My foregoing comments might seem to strike a note of hopelessness, but nothing could be further from the truth. I am full of optimism. I see signs of intellectual renewal popping up all around me like saplings from the ashes of some great forest fire. In time, I hope — though I dare not trust — that we will again become a people who demand of our representatives both eloquence and truth, both classical erudition and Christian virtue.
One such sapling is the book I now hold in my hands, the inaugural volume in a series called Finding Our Words, under the editorship of Allison Ellis. This series collects, under various themes, foundational texts in the Western canon, what Matthew Arnold called “the best which has been thought and said.” These editions are aimed at the middle or high school student looking to gain a classical education. The selections are accompanied by remarkably good introductions by Tracy Lee Simmons, author of Climbing Parnassus and On Being Civilized. Further, students are given memorization assignments following each reading, consisting of the most critical extracts.
Finding Our Words is right. Only by immersing ourselves in the best words of our forebears, savoring them on our tongues, reciting them over and over until they rest permanently in our hearts, feeling the sting of tears even after the thousandth recitation, only then will we recover something of the culture that made these words possible in the first place. Only by making their words our own will we be able to speak our own words with their command of language.
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Related: Read American Democracy.
