A reader considering the last two numbers in this series – on the Schoolroom and the University, respectively – may mutter at me: “This is all very well, Edwards; we shall educate our children into the tradition, and we shall redeem higher education with collegiate bodies and seminary-farms educating Guardians of the Permanent Things. But I’m past all that now; I can’t benefit. I am alone in my little battle, and armed, metaphorically, with a pitchfork and nothing else.”
The problem is this: that we are ill-equipped to build the Citadel we desire and our cause requires. We have no knowledge of masonry, nor building cranes to lift the great sandstone blocks into place. We don’t know our merlons from our mullions. We have scant tools in the shed – a rusted leaf-rake and a rubber mallet. How are we supposed to begin building and cultivating the future?
Some means of remedial education is necessary. We are as the first penal-colonists in Australia, cast upon some fatal shore by the whim of the prevailing culture, a gaggle of shoemakers and labourers with no wisdom with which to tame the soil.
Of course a person minded to serve the Permanent Things might study on their own, set themselves reading lists, do all in their power to gain the knowledge necessary to teach and guide and build for their great-grandchildren. Yet not all are capable of this, given the whirlwind of their life, or the exact set of their character, or prior educational limitations.
We look for will, not wit, when it comes to those who would drag the great blocks up the hill to the building site. Wit is admirable, and useful, but there are already many mayfly men out there with more than enough wit to sink our own civilisation. Will is what lacks – will to build and endure, to take a sunny view of the dismal weather predicted, to build soil year by year with little yield in the short term. Traditionalists, of all people, have lost their will – defeatism or presentism or apocalypticism have infected them. Will is the well from which we water our cattle; without water, the whole herd dies, no matter how well we brush their coats. So with will – our pious presentation means nothing without will.
So the remedial student – and so are we all! – who has will, has much. What they need is a guide, or an institution, or a fellowship, to aid them in their intellectual and cultural growth. How might we provide such aid? Well, by the Night School.
What do I mean?
The previous number posited the creation of the University of the Permanent Things, perhaps with constituent Colleges. Scholars band together and accumulate apprentices. This is a traditional mode of higher education. The collegiate lifestyle involved, the life of reflection aimed at, the preparation of young people for leadership in their homes and in the nation – they require a full-time commitment from most of those involved.
If you are 30 with a job (whether at home or in the office!) and two children and another on the way, this isn’t an option. You have – quite properly – committed yourself to a field of work and your family. Yet you know you lack; you have not the tools to build the Citadel. Some of that missing knowledge is likely of a practical nature, and can be learned as you make compost and make decent scrambled eggs. Some, however, serves the cultivation of the intellective self, and requires energy and focus.
I have observed above that not everyone can marry energy, focus, and native ability – but will can suffice where wit lacks. Will is what drives a partisan of Permanence to seek out like minds in the hidden valleys of culture – whether physical or electronic. Such a partisan, whether an accountant or stay-at-home mother or council clerk, seeks mentors and comrades to talk to at 11pm; to message with brief impressions of politics and culture; to learn from, and offer to.
This could become a formal or semi-formal activity. This could become a reading circle – or a Night School. Those who have learning can offer it in the smaller hours, or at weekends, to those who have not the time or vocation to go to the University. It may be a corporate effort, or solo – an Institute, or a Socrates. Either way, the essential thing is that this body serve the willing with primers in culture, history, literature, and philosophy. If you like, they are the “political education” wing of the coming Permanence Revolution! They slip amongst the populace, meeting in dingy pub barrooms, or connecting to dissidents on Twitter. They do not subvert the workplace, as the covert Communist does – but they do cultivate the revolutionary vanguard.
This concept – of a formal or semi-formal educational body aiming at part-time cultivation for those committed to the moral imagination and civilisation building – can take any number of forms. I have discussed some possible archetypes in the second number of this series, “The Shadow Society”, but I will offer one possible form – one I intend to pursue myself – that may offer inspiration.
Could we not create a “Slack Channel Club” with the express purpose of studying small reading lists together? There could be a new reading list every six months, and each reading list could consist of only one or two longer books, with the rest short books or long essays. One member could take the particular duty of leading conversation – preferably whoever has the widest reading and the most experience in the life of reflection.
Of course, if some Man of Letters should emerge from the jungle, bedecked in three-piece tweeds, carrying a copy of Milton in one hand and Donoso Cortes in the other – well, then, recruit him to tutor you all! But we must cope in the lack – like half-savage survivors in the wake of the fall of empires, we must scratch through the ruins and accumulate, speculate, and then articulate the meaning of things. The Baptistry at Poitiers is a haphazard, almost ugly pastiche – and more than a pastiche, a literal recycling, as the biggest stones were Roman! What did those half-pagans clad in stinking wool know of architectural principles? Yet without the faith in civilization that led to its rebuilding by the Merovings – no Charlemagne, no Alcuin, no Carolingian Renaissance, no Iron Crown – no Italy, no France, no Germany – no Goethe, no Arthuriana, no Dante! The faith to step into the ruins and lift one worn block on top of another is the sacred flame of civilisation in the breast – of peace, and friendliness, of good things – without which we are condemned to at the best a dissatisfied wandering, carving our dragon prows and seeing only despair in the stars.
Any of us can take our handcart to the ruined villa and gather stones – any of us can gather a few friends, or be so gathered, and read together. Even reading English, we will struggle in translation – what on earth are these dead men and women saying? What world do they hail from? What is this strange idea? Even where we have some grounding, we will often feel lost in a wide rereading of the classics – but that is as it should be. The Night School is a journey of rediscovery. It is the careful collation of the living fragments of a world – occluded, perhaps, by our present darkness, but ready to be reforged, like some fell fae sword from a faerytale.
What might we read together, then, in our Affirming Flame Club? Take this as a sample “semester reading list”, to be read and discussed over 6 months:
- Plato, "Euthyphro"
- Shakespeare, “Richard II”
- Macaulay, “Horatius at the Bridge”
- Runciman, “Constantinople 1453”
- Kirk, “Politics of Prudence”
Three booklet-length works, one shorter history book, and something a little longer. This is beyond the capabilities of barely anyone – it is will that lacks. Perhaps there is some prospective embarrassment – bumbling men and women trying to decode Shakespeare, reading it out loud on Zoom and laughing at each other’s pronunciation; one fellow reading about the legendary background to Horatius on Wikipedia, half-bemused. Who would volunteer for such a task? Only explorers and monks and gardeners, and the world has dearth of all three – but perhaps we might aspire to such an honour.
But what is the point? Are we aiming at mere intellectual satisfaction, knowing just how much better we are than those dreadful progressives, sitting happily in the sewage? We, after all, have ascended to a standing position; thank God we are not such as these.
No, this shared study in the Night School does not aim at partisan superiority. It is the founding of a new Cavendish Laboratory, or Round Table, or Citeaux – there is a Quest involved. The first aim, as in all things, is the cultivation of the self – a turning away from the mayfly world of social media, of the news cycle, of the endless churn of Prestige Dramas – a turn towards ancient wells waiting to be redug, brimming with Wisdom’s waters. The order of the soul must be attended before the order of the city can be considered. Providence uses men of blood, but the wise civilisation knows in which barracks to keep them. The Traditiologue, desperately seeking to balance their own ill-wrought edifice upon pillars of public discourse, ever seeking public superiority to hide private roil, is merely a cassocked Jacobin, and his fall shall be the shame, or worse. The traditionalist gives to his neighbour from a private plenitude – a storehouse of soul and mind. So turn inward if you desire to turn outward. Build yourself before worrying about building the world.
The second goal of the Quest requires patience, and the historical view. We gather the stone today; we plant the small apple seeds. You embarrass yourself now on the Zoom Athenaeum because you want your great-granddaughter to sit with her grandchildren in front of an Aga in a brick-floored farmhouse kitchen, reading the Bible and Longfellow and the Narniad. You train yourself to be a Meroving so that they might be Carolings. You build your haphazard little chapel so they might build the Palatine Chapel at Aix, fit as the resting place of Emperors. The Night School is, in our grand concept, the humble theatre of action for regulation consultants and Environmental Services assistant managers – it is where we groundlings feed the flame, and sear into the wood of our wandering longship blackened words of promise: “We shall rebuild.”
When does the Night School start? :)
ReplyDeleteHi Robert - check this link: https://wallsofutica.blogspot.com/2020/11/small-apple-night-school-overview.html. Basically, 30th November for the first pod or two - get in touch if you're wanting to join in.
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