The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #17
Looking at these great works of western man and remembering all that he has achieved in philosophy, poetry, science, law making...it does seem hard to believe that European Civilisation can ever vanish. And yet, you know, it has happened once. All the life-giving human activities that we lump together under the word Civilisation have been obliterated once in Western Europe, when the Barbarians ran over the Roman Empire. For two centuries the heart of European Civilisation almost stopped beating.

We got through by the skin of our teeth. In the last few years we have developed an uneasy feeling that this could happen again. And advanced thinkers, who, even in Roman times, thought it fine to gang up with the Barbarians, have begun to question if civilisation is worth preserving...I don't think that civilisation will disappear as long as we believe in it. But it will if we don't. -From Lord Clark's notes for Civilisation; 1968. (Available on DVD; go to bbcamericashop.com)


In the visually striking and endlessly fascinating BBC program Civilisation, Lord Kenneth Clark begins by quoting the nineteenth century English art critic and social reformer John Ruskin, who observed that "great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts: The book of their deeds; the book of their words; and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others. But, of the three, the only trustworthy one is the last."


One might well wonder what the study of art has to do with historical studies. If we incline to the not unreasonable perception that history is, to a great extent, philosophy teaching by example. And if we further entertain the view that philosophy is very much the means by which humans search for and recognize truth, goodness and beauty- that is, things that are made well- then I think history and art share a most relevant affinity. Accordingly, art is much more than merely ornamentation; it is the physical expression and the enduring record of a culture's highest ideals.


Lord Clark, the distinguished Oxford educated art historian, offers valuable insights well worth the consideration of a citizenry whose highest ideal is FREEDOM. He remarks that the incredible saga of the destruction of Western culture that was the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, "does tell one something about the nature of civilisation: it shows that however complex and solid it seems, civilisation is actually quite fragile- it can be destroyed."


What are the enemies of civilization? "First of all, fear. Fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague. Fears that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things or planting trees, or even planning next year's crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren't question anything or change anything. The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions that destroyed self-confidence."


Americans can certainly comprehend such fear today, as we risk war with Iran, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, North Korea, in South America, off the coast of Somalia, in Afghanistan, in Iraq or the Persian Gulf. We are in constant fear of homeland invasion by the drug cartels and our domestic gangs distributing their poison into our inner cities and suburbs; and through terrorist attack by radical Islamic elements and "sleeper cells", as the recent slaughter at Fort Hood made us painfully aware.


We fear war in our schools, war in our churches and shopping malls, war in our marriages. We fear for our children and loved ones because of the war declared against them according to the blind rage of strangers, and the cruel wickedness of sexual predators, pedophiles and serial killers. And sadly, because essentially we are a community of souls each with a conscience, we fear most profoundly as we war daily against our God and the Son He lovingly sent.


We in America fear also pandemic, contagion and plague, whether swine flu from Mexico or bird flu from China and their various mutations. Widespread jet travel and burgeoning global commerce delivers from the most distant areas of the world disease, as well as products, into our midst. We fear the contamination of our water and food supplies, and we fear pollution and environmental degradation. And still, the memory of the fourteenth century Black Death lingers in the Western consciousness, as nearly 50% of Europe's population perished in a matter of twenty years.


"And then...boredom. A feeling of hopelessness, which can overtake people with a high degree of material prosperity...Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity. Enough to provide a little leisure. But far more, it requires confidence. Confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, confidence in one's own mental powers."


Filling much of the background of Lord Clark's immediate presentation looms an imposing bridge and aqueduct system built by Roman engineers, when the current location- Nimes, France- formerly was the Roman province of Gaul. This impressive structure, continued Lord Clark, "is not only a triumph of technical skill, but it shows a vigorous belief in discipline and law. Energy, vitality- all the great civilisations or civilising epochs, have had a weight of energy behind them...So, if one asks why the civilisation of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real answer is that it was exhausted..."


It is entirely instructive to our own society therefore, to view from our modern vantage the cultural exhaustion experienced in Classical civilization, as it was emptied of its energy and vitality- its life force, and the ultimate depletion of the people's confidence in its laws, philosophy, society and especially their mental powers.


It is equally useful to note those things that survived the fall of Rome- which enabled us to get through "by the skin of our teeth"- and which gave impetus to the next European Civilization; one that was destined to flourish as an Atlantic Civilization rather than Mediterranean. What survived and eventually prospered in the hands of Western man is revealed in the life's work of two prominent citizens of Carthage, the Capital City of the Roman province of Africa.

Mindful of the horrific destruction of Rome, Martianus Capella- a Roman proconsul in Carthage, and Aurelius Augustinus- that is, Augustine, a Christian clergyman in that same city, dedicated themselves to the task of preserving some semblance of their culture. With the certain approach of the fearsome Vandals, who were storming across the Straits of Gibraltar to put an end to Roman rule in Africa, both men set to work composing a most unique literary legacy.

Capella produced in nine volumes the imperial school curriculum, the trivium and quadrivium as they came to be called, which were intended as "condensed forms of Roman knowledge" to help the survivors of a soon-to-be fragmented and largely diminished Roman Empire. Augustine composed an extraordinary book entitled The City of God, forming the basis of which was the Credo ut intelligam (understanding comes only through belief), which would "see the monasteries through the Dark Ages that lay ahead."

Forming what were known as the seven liberal arts- rhetoric, grammar, argument, music, geometry, arithmetic and astronomy- Capella accompanied these subjects with an encyclopedic supplement consisting of facts germane to these areas of study. According to James Burke, Martianus Capella's "work was to become standard reference for education for the next six centuries."

Augustine's City of God "was to influence Christian thinking for a thousand years." Indeed, his devout faith in the Bible as God's revealed truth to humanity rendered "a decisive influence on the development of metaphysics by introducing the identification of God and Being...If God is Being, He is not only total being: totum esse, but, as we have seen, He is more especially true being: verum esse..." (Etienne Gilson; The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy).

In the absence of this insight, Greek thought- as innovative and remarkably effective as it is- was not able in its day to erect a viable science. And in the departure from such insight today, modern science- as unquestionably powerful and enormously productive as it is- unavoidably lapses into error and inevitably leads human reason astray.

On the political level, the energy Augustine's work contributed to the eventual formation of democracy and human FREEDOM in Western Civilization was promoted through its preservation of that continuity of existence (ontology) and thought (epistemology) that began in Jerusalem, and spread to Athens, Rome, London and Philadelphia: the "tale of five cities" about which Professor Russell Kirk wrote in The Roots of American Order.