build roads or bridges or how to mow the yard.  They are the sciences or organized fields of study which aim at the discovery of wisdom, the best and most profound knowledge possible.  Seeking this kind of knowledge is the highest purpose of the university.  The sciences which seek this knowledge are called the liberal arts because they are freely undertaken by free men and women who search for truth unencumbered by concerns for utility or necessity or by being governed by ideology. 

This is not to say that liberal learning is impractical or not really beneficial.  Quite the contrary, liberal studies illuminate the most important meanings in life and orient the person to what is good and significant in human existence.  They teach us how to excel in the task of personhood and of rising to the challenges of becoming the most excellent persons we may be.  Achieving this level of self knowledge and an understanding of one’s purpose in life is an invaluable asset for living life well amidst struggle, hardship, and tribulations.   Liberal studies sharpen our abilities in discernment, logical analysis, and the ability to discern the important from the unimportant.

Dr. Patrick discovered liberal learning in his undergraduate days at Auburn and later at the University of the South at Sewanee.  He came to see that universities are depositories of the greatest insights discovered or revealed to humankind, places where the great ideas are preserved in the writings, manuscripts, letters, lectures, and remarkable historical documents which we call the great books.  These works situate us in the great drama of human history, they tell us who we are, how we got here, what we are about, and what our duties are to ourselves and others.  He reveled in the ideas proposed by the great thinkers, wanting (as we all should) to appropriate the best and allow their meanings to find a home in his own life and outlook.  He saw that the spirit of learning is transformative for the human soul endowing it with images and insights which dispel concern, anxiety, and the fear which comes from ignorance.  Those of us who knew him well remember how he exemplified this truth– becoming through study, thought, and tireless energy–the magnanimous or great-souled person that he was.

Liberal studies are described as liberal or “free” studies in several senses.  Again, they are free in the sense that they are not bound by a need to produce a product or by a commitment to respect a certain ideology.  They are free in this sense to consider whichever subjects or issues they choose to pursue.  This is the reason that medieval disputations distinguished between debates that were addressed to a certain issue (and constrained to stay on point) and those which were “quoadlibet” or free to pursue any issue of interest “as they may wish.”  Liberal studies are also described as those pursued by free men and women especially those of the citizen class of free societies who determine their own interests and pursuits, the “self-commanding” men and women described by Pericles. 

Liberal studies are also free in the sense that they free the person to reach conclusions on according to his or her best judgment.  They invite the person to “reason things out,” to exercise discernment, and to judge things according to the available evidence.  Liberal studies challenge us to think for ourselves, see for ourselves, and defend our conclusions through discussion and debate.   Liberal studies in this way open our minds, engender creativity and inspiration, and allow us to imagine progress and a better world.

This was certainly Dr. Patrick’s experience. We remember fondly how we respected his unapologetic embrace of the truths he saw, and his determined, unbending commitment to the principles he identified.  He committed himself to the life of learning wholeheartedly because he saw that the excellence of the human person lies in the recognition of truth and the will to follow it without compromise.

At Sewanee and through his doctoral studies at Trinity College Toronto, he gained an appreciation of university learning inspired by the British tradition of arts and letters from the founding of Oxford in the late 1200’s to Newman and the Tractarian movement in the nineteenth century to the splendid thinking of Chesterton, Belloc, Lewis, and Tolkien among many others in the twentieth.  In his work The Magdalen Metaphysicals he described the climate of ideas in Oxford in the early years of the 1900’s which pitted men like F. H. Bradley and R. G. Collingwood, who accepted to some extent Hegel’s emphasis on spirit, against the emerging empiricists and analytical thinkers like A. J. Ayer, G. E. Moore, and Bertram Russell on the other.  In these men he saw and developed a deep respect and admiration for the way they lived resolutely in the light of the truths they saw.

Following his experience of the Oxford tradition of learning, his study of the religion based curricula of the earliest American universities, his appreciation for Newman’s The Idea of a University, and his own experience at the University of Dallas, Dr. Patrick developed a keen sense of what the intellectual life of a true university entails. Here are the essential elements which he taught us concerning learning in the liberal arts tradition, the spirit of the true university:

The university is about discovering what is true. Its razon d’etre is the search for truth and while many additional benefits flow from this search, the university cannot deviate from this mission without losing its essential character.  It is a place where scholars and students come together to discuss, dialogue, reflect, criticize, and critique the great ideas of the best thinkers as expressed in their great books, taking these texts as the starting point for myriad on-going conversations and reflections.  This process has the essential form of a conversation between teachers and students wherein learning happens when points of view are exchanged, compared, diagnosed, and evaluated.  The works which constitute the curriculum are chosen from a larger canon of insightful texts which embody the values, insights, and truths which most convey the enduring and abiding meanings about man, God, and the cosmic order.  The canon of texts forming the curriculum represents a judgment of the collegium of scholars that the works convey these abiding meanings or eternal truths –and not on the basis of gender, race, or the ethnicity of the authors.  The curriculum presupposes that a student has a sufficient background to be able to participate in the work of the institution especially with regard to a formation in classical languages and literatures, but a student can qualify for admission to studies largely by demonstrating a genuine desire to engage the ideas concerned.

The goal of the curriculum is to offer students the opportunity to engage the great ideas conveyed by the great books in such a way that they can profit as much as each is able to do so.  The curriculum is a course along which each student journeys, engaging the great minds and the great ideas, reflecting upon them, and seeing the implications for his or her personal understanding.   Dr. Patrick explained this by saying that the curriculum allows each student “to take away as much as possible.”  Every student is an individual; but the curriculum attests to the universal principles about human nature which transforms each of us according to our individuality.

Newman’s The Idea of a University, published as a mission statement for the proposed Catholic University of Ireland in the year 1854, articulated the important elements of learning which largely formed his vision.   First, one must turn to learning for the discovery of truth and possess the intention to submit to what one learns.  One must possess a reverence for truth and the humility to accept its conclusions even when these conclusions are inconvenient or uncomfortable.  Moreover, one must not pursue ideas for the sake of power or prestige, but rather in the spirit of recognizing that knowledge is a good in itself.  (On this point, Dr. Patrick endlessly objected to Bacon’s assertion that the seeking of knowledge is important because it gives us power over nature.  Similarly, we see unhappily how university professors too often develop theories, write, and profess not to illuminate but to use their positions for political advantage or popular esteem.) 

Learning challenges the student to endeavor to discover, articulate, and advance statements which accurately describe reality.  Because truth is the property of a statement which is “adequate to reality” as the Scholastics explained or which “corresponds” to reality, university learning is about identifying those ideas which actually describe reality itself. 

As logic teaches, we express ideas through statements or judgments which are also called propositions or assertions.   They are logical or ideal entities (as we learned in grammar) consisting of a subject and a predicate.  The subject term is what the statement is about, the predicate term is a description or characteristic which is either affirmed or denied of the subject.   Logically, every statement proposes or asserts an objective relation between the subject and predicate terms.  Statements are true when what they propose is actually the case in reality. 

Understanding this we see that inquiry and scholarly investigation is about determining which statements “tell it like it is” about the myriad realities we think about—the elements of the cosmos, plants, animals, principles, laws, poems, historical events, human beings, political movements, good and evil, the soul, God, angels, or anything else in the great universe of being.  We seek to know, in other words, “the natures of things.”

Seeing this as the purpose of university learning, Newman appreciated the difficulties of arriving at truth about the many complex issues and realities we experience.  Especially, the challenge is to marshal evidence in support of the most accurate insights which led him to insist that university brings together students and professors conversant with the best thinking of the different disciplines to propose, examine, debate, and conclude on the best conclusions.  He saw that the evidence supporting the truth of propositions comes in different forms; some is found in the testimony of history and theology, some is found in the empirical evidence of the natural sciences, some is found through imagination in poetry and literature, and some is found in the clear evidence of natural reason.  In its most splendid expression, the university assembles its scholars to address the great questions to debate and refine the best conclusions possible.

This, too, was Dr. Patrick’s vision which was realized in the College of Saint Thomas More where students were welcomed to join the academic fellowship to contribute to this task. The work of the College involved reading the great books wherein arguments are made in support of the great ideas (statements, judgments, or propositions) about the natures of things, ideas that are the most transformative, ideas that live in our souls and imaginations, ideas which guide us towards becoming the best persons we can be.  As Dr. Patrick often commented, the purpose of the College was to be a place which kept these ideas alive.

 

 

 

Quotes from Newman

From Historical Sketches

1. “If I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could, what a University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of a Studium Generale, or “School of Universal Learning”….Accordingly, in its simple and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter.  Many things are requisite to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this description; but such as this a University seems to be in its essence, a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country.”

 

2. “It is the place to which a thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonistic activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth…It is a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge…         It is the place where the professor become eloquent, and is a missionary and a preacher, displaying his science in its most complete and most winning form, pouring it forthwith the zeal of enthusiasm, and lighting up his own love of it in the breasts of his hearers.”

 

From The Idea of a University

1. “That alone is liberal knowledge, which stands on its own pretensions, which is independent of sequel, expects no complement, refused to be informed (as it is called) by any end, or absorbed into any art, in order duly to present itself to our contemplation. The most ordinary pursuits have this specific character, it they are self-sufficient and complete:  the highest lose it, when they minister to something beyond them.”

 

2. “The principle of real dignity in Knowledge, its worth, its durableness, considered irrespectively of its results, is this germ within it of a scientific or a philosophical process.”

 

3. “Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such is its own reward.  And if this is true of all knowledge, it is true also of that special Philosophy, which I have made to consist in a comprehensive view of truth in all its branches, of the relations of science to science, of their mutual bearings, and their respective values.”

 

4. “I say, a University, taken in its bare idea, and before we view as an instrument of the Church, has this object and this mission: it contemplates neither moral impression nor mechanical production; it professors to exercise the mind neither in art nor in duty; its function is intellectual culture; here it may leave its scholars, and it has done its work when it has done as much as this.  It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.”

This famous question by Tertullian has long been understood to raise the issue of the relation between faith and reason.  It points to the issue of how the conclusions of philosophy, based upon mankind’s natural reasoning ability, should be considered in relation to the wisdom and insights revealed by Christ, insights and truths based on His divine authority which constitute the foundations of theology, faith, and Christian belief.

Tertullian, who lived from 155 to 220 a.d., is remembered as the “Father of Latin Christianity” and for his polemical writings against heresy during the early years of the Christian faith.  His rhetorical question was meant to challenge the tradition of Greek philosophy centered in classical Athens by suggesting that it could contribute little to the fullness of ultimate truth—about God, man, and the world—revealed by Christ and coming from the Judeo-Christian tradition of Jerusalem.  Heresy arises from those who judge their own thoughts and conclusions to be more trustworthy than the teaching of Christ, which as Scripture explains, confounds the presumption of the arrogant and “vain philosophy.”  Tertullian wrote extensively against the heretical tendencies of the time.

Being well-versed in the theological and philosophical traditions of the Church, Dr. Patrick addressed the issue by first rejecting the so-called “two truth” position, advanced notably by the Arabic philosopher Averroes, that opposed truths could both be true despite simultaneously asserting contradictory positions. This position is echoed today when some contend that “my truth” is different from “your truth.” Historically it was asserted when Copernicus advanced the helio-centric view of the solar system, some contending that scientifically the earth moves around the sun, but scripturally the heavens revolve around the earth.

Recalling Christ’s words that “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” believers rightly understand that all true statements are consistent with one another and that whatever is true is one field of study or according to one discipline of learning must be true universally.  This was Tertullian’s position that the “wisdom” of Greek philosophy could not be accepted and contributed little if it was in conflict with the manifest truth of revelation. His insight was absolutely correct that all knowledge is consistent with what is divinely revealed.  But in attacking the inaccuracies of mistaken views from the Greek philosophic tradition, he leaves the impression that all knowledge gained through natural reason is useless and unreliable.  He seems to assert that because the sublime truths of revelation constitute the pinnacle of what is important to know, all other knowledge is unimportant.

On the other hand, as Augustine saw, many insights of Greek philosophy were genuinely consistent with faith.  He showed that while many erred, others demonstrated the excellence of God’s gift of reason to mankind and how this give could arrive at great understanding through the principles of correct reasoning.  Augustine, for example, pointed to the ethical insights of Socrates and Plato regarding justice and the soul’s yearning for God and immortality.  He showed the inadequacy of skepticism and asserted that humans can indeed arrive at truth despite being oftentimes in error.  He disputed the Manichean world-view regarding the origin of evil, and he affirmed the reality of free will.   

One way to understand the development of thought after the coming of Christ is to understand that scholars sought to evaluate the truths of the new theology as compared with the established insights of the Greek tradition.  Christian thinkers undertook this task, but so, too, did Jewish and Islamic thinkers who asked about how their religious traditions should be understood in the light of natural reason. Early Islamic commentators raised the question of whether the teachings of the Koran were also validated by human reason, suggesting that the principles of natural justice as found in law and politics—principles that were commonly understood as the rational foundations of commerce, for example, — were codified in the Koran.  Similarly, they asked about issues regarding the relations between peoples, the obligations of rulers to those ruled, and ultimate questions about the origin of the world itself, showing that these could be illuminated by reason in addition to the teaching of the Koran. Some went so far as to suggest that reason should be used to exegete difficult passages in the Koran where competing interpretations had developed. Reason could help determine whether the meaning of a passage, for example, should be understood literally or allegorically.  In some parts of the Islamic world, a rationalistic understanding of Muslim spirituality emerged, but in others we find a violent and powerful rejection against any role for reason in understanding the Islamic faith.  While some, like Averroes, argued that faith and reason should be employed to gain a full understanding of Islamic thought, staunch religious leaders argued that since the Koran came directly from Allah via the archangel Gabriel it was perfect in every respect, contained all the principles of interpretation, and that it was human folly to think otherwise. The view developed that using reason to understand the Koran was counterproductive and that only trained religious scholars could comment on its proper meaning.

In Christian circles, the Platonic tradition was predominant in Augustine, Boethius, and Eriugena until late in the first millennium when discoveries of long-forgotten manuscripts in Greek monasteries and translations from Arabic sources in the Iberian peninsula began to expand knowledge of Aristotle’s thought for the Latin Christian west. Newly available Aristotelian works on metaphysics, politics, ethics, rhetoric, the cosmos, and the soul demonstrated a wealth of philosophic understanding that had not been available to Tertullian and the early Church fathers. With great insight and erudition, Thomas Aquinas undertook the task of evaluating how and whether Aristotle’s conclusions –based on reason alone without the advantage of revelation—were consistent with Christian thought. Aquinas’ master work the Summa Theologiae is heralded as the great synthesis of classical and Christian thought showing that the truths of faith and the truths of natural reason are never opposed and that while arrived at differently are complementary and mutually supportive.

For example, the Biblical account of the origin of the cosmos teaches that the eternal God created the world bringing it to be out of love and a benevolent intention.  This truth conveyed by scriptural tradition shows that the world had a beginning in time and that it came to be by a creative act.  In a similar way, Aristotle had maintained that by understanding how the things of the physical universal are contingent beings–things that do not have to exist, but which in fact do exist—their reality and actual existence can only be possible because they are brought into being by a necessarily existing being.  Hence he argued that reason teaches that there must exist a first cause or prime mover which alone can explain the factual existence of material universe, ourselves, and all therein.  In this way, what the believer accepts on the basis of faith in the testimony of scripture is also confirmed through reasoning powers of the human intellect.

In his work the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas undertakes to show how natural reason supports the truths of the Christian faith, pointing out that arguments based on faith in the authority of Christ are rejected by believers from other faiths who do not accept the testimony of the scriptures.  He goes on to show that natural reason is a great ally of the faith showing that its conclusions and insights are not irrational or nonsensical.  Rather they support faith positions concerning the existence of God, the importance of virtue, and the elements of a happy life—not only because they are based on the teachings of Christ, but also because they are based on the intellectually luminous insights of logical thinking.  From this, we reach the great insight of the Scholastic tradition that faith and reason are compatible and never in opposition.  The believer can be re-assured that the articles of faith are never irrational or absurd, that they make sense, and that if the Church counsels them as worthy of belief, we can be confident that they affirmed both by the testimony of tradition and by right reason.

So to Tertullian’s question: What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? We see that the answer is everything.  Philosophical reasoning supports and deepens our understanding of the true faith.  It clarifies the errors and misconceptions of those attacking Christian tradition and demonstrates that we enjoy an enlightened understanding of our place in the universe. True philosophy undermines the erroneous contentions of materialism and the mistaken claims of evolutionary theories which posit the impossible development of life from the un-living or the personal from the impersonal. Similarly, it demonstrates that certain knowledge can be achieved not only in mathematics and logic but also with regard to ethics and metaphysics, 

These considerations led John-Paul II to remind the world of the importance of philosophy in his encyclical Fides et Ratio where he argues that faith and reason are like the two wings of a dove allowing it to take flight. Just as faith prevents philosophy from becoming self consumed (as Tertullian pointed out about some ancient traditions), so too does philosophy keep faith from devolving into superstition and fideism (the contention that faith alone teaches what is true). Regrettably, John-Paul wrote, the world has become overcome with self-absorption and relativistic theories which distort and undermine the inspiring truths of the faith. What is needed, he explains, is a renewed respect for philosophy as an autonomous science and an understanding of the genuine truths of metaphysics. 

In Remembrance of Dr. James Patrick

Remembered thoughts and ideas…

1. Ideas have consequences
2. Saving Western Civilization
3. Reality has a form.
4. We must always respect the forms of things.
5. Renewal of the Common Tradition
6. They argue “Everything is itself and everything else” or simply “Everything is everything else.”
7. Sex and violence are the best things on TV.
8. Nepotism is the second highest principle.
9. One should always remember that …
10. Row!
11. A father who beats you is preferable to one who is absent.

Quotes from Richard Weavers Ideas have Consequences for discussion

1. “This is another book about the dissolution of the West.”
2. Two themes “It is here the assumption that the world is intelligible and that man is free and that those consequences we are now expiating are the product not of biological or other necessity but of unintelligent choice.” And Weaver’s “belief that man should not follow a scientific analysis with a plea of moral impotence.”
3. The process is complicated by the “Whig theory of history, with its belief that the most advanced point in time represents the point of highest development, aided no doubt by theories of evolution.”
4. “It is the appalling problem, when one comes to actual cases, of getting men to distinguish between better and worse. Are people today provided with a sufficiently rational scale of values to attach these predicates with intelligence?”
5. “There is ground for declaring that modern man has become a moral idiot. So few are those who care to examine their lives, or to accept the rebuke which comes of admitting that our present state may be a fallen state, that one questions whether people now understand what is meant by the superiority of an ideal.”
6. “Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals.”
7. Ideas have consequences. For Weaver the dire state of modernity began with the advent of nominalism. “It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existence. His triumph tended to leave universal terms mere names serving our convenience. The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of man; and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of humankind. The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change in the affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modern empiricism.”
8. Nominalism gave rise to empiricism and “fact” denying that there are forms in things, essential natures, and valid distinctions—between good and evil, natural and supernatural, man and nature—resulting in the ‘…abandonment of the doctrine of original sin. If physical nature is the totality and if man is of nature, it is impossible to think of him as suffering from constitutional evil; his defections must now be attributed to his simple ignorance or to some kind of social deprivation. One comes thus by clear deduction to the corollary of the natural goodness of man.”
9. The result was the view that “…it was proper that [man] should regard as his highest intellectual vocation methods of interpreting data supplied by the senses… Thus it is not the mysterious fact of the world’s existence which interests the new man but explanations of how the world works. This is the rational basis for modern science, whose systemization of phenomena is, as Bacon declared in the New Atlantis, a means to dominion.”
10. Ideas have Consequences “Materialism loomed next on the horizon… With the human being thus firmly ensconced in nature, it at once became necessary to question the fundamental character of his motivation. Biological necessity, issuing in the survival of the fittest, was offered as the causa causans, after the important question of human origin had been decided in favor of scientific materialism.”
11. Next came economic determinism. “The social philosophers of the nineteenth century found in Darwin powerful support for their thesis that human beings act always out of economic incentives, and it was they who completed the abolishment of freedom of the will. The great pageant of history thus became reducible to the economic endeavors of individuals and classes; and elaborate prognoses were constructed on the theory of economic conflict and resolution. Man created in the divine image, the protagonist of a great drama in which his soul was at stake, was replaced by man the wealth-seeking and-consuming animal.”
12. “Finally came psychological behaviorism, which denied not only freedom of the will but even such elementary means of direction as instinct.”
13. “[Man] is in the deep and dark abyss, and he has nothing with which to raise himself. His life is practice without theory. As problems crowd upon him, he deepens confusion by meeting them with ad hoc policies. Secretly he hungers for truth…”
14. “This story is eloquently reflected in changes that have come over education. The shift from the truth of the intellect to the facts of experience followed hard upon the meeting with the witches… Logic became grammaticized, passing from a science which taught men [to speak truly] ui to one which taught to speak correctly] or from an ontological division by categories to a study of signification, with the inevitable focus upon historical meanings. Here begins the assault upon definition: if words no longer correspond to objective realities, it seems no great wrong to take liberties with words.”
15. Thus “modern man has about squandered his estate.”
16. And “…in the face of the enormous brutality of our age we seem unable to make appropriate response to perversions of truth and acts of bestiality.”
17. Hope “Hope of restoration depends upon recovery of the “ceremony of innocence,” of that clearness of vision and knowledge of form which enable us to sense what is alien or destructive, what does not comport with our moral ambition.”
18. But “We must consider that we are in effect asking for a confession of guilt and an acceptance of sterner obligation; we are making demands in the name of the ideal or the suprapersonal, and we cannot expect a more cordial welcome than disturbers of complacency have received in any other age,”
19. “I shall adhere to the classic proposition that there is no knowledge at the level of sensation, that therefore knowledge is of universals, and that whatever we know as a truth enables us to predict.”
20. “In the final reach of analysis our problem is how to recover that intellectual integrity which enables men to perceive the order of goods.”

Recovering the Metaphysical ideal …

21. In the Chapter entitled “The Last Metaphysical Right,” Weaver begins by explaining that “The remaining chapters therefore present means of restoration” and “I have endeavored to make plain in every way that I regard all the evils in our now extensive catalogue as flowing from a falsified picture of the world which, for our immediate concern, results in an inability to interpret current happenings.”
22. But he warns “nothing substantial can be done until we have brought sinners to repentance,,, Once man has regained sufficient humility to confess that ideals have been dishonored and that his condition is a reproach, one obstruction has been removed.”
23. What is necessary is “…the underpinning of metaphysic.”
24. For Weaver the principle conclusions of metaphysics have been vanquished—all that is, except the principle of private property which he sees as the “the last metaphysical right remaining to us, The ordinances of religion, the prerogatives of sex and of vocation, all have been swept away by materialism, but the relationship of a man to his own has until the present largely escaped attack.  ? In seeking protection against an otherwise omnipotent state, the opposition must now fall back upon the metaphysical right of private property.”
25. “Private right defending noble preference is what we wish to make possible by insisting that not all shall be dependents of the state.”
26. It is important to note that private property alone can reform education. This is because “Nothing is more certain than that whatever has to court public favor for its support will sooner or later be prostituted to utilitarian ends. The educational institutions of the United States afford a striking demonstration of this truth. Virtually without exception, liberal education, that is to say, education centered about ideas and ideals, has fared best in those institutions which draw their income from private sources. They have been able, despite limitations which donors have sought to lay upon them, to insist that education be not entirely a means of breadwinning. This means that they have been relatively free to promote pure knowledge and the training of the mind; they have afforded a last stand for “antisocial” studies like Latin and Greek.”
27. Excellent analysis of public education. “In state institutions, always at the mercy of elected bodies and of the public generally, and under obligation to show practical fruits for their expenditure of money, the movement toward specialism and vocationalism has been irresistible. They have never been able to say that they will do what they will with their own because their own is not private. It seems fair to say that the opposite of the private is the prostitute.”
28. “It is, on the contrary, important to keep substance in life, for a man’s character emerges in the building and ordering of his house; it does not emerge in complaisance with state arrangement, and it is likely to be totally effaced by communistic organization. Substance has a part in bringing out that distinction which we have admitted to be good; it is somehow instrumental in man’s probation.”
29. “And, underlying all, there is for us in this critical battle against chaos the concept of inviolable right. We prize this instance because it is the opening for other transcendental conceptions. So long as there is a single breach in monism or pragmatism, the cause of values is not lost …Therefore one inviolable right there must be to validate all other rights.”
30. “We are looking for a place where a successful stand may be made for the logos against modern barbarism.”