Mellby Lecture, Founders Day, 1996

Cicero's Ideal Orator and the Saint Olaf Graduate: The Tradition Continues?

I want to extend my thanks to Steve Reece for the very flattering introduction (comment about brochure). I also want to thank last year's Faculty Development Committee for choosing me as this fall's Mellby Lecturer; John Barbour, current chair of the Faculty Development Committee, and especially Linda Gregerson of the Dean's Office, for their gracious help in taking care of the arrangements for the lecture and reception; and all of you for coming here tonight to hear what I have to say. It's a very great honor for me to be here and to have the opportunity, on the anniversary of the Foundation Day of this College, to share with you, my friends, students, and colleagues, some of the work that has kept me busy for these many years here at St. Olaf.

When Fred Ohles and Mark Schelske informed me last spring of my selection and asked me to think of a topic that would be relevant to a general audience and a cross-section of the whole community, I immediately thought of giving an hour's disquisition on the syntactical implications of use of redundant mÆ in Greek negative sentences. In all seriousness, it didn't take me any time at all to decide to speak to you about Cicero. From the first time I encountered the orator's great speech against Catiline as a 16-year old high school junior, I have loved Cicero. You can imagine the reaction of my high school Latin teacher, Ron Karrenbauer, to this loud, rather unsophisticated, blue-collar kid who, everytime he heard one of Cicero's stately periodic sentences or impassioned rhetorical outbursts (like O tempora O mores! Senatus haec intellegit, consul videt, hic tamen vivit!), would uncontrollably exclaim, “Whoa, that's great!” or some such thing. Karrenbauer, glancing characteristically over his reading glasses, in his rather curt, Germanic manner, and with threatening tone of voice, would peer at me and say something like, “Knock it off, May, or I'll come over there and throw you out of the room.” It took him almost two more years to realize that I was actually sincere in my enthusiasm and not just putting him on or making fun of it all!

When I was barely 14, I met a young girl. I fell in love with her two years later. After 7 years of steady dating, we married, and Donna has, for the past 22 years, been my constant companion and best friend. Next to her, I doubt that I've spent as much time thinking about any one person, living or dead, during the past thirty years as I have about Cicero. His writings were what convinced me to major in classics and become a high-school Latin teacher. The desire to study his rhetoric and oratory further sent me to the University of North Carolina to study with George Kennedy, one of the world's leading experts on classical rhetoric. My work there was a preparation for the scholarship I have carried out and continue to carry out for these past twenty years. So you see, that choice was easy.

Nor did it take me long to come up with a title. After all, Cicero had spent most of his life thinking about and writing about and living a form of what we call today the “liberal arts;” and since I have spent most of my life studying Cicero, and my entire professional career teaching here at St. Olaf, a college professing the liberal arts at its core, the topic seemed a natural.

And so my thoughts turned to my main man, Cicero, when he was a mere 16 years old (ca. 90 B.C.), a gifted youth from a family that, although not belonging to the prestigious nobility of the Roman republic, valued a good education as the highest goal for their two sons, and made every sacrifice to ensure that that goal was met. The intellectual climate of the early first century B.C. in Rome was an interesting one. Fifty years earlier, Rome had militarily conquered Greece, and as the Roman poet Horace was later to say, “Greece, the captive, now conquered her savage conquerer” (Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis/intulit agresti Latio). That is, Greece, although now militarily and politically subject to Rome, had captured her conquerer intellectually. Although the native Italians had encountered the Greeks in southern Italy centuries earlier, the whole heritage of the Greek world, it art and architecture, but more importantly its literature and philosophy, were now more accessible to the Romans than ever before. The floodgates were open, and no matter how hard the old, hard-line conservative Romans fought the influx, fearing the soft, slick, and crafty influence that Greek intellectuals brought with them, there was no turning back. Nearly all aspects of Roman life would henceforth bear the stamp of Greek influence, but an influence that was blended with the Roman way of things to yield an incredibly original and unique product in all of its manifestations.

It may be useful at this juncture to say a bit about education in the Graeco-Roman world. To speak of any real “system” of education would, indeed, be misleading, especially in reference to what we might call today “higher” education. There were no organized colleges or universities, and further education beyond the loosely organized schooling that youths and adolescents received was usually arranged on a private basis. In the fledgling democracy of 6th century Athens, this kind of education tended to be apprenticeship in some craft or training for public life. The new demands of democratic society had made it incumbent upon its participants to be able to defend themselves in the courts and speak in the assembly. Hence, teachers of rhetoric and practical handbooks (called by the Greeks t°xnai, by the Romans artes), outlining the rules for composing an effective speech, made their appearance. Inquiries about the nature of the universe, as well as about the nature of humanity and the connection between them arose, and men offered their doctrines to students, sometimes for pay, sometimes gratis. So-called philosophical schools emerged, distinguished by their own Weltanshauung in regard to these questions, e.g., the Academic, the Peripatetic, the Stoic, the Epicurean. Intellectual exchange and debate continued between these schools and their pupils down through the Hellenistic period and into Roman times.

Roman education, of course, was bound to be affected by its contact with the Greeks. After the grounding of a basic education, the young man who wished to receive what the Roman's considered “higher” education would go on to apprentice for a life of public service to the state, a course which nearly every noble Roman chose. The traditional tirocinium fori (apprenticeship in the forum) whereby parents would arrange for their sons to be attached to one or often several important Roman statesmen continued, but alongside it, the young Roman now regularly attended lectures by learned teachers or philosophers, usually Greeks who had taken up residence in Rome. Many students also travelled abroad to Athens or other Greek centers of learning. There they often heard lectures by, among others, representatives of the chief philosophical schools of the time, the intellectual heirs of people like Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, and would thus have been introduced to the major intellectual issues that were current at the time.

The young Cicero was the product of such an education, and at the ripe old age of 16, the same age at which I was first introduced to his writings, we find Cicero writing his first book, De inventione (On Invention)! It is, more a less, a typical rhetorical handbook, laying out the (often very boring) rules for writing an effective speech (digression on handbook contents). Cicero completed only about half the work, and later in life was rather embarrassed by it. Still, in its introduction, Cicero lays out for us what was obviously one of the great intellectual debates of the time, a debate, I submit, that continues (albeit with terms often radically changed) to this day. This proem, in fact, became one of the most influential texts in educational circles during the next 1500 years. I now quote at length the first section of the De inventione:

I have often seriously debated with myself whether humans and communities have received more good or evil from oratory and a consuming devotion to eloquence. For when I ponder the troubles in our state, and run over in my mind the ancient misfortunes of mighty cities, I see that no little part of the disasters was brought about by skillful speakers. When, on the other hand, I begin to search in the records of literature for events which occurred before the period which our generation can remember, I find that many cities have been founded, that the flames of a multitude of wars have been extinguished, and that the strongest alliances and most sacred friendships have been formed not only by the use of reason but also more easily by the help of eloquence. For my own part, after long thought I have been led by reason itself to hold this opinion first and foremost, that wisdom without eloquence does too little for the good of states, but that eloquence without wisdom is generally highly disadvantageous and is never helpful. Therefore, if anyone neglects the study of philosophy and moral conduct, which is the highest and most honorable of pursuits, and devotes his whole energy to the practice of oratory, his civic life is nurtured into something useless to himself and harmful to his country; but the person who equips himself with the weapons of eloquence, not to be able to attack the welfare of his country but to defend it, he, I think, will be a citizen most helpful and most devoted both to his own interests and those of his community. (Cicero, De Inventione 1. 1)

Pretty impressive for a sixteen-year old, eh? You should read it in Latin! Long before the young Cicero had written these words, the debate over the relationship between human reasoning power (ratio, sapientia, wisdom) and power of expression (oratio, eloquentia, eloquence) had been raging. Poets as early as Homer and Hesiod remarked on the human gift of speech, the ability to express thoughts coherently, even eloquently. Phoenix's charge (Iliad 9. 443) to make Achilles a “speaker of words and a doer of deeds” represents not only the “most concentrated formulation of Homer's heroic ideal” (Solmsen), but also an early attempt to reconcile human faculties of thought, action, and speech.

In fifth and fourth century Athens, after the creation of rhetorical systems that were founded largely on the principle of argumentation based on probability ( eÞkÒw), sophists like Gorgias of Leontini, rejecting the ideal sphere of pure reason and absolute truth in favor of the probable and relative, extolled the power of the word, endeavoring at times to make the worse seem the better cause. Philosophers like Socrates and Plato, on the contrary, searching for final and absolute ends, championed truth uncovered through dialectic.

Other thinkers, while recognizing the inherent tensions between wisdom and eloquence (or philosophy and rhetoric), worked, long before Cicero, to reconcile the two into some sort of harmonious union. In fact, Plato, in his middle dialogue, the Phaedrus, had planted the seeds for such a union by suggesting that rhetoric should be assimilated to philosophy and subordinated to dialectic (Phaedrus 269C-274A, 277B-C). Isocrates, on the other hand, argued for a subordination and assimilation of philosophy to rhetoric. Aristotle, cultivating the seeds that his master had sown in the Phaedrus, considered rhetoric an “offshoot” of dialectic and constructed a philosophical framework upon which to build his rhetorical system. The Stoic philosophers saw in their belief in a divine, transcendant logos (whose meaning implies both discourse and thought) an ideal integration of rhetoric and dialectic and, therefore, a resolution to the conflict.

Yet it was Cicero, the heir and beneficiary of these traditions, who first outlined a systematic and successful picture of the philosophical rhetor (or the rhetorical philosopher) that would influence subsequent thinkers on this topic for centuries to come. For Cicero, the bond between reason and speech (ratio et oratio), or wisdom and eloquence (sapientia et eloquentia), is the ultimate source of fellowship and society among all human beings. It separates us from the beasts and unites us in a kind of natural fraternity. Consider his words from another of his works ( De officiis 1. 50):

But it seems we must trace back to their ultimate sources the principles of fellowship and society that nature has established among humans. The first principle is that which is found in the connection subsisting between all the members of the human race, and that bond of connection is reason and speech (ratio et oratio), which by the processes of teaching and learning, of communicating, discussing, and reasoning associate men together and unite them in a sort of natural fraternity. In no other particular are we farther removed from the nature of beasts; for we admit that they may have courage (horses and lions, for example), but we do not admit that they have justice, equity, and goodness; for they are not endowed with reason or speech. (Cf. also De oratore 1. 30 ff.)

Such faith in the power of a united and integrated wisdom and eloquence endured from Cicero's first through his final extant work, it served as the major premise of his mature rhetorical writings, and, insofar as we might ascertain, it stood as the guiding principle of his own life and career as an orator and statesman.

Before turning to an examination of Cicero's portrait of his ideal orator as presented in his masterpiece, De oratore, let us quickly summarize the rest of the proem of De inventione. After concluding that wisdom without eloquence has been of little help to states and that eloquence without wisdom has often proved downright disastrous (1. 1), Cicero then presents a picture of the development of human society. There was a time when people wandered at large in the fields like animals and lived on wild fare. They did nothing on the basis of reason, but relied chiefly on physical strength. At this juncture, a great and wise leader (magnus...vir et sapiens) appeared who, through reason and the persuasive power of his eloquence (propter rationem atque orationem), raised human beings out of their primitive state. When this man's successors, other great and eloquent men, tended to involve themselves in high matters of great importance to the neglect of private suits at law, others shrewd and skilled at speech but less virtuous began to concern themselves with private and petty disputes; in doing so, they grew accustomed to stand on the side of falsehood against the truth. Such men, who had acquired eloquence alone to the neglect of wisdom (qui omisso studio sapientiae nihil sibi praeter eloquentiam comparasset) appeared both to themselves and to the multitude to be fit to govern the state. But once the helm of the ship of state was in their hands, great and disastrous shipwrecks occurred. The study of eloquence thus fell into such odium and unpopularity from the abusive actions of these men that the most talented leaders were prompted to withdraw into philosophical speculation (De Inv. 1. 2-5). Thus, in Cicero's view, the rift between wisdom and eloquence was born.

We should observe that, according to Cicero, those who possess only a “mute and voiceless wisdom” (tacita et inops dicendi sapientia) have little hope of effecting any good; wisdom needs eloquence to realize its potential. On the other hand, the person in possession of an eloquence stripped of its consideration of moral duty and cloaked only by a speciousness of virtue presents a threatening and destructive alternative that has already been responsible for the downfall of many. Thus, for Cicero, the marriage between wisdom and eloquence is absolutely essential; they are--or should be--inextricably bound together. Finally, we should note the fact that the Ciceronian conception of the operation of wisdom joined with eloquence takes place in a social, civil, and political context.

It may be useful for us at this point to unpack these two terms, sapientia and eloquentia, a bit, and to illustrate what is essentially at issue here. The terms sapientia and eloquentia serve here, more or less, as emblems for two competing educational theories. Should people who are being groomed for service to the community be trained in a narrow, technical sort of way, allowing their own experience and the experience of others, along with the mere acquisition of the rules for effective public speaking, serve as their intellectual basis (eloquentia); or should such leaders, in addition to the education that eloquentia affords, also be schooled in sapientia, which includes not only philosophy proper, but all of the artes liberales or artes ingenuae?

I should mention here, perhaps, that for Cicero (and most other educated Romans), the option of sapientia alone, i.e., mere philosophical speculation or intellectual pursuit, is not a viable or acceptable one. When human beings employ their faculties of reason and speech (ratio et oratio ) for the good of others and especially their community, they are most ennobled, for it is to their country that people's greatest moral obligation is due. As Cicero says himself in De off. 1. 57:

But when you have surveyed everything with a rational spirit, of all fellowships none is more serious, none more dear than that of each of us with the state. Parents are dear, children are dear, relatives and friends too; but our native land alone has embraced all the affections of us all; what good man would hesitate to face death on her behalf, if he could do her a service?

In fact, in another context (Somnium Scipionis), Cicero asserts that the highest place in heaven are for those who have served the community well. So, it is clear that, for Cicero in search of his ideally educated orator or statesman, the question is whether he should be trained narrowly in a technical sense that might allow him to gain public prominence, but perhaps cause great disasters subsequently, or should he be educated more broadly and liberally, which will insure a more skillful piloting of the ship of state.

Ironically, this philosophical prologue of the De inventione is followed by two books of very technical rhetorical handbook writing. Still, the value of what we would call the liberal arts in the education of a person never was doubted by Cicero, and his appreciation for it grew and matured.

The most complete, mature, and masterful expression of that appreciation appears in Cicero's grand rhetorical masterpiece, written more than 30 years following De inventione, the De oratore (“On the Ideal Orator”). The prologue, which he addresses to his brother Quintus and in which, in fact, he alludes to the De inventione, makes clear that the issues, although defined slightly differently, remain much the same:

For as you have often told me, you would like me to publish something more polished and mature on this subject, since the sketchy and unsophisticated work that found its way out of my notebooks when I was a boy, or rather a youth, is hardly worthy of my present age and of the experience I have acquired from pleading so many momentous cases. Moreover, when our discussions on occasion turn to this topic, you always disagree with me: I maintain that eloquence is founded upon the intellectual accomplishments of the most learned; you, on the other hand, believe that it has nothing to do with the refinements of education, but is, rather, one of the things that depend on natural ability and practice.

In the nearly 400 pages of Latin that follow, Cicero constructs his view of the ideal orator, in his eyes, the person ideally educated to serve in the courts and in public life. The work takes the form of a dialogue (imaginary or real) between several Roman statesmen and intellectuals of the previous generation to Cicero himself. They are on holiday from the Roman forum, in a country villa at Tusculum rather than with most other Romans who are in the city attending the Roman Games. The two chief interlocutors, Crassus and Antonius, were the two greatest orators in the generation previous to Cicero's. It is no accident that Cicero had apprenticed, so to speak, with both of them, and had observed them in the forum diligently as a boy.

Scholars of earlier times generally assumed that the character of the refined, broadly educated, Crassus was made to represent Cicero's views, while Antonius, the practical pleader who depended more on his experience in the court and his natural abilities, and who eschewed (at least openly) Greek literature and learning, was made to represent Cicero's brother, and the other side of the debate. Recent work has shown, on the contrary, that both characters, along with the other lesser characters in the dialogue, are representative of Cicero's own views about the debate; in other words, the dialogue and give-and-take discussion between characters actually represents an artistically embellished argument in utramque partem, i.e., an argument that takes up an issue and debates it from both sides, now this way, now that, in order to arrive as closely as possible to the truth. This type of argumentation was a staple of the New Academy, that philosophical school to which Cicero himself felt most attached; hence, it is only natural that he would engage in it. It is remarkable that he was able to construct such an argument in such an extraordinarily artistic fashion.

The second extaordinary thing about De oratore is that it is a rhetorical treatise unlike any rhetorical treatise that had come before it; it abandons entirely the format, the language--that is, the jargon--of typical rhetorical handbooks. In fact, Cicero has his characters openly criticize the handbooks virtually every opportunity they get. Still, were one to look for them, most of the rhetorical precepts (at least in abbreviated form) are there, woven skilfully into the dialogue and discussed in a vocabulary that avoids the traditional technical terminology. In fact, the language and the style of the dialogue make for a literary masterpiece in themselves. Cicero realizes, as do all great masters of any art, that the rules and precepts that define an art are mere tools which, once mastered and internalized, should not dictate one's exercise of the art, but merely provide a springboard for the creative and artistic expression of all the possibilities that any art offers. Thus, De oratore presents us with the most literary, or perhaps we should say “rhetorical,” treatment of the art of rhetoric of any treatise--the dialogue itself is a literary and rhetorical masterpiece.

But the most extraordinary thing of all about the De oratore is its content--that is, it's message, the portrait of the ideal orator that Cicero presents to us. Here is no narrowly trained bawler, no glib political hack, no pedantic pettifogger, but the incarnation of wisdom and eloquence, a true “philosophical orator,” or should we say “rhetorical philosopher,” who is trained in the broadest possible way, an active, virtuous, universally competent citizen, an orator “capable of addressing any topic and assuming any position of leadership in the state” [Kimball], the ideal that subsequently provides the idea so many centuries later for the “Renaissance Man.” Consider this passage from Book 1 (158-159):

Next our speech-making must be led out from the sheltered training ground of our home right into the fray, into the dust and the din, into the camp and the front-line of the forum; we must confront the gaze of the whole world; the powers of our native ability must be put to the test, and that secluded preparation must be brought out into the light of reality.

Also, we must read poetry, acquire a knowledge of history, and select teachers and writers of all the noble arts, read them attentively and, for the sake of practice, praise, expound, correct, criticize, and refute them. We must argue every question on both sides, and on every topic we must elicit as well as express every plausible argument. We must thoroughly learn the civil law, acquire knowledge of statutes, and get to know the whole past. We must acquire knowledge of the conventions of the senate, the organization of the state, the legal standing of our allies, international treaties, pacts, and foreign policy. And from all types of urbanity we must take bits of witticism and humor that we can sprinkle, like a little salt, throughout all of our speech.

Furthermore, the marriage of wisdom and eloquence (sapientia and eloquentia) is still the basis for Cicero's ideal, and although the account of their divorce is a bit more sophisticated here, the major theme from the De inventione prologue still thunders loudly:

Now if anyone wants to bestow the name of orator upon that philosopher who imparts to us a full range of subjects and an abundant command of speech, I grant my permission; conversely, if someone prefers to apply the title of philosopher to this orator who, as I say, holds wisdom and eloquence bound tightly together, I shall raise no objection--provided that we agree on this point: we must praise neither the inarticulateness of the person who has mastered the material but cannot explain it in language, nor the ignorance of the one who has no store of knowledge but a ready supply of words. If, however, I should be forced to choose one of these alternatives, I would, speaking for myself, prefer inarticulate wisdom to babbling folly; but if we are looking for the one combination that excels all others, the prize must go to the educated orator, and if they allow him to be ranked as a philosopher, the grounds for controversy are removed. If, however, they insist on making a distinction between them, they will rank lower in this regard: the ideal orator has at his disposal all the knowlege of the philosophers, but the acquired knowledge of the philosophers does not necessarily include eloquence; and although they look down upon it, eloquence still inevitably seems to set a capstone, as it were, upon their arts. (De oratore 3. 142-143)

So, as we have pointed out so many times already, the ideal orator must combine his eloquence with wisdom. For Cicero, that means a solid grounding in the arts which we have come to call liberal. It means, moreover, an intimate knowledge of the civil law--something that Roman pleaders generally avoided. You see, the average patron in a Roman court of law was trained in court procedure and in effective speaking, but not in the actual law. Jurisconsults (who sometimes also pled cases) were the legal experts, and when preparing cases, it was to the jurisconsult that the orator would have recourse in order to be informed about the specific law and the precedents which would affect his case. In De oratore there is vigorous debate between Crassus, Antonius and the others about the necessity of learning the law, and despite the objections raised, Crassus holds his ground.

Another rather unique demand we find Crassus making for his orator is the knowledge of “pyschology,” that is, in ancient terms, the knowledge of the soul and the emotions that effect it. In order for the speaker to present his case effectively, he must establish his audience's confidence in his own character. Further, he must, when he wishes, be able to kindle the fires of emotion, and fan them when once ignited. All of this requires intimate familiarity with the emotions, with human nature, and with the expectations of the audience. The speaker who can talk comfortably in most situations will likewise be required to know history, to feel not out of place discussing the nature of the world, to spice his comments with appropriate wit, to be widely read in the poets and other writers of literature, and to be able to hold all of these things within a memory that to us moderns would seem to have the capacity more of a computer chip than of a human brain.

Although Cicero expects his orator to use his “liberal education” towards practical ends in serving the community, it is essential at the same time to point out that he recognized the intrinsic value of such an education for its own sake. Like Plato, Cicero considered knowledge a virtue, and virtue a reward in itself. Consider Cicero's words (in another context) about the value and delight of literary studies; after describing the practical advantages gained from such study, he continues:

But let us for the moment waive these solid advantages; let us assume that entertainment is the sole end of such studies; even so, I think you would hold that no mental employment is so broadening to the sympathies or so enlightening to the understanding. Other pursuits belong not to all times, all ages, all conditions; but these studies give stimulus to our youth and diversion to our old age; they add a charm to our successes, and offer a haven of consolation for our failures. In the home they delight, in the world they hamper not. Throughout late nights, on all our journeys, in our hours spent at our country estates (lake cabins?!?), they are our unfailing companions. (Pro Archia 16)

We may rightly ask the question, “Does such an orator exist--or could he exist?” Well, despite the other characters' insistence that he is that person, Crassus is adamant in denial, maintaining that he has no individual in mind, but rather an ideal. Knowing Cicero, I think we might safely speculate that he was pretty much describing himself. Although that sounds incredibly egotistical, he was, in the final analysis, correct. As Quintilian, the great teacher and rhetorician, said a century later, “The name Cicero has become not the name of a man, but of eloquence itself”--non nomen hominis, sed eloquentiae.

For those of you who are not yet sleeping, and who have been following along with me and with Cicero, it is probably evident where I am heading with all of this. Jumping ahead two millennia, we can see, I believe, the kernel of Cicero's conception of the liberal arts and the ideal orator still operative in today's world, and I hope, here at St. Olaf. Of course, in that two-thousand year leap, much has transpired--so much, in fact, that it would take an entire semester to do justice to it. I have a handout here merely outlining the tradition of the wisdom-eloquence thread throughout antiquity into the middle ages. Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about it now!!!! You can follow it up in your spare time--or perhaps I should design a course on the development of the liberal arts. Suffice it to say that the legacy of antiquity in terms of the liberal arts has been filtered, refined, changed, dogmatized, etc., etc., by many events and many institutions. Even so, I would submit that certain aspects of Cicero's ideal, and certainly the debate between the educational theories emblematized by the quarrel between wisdom and eloquence (sapientia and eloquentia) are with us still today and inform our own discussions (whether knowingly or otherwise).

Here at Saint Olaf, for example, we boast of offering an education based on the liberal arts, and in doing so and in recognizing that “life is more than a livelihood,” we claim to focus on “what is ultimately worthwhile and fosters the development of the whole person in mind, body, and spirit” (St. Olaf Mission Statement). Cicero's insistence that eloquence be combined with wisdom or that wisdom be combined with eloquence is, in fact, the basis of our approach to education here. Obviously we eschew the narrow technical training that would still enable students to pursue a career, but in what we believe would be a much less satisfying and incomplete way. For example, students wishing to become nurses or musicians could simply enroll in a nurses' training program or in a conservatory; and, to be sure, they might become excellent nurses or musicians per se. But that's not really good enough to our way of thinking: we want nurses and musicians who, like Cicero's ideal orator, are not only trained excellently in their own specialities, but who have the broad wisdom offered by liberal studies, wisdom that will inform their own specialties in ways far beyond technical competency. This fact is sometimes troubling to our students, to their parents, and to other segments of our society and our constituency. But, although we are sometimes buffeted by the demands of the marketplace and other such forces, and have at times even made modest concessions, we remain, I believe, firmly committed to an educational philosophy that insists that “wisdom” must accompany our several forms of “eloquence.”

On the other hand, like Cicero, we shouldn't be content with what he calls “mute wisdom,” that is, knowledge that, albeit intrinsically worthwhile, keeps to itself for its own selfish benefit. The cultivation of our powers of ratio et oratio, of reason and speech, should have as their end, not only our own gratification, but the good of the community at large. To quote again the Saint Olaf mission statement: “[St. Olaf College]...encourages [students] to be seekers of truth, leading lives of unselfish service to others; and it challenges them to be responsible and knowledgeable citizens of the world.”

Now, speaking of St. Olaf, there is still one distinctive and important dimension missing here, namely our rootedness in the Christian Gospel. I mentioned above that this conception of education has been passed down to us from the ancients, but filtered, of course, in many and various ways, and by many events and institutions, most notably, of course, the coming of Christianity and the institution of Christ's mystical body on earth, the Church. Just as the Romans borrowed from the Greeks to make something derivative unique, so early Christian culture borrowed from the pagans what it could use effectively to its purposes. St. Augustine likened this action to the Hebrew children's plundering of Egyptian gold during the Exodus.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time, nor you the patience, for me to go into great detail about how the “Christian” strand of Cicero's plea for a union between wisdom and eloquence played itself out through the centuries, but I would like to spend these last few minutes of my lecture talking just a bit about it and in particular about St. Augustine's adaptation. For the Christian, the union of transcendant wisdom and eloquence is realized to perfection in the God-man, our mediator and Savior, Jesus Christ. He is the incarnation of the Wisdom of the Old Testament, in Greek, Sophia, Sapientia in Latin, as well as the embodiment of Eloquence, i.e., Logos, the “Word made flesh.” Hence, Divine Wisdom and Eloquence finds its perfect unified expression in Christ.

Human wisdom and eloquence, which for Augustine are both based in the Sacred Scriptures, should be used effectively together by the Christian preacher. In book four of De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Teaching), he argues that, since those who stand on the side of falsehood are armed with the art of eloquence, it is absurd that the defenders of the Truth (i.e., Incarnate Christ; cf. De Doctr. Christ. 4. 27. 59; 1. 34. 38; Jn. 14:6) should stand unarmed against these agents of lying and deception. Indeed, the faculty of eloquence should be pursued in order to fight on behalf of the Truth (4. 1. 2). Yet the eloquent man who speaks without wisdom must be avoided. In this connection, Augustine quotes verbatim our famous passage from Cicero's De Inventione.

We should note here that Augustine's notion of wisdom represents a great departure from Cicero's. It is that human wisdom which approaches or partakes of the Divine; the wisdom with which St. Paul spoke; the true and supernal wisdom that descends from the Father of Lights (De doctr. Christ. 4. 5. 7). Such wisdom, according to Augustine, is aquired in seven steps, corresponding to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, beginning with fear of the Lord and proceeding through piety, knowledge, fortitude, counsel, understanding, and finally arriving at sapientia, wisdom. According to Augustine, Cicero and other pagans who wrote concerining the rules of eloquence were ignorant of this true wisdom, founded on the fear of the Lord, nurtured and sustained by the knowledge of the Scriptures, and perfected by love of neighbor and of God. Nevertheless, even they recognized that eloquence without wisdom was most harmful. “Therefore,” Augustine asks, “how much more ought we, who are the sons and ministers of this true wisdom, to think in no other way?” For Augustine, this true wisdom can, in fact, persuade by force of its inner logic.

Yet the Saint takes it a step further, and asserts that in the final analyis, eloquence is not needed at all:

What therefore is it to speak not only wisely but also eloquently except to employ sufficient words in the subdued style, splendid words in the moderate style, and vehement words in the grand style, while the things spoken about are true and ought to be heard? But he who cannot do both should say wisely what he cannot say eloquently, rather than say eloquently what he cannot say wisely. However, if he cannot do this, let him so order his life that he not only prepares a reward for himself, but also that he offers an example to others, and his way of living may be as it were, an eloquent speech (De Doctr. Christ. 4. 28. 61).

At St. Olaf College, we not only carry on the tradition of striving to attain human wisdom, but we claim also to deal with that supernal wisdom of which Augustine speaks. As he hoped for the modus vivendi of his Christian teacher to become his eloquence (copia dicendi), so too, we hope our graduates' lives will serve as an eloquent statement to the world of their human and divine wisdom--we challenge them “to be responsible and knowledgeable citizens of the world.”

You may have noticed that the end of the title of this lecture includes a question mark, “The Tradition Continues?” When Cicero wrote his De oratore, or for that matter, when St. Augustine was describing his Christian preacher in De doctrina Christiana, both had in mind “ideals.” I suppose our lofty mission statement envisions the same: we view our graduate there in an “idealized” state. We, like they did so many centuries ago, strive for that ideal in our less than perfect ways. Sometimes we are extraordinarily successful; at other times we fail. But we do continue the tradition and we do continue the endeavor. When I opened up this year's St. Olaf Catalog and turned to the section describing a St. Olaf Education, I was heartened, but also a bit amused, to read the bold-faced sub-heading, “An Education for Life in the 21st Century.” Indeed, it is; but something that many of us fail to realize, perhaps especially many of our students and our constituents, is that such a course of study has also been an education for the 21 centuries that have preceded it. I don't know about you, but I, for one, am personally very proud to be a part of that tradition!

James M. May

Mellby Lecture,

Founders' Day, 1996