The Training and Profession of the Man of Letters

The man of letters is largely an extinct class. (I note hastily that, of course, a woman might be a Man of Letters; Madame de Stael certainly was.) Why? Those generalist dilettantes are relics of an age where specialism was not so vital, perhaps. The idea of some gentleman writing, as Chaucer did, in such genres as poetry, spiritual tract, mechanical science, and philosophy translation – well, there was so much less to know, back then.

In a sense there is something undeniable about this – certainly in the physical sciences there has been so much work done in the last 600 years, and the highest theorems are so technically complex, that the aspiring generalist cannot hope to attain greatly in those subjects. However, the classic man of letters was never best known for his scientific speculations; yes, Elyot published on medicine, and Bacon on science, but it is perfectly plausible that now a medical doctor might also read widely in philosophy. The particular fusion in the “Renaissance man” of an interest in practical investigations of the world and careful reflection upon it is neither universal, nor even lately extinct – Sir Roger Scruton was a notable expert on music and architecture, both technical as well as aesthetic subjects.

No, the man of letters is extinct, or largely extinct, for a wide array of other reasons. The core class from which the profession drew in every nation – that is, Good Old Families – is much reduced. Independent wealth and generous allowances are sniffed at, now – and yet without them, no Mirandola, no Burke or Wilberforce, no Teddy Roosevelt, perhaps not even a Russell. And the idle rich now have other interests, less intellectual curiosity outside of the technical arts, and consider that they have paid their greatest contribution to society via the revenue.

Where else might we turn? It is nearly unthinkable that someone from the lower-middle/upper-working-class could now attain the same quality of education available to Sir Roger in his day, given the widespread vandalism and dissipation in the world of education. Even a cursory look at the progress in curricula over the last 60 years (or more – More and Babbitt were fighting this cause in 1900) shows a great decline in the riches set before the student. Perhaps teaching liberal arts to the poor so as to educate free men was too much of a danger to the paternalist progressivists.

The wellsprings of the traditional MoL are stopped up, then, in large part. The responsible rich have been driven from the land to the city and lost all quality, becoming moral slackjaws, and the intellectual elevation possible via a rigorous classical education has been taken away from those of more modest origin. (Well, indeed, taken away from everybody.)

Is the Man of Letters worth resurrecting? How could he come into being now and how would society benefit from his presence?

Well, the words one most associates with the MoL – whether a Kirk or Lewis, a Stein or Arendt, to offer but four more modern exemplars – are “erudition”, “breadth of learning”, “learned”, “of catholic taste”, and their like. There is both a broadness and a deepness in the Man of Letters – broad in sympathies and knowledge, deep in understanding.

How can you or I aspire to that rank, given that many of us have lacked serious intellectual training, and time seems to slip away so quickly? Perhaps more importantly, why bother?

You cannot hope for the financial rewards some very few receive; most of us will need to find a profession or trade to support the life of the mind. The flesh being weak, it needs sustenance. The appeal of the life of the Man of Letters is an issue of temperament, not career prospects. Do you long to gain an overview of matters, of being able to see the whole landscape of the human experience, knowing that Wagner’s Parsifal is Ser Percival of Breton lays and Malory; understanding how these might connect to the Fisher King, that wounded fey dominus; being able to move from that to the longaevi, the medieval faeries, neither good nor evil; and thence to the two types of medieval magic, explaining why astrology was noble and alchemy anathema; and then back again by many returns to the basis of the Romantic movement, and its effect on music, and how that nationalism which had seemed so noble then which seems so evil to us? Do you desire a refinement that burns away grossness and burnishes whatever God-given spark of insight you possess? Do you wish to make a legion of friends amongst the dead, knowing that their long arguments in the salon of your mind will be more stimulating than any graduate seminar? Indeed, when you find amongst the old writers friendly voices, and in the histories high and noble figures, you know that walking the narrow path you are never alone; saints and soldiers and Socrates and Sidney go along with you.

If that appeals, then you must have the training – above all for your own sake, for the sake of a soul hungry for such bread; after that hunger is sated, there is the matter of your bounden public duties, but first, you must nourish the spirit given to you. How?

The unfit man or woman changes their diet and habits to become fit; the same must apply with the late-coming aspirant to Letterdom. It approaches a cliché – because of how true it is – but electronic entertainment is a born enemy to intellectual development. Of course there are beautiful movies well worth seeing, and great televisual novels, and enlightening documentaries, and so on. I don’t want to offer any grand aesthetic here! But really – another binged series, a third watch-through of Breaking Bad, 3 hours a day in the cinema on an annual pass (though I write this as it seems cinemas may be about to finally be euthanized), or 100 hours in a month on Crusader Kings – can anyone honestly claim that there can be any attainment to greatness from those? Not that there might not be some good – but nested in much evil, as your sand runs down the timer’s neck, and never returns.

There must be real discipline and attention given to reading as the primary (though not exclusive) school for the adult desiring a late education. Yes, there must be concerts and galley visits and walks along fossil-strewn beaches and knocking at the doors of rural chapels and even, with all else done, The Wire and Civilisation. The cultivated mind cannot be a paper mind only; the demented heresiarchs of our time are detached brains that have floated around half-understood books for too long, without ever turning to the stubbornly real world outside. Idealism cannot bear much reality, and so avoids it by all ventures.

But I assert that to build the cathedral of the mind, you must have a sturdy understanding of building principles. You must quarry out the best of human wisdom. In short, to be a Man of Letters, you must, well, have read a lot of sentences made up of words made up of letters! So there must be discipline exerted to guard time and mental space for study.

In this respect, physical periodicals are preferable to electronic ones, where possible; certainly physical books are preferable to PDFs on your laptop, though a dedicated e-reader has its virtue (though – and we will not argue about this! – it is still inferior to the reassuringly real heft in the hand of a real book). You need space and context for study. That might be in a study, or out on the hills, or the living room after the kids go to bed, or even on the toilet! Though elevated surroundings can elevate the mind, the important thing is that you build a little dyke against the waters of ordinary life, behind which you can retreat and cultivate your acre.

Time is, of course, a precious commodity – but I do not believe there are many people who, in all honesty, could not find half an hour a day for serious reading if they desired it. The mind made for this service desires it; it drives itself to exhaustion to find it; it denies itself other lesser pleasures for its sake. And indeed serious reading is a habit – it must start somewhere and be persisted in if it is to stick. So find your half hour a day, at least. That is less than two hours a day, of course – that’s basic numbers – and you will fit correspondingly less into it, but we must each cut out cloth to budget.

What to read, though? Well, in a sense, everything! Yet there must be selection – both practically and pedagogically to begin with, and then later as a matter of discernment. Practically, no-one has the time to read as widely as they would like, or take in every major periodical, or deeply investigate every field of learning. Pedagogically, the unformed mind can be corrupted by ugly or evil material if it does not know how to parse them, and it can take quite some remedial work to undo the damage. You do not feed a weaning toddler a diet of oven pizza and Coca Cola; do not feed your nascent mind trash, either. Once you have attained some judgement, of course, you might go to the Index of Prohibited Miscellany and study some select works – but even so, a selection is necessary, for time reasons and to avoid an over-coarsening of the soul. Stare into the abyss too long, and all that.

So there must be a selection – a selection of old books. Fewer fashionable new books, more books by dead people. Many of the classics are not overhard to read, and you can create a small reading list with real variety. A Platonic dialogue and a Shakespeare play and a classic sci-fi novel (say, The War of the Worlds or Hyperion) can be fit in to a few months at the longest for most people, and none are overly difficult in terms of comprehension. Research them – many editions of (to take our examples) Plato or Shakespeare also include good critical introductions. Add a decent periodical or two to that list, picking one that is only monthly or quarterly if you lack for time (Apollo, New Criterion, Analog, etc). Read less news – not that an engagement with current affairs is improper, but an absorption into the 24-hour news cycle can only drain your energy and divert your focus. Imagine the initial years of training are your monastic novitiate – you must learn to separate from the world before you can healthily engage with it again.

Follow the natural bent of your desires over reading, bearing in mind the principle of avoiding the crass or over-recent. At the very beginning it is better to take guidance from someone else as to some “starting points” – but if you are engaged by On Liberty by Mill, you might choose to read his Utilitarianism to fill out your conception of his thought, or you might read Liberty, Equality, Fraternity by Stephen, that devastating response to Mill. If you enjoy Shelley, perhaps turn to Keats. Dive into natural law. In one sense, you must be like he hummingbird, flitting from topic to topic and author to author, supping a little of everything so as to get an idea of the possibilities and range; yet at times you must be like the badger, which can dig up to 14 feet down for its sett. When the spirit takes you, obsess – shine a light on every corner of the topic, and squirrel away what you find for a latter day.

As a corollary to this, if at all possible, build your library. It may be you lack money or space for a great collection, but even a couple dozen good editions of excellent books provide both a comfort and a destination. You know you have directly succoured the Permanent Things by enshrining them in your home, and you know that here are books to read and savour in the future. On which point, if at all possible, be rather overambitious with your book-buying than over-cautious – you declare to the world your allegiances by your proven desire to learn and understand.

Find friends to discuss all this with – somehow, anyhow. Use the Internet or your old networks or book clubs or anything. Find companions to share your thinking and reading with. This is frankly much more challenging than either finding time or picking good books – “a true friend is hard to find”. Yet it is vital – “iron sharpens iron”. The solo intellect quickly becomes demented; loneliness breeds both egotism and solipsism, and these result in a narrow bigotry that quickly loses any learned skill of real understanding. You are a pilgrim; better to go in caravan to avoid banditti, and for mutual solace on what can be a lonely road.

Enough for those two – I will write more about possible courses and networks in one number of my Citadel of the Permanent Things series.

Once you have begun to gather the raw materials of your cathedral, the question must follow, how are they to be put together? You are reading as widely and as deeply as you can; you are settling new territory in the wilds of your mind, taming the harshness of Natural Man; you are undertaking a toble task.

The next stage is to learn to “connect the dots”. Of course, some will have the natural component of this ability in greater quantity than others. Some will have a naturally agile mind which enthusiastically seizes contradictions within arguments and common themes between books, which surgically draws out the implications of propositions, and so forth. However, some of us are not so blessed, and – without entering fully on the distinct subject of the training of the mind – such will need to specifically enter a regimen that improves the skills of analysis and connection. Formal logic is a great aid here, as is the simple act of reading widely – good writing accompanied by attentive reading is as powerful an educator as any. Finally, you would do well to – either with your intellectual intimates or by self-set essays – set out the strengths and weaknesses of what you have read, always balancing charity and humility on the one side with boldness and vigour on the other. Is Rousseau right to believe man is free and peaceable when in a state of nature, with the superstructure of enforced social life? Why, or why not? Do you know any counterarguments from other writers, or can you see proof or disproof in the world around us? Can the state be trusted with any economic planning, or is Hayek right when he says that even the slightest creation of that sort of oversight inevitably leads to a wider tyranny? Set aside your own first emotional preference for now; you may believe in the genius of the state or be an ardent Objectivist, but you must affirm or deny Hayek by means of argument.

You see the general plan. A wide course of reading, a curious mind given scope for deep-dives, a conscious discipline of reflection upon the mass of learning you are accumulating – these are the stock-in-trade of every truly great mind ever, and are replicable even for those of us of smaller capacity. Insomuch as they do not require genius to be at least partially effective – they are achievable via diligence and enjoyment – they are not “jet pilot” tools, dangerous to the amateur. They are basic nourishment for the mind.

Now, the practical question is, what purpose does this have, beyond pleasure? Pleasure must come first by way of necessity; if the life described is not pleasurable, it will never fruit. Yet there is a point where what we might call the Lettered Man – who has undergone the training above – becomes the full-fledged Man of Letters, the contributor to society, the master of those Letters.

What is the public profession of such a person? Well, they may have another job – a doctor or a bricklayer, even! – but this is, ultimately, a vocation. One is called to public service by dint of one’s qualifications, despite the common antipathy to such people. Let me offer three roles that come to mind – which one trains for via the wide reading and conscious reflection discussed above.

The Man of Letters fulfils, most practically, the role of a LATERAL  ANALYST. They are peculiarly able to draw inferences from situations – whether by historical comparison, or artistic expression, or the record of written controversy – that illuminate that situation. You see the incompetent, would-be MoL do this by comparing every leader or regime they dislike to either Weimar or its successor. The Man of Letters does this competently, by genuinely wider and reflective reading. Someone who has competently learned to connect different eras and complex arguments already is surely a sounder bet in our unpredictable era than someone who has only learned a narrow, technical trade.

The Man of Letters, too, is an ARSENAL OF AUTHORITIES. Given the neglect of the better books in many libraries, including university libraries – how else could I have amassed such a fine collection of good hardbacks at low prices, except for their mass expulsion from institutes of higher education across the world? – the MoL has the unique opportunity to become a sort of shaman or skald, carrying forward the ideas and tales of old in an intellectually enfeebled age. The tribe can come to the Man of Letters for old wisdom, for good precedents, for heroes and villains to emulate or dread. Now, like the shamans of some tribes, the Man of Letters may be forced to live at the edge of the village, but the vocation is its own reward, both in pleasure and in the fulfilment of duty. Even if public esteem is low today, it may be higher tomorrow; better to store up what is needed in the Arsenal.

Finally, the Man of Letters is the chief HUMANE INFLUENCE. Humaneness and humanitarianism are not the same thing; humanitarianism has its use, but it does not humanise. (Sometimes it animalises via a wrongheaded species of paternalism.) The humane influence is one which sets everything in a right place, gentles the harsh contours of social life, locates the human being as a creature of dignity in a complicated world. The biologist cannot do this via biology, for that only tells us the goop that we are made from. The lawyer cannot do this via law, because the law is a machine or tool aiming at a given end. Even the philosopher cannot do this strictly via “philosophy” in the generally accepted sense, because formal philosophy lacks so much of what truly makes us humane: art, music, wine, trees, birdsong, prayer. The generalist can connect all these aspects of the truly humane life and offer them to the world. I believe that influence is all that could now resist the street militias and anarchy threatening the Anglo-American world with utter ruin – if it but existed in strength.

Well, then, there is the task. Would you be an artist of analysis, a granary of good things, a humanising force? Would you be a walking library and sage? This is all very pretentious, yes; it is beyond any of our power. But all the better. We are ill-equipped, and there is little economic gain or social prestige on offer. Good! Even a noble failure in such a case will be a worthy entry in the Annals of the Good. It is better to pretend to a life from a dream, and thereby hope to make make some fragment reality, than give in to the untrammelled barbarity of the Late Electronic Age. Perhaps we will find that others live in the dream, too; perhaps we will discover that It was waiting to break in to overtake cold reality, only wanting for midwives to draw it forth.