The Hope of America Rests with Her Teachers

 Thomas Martin

      Thomas Martin teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. You may contact Tom Martin at: Martint@unk.edu

For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi . . . [But] There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents, for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

These words belong to Thomas Jefferson and were written to John Adams on October 28, 1813. By this time, both men have been President of America and have retired to their farms. They are America’s wise men reflecting on the nation they have been instrumental in creating. Jefferson agrees with Adams that the hope of America rests with her natural aristocracy: the virtuous and talented citizens. Both Founding Fathers fear that the artificial aristocracy, the wealthy, that are neither virtuous nor talented, a “mischievous ingredient in government,” will grab the helm of government, and set to protecting the wealth of their class before the good of their fellow citizens.

Jefferson and Adams are philosophical: they see what is the case and they see what ought to be the case. Furthermore, they are capable of qualitative judgment, of discerning the higher from the lower, the virtuous from the vicious, and the man who uses his talents to serve the greater good from the man who uses his talents to serve himself. Being students of history, both know principalities, kingdoms, and nations have long been led by the artificial aristocracy: tyrants and nobility, whose primary function is to maintain and increase their material prosperity at the expense of the common man’s liberty and right to self-determination.  Thus, it is essential that America, this land where all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, be governed by the natural aristocracy who are marked by being virtuous and talented.

To ensure the rise of the natural aristocracy to positions of leadership in America, Jefferson tells Adams of a bill he has introduced to establish schools throughout the country:

This proposed to divide every county into wards of 5 or 6 square miles . . . to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic, to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects to be completed at an University, where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for the public trusts. 

Jefferson thinks public schools ought to be established for the public trust, and from these schools the guardians of America ought to be the best students, selected by their teachers, to be promoted beyond the elementary learning to a “high” school, from which the “most promising subjects” ought to be promoted to a university, in order to keep the rich from competing for the public trust. America’s future depends upon her teachers’ grading to select the natural aristocracy from the masses.

      John Adams, in a letter to his wife Abigail on February 4, 1794, foreshadows Jefferson’s concern for an educational system that promotes the virtuous and talented students so as to keep government out of the hands of the wealthy: 

By The Law of Nature, all Men are Men and not Eagle, That is they are all of the same species. And this is the most That the Equality of Nature amounts to. But Man differs by Nature from Man, almost as much as Man from Beast. The Equality of Nature is Moral and Political only and means that all Men are independent. But a Physical Inequality, an Intellectual Inequality of the most serious kind is established unchangeably by the Author of Nature. And Society has a Right to establish any other Inequalities it may judge necessary for its good.

The Precept however Do as you would be done by implies an Equality which is the real Equality of Nature and Christianity, and has been Known and understood in all Ages.

Jefferson and Adams see what every good teacher knows: by nature, students are not equal in their intellectual ability or physical talents. In fact, no matter how hard a teacher works, many students will not progress beyond the basics of reading, writing, and simple arithmetic.

The hope of America being governed by the natural aristocracy rests with her teachers being responsible for selecting the virtuous and talented students by judging who is capable of superior work, regardless of their creed, their race, or their sex, and culling out the rest.

All Americans have an equal opportunity to the education Jefferson proposes, but all Americans do not have the right to be equally intelligent or to be considered equally virtuous.

Equality of opportunity is ideally placed before every person in America; however, the equality of abilities has never existed, as Alexis de Tocqueville notes in Democracy in America ,

No matter what efforts a people makes, it will never succeed in making conditions perfectly equal within it; and if it has the misfortune to arrive at an absolute and complete leveling, there would still remain the inequality of intelligence, which, coming directly from God, will always elude the laws [232].

The rudiments of the university curriculum for Jefferson’s natural aristocracy are outlined in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr when he is about to attend college:

An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the second. It is time for you now to begin to be choice in your reading; to begin to pursue a regular course in it; and not to suffer yourself to be turned to the right or left by reading any thing out of that course. I have long ago digested a plan for you, suited to the circumstances in which you will be placed. This I will detail to you, from time to time, as you advance. For the present, I advise you to begin a course of ancient history, reading every thing in the original and not in translations. First read Goldsmith’s history of Greece. This will give you a digested view of that field. Then take up ancient history in the detail, reading the following books, in the following order: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophontis Hellenica, Xenophontis Anabasis, Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Justin. This shall form the first stage of your historical reading, and is all I need mention to you now. The next, will be of Roman history. From that, we will come down to modern history. In Greek and Latin poetry, you have read or will read at school, Virgil, Terence, Horace, Anacreon, Theocritus, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles. Read also Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakespeare, Ossian, Pope’s and Swift’s works, in order to form your style in your own language. In morality, read Epictetus, Xenophontis Memorabilia, Plato’s Socratic dialogues, Cicero’s philosophies, Antoninus, and Seneca. In order to assure a certain progress in this reading, consider what hours you have free from the school and the exercises of the school. Give about two of them, every day, to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes the mind strong.

Such a curriculum distinguishes the virtuous people of history, the wisdom of poets, the ideals of authors, and the ideals of virtuous Greeks and Romans. In order to draw from history, literature, poetry, and philosophy, students must be taught to read such works which will reveal those who are capable of making qualitative judgments about human actions just as a minister or priest must be educated in scripture and those who have “eyes that do not see and ears which do not hear” ought never shepherd a congregation.  

Given that Jefferson is a deist, he understands the classical sense of virtue and is attracted to Aristotle, while Adams, being a Christian well-educated in Greek and Roman culture, understands the cardinal virtues as well as the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity which are not grasped by reason alone but infused by God’s grace: 

“Do as you would be done by implies an Equality which is the real Equality of Nature and Christianity, and has been Known and understood in all Ages.”

Thus, Jefferson’s natural aristocracy is reminiscent of the natural selection of the virtuous and talented students who are the guardians of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s students of the Nicomachean Ethics who know that the end of politics is the good of the state and that to be a:

. . . competent student of what is right and just, and of politics in general, one must first have received a proper upbringing in moral conduct.

The natural aristocracy of the Republic is selected for an education meant to polish those who are marked by the virtues of justice, wisdom, courage, and moderation.  The natural virtues, which are grasped by intellect, the “divine element within” for Aristotle, are the transforming qualities which make men God-like. The virtues of Aristotle, known as the cardinal virtues, which reason grasps as the principles of just action, are wisdom, courage, magnificence, generosity, gentleness, high-mindedness, moderation, and truthfulness.

Aristotle classifies virtue into two categories: intellectual and moral. Intellectual virtue “owes its origins and development chiefly to teaching, and for that reason requires experience and time” [1103a15]. Moral virtue is formed by habit, and man by nature is equipped to receive them. Man is not by nature virtuous, but it is in his nature to be virtuous. The same holds true for speech; man does not by nature speak, but it is in his nature to speak. Inherent in the development of moral virtue, as it is formed by habit, is the importance of a good upbringing, of parents who teach their children civility, for virtues are acquired by “first having them put into actions.” To explain this point Aristotle states,

For the things which we have to learn before we can do them, learn by doing: men become builders by building houses and harpists by playing the harp. Similarly, we become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage [1103a30].

Wealth, for Aristotle, is not a good in itself but only useful as a means to something else. To treat wealth as an end is to worship an inanimate object, an “artificial object,” and, as Midas learned, the worth of his daughter changed dramatically when she turned to gold. Wealth, when treated as a god, becomes a demon and if not the taproot of evil, it is at the very least a root of evil. This does not mean that being wealthy is a sign of a corrupt and evil man, for a rich man can do much good with his money. Money, gold, diamonds, stocks, etc., are inanimate objects that lack a will, as do all inanimate objects, to act; they are, therefore, incapable of being virtuous or vicious.

Aristotle notes, the average person may exercise the virtue of generosity with his money, giving what little he has to aid others; however, the rich man may be magnanimous, giving things of substantial worth, libraries, colleges, scholarships, hospitals, museums, and parks to serve the greater good of the community and nation long after his death. So, Jefferson does not see virtue and money as an “either/or,” as though a wealthy man could not be virtuous. Nor are they equivalent; virtue is not wealth.

Jefferson would see the cardinal virtues not only exemplified in the life of Socrates, but especially in his apology, addressed to the senators of Athens before his execution, “Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.”

And so, neither Jefferson nor Adams ascribes to the economic theory of History: that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics. It is up to the virtuous and talented citizens to battle the artificial aristocracy and preserve America whose people have been endowed by “their Creator with certain unalienable Rights [and] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The fundamental maxim of government for Adams is “never trust the lamb to the wolf.”

In order to preserve America it is essential for the natural aristocracy to understand that Liberty is a virtue and not a freedom to do whatever makes a person happy. Liberty is what sailors are given when they go ashore in uniform; they are not free to define liberty as whatever they please and act according to what they please, but in accordance to being representatives of the United States Navy.

Levi Hart, in a tract written in 1775, addresses the different senses, moving from the lower to the higher, of the virtue of Liberty,

Civil liberty doth not consist in a freedom from all law and government—but in freedom from unjust law and tyrannical government. . . . Religious liberty is the opportunity of professing and practicing that religion which is agreeable to our judgment and consciences, without interruption or punishment from the civil magistrate . . . Ecclesiastical liberty, is such a state of ordered regularity in Christian society, as gives every member opportunity to fill up his place in acting for the general good of that great and holy. . . . Finally, there is another kind of liberty and bondage, which deserve particular attention in this place, only as they are especially pointed to in our text, but as being of principle concern to men, they be denominated spiritual liberty and bondage—This liberty is spoken of by our Lord, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”—if the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

Being liberally educated, Jefferson and Adams both understand Liberty is as necessary to the protection of a people from tyrannical government, as a good teacher is necessary to the formation of students’ minds sharpened on long and hard reading of the best minds. It is this pursuit of truth that reveals the natural aristocracy who are capable of sound moral judgment.

There will be teachers who do not like the idea of grading students according to their abilities, who think that an education in a democracy entitles all students to be equally rewarded, regardless of the student’s ability to demonstrate the rudiments of a thoughtful mind. Teachers who think the student’s development of a “positive self-esteem” is more important than actually knowing history, literature, poetry, science, or being able to comprehend so much as one philosopher are responsible for dummying-down America’s schools, colleges, and universities to levels unacceptable even for tech schools. Today there are college students lacking even a tech-school craft and graduating without ever having read even one of the historians, poets, authors, or philosophers on Jefferson’s reading list and without even understanding that this is essential to being educated. Such students have suffered a textbook education and have learned to highlight and parrot essential points upon which they will be tested with multi-choice questions and perhaps a few short written answers. It is the difference between being able to navigate a ship with a sextant and being a galley slave rowing to the lash of a whip.

Such teachers in America give the artificial aristocracy exactly what they want: mindless wage slaves, subserviently working in chain stores, universities, government agencies, superstores, fast-food joints, or running a fuel truck or cash register in a convenience store for the oil cartel, or sitting cow-eyed before a computer.

As much as Jefferson hopes for America, he also sees America as a country taken over by “timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.”

The hope of America rests upon the best students being: “sought out from every condition of life and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for the public trusts,” refusing to allow the artificial aristocracy ever to be the guardians of the public trusts.

In closing, I have seen Jefferson’s natural aristocracy in Nebraska surfacing from towns like Aurora, Amherst, Anselmo, Bridgeport, Central City, Columbus, Dannebrog, Elgin, Gretna, Holdredge, Kearney, Minden, Ralston, St. Paul, McCook, Wallace, and Wayne into this university. They step back into the world as computer programmers, bank-tellers, physicians, nurses, ministers, priests, nuns, carpenters, heavy equipment operators, truck drivers, lawyers, teachers, housewives, farmers, engineers, bartenders, painters, soldiers, social workers and artists. Such students are the leaven in the bread, the honest hearts and knowing heads, who in the words of the American historian David McCullough, know that “trying to think without knowing the classics is like trying to plant cut flowers.”   Ω