Correspondence  

The Cambridge Apostles

      In his review of The Cambridge Apostles, Michael S. Swisher lets drop a gratuitous innuendo, “Conservative proponents of classical education and single-sex schooling might well take cautionary note!” To which, one must respond, “Why might we?” Does Swisher’s preoccupation with “elites and their institutions” somehow lead to comprehension of such imaginative distractions?

      Absent any relevant proof in such casual aspersions, one senses a lurking predisposition of self-doubting narrowness or left-leaning bias. Where’s the res ipsa loquitur? Where’s the body of evidence warranting such “caution” per se? Are we to assume so carelessly that priestly celibacy and British schools or American prep schools encourage or stir homosexuality where it didn’t exist before? Certainly, homosexuality is fact, but does this prove anything is wrong with the institutions or does it suggest a weakening of social mores extraneous to such institutions—secularity, unchecked liberalism, deconstructivism, “weak men and disorderly women.” Does Swisher offer a sine qua non for his imputation? Or proof that co-eds offer a pristine balance of heterosexuality conducive to better education? Based on this one book?

      Considering all the pitfalls and drawbacks of co-education after age 12, as well as the many advantages of single-sex schooling for teenagers, why should we adopt a negative attitude based merely on Richard Deacon’s preoccupation with an oddball British clique of academics? And to disparage on such flimsy grounds “classical education” too? Sorry, there is too much of a stretch in Swisher’s insinuation to deserve any weight. I’d throw his case out of court.

W. Edward Chynoweth

Sanger, California

Michael S. Swisher Responds:

      Barry MacDonald has forwarded your letter commenting on my review of the Cambridge Apostles published in the June, 2003 issue of The St. Croix Review. I appreciate any response, even a critical one, to something I have written. That you sent one shows that you took what I wrote seriously enough to think it worth writing, and for that implicit compliment I thank you.

      All human institutions are flawed to some degree or another. To point out the flaws and weaknesses of an institution is not to condemn it completely, or to suggest its inferiority to unspecified alternatives. That the Greek and Latin classics harbor a vein of homoeroticism, unconstrained by Christian morality or even natural shame, cannot be denied. See, for example, some of the Greek lyric poets like Callimachus and Meleager, the eclogues of Virgil patterned on their model, the Satyricon of Petronius, or the epigrams of Martial. Moreover, the all-boys’ English “public” (i.e., private) schools fostered an atmosphere in which acting upon such dubious classical precedents was tolerated, if not encouraged. Many historians and memoirists (e.g., Malcolm Muggeridge), not just Richard Deacon, attest that this was true, even in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, long before standards of public and private morality had been debased to today’s level.

      To suggest that conservative proponents of classical education and single-sex schooling might well take cautionary note of these facts is hardly to suggest that the present American secularized, vulgarized, dumbed-down, co-educational system of public schools is therefore a superior approach. It is, rather, a reminder that in order to prevent abuses one must be aware of their potential for happening.

      The want of such awareness in Victorian Britain probably arose from naïveté. The same cannot be said of the pæderastic scandals in the Roman Catholic Church today. These represent a deeper problem, not only of failing to maintain standards, but also of dismissing their importance altogether. Would that cautionary note had been taken!

      As for élites and their institutions, I am hardly preoccupied with them. I am simply interested in them. The development of élites seems to be typical of almost all societies, past and present. Even Communist countries like the former U.S.S.R., organized on the egalitarian theories of Karl Marx, ended up having an élite, the nomenklatura. I agree with Vilfredo Pareto that the formation of élites is inevitable, and is a product of nature’s unequal distribution of talent, drive, and luck. The character of an élite, whether it be virtuous or venal, wise or foolish, depends upon the social and educational institutions that shape it. The nature and extent of its influence over politics and finance depend upon the constitutional, legal, and economic institutions of the society in which it exists. These institutions are in turn shaped by a succession of élites, with the different results that history has shown in different times and places.

      Pareto and others who have made similar observations are often attacked as elitists. This seems to me like calling Isaac Newton a “gravitationalist” and blaming him and others of his school every time a piece of china falls to the floor and shatters! To observe that élites are an inevitable and natural feature of human society is neither to condemn nor to praise them. I believe it is correct thinking to concern ourselves with the way in which the society’s leadership is formed, rather than with decrying elitism or trying to prevent the emergence of an élite.

The Apostles cannot be dismissed as just “an odd-ball clique of British academics.” They included John Maynard Keynes, arguably the 20th century’s most influential economist, and the Communist spies, Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess. Each of these men, in his own way, was part of his country’s élite. Each exerted negative influence, not just on Britain, but on the entire Western world. Their careers represented not just moral failure on their individual parts, but on that of the peculiar cultural milieu in which they thrived. Is it not good conservatism to heed the lessons of history?    Ω