He quite early anticipated the growth of an American variant of English, and took issue with the Edinburgh Reviewers on their assumption that such a development would be a culpable adulteration. In his observations on this, he clearly intimates the discrimination to be made between the development and the degeneration of a living language. “Certainly so great growing a population spread over such an extent of country, with such a variety of climates, of productions, of arts, must enlarge their language to make it answer the purpose of expressing all ideas, the new as well as the old. . . . But whether will these adulterate or enrich the English language? . . . Did the Athenians consider the Doric, the Ionian, the olic, and other dialects as disfiguring or as beautifying their language? Did they fastidiously disavow Herodotus, Pindar, Theocritus, Sappho, Alcæus, as Grecian writers? On the contrary, they were sensible that the variety of dialects, still infinitely varied by poetical license, constituted the riches of their language and made the Grecian Homer the first of poets, as he must ever remain until a language equally ductile and copious shall be spoken.”
III
“I think,” wrote Mr. Jefferson to a young relative who was making choice of studies in college, “it is lost time to attend lectures on moral philosophy. He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler if He had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them?” The moral and religious nature of man presents many attractive problems to the metaphysician, but Mr. Jefferson had a pretty clear conviction, in the first place, that these problems are insoluble, and moreover, that their solution, even if one might attain it, would have so little bearing on the practical conduct of life that speculation about them had best be left to those who have nothing better to do. In these matters, it is interesting to see how completely, without being aware of it, he is in the tradition of such English churchmen as Whichcote, Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Wilson. No doubt he was unacquainted with them, as he was unacquainted with Goethe; yet he was an independent and powerful continuator of their thought. The human sense of religion and morals “is submitted indeed in some degree to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this, even a less one than what we call common sense.” First and last, one must be practical; this sense was meant to bear strictly on practice; and, as Bishop Wilson acutely said, while the practical truths of the Gospel are clear, no Christian need complain of a want of light. The worst of speculative system-making was that it tended to interfere with practice; the tenets of these systems were inert. Mr. Jefferson was wholly with Whichcote in perceiving that “too many scholars have lived upon air and empty nothings; falling out about nothings, and being very wise about things that are not and work not.” Furthermore, it was easy to assent to a speculative system, while a practical obedience to one’s native sense of conduct was extremely hard— Pittacus said, —and therefore the tendency was to make the one do duty for the other. Mr. Jefferson had had a bitter experience of this in his collisions with the monstrous systematization of intolerance inculcated upon colonial Virginia by the Church of England. “Why have Christians,” he mused in 1776, “been distinguished above all people who have ever lived, for persecutions? Is it because it is the genius of their religion? No, its genius is the reverse. It is the refusing toleration to those of a different opinion”—toleration, which was of the essence of moral and religious practice. In this there is a distinct echo of Jeremy Taylor’s insistence that “it is keeping the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, and not identity of opinion, that the Holy Spirit requires of us.”
Mr. Jefferson’s repugnance to metaphysical system-making and its resultant separatism was so strong that he kept fastidiously clear of all contact with the subject. “I not only write nothing on religion,” he said in 1815, “but rarely permit myself to speak of it, and never but in a reasonable society.” His experience of the Dwights, Smiths and Masons of the period had satisfied him concerning the religious character bred by the official organization of Christianity, and therefore he was content to tell Dr. Ezra Stiles in 1819 that he was “of a sect by myself, as far as I know.” Each person’s particular convictions or principles “are a subject of accountability to our God alone”; it was quite enough for others to stay within the line laid down by Jesus, and judge the tree by its fruits. It was a fair inference that if a life “has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it can not be a bad one”; and any attempt at a scrutiny closer than this was inadmissible. The worst thing for religion, indeed, was contention about it; therefore “it is a matter of principle with me to avoid disturbing the tranquillity of others by the expression of any opinion on the innocent questions on which we schismatize.” Once more he is completely in Whichcote’s penetrating view that “nothing is worse done than what is ill done for religion; that must not be done in defence of religion which is contrary to religion.”
In the purview of teleology, especially, Mr. Jefferson was keenly aware of the vanity and viciousness of speculative constructions. He seldom spoke about his beliefs concerning the final destiny of man, and the little that he imparted to his more intimate correspondents is in a vein more nearly akin to the calm and profound thought of Marcus Aurelius than to post-Augustinian Christianity. The word unimpassioned is worth remarking in his suggestion to Mrs. John Adams in 1817, that “perhaps one of the elements of future felicity is to be a constant and unimpassioned view of what is passing here.” A year later, he tells John Adams that presently “we shall only be lookers-on,” and that sub specie æternitatis, “we may be amused with seeing the fallacy of our own guesses, and even the nothingness of those labours which have filled and agitated our own time here.” One might hazard such words to the Adamses, or to Edward Rutledge, or to good old conscientious John Dickinson, who would have liked the half-cooked omelette of demi-semi-independence back in 1776, but who could not bring himself to break any eggs by signing the Declaration. But the Reverend Isaac Story, dallying with a theory of the transmigration of souls, was another matter. “It is not for me to pronounce on the hypothesis you present. . . . When I was young, I was fond of the speculations which seemed to promise some insight into that hidden country, but observing at length that they left me in the same ignorance in which they had found me, I have for very many years ceased to read or think concerning them, and have reposed my head on that pillow of ignorance which a benevolent Creator has made so soft for us, knowing how much we should be forced to use it. I have thought it better, by nourishing the good passions and controlling the bad, to merit an inheritance in a state of being of which I can know so little, and to trust for the future to Him who has been so good in the past.”
Mr. Jefferson surveyed the ancient and modern systems of moral and religious philosophy with an interesting impartiality. He considered the genuine doctrines of Epicurus as “containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.” He drew up an excellent syllabus of these doctrines for his old diplomatic colleague, William Short, complaining of the sophistication of Epicurus at the hands of disciples and commentators, “in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice.” Most of all, however, he felt at ease in the Christian system, again energetically discriminating against its sophistication and debasement. “There never was a more pure and sublime system of morality delivered to man than is to be found in the four Evangelists.” His venerable Revolutionary compatriot, Charles Thomson, who was ornamenting a green old age by making a harmony of the Gospels, sent him a copy of his book. It then came out that Mr. Jefferson had to some extent anticipated him by putting together a Verba Christi in the interest of freeing this “pure and sublime system” from even the editorial comment and arrangement of the Evangelists themselves, letting it stand altogether clear of the influence of context. It was during his first term in the Presidency, he wrote Thomson, that he had employed several evenings in making “a we
e-little book from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank book in a certain order of time or subject. . . . If I had time, I would add to my little book the Greek, Latin and French texts, in columns side by side.” He found time to do this almost at once, it appears, perhaps stimulated by Thomson’s work; and he put together another book, making the four texts parallel, and styling it the Morals of Jesus.
IV
At the time of the Constitutional Convention, or even before, it was plain that by virtue of their superiority in mobility, in power of organization and in wealth, “the rich and well-born” would easily take command over the institutional voices of the new American society, and cause them to say what they wished said; and that with this would go a rapidly-developing technique of suppression and misrepresentation. It was a matter of great regret to Mr. Jefferson that no history of the Revolution, other than a mere chronology of external facts, could ever be written, “all its councils, designs and discussions having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and with no members, as far as I know, having even made notes of them.” Such records of post-Revolutionary political history as were made by Harper and Otis, for example, and by John Marshall in his biography of Washington, were only, he thought, about what might be expected; the first two an endeavour to whitewash their party, and the last a “party diatribe,” conceived purely in an electioneering interest. Thus it was, he remarked, that “man is fed with fables through life, leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eye.” For what he so well called the “fan-colouring biographers” he had deep disrespect. “You have certainly practiced vigorously the precept of de mortuis nil nisi bonum” he wrote dryly to Patrick Henry’s biographer, William Wirt. “This . . . constitutes perhaps the distinction between panegyric and history.”
Yet he was aware that a long future belonged to such as these. He foresaw a protracted and diligent indoctrination of the public, an unquestioned sway of myth and legend over the popular imagination, in support of the politico-economic system of the United States. “We have been too careless of our future reputations, while our tories will omit nothing to place us in the wrong. Besides the five-volumed libel [Marshall’s Life of Washington] which represents us as struggling for office, . . . the life of Hamilton is in the hands of a man who to the bitterness of the priest adds the rancour of the fiercest Federalism. . . . And doubtless other things are in preparation, unknown to us. On our part, we are depending on truth to make itself known, while history is taking a contrary set which may become too inveterate for correction.” The cohesive power of public plunder, the appeal of America as the “land of opportunity” to get rich by the uncompensated appropriation of the labour-products of others, by methods of speculation, monopoly and forestalling—these would confirm contemporary history in its “contrary set.” More than this, they would give direction to the whole institutional life of the country, to schools and colleges, the pulpit and the forum, to all forms of social organization, and especially to what Mr. Jefferson called the “cannibal newspapers.” True, the years are never unjust, if one but reckon on enough of them—the self-preserving instinct of humanity attends to that—but while waiting for their justice, there is little else that one can do.
V
Yet, little as it might be, that little should be done. It was delightful to go on from day to day in the amiable social life of Monticello, co-operating with the august and unfailing periodicity of nature, keeping Homer and Sophocles, Tacitus and Pindar as one’s intimates, playing at touch-and-go over the whole range of culture in one’s correspondence with John Adams, Humboldt, Ticknor, Wistar, Cooper, Dupont de Nemours. It was well to enjoy the luxury of being a disinterested, irresponsible and occasional observer of public affairs—
turbantibus æquora ventis,
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem
—watching Madison struggle at the oar, and sometimes giving him a bit of advice from the safe footing of solid ground. These satisfactions were his by right; “having performed my quadragena stipendia, I am entitled to my discharge.” One must be aware also that “nothing is more incumbent on the old than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honours they can no longer earn and the duties they can no longer perform.” When Mr. Jefferson was asked to become a candidate for the Presidency again in 1812, and when in the same year Madison asked him to go back to his old place as Secretary of State, he declined both invitations. “Good wishes,” he wrote Thomas Law, “are all an old man has to offer to his country or friends.” He owed his countrymen nothing, and he asked nothing of them. There is, one may be quite sure, no known instance of any one having prosecuted a career in the service of the United States at so great personal sacrifice. He had the eminent consolation, as he wrote Count Deodati, in 1807, “of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands as clean as they are empty.”
Yet, although in retirement, busy with the joys of a literary leisure so hardly earned, one might not be quite satisfied without giving one’s waning activity some little turn for the public interest. Good wishes were not quite enough. Even for an old man, even to one’s last hour, “es ist nicht genug zu wissen,” his great German contemporary was insisting, “man muss auch anwenden; es ist nicht genug zu wollen, man muss auch thun.” The wisdom of age, moreover, so improves the management and economy of activity, and so clears and illuminates its direction, that an old man with but little energy and with but little time before him, should accomplish a work of more worth and permanence than could ever be done in youth. “Wenn man alt ist” said Goethe, again, “muss man mehr thun als da man jung war.”
There were two public measures that Mr. Jefferson saw he might still safely and effectively sponsor. One was for resisting centralization and promoting the principle of local self-government, by the division of Virginia’s counties into wards or townships. “These will be pure and elementary republics, the sum of all which, taken together, composes the State, and will make of the whole a true democracy as to the business of the wards, which is that of nearest and daily concern.” If the transactions of the larger political units, which are necessarily carried on in a representative way, become “corrupt and perverted,” the ward-system constitutes the people into a regularly organized power, and furnishes the machinery whereby they may “crush regularly and peaceably the usurpations of their unfaithful agents.” Probably not much could come of this, considering the way the country was going. “I have little hope that the torrent of consolidation can be withstood.” Yet one might always try; it was just possible that in one State at least, the system might be put into effect, and that Virginia might set a good example, most of all to New England, which had the system, but was aborting its best fruit.
The second measure which Mr. Jefferson had at heart was “that of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.” This was a return to an old love. When he was employed in revising the Virginia Statutes, in 1797, he drew up a remarkable bill for a system of public schools. In the vulgar sense of the term—the sense by which anything merely indiscriminate may be called democratic—it was far from a democratic system. Mr. Jefferson’s notion of the limitation of education at public expense was as explicit as his notion of a limited suffrage, which he set forth at the same time. Like his contemporary, the Iron Duke, he was well aware that it was possible for a man’s education to be too much for his abilities. His bill provided that each ward in the county should have a school, open to all for instruction in reading, writing and common arithmetic. Each year, “the boy of best genius in the school”—the girls, apparently, were out of reckoning —was to be picked out and sent to the grammar school, of which there were to be twenty, conveniently placed i
n the State. This élite of the primary schools should be continued at the grammar school one or two years and then dismissed, with the exception of “the best genius of the whole,” who should be continued six years. “By this means,” said Mr. Jefferson, “twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually.” At the end of six years, the best half of the twenty were to be sent to William and Mary, and the rest turned adrift. Children who paid their way might have use of the schools without restriction: this selective system showed only how far Mr. Jefferson thought the State’s responsibility for free popular education should extend, and the directions in which it should be discharged.
Throughout his life, Mr. Jefferson consistently maintained that “the most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate as far as possible the minds of the people.” He had no doubt that “if a nation expects to be ignorant and free, . . . it expects what never was and never will be.” He seems never to have suspected, however, the ease with which mere literacy is perverted, and that it is therefore quite possible for a literate people to be much more ignorant than an illiterate people—that a people of well-perverted literacy, indeed, is invincibly unintelligent. His idea of literacy was mechanical, and he insisted on it mechanically; and he is thus, perhaps, as much as any one responsible for the general and calamitous over-confidence in literacy which prevailed in America unquestioned during the century that followed him. The astonishing exaggeration of his own confidence in literacy may be seen in a letter to the Chevalier de Ouis, in 1814, congratulating him upon the provision in the new Constitution of Spain, which disfranchised, after a certain time, all citizens who could not read and write. This, he said, “is the fruitful germ of the improvement of everything good, and the correction of everything imperfect in the present Constitution. This will give you an enlightened people, and an energetic public opinion which will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of the government!”
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