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APPENDIX B
EXERCISES AND TESTS AT THE FOUR LEVELS OF READING

Introductory

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This Appendix offers a highly abbreviated sample of what Reading Exercises for independent study or group study are like. Obviously the sample cannot provide a thorough or exhaustive set of exercises, such as one would expect to find in a manual or workbook. However, it can perhaps go a certain way toward suggesting what such exercises would be, and how to get the most out of them.

The Appendix contains brief exercises and test questions at each of the four levels of reading:

At the First Level of Reading—Elementary Reading—the texts used are biographical notes about two of the authors included in Great Books of the Western World, John Stuart Mill and Sir Isaac Newton.

At the Second Level of Reading—Inspectional Reading—the texts used are the tables of contents of two works included in Great Books of the Western World, Dante’s Divine Comedy and Darwin’s The Origin of Species.

At the Third Level of Reading—Analytical Reading—the text used is How to Read a Book itself.

At the Fourth Level of Reading—Syntopical Reading—the texts used are selected passages reprinted from two other works included in Great Books• of the Western World, Aristotle’s Politics and Rousseau’s The Social Contract.

The reader will probably find that the sample exercises at the first two levels of reading are more familiar and conventional than those at the last two levels. This Appendix, unlike a more elaborate manual, can do little more than reinforce and clarify the distinctions between the various levels of reading and the differences between the various kinds of books. It cannot attempt to provide a really comprehensive and intensive exercise workbook.

It has become commonplace to criticize reading exercises and test questions on the grounds that they are not scientifically standardized, that they are culturally discriminatory, that by themselves they are not reliably predictive of success in schooling or in subsequent career progress, that questions often permit of more than one appropriate or “correct” answer, and that for all these reasons, grading by tests is to a certain extent arbitrary.

Much of this and similar criticism of the tests is valid, particularly if major decisions about school standing or placement, or about employment opportunities, are based exclusively on results drawn from these tests. However, many of the tests do effectively distinguish or identify degrees of competence, and they will continue to be widely employed in making academic and career judgments about individuals. Even if there were no other reasons, this reason by itself makes it desirable that the reader have some familiarity with the mechanics of these exercises and test questions.

It is particularly to be noted that the texts used in most such reading exercises are selected primarily for the sake of the test questions that are based on them. Hence the texts themselves are for the most part unrelated; frequently they are fragments—bits and pieces of technical pedantry or mere trivia.

In this Appendix, merely exemplary though it be, the emphasis is quite otherwise. The texts used for practice and to provide material for testing are themselves worth reading. Indeed, they are indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to advance beyond the first levels of reading. The texts are selected and the questions based on them are designed as tools for learning how to read what is worth reading.

A word about the form of the questions used in the tests that appear in the following pages. It is customary in such tests to employ a number of different kinds of questions. There are essay questions and multiple-choice questions. An essay question, of course, requires the person being tested to respond to something he has read in an extended statement. Multiple-choice questions are in turn of many kinds; usually they are presented in homogeneous groups. Sometimes a series of statements follows the reading exercise, and the person being tested is asked to indicate which statement best expresses the main idea or ideas of the passage read. In other cases the reader may be offered a choice of statements about a detail in the text, only one of which is a valid interpretation of the text, or at least is more apt than the others; or it may be the other way around; one is an incorrect choice, and the others are correct. Or a verbatim quotation may be given from the text to discover whether the reader has taken note of it and remembered it. Sometimes, in a statement either quoted directly or simply drawn from the text the reader will find a blank indicating that one or more words that will make sense of the statement have been omitted. Then follows a list of choices, lettered or numbered, among which the person being tested is asked to choose the phrase that, when inserted in the blank, best completes the statement.

Most questions may be answered directly from the passage read. But some questions require the reader to go outside the text for material that it is assumed he knows, material required to answer the question correctly. Still other questions are inferential: that is, they draw certain inferences from the text. The person taking the test is asked to select from a group of possibilities the inferences that can reasonably be drawn from the text; or he may be expected to recognize and discard inferences that are spurious and have no foundation in the text.

If one is faced with the task of creating a standardized test to be used widely in critical academic and career situations, then the choice of the kinds of questions and the framing of the questions themselves become critical as well. Fortunately, we do not face that kind of task in this Appendix. Instead, we are merely suggesting some approaches that may be tried in a course of independent study aimed at improving one’s own reading skills. We will employ in what follows most of the kinds of questions just described—not segregating the types in groups as is usually done—and some other kinds as well. Some are quite easy, others are very difficult; the difficult questions may be the most fun to try to answer.

Because some of the questions are very difficult, and because we have framed them with the intention as much of causing you to reflect on what you have read as to test you on what you have read, we have in many cases given more than the customary short and cryptic answers to the questions. This is particularly so in the case of the questions in the last part of this Appendix, the section dealing with syntopical reading. There, we have taken the liberty of leading the reader by the hand, as it were, framing the questions in such a way as to suggest an overall interpretation of the texts read, and answering the questions as much as possible as though we were present in person.

I. Exercises and Tests at the First Level of Reading: Elementary Reading

Two short biographical sketches appear in this section of the Appendix. One outlines the life of John Stuart Mill, the other that of Sir Isaac Newton. The Mill sketch appears first, although of course Newton predates Mill by nearly two centuries.

This biographical sketch of Mill is reprinted from Volume 43 of Great Books of the Western World. Besides the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federalist Papers of Hamilton, Madison and Jay—the founding documents of America—that volume contains three complete works by Mill: On Liberty, Representative Government and Utilitarianism. These are three of Mill’s greatest works, but they by no means exhaust his writings. The Subjection of Women, for example, is of great contemporary interest, not only because Mill was one of the first thinkers in Western history to advocate complete equality for women, but also because of the book’s trenchant style and the many insights it expresses about the relations of men and women at any time and place.

At the first level of reading, speed is not of the essence. The sketch of Mill’s life that follows is about 1,200 words long. We suggest that it be read at a comfortable speed—in perhaps six to ten minutes. We also suggest that you mark phrases and sentences in the text that especially interest you and perhaps also make a few notes. Then try to answer the questions we have appended.

JOHN STUART MILL
1806-1873

Mill, in his Autobiography, declared that his intellectual development was due primarily to the influence of two people: his father, James Mill, and his wife.

James Mill elaborated for his son a comprehensive educational program, modelled upon the theories of Helvétius and Bentham. It was encyclopedic in scope and equipped Mill by the time he was thirteen with the equivalent of a thorough university education. The father acted as the boy’s tutor and constant companion, allowing Mill to work in the same room with him and even to interrupt him as he was writing his History of India or his articles for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Mill later described the result as one that “made me appear as a ‘made’ or manufactured man, having had a certain impress of opinion stamped upon me which I could only reproduce.”

The education began with Greek and arithmetic at the age of three. By the time he was eight Mill had read through the whole of Herodotus, six dialogues of Plato and considerable history. Before he was twelve he had studied Euclid and algebra, the Greek and Latin poets, and some English poetry. His interest in history continued, and he even attempted writing an account of Roman government. At twelve he was introduced to logic in Aristotle’s Organon and the Latin scholastic manuals on the subject. The last year under his father’s direct supervision, his thirteenth, was devoted to political economy; the son’s notes later served the elder Mill in his Elements of Political Economy. He furthered his education by a period of studies with his father’s friends, reading law with Austin and economics with Ricardo, and completed it by himself with Bentham’s treatise on legislation, which he felt gave him “a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy … a religion” and made a “different being of him.”

Although Mill never actually severed relations with his father, he experienced, at the age of twenty, a “crisis” in his mental history. It occurred to him to pose the question: “Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?” He reported that “an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, ‘No,’” and he was overcome by a depression which lasted for several years. The first break in his “gloom” came while reading Marmontel’s Mémoires:“I … came to the passage which relates his father’s death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be everything to them —would supply the place of all that they had lost.” He was moved to tears by the scene, and from this moment his “burden grew lighter.”

From the time he was seventeen, Mill supported himself by working for the East India Company, where his father was an official. Although he began nominally as a clerk, he was soon promoted to assistant-examiner, and for twenty years, from his father’s death in 1836, until the Company’s activities were taken over by the British Government, he had charge of the relations with the Indian states, which gave him wide practical experience in the problems of government. In addition to his regular employment, he took part in many activities tending to prepare public opinion for legislative reform. He, his father, and their friends formed the group known as “philosophical radicals,” which made a major contribution to the debates leading to the Reform Bill of 1832. Mill was active in exposing what he considered departures from sound principle in parliament and the courts of justice. He wrote often for the newspapers friendly to the “radical” cause, helped to found and edit the Westminster Review as a “radical” organ, and participated in several reading and debating societies, devoted to the discussion of the contemporary intellectual and social problems.

These activities did not prevent him from pursuing his own intellectual interests. He edited Bentham’s Rationale of Judicial Evidence. He studied logic and science with the aim of reconciling syllogistic logic with the methods of inductive science, and published his System of Logic (1843). At the same time he pushed his inquiries in the field of economics. These first took the form of Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy and were later given systematic treatment in the Principles of Political Economy (1848).

The development and productivity of these years he attributed to his relationship with Mrs. Harriet Taylor, who became his wife in 1851. Mill had known her for twenty years, since shortly after his “crisis,” and he could never praise too highly her influence upon his work. Although he published less during the seven years of his married life than at any other period of his career, he thought out and partly wrote many of his important works, including the essay On Liberty (1859), the Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, which later led to the Representative Government (1861), and Utilitarianism (1863). He attributed to her especially his understanding of the human side of the abstract reforms he advocated. After her death he stated: “Her memory is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing up as it does all worthiness, I endeavour to regulate my life.”

Mill devoted a large part of his last years directly to political activity. In addition to his writings, he was one of the founders of the first women’s suffrage society and, in 1865, consented to become a member of Parliament. Voting with the radical wing of the Liberal Party, he took an active part in the debates on Disraeli’s Reform Bill and promoted the measures which he had long advocated, such as the representation of women, the reform of London government, and the alteration of land tenure in Ireland. Largely because of his support of unpopular measures, he was defeated for re-election. He retired to his cottage in Avignon, which had been built so that he might be close to the grave of his wife, and died there May 8, 1873.

Note that the questions in these tests are not all of the same type: there are several kinds of multiple-choice questions and some essay questions as well. Some questions call for information not included in the passage you have read—the background information a capable reader brings to whatever he reads. Select all the answers which seem to you to be valid, whether they are stated or implied in the text, or simply seem to you true on the basis of logic or your background information.

Test A: Questions about the biographical sketch of John Stuart Mill

1. During the latter part of Mill’s life, England was ruled by (a) George IV (b) William IV (c) Victoria (d) Edward VII.

2. Mill’s early education was largely designed by (a) Jeremy Bentham (b) his father, James Mill (c) the Encyclopaedia Britannica for which his father wrote articles (d) Marmontel’s Mémoires.

3. By the time he was eight years old, Mill had read (a) Herodotus (b) six dialogues of Plato (c) Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

4. Mill went to work for the East India Company to support himself at the age of (a) 14 (b) 17 (c) 21 (d) 25.

5. At the age of twenty, Mill experienced a (a) quarrel with his father (b) crisis in his mental history (c) “crisis” in his mental history (d) love affair with a married woman.

6. Mill, his father, and their friends called themselves “philosophical radicals” because they believed (a) in the overthrow of the government by violence (b) that reforms should be made in Parliamentary representation (c) that the study of philosophy should be dropped from college curriculums.

7. Among the authors whom Mill read as a young man, and who probably influenced his thinking, were (a) Aristotle (b) Dewey (c) Ricardo (d) Bentham.

8. Which of these well known works of Mill is not mentioned in the text? (a) On Liberty (b) Representative Government (c) Utilitarianism (d) The Subjection of Women.

9. Were he alive today, is it likely or not likely that Mill would be

LIKELY

NOT LIKELY

(a) a supporter of the women’s liberation movement

______

______

(b) in favor of universal education

______

______

(c) an active segregationist

______

______

(d) a strong advocate of censorship of newspapers and other mass media

______

______

10. It can be inferred from the text that Mill considered his wife (the former Mrs. Harriet Taylor), both during their marriage and after her death, to be (a) his severest critic (b) his best friend (c) his greatest enemy (d) his muse.

Turn to p. 413 for the answers to Test A.

Sir Isaac Newton is of enormous interest to scholars and historians of science at the present day. There are two main reasons for this. The first is a commonplace. By combining analysis with experimentation—by combining theorizing with systematic observation of natural phenomena—men like Galileo and Newton launched an intellectual revolution and helped to usher in our modern age of science. Not only did they discover truths about the physical world that continue to be relevant and important, but they also developed new methods of studying nature that have proved to be of wide usefulness in many areas of study and research.

That, as we said, is a commonplace; that aspect of Newton’s life and achievement has been known and discussed for centuries. More recently, Newton has become the center of a worldwide study of the character of genius. Scholars and students of science and literature endlessly rank scientists and authors as more or less great, or on a scale ranging from extraordinary to genius. There is a considerable body of learned opinion that maintains that Newton was the supreme genius—the greatest intellect of all time. Many efforts have been made to characterize and account for genius. Precocity, the ability to concentrate, acute intuitiveness, rigorous analytical capacity —by terms such as these genius is described. All these terms seem to apply to Isaac Newton.

The biographical sketch of Newton that follows is reprinted from Volume 34 of Great Books of the Western World. That volume contains the texts of Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (often known as Newton’s Principia) and of his Optics; it also contains the text of the Treatise on Light of the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens. The biography of Newton is somewhat longer than the one of Mill; therefore, take ten to twelve minutes to read it. As before, mark the most striking passages and make notes. Then try to answer the questions that follow.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON
1642-1727

Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, on Christmas Day, 1642. His father, a small farmer, died a few months before his birth, and when in 1645 his mother married the rector of North Witham, Newton was left with his maternal grandmother at Woolsthorpe. After having acquired the rudiments of education at small schools close by, Newton was sent at the age of twelve to the grammar school at Grantham, where he lived in the house of an apothecary. By his own account, Newton was at first an indifferent scholar until a successful fight with another boy aroused a spirit of emulation and led to his becoming first in the school. He displayed very early a taste and aptitude for mechanical contrivances; he made windmills, water clocks, kites, and sundials, and he is said to have invented a four-wheel carriage which was to be moved by the rider.

After the death of her second husband in 1656, Newton’s mother returned to Woolsthorpe and removed her eldest son from school so that he might prepare himself to manage the farm. But it was soon evident that his interests were not in farming, and upon the advice of his uncle, the rector of Burton Coggles, he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1661 as one of the boys who performed menial services in return for their expenses. Although there is no record of his formal progress as a student, Newton is known to have read widely in mathematics and mechanics. His first reading at Cambridge was in the optical works of Kepler. He turned to Euclid because he was bothered by his inability to comprehend certain diagrams in a book on astrology he had bought at a fair; finding its propositions self-evident, he put it aside as “a trifling book,” until his teacher, Isaac Barrow, induced him to take up the book again. It appears to have been the study of Descartes’ Geometry which inspired him to do original mathematical work. In a small commonplace book kept by Newton as an undergraduate, there are several articles on angular sections and the squaring of curves, several calculations about musical notes, geometrical problems from Vieta and Van Schooten, annotations out of Wallis’ Arithmetic of Infinities, together with observations on refraction, on the grinding of spherical optic glasses, on the errors of lenses, and on the extraction of all kinds of roots. It was around the time of his taking the Bachelor’s degree, in 1665, that Newton discovered the binomial theorem and made the first notes on his discovery of the “method of fluxions.”

When the Great Plague spread from London to Cambridge in 1665, college was dismissed, and Newton retired to the farm in Lincolnshire, where he conducted experiments in optics and chemistry and continued his mathematical speculations. From this forced retirement in 1666 he dated his discovery of the gravitational theory: “In the same year I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon, … compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth and found them to answer pretty nearly.” At about the same time his work on optics led to his explanation of the composition of white light. Of the work he accomplished in these years Newton later remarked: “All this was in the two years of 1665 and 1666, for in those years I was in the prime of my age for invention and minded Mathematics and Philosophy more than at any time since.”

On the re-ppening of Trinity College in 1667, Newton was elected a fellow, and two years later, a little before his twenty-seventh birthday, he was appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics, succeeding his friend and teacher, Dr. Barrow. Newton had already built a reflecting telescope in 1668; the second telescope of his making he presented to the Royal Society in December, 1671. Two months later, as a fellow of the Society, he communicated his discovery on light and thereby started a controversy which was to run for many years and to involve Hooke, Lucas, Linus, and others. Newton, who always found controversy distasteful, “blamed my own imprudence for parting with so substantial a blessing as my quiet to run after a shadow.” His papers on optics, the most important of which were communicated to the Royal Society between 1672 and 1676, were collected in the Optics (1704).

It was not until 1684 that Newton began to think of making known his work on gravity. Hooke, Halley, and Sir Christopher Wren had independently come to some notion of the law of gravity but were not having any success in explaining the orbits of the planets. In that year Halley consulted Newton on the problem and was astonished to find that he had already solved it. Newton submitted to him four theorems and seven problems, which proved to be the nucleus of his major work. In some seventeen or eighteen months during 1685 and 1686 he wrote in Latin the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Newton thought for some time of suppressing the third book, and it was only Halley’s insistence that preserved it. Halley also took upon himself the cost of publishing the work in 1687 after the Royal Society proved unable to meet its cost. The book caused great excitement throughout Europe, and in 1689 Huygens, at that time the more famous scientist, came to England to make the personal acquaintance of Newton.

While working upon the Principles, Newton had begun to take a more prominent part in university affairs. For his opposition to the attempt of James II to repudiate the oath of allegiance and supremacy at the university, Newton was elected parliamentary member for Cambridge. On his return to the university, he suffered a serious illness which incapacitated him for most of 1692 and 1693 and caused considerable concern to his friends and fellow workers. After his recovery, he left the university to work for the government. Through his friends Locke, Wren, and Lord Halifax, Newton was made Warden of the Mint in 1695 and four years later, Master of the Mint, a position he held until his death.

For the last thirty years of his life Newton produced little original mathematical work. He kept his interest and his skill in the subject; in 1696 he solved overnight a problem offered by Bernoulli in a competition for which six months had been allowed, and again in 1716 he worked in a few hours a problem which Leibniz had proposed in order to “feel the pulse of the English analysts.” He was much occupied, to his own distress, with two mathematical controversies, one regarding the astronomical observations of the astronomer royal, and the other with Leibniz regarding the invention of calculus. He also worked on revisions for a second edition of the Principtes, which appeared in 1713.

Newton’s scientific work brought him great fame. He was a popular visitor at the Court and was knighted in 1705. Many honors came to him from the continent; he was in correspondence with all the leading men of science, and visitors became so frequent as to prove a serious discomfort. Despite his fame, Newton maintained his modesty. Shortly before his death, he remarked: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

From an early period of his life Newton had been much interested in theological studies and before 1690 had begun to study the prophecies. In that year he wrote, in the form of a letter to Locke, an Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of the Scriptures, regarding two passages on the Trinity. He left in manuscript Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse and other works of exegesis.

After 1725 Newton’s health was much impaired, and his duties at the Mint were discharged by a deputy. In February, 1727, he presided for the last time at the Royal Society, of which he had been president since 1703, and died on March 20, 1727, in his eighty-fifth year. He was buried in Westminster Abbey after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber.

Test B: Questions about the biography of Sir Isaac Newton

1. Before Newton gained admission to Trinity College, Cambridge, he took a special interest in (a) politics (b) theology (c) mechanical devices (d) science and mathematics.

2. Newton was knighted by (a) King Charles II (16601685) (b) King James II (1685-1688) (c) Queen Anne (17021714) (d) King George I (1714-1727).

3. When Trinity College was closed for two years from 1665 to 1667 as a consequence of the spreading of the Great Plague from London to Cambridge, Newton along with many other students took an extended holiday on the Continent. (True or False?)

4. Newton was elected to Parliament on the basis of (a) his handling of antiroyalist rioting among the students (b) his opposition to James II’s attempt to repudiate the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy (c) his handling of student and faculty panic in the face of the spread of the Great Plague from London to Cambridge.

5. During the latter part of his life, Newton was occupied and distressed by his involvement in controversies regarding (a) astronomical observations of the astronomer royal (b) the invention of the calculus (c) the prophecies of Daniel.

6. Newton originally wrote his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in (a) Greek (b) Latin (c) English.

7. Among other matters, the work explained (a) why apples fall (b) the orbits of the planets (c) how to square a circle (d) in what respects God is a geometrician.

8. Optics is (a) the general name given to the study of light, the radiant energy that among other things by its action upon the organs of vision enables man to see (b) the general name for the study of the eye in man and other animals(c) the technology of the production of the lens and its use in telescopes.

9. Newton, in his Optics, (a) proved that light travels at 300,000 kilometers an hour (b) revealed the composition of white light (c) described how white light can be broken up by a prism into the colors of the spectrum (d) outlined some military uses of the telescope.

10. As an old man, Newton remarked: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Comment on this statement in 250 words.

Turn to p. 413 for the answers to Test B.

You have now completed the two-part reading exercise at the first level of reading. You will of course have noted that, as we reminded you they would, the questions draw not only on the texts read but also on historical and other information not explicitly included in the text. The capable reader, even at this first level, can bring useful information to bear on whatever he reads. In general, the better informed he is, the better he reads.

If you have done reasonably well in answering the test questions, it must be obvious to you that you are a pretty well-rounded reader and that you have reached and even exceeded the standards set for Elementary Reading. We hope you have also recognized that these exercises and tests were designed not only to improve your skill as a reader but also to help you learn something worth knowing, or to apply something you already know to what you read.

II. Exercises and Tests at the Second Level of Reading: Inspectional Reading

The tables of contents of two works included in Great Books of the Western World are used as texts for reading and testing in this section of Appendix B. In addition, short biographical sketches of their authors—Dante and Darwin—are also reprinted here, for the reader’s information and also as material from which test questions are drawn.

The biography of Dante and the table of contents of his Divine Comedy are taken from Volume 21 of Great Books of the Western World. That volume contains only the Divine Comedy. But Dante wrote other works, in prose and verse, of great interest and beauty, although only his Comedy (the adjective “Divine” was added after his death) is widely read today.

You will recall, from Chapter 4, that there are two steps in Inspectional Reading. The first we called Pre-Reading or Skimming; the second, Superficial Reading. As we do not have the entire text of the Divine Comedy before us for this sample reading exercise, we will treat the table of contents of the work, given here in its entirety, as though it were a book in itself. That is, we suggest that you spend less than ten minutes (here, speed is of the essence) systematically skimming the whole table of contents, after which you can try answering some questions; and then we will ask you to read the table of contents over again superficially—that is, in about twenty minutes—and then answer some more questions.

The total reading time to be devoted to the table of contents of the Divine Comedy is therefore half an hour. Considering that scholars have devoted thirty years of their lives to the Divine Comedy, we dare say that thirty minutes of inspection is indeed superficial. At the same time, it is not presumptuous or vain. One can learn a lot about this great poem in half an hour. And as to those for whom Dante and the Divine Comedy are vague names at best, a careful inspection of the table of contents may induce them to inspect the whole work, or even lead them on to read the whole analytically, at the third level of reading.

Before giving the table of contents your first inspection—before either pre-reading or systematically skimming it—read the biographical note about Dante in a few minutes. It will help you understand what Dante is planning and doing in the Divine Comedy—and also help you to answer some of our questions.

DANTE ALIGHIERI
1265-1321

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence about the middle of May, 1265. The city, then under its first democratic constitution, was sharply divided between the Papal party of the Guelphs and the Imperial party of the Ghibellines. Dante’s family were adherents of the Guelph faction, and when Dante was only a few months old, the Guelphs obtained decisive victory at the Battle of Benevento. Although of noble ancestry, the Alighieri family was neither wealthy nor particularly prominent.

It seems probable that Dante received his early education at the Franciscan school of Santa Croce. He evidently owed much to the influence of Brunetto Latini, the philosopher and scholar who figured largely in the councils of the Florentine commune. Before Dante was twenty, he began writing poetry and became associated with the Italian poets of the “sweet new style,” who exalted their love and their ladies in philosophical verse. Dante’s “lady,” whom he celebrated with singular devotion, was a certain Beatrice. According to Boccaccio’s life of Dante, she was Beatrice Portinari, daughter of a Florentine citizen, who married a wealthy banker and died when she was but twenty-four. Dante first sang of Beatrice in the Vita Nuova (1292), a sequence of poems with prose comment in which he recounts the story of his love, of the first meeting when they were both nine years of age, of the exchange of greetings which passed between them on May Day, 1283, and of Beatrice’s death in 1290.

Upon turning thirty, Dante became actively involved in Florentine politics. The constitution of the city was based upon the guilds, and Dante, upon his enrolment in the guild of physicians and apothecaries, which also included book dealers, became eligible for office. He participated in the deliberations of the councils, served on a special embassy, and in 1300 was elected one of the six priors that governed the city. The former struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines had appeared in new form in the conflict between the Whites and the Blacks. As one of the priors, Dante seems to have been influential in the move to lessen factionalism by banishing from Florence the rival leaders, including among the Blacks his wife’s relative, Corso Donati, and among the Whites his “first friend,” the poet, Guido Cavalcanti. Despite the opposition of Dante and the White leaders to Papal interference in Florentine affairs, Pope Boniface VIII in 1301 invited Charles of Valois, brother of King Philip of France, to enter Florence to settle the differences between the two factions. Actually he assisted the Blacks to seize power, and more than six hundred Whites were condemned to exile. In 1302 Dante, with four others of the White party, was charged with corruption in office. He was condemned to pay a fine of five thousand florins within three days or lose his property, exiled for two years, and denied the right ever again to hold public office. Three months later, upon his refusal to pay the fine, Dante was condemned to be burned alive if he should come within the power of the republic.

“After it was the pleasure of the citizens of the most beautiful and most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to chase me forth from her sweet bosom,” Dante writes of his exile in the Convivio, “I have gone through almost every region to which this tongue of ours extends, showing against my will the wound of fortune.” It is recorded that Dante attended a meeting at San Godenzo, where an alliance was formed between the Whites in exile and the Ghibellines, but he does not seem to have been present in 1304 when the combined forces were defeated at Lastra. Perhaps he had already separated himself from the “evil and foolish company” of his fellow-exiles, “formed a party by himself,” and found his “first refuge and hostelry” at the court of the Delia Scalas in Verona. Probably during the following years he spent time at Bologna and later at Padua, where Giotto is said to have entertained him. Toward the end of 1306 he was the guest of the Malaspinas in Lunigiana and acted as their ambassador in making peace with the Bishop of Luni. Some time after this date he may have visited Paris and attended the university there.

During the early years of his exile Dante appears to have studied in those subjects which gained him the title of philosopher and theologian as well as poet. In the Convivio, probably written between 1305 and 1308, he tells how, after the death of Beatrice, he turned to Cicero’s De Amicitia and the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius, which awoke in him the love of philosophy. To sing its praises he began his Convivio, which he intended to be a kind of treasury of universal knowledge in the form of poems connected by lengthy prose commentaries. At the same time he worked upon the De Vulgari Eloquentia, a Latin treatise in which he defended the use of Italian as a literary language.

The election of Henry of Luxemburg as emperor in 1308 stirred Dante’s political hopes. When Henry entered Italy in 1310 at the head of an army, Dante in an epistle to the princes and people of Italy hailed the coming of a deliverer. At Milan he paid personal homage to Henry as his sovereign. When Florence, in alliance with King Robert of Naples, prepared to resist the emperor, Dante in a second epistle denounced them for their obstinacy and prophesied their doom. In a third epistle he upbraided the Emperor himself for his delay and urged him on against Florence. It was probably during this period that he wrote his De Monarchia, an intellectual defense of the emperor as the sovereign of the temporal order. The death of Henry in 1313, after a year or so of ineffectual fighting, brought an end to the political aspirations of Dante and his party. The city of Florence in 1311 and again in 1315 renewed his condemnation.

After Henry’s death, Dante passed the rest of his life under the protection of various lords of Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Romagna. According to one tradition, he retired for a time to the monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana in the Appenines, where he worked on the Divine Comedy, which may have been planned as early as 1292. He was almost certainly for a time at the court of Can Grande della Scala, to whom he dedicated the Paradiso. In 1315 Florence issued a general recall of exiles. Dante refused to pay the required fine and to “bear the brand of oblation,” feeling that such a return would derogate from his fame and honor. To the end of his life he appears to have hoped that his Comedy would finally open the gates of the city to him.

The last few years of the poet’s life were spent at Ravenna, under the patronage of Guido da Polenta, a nephew of Francesca da Rimini. Dante’s daughter, Beatrice, was a nun in that city, and one of his sons held a benefice there; his wife seems to have resided in Florence throughout his exile. Dante was greatly esteemed at Ravenna and enjoyed a congenial circle of friends. Here he completed the Divine Comedy and wrote two eclogues in Latin which indicate that a certain contentment surrounded his closing days. Returning from a diplomatic mission to Venice on behalf of his patron, he caught a fever and died September 14, 1321. He was buried at Ravenna before the door of the principal church, with the highest honors, and “in the habit of a poet and a great philosopher.”

Now spend about ten minutes pre-reading or skimming the following table of contents systematically. The text used here is that of the Charles Eliot Norton translation. Other translators would of course present the table of contents in somewhat different terms.

TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE Divine Comedy

HELL

CANTO I: Dante, astray in a wood, reaches the foot of a hill which he begins to ascend; he is hindered by three beasts; he turns back and is met by Virgil, who proposes to guide him into the eternal world.

CANTO II: Dante, doubtful of his own powers, is discouraged at the outset. Virgil cheers him by telling him that he has been sent to his aid by a blessed Spirit from Heaven, who revealed herself as Beatrice. Dante casts off fear, and the poets proceed.

CANTO III: The gate of Hell. Virgil leads Dante in. The punishment of those who had lived without infamy and without praise. Acheron, and the sinners on its bank. Charon. Earthquake. Dante swoons.

CANTO IV: The further side of Acheron. Virgil leads Dante into Limbo, the First Circle of Hell, containing the spirits of those who lived virtuously but without faith in Christ. Greeting of Virgil by his fellow poets. They enter a castle, where are the shades of ancient worthies. After seeing them Virgil and Dante depart.

CANTO V: The Second Circle, that of Carnal Sinners. Minos. Shades renowned of old. Francesca da Rimini.

CANTO VI: The Third Circle, that of the Gluttonous. Cerberus. Ciacco.

CANTO VII: The Fourth Circle, that of the Avaricious and the Prodigal. Pluto. Fortune. The Styx. The Fifth Circle, that of the Wrathful.

CANTO VIII: The Fifth Circle. Phlegyas and his boat. Passage of the Styx. Filippo Argenti. The City of Dis. The demons refuse entrance to the poets.

CANTO IX: The City of Dis. Erichtho. The Three Furies. The Heavenly Messenger. The Sixth Circle: that of the Heretics.

CANTO X: The Sixth Circle. Farinata degli Uberti. Cavalcante Cavalcanti. Frederick II.

CANTO XI: The Sixth Circle. Tomb of Pope Anastasius. Discourse of Virgil on the divisions of the lower Hell.

CANTO XII: The Seventh Circle, that of the Violent, first round: those who do violence to others. The Minotaur. The Centaurs. Chiron. Nessus. The River of boiling blood, and the sinners in it.

CANTO XIII: The Seventh Circle, second round: those who have done violence to themselves and to their goods. The Wood of Self-murderers. The Harpies. Pier dello Vigne. Lano of Siena and others.

CANTO XIV: The Seventh Circle, third round: those who have done violence to God. The Burning Sand. Capaneus. Figure of the Old Man in Crete. The rivers of Hell.

CANTO XV: The Seventh Circle, third round: those who have done violence to Nature. Brunetto Latini. Prophecies of misfortune to Dante.

CANTO XVI: The Seventh Circle, third round: those who have done violence to Nature. Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi and Jacopo Rusticucci. The roar of Phlegethon as it pours downward. The cord thrown into the abyss.

CANTO XVII. The Seventh Circle, third round: those who have done violence to Art. Geryon. The Usurers. Descent to the Eighth Circle.

CANTO XVIII: The Eighth Circle: that of the fraudulent; first pouch: pandars and seducers. Venedico Caccianimico. Jason. Second pouch: false flatterers. Alessio Interminei. Thais.

CANTO XIX: The Eighth Circle: third pouch: simonists. Pope Nicholas III.

CANTO XX: The Eighth Circle: fourth pouch: diviners, soothsayers, and magicians. Amphiaraus. Tiresias. Aruns. Manto. Eurypylus. Michael Scott. Asdente.

CANTO XXI: The Eighth Circle: fifth pouch: barrators. A magistrate of Lucca. The Malebranche. Parley with them.

CANTO XXII: The Eighth Circle: fifth pouch: barrators. Ciampolo of Navarre. Fra Gomita. Michel Zanche. Fray of the Malebranche.

CANTO XXIII: The Eighth Circle. Escape from the fifth pouch. The sixth pouch: hypocrites, in cloaks of gilded lead. Jovial Friars. Caiaphas. Annas. Frate Catalano.

CANTO XXIV: The Eighth Circle. The poets climb from the sixth pouch. Seventh pouch, filled with serpents, by which thieves are tormented. Vanni Fucci. Prophecy of calamity to Dante.

CANTO XXV: The Eighth Circle: seventh pouch: fraudulent thieves. Cacus. Agnello Brunelleschi and others.

CANTO XXVI: The Eighth Circle: eighth pouch: fraudulent counsellors. Ulysses and Diomed.

CNTO XXVII: The Eighth Circle: eighth pouch: fraudulent counsellors. Guido da Montefeltro.

CANTO XXVIII: The Eighth Circle: ninth pouch: sowers of discord and schism. Mahomet and Ali. Fra Dolcino. Pier da Medicina. Curio. Mosca. Bertran de Born.

CANTO XXIX: The Eighth Circle: ninth pouch. Geri del Bello. Tenth pouch: falsifiers of all sorts. Alchemists. Griffolino of Arezzo. Capocchio.

CANTO XXX: The Eighth Circle: tenth pouch: false personators, false moneyers, and the false in words. Myrrha. Gianni Schicchi. Master Adam. Sinon of Troy.

CANTO XXXI: The Eighth Circle. Giants. Nimrod. Ephialtes. Antæus sets the Poets down in the Ninth Circle.

CANTO XXXII: The Ninth Circle: that of traitors; first ring: Caina. Counts of Mangona. Camicion de’ Pazzi. Second ring: Antenora. Bocca degli Abati. Buoso da Duera. Count Ugolino.

CANTO XXXIII: The Ninth Circle: second ring: Antenora. Count Ugolino. Third ring: Ptolomea. Frate Alberigo. Branca d’ Oria.

CANTO XXXIV: The Ninth Circle: fourth ring: Judecca. Lucifer. Judas, Brutus and Cassius. Centre of the Universe. Passage from Hell. Ascent to the surface of the Southern Hemisphere.

PURGATORY

CANTO I: The new theme. Invocation to the Muses. Dawn of Easter on the shore of Purgatory. The Four Stars. Cato. The cleansing of Dante’s face from the stains of Hell.

CANTO II: Sunrise. The Poets on the shore. Coming of a boat, guided by an angel, bearing souls to Purgatory. Their landing. Casella and his song. Cato hurries the souls to the mountain.

CANTO III: Ante-Purgatory. Souls of those who have died in contumacy of the Church. Manfred.

CANTO IV: Ante-Purgatory. Ascent to a shelf of the mountain. The negligent, who postponed repentance to the last hour. Belacqua.

CANTO V: Ante-Purgatory. Spirits who had delayed repentance, and met with death by violence, but died repentant. Jacopo del Cassera. Buonconte da Montefeltro. Pia de’ Tolomei.

CANTO VI: Ante-Purgatory. More spirits who had deferred repentance till they were overtaken by a violent death. Efficacy of prayer. Sordello. Apostrophe to Italy.

CANTO VII: Virgil makes himself known to Sordello. Sordello leads the Poets to the Valley of the Princes who had been negligent of salvation. He points them out by name.

CANTO VIII: Valley of the Princes. Two Guardian Angels. Nino Visconti. The Serpent. Corrado Malaspina.

CANTO IX: Slumber and Dream of Dante. The Eagle. Lucia. The Gate of Purgatory. The Angelic Gatekeeper. Seven P’s inscribed on Dante’s Forehead. Entrance to the First Ledge.

CANTO X: Purgatory proper. First Ledge: the Proud. Examples of Humility sculptured on the rock.

CANTO XI: First Ledge: the Proud. Prayer. Omberto Aldobrandeschi. Oderisi d’ Agubbio. Provenzan Salvani.

CANTO XII. First Ledge: the Proud. Instances of the punishment of Pride graven on the pavement. Meeting with an Angel who removes one of the P’s. Ascent to the Second Ledge.

CANTO XIII: Second Ledge: the Envious. Examples of Love. The Shades in haircloth, and with sealed eyes. Sapìa of Siena.

CANTO XIV: Second Ledge: the Envious. Guido del Duca. Rinieri de’ Calboli. Instances of the punishment of Envy.

CANTO XV: Second Ledge: the Envious. An Angel removes the second P from Dante’s forehead. Discourse concerning the Sharing of Good. Ascent to the Third Ledge: the Wrathful. Vision of Examples of Forbearance.

CANTO XVI: Third Ledge: the Wrathful. Marco Lombardo. His discourse on Free Will, and the corruption of the World.

CANTO XVII: Third Ledge: the Wrathful. Issue from the Smoke. Vision of Instances of the punishment of Anger. Ascent to the Fourth Ledge, where Sloth is purged. Second Nightfall in Purgatory. Virgil explains how Love is the root alike of Virtue and of Sin.

CANTO XVIII: Fourth Ledge: the Slothful. Discourse of Virgil on Love and Free Will. Throng of Spirits running in haste to redeem their Sin. Examples of Zeal. The Abbot of San Zeno. Instances of the punishment of Sloth. Dante falls asleep.

CANTO XIX: Fourth Ledge. Dante dreams of the Siren. The Angel of the Pass. Ascent to the Fifth Ledge: The Avaricious. Pope Adrian V.

CANTO XX: Fifth Ledge: the Avaricious. The Spirits celebrate examples of Poverty and Bounty. Hugh Capet. His discourse on his descendants. Instances of the punishment of Avarice. Trembling of the Mountain.

CANTO XXI: Fifth Ledge. The shade of Statius. Cause of the trembling of the Mountain. Statius does honor to Virgil.

CANTO XXII: Ascent to the Sixth Ledge. Discourse of Statius and Virgil. Entrance to the Ledge: the Gluttonous. The Mystic Tree. Examples of Temperance.

CANTO XXIII: Sixth Ledge: the Gluttonous. Forese Donati. Nella. Rebuke of the women of Florence.

CANTO XXIV: Sixth Ledge: the Gluttonous. Forese Donati. Piccarda Donati. Bonagiunta of Lucca. Pope Martin IV. Ubaldin dalla Pila. Bonifazio. Messer Marchese. Prophecy of Bonagiunta concerning Gentucca, and of Forese concerning Corso de’ Donati. Second Mystic Tree. Instances of the punishment of gluttony. The Angel of the Pass.

CANTO XXV: Ascent to the Seventh Ledge. Discourse of Statius on generation, the infusion of the Soul into the body, and the corporeal semblance of Souls after death. The Seventh Ledge: the Lustful. The mode of their Purification. Examples of Chastity.

CANTO XXVI: Seventh Ledge: the Lustful. Sinners in the fire, going in opposite directions. Instances of the punishment of Lust. Guido Guinicelli. Arnaut Daniel.

CANTO XXVII: Seventh Ledge: the Lustful. Passage through the Flames. Stairway in the rock. Night upon the stairs. Dream of Dante. Morning. Ascent to the Earthly Paradise. Last words of Virgil.

CANTO XXVIII: The Earthly Paradise. The Forest. A Lady gathering flowers on the bank of a little stream. Discourse with her concerning the nature of the place.

CANTO XXIX: The Earthly Paradise. Mystic Procession or Triumph of the Church.

CANTO XXX: The Earthly Paradise. Beatrice appears. Departure of Virgil. Reproof of Dante by Beatrice.

CANTO XXXI: The Earthly Paradise. Reproachful discourse of Beatrice, and confession of Dante. Passage of Lethe. Appeal of the Virtues to Beatrice. Her Unveiling.

CANTO XXXII: The Earthly Paradise. Return of the Triumphal procession. The Chariot bound to the Mystic Tree. Sleep of Dante. His waking to find the Triumph departed. Transformation of the Chariot. The Harlot and the Giant.

CANTO XXXIII: The Earthly Paradise. Prophecy of Beatrice concerning one who shall restore the Empire. Her discourse with Dante. The river Eunoë. Dante drinks of it, and is fit to ascend to Heaven.

PARADISE

CANTO I: Proem. Invocation. Beatrice, and Dante transhumanized, ascend through the Sphere of Fire toward the Moon. Beatrice explains the cause of their ascent.

CANTO II: Proem. Ascent to the Moon. The cause of Spots on the Moon. Influence of the Heavens.

CANTO III: The Heaven of the Moon. Spirits whose vows had been broken. Piccarda Donati. The Empress Constance.

CANTO IV: Doubts of Dante, respecting the justice of Heaven and the abode of the blessed, solved by Beatrice. Question of Dante as to the possibility of reparation for broken vows.

CANTO V: The sanctity of vows, and the seriousness with which they are to be made or changed. Ascent to the Heaven of Mercury. The shade of Justinian.

CANTO VI: Justinian tells of his own life. The story of the Roman Eagle. Spirits in the planet Mercury. Romeo.

CANTO VII: Discourse of Beatrice. The Fall of Man. The scheme of his Redemption.

CANTO VIII: Ascent to the Heaven of Venus. Spirits of Lovers. Charles Martel. His discourse on the order and the varieties in mortal things.

CANTO IX: The planet Venus. Conversation of Dante with Cunizza da Romano. With Folco of Marseilles. Rahab. Avarice of the Papal Court.

CANTO X: Ascent to the Sun. Spirits of the wise, and the learned in theology. St. Thomas Aquinas. He names to Dante those who surround him.

CANTO XI: The Vanity of worldly desires. St. Thomas Aquinas undertakes to solve two doubts perplexing Dante. He narrates the life of St. Francis of Assisi.

CANTO XII: Second circle of the spirits of wise religious men, doctors of the Church and teachers. St. Bonaventura narrates the life of St. Dominic, and tells the names of those who form the circle with him.

CANTO XIII: St. Thomas Aquinas speaks again, and explains the relation of the wisdom of Solomon to that of Adam and of Christ, and declares the vanity of human judgment.

CANTO XIV: At the prayer of Beatrice, Solomon tells of the glorified body of the blessed after the Last Judgment. Ascent to the Heaven of Mars. Spirits of the Soldiery of Christ in the form of a Cross with the figure of Christ thereon. Hymn of the Spirits.

CANTO XV: Dante is welcomed by his ancestor, Cacciaguida. Cacciaguida tells of his family, and of the simple life of Florence in the old days.

CANTO XVI: The boast of blood. Cacciaguida continues his discourse concerning the old and the new Florence.

CANTO XVII: Dante questions Cacciaguida as to his fortunes. Cacciaguida replies, foretelling the exile of Dante, and the renown of his Poem.

CANTO XVIII: The Spirits in the Cross of Mars. Ascent to the Heaven of Jupiter. Words shaped in light upon the planet by the Spirits. Denunciation of the avarice of the Popes.

CANTO XIX: The voice of the Eagle. It speaks of the mysteries of Divine justice; of the necessity of Faith for salvation; of the sins of certain kings.

CANTO XX: The song of the Just. Princes who have loved righteousness, in the eye of the Eagle. Spirits, once Pagans, in bliss. Faith and Salvation. Predestination.

CANTO XXI: Ascent to the Heaven of Saturn. Spirits of those who had given themselves to devout contemplation. The Golden Stairway. St. Peter Damian. Predestination. The luxury of modern Prelates. Dante alarmed by a cry of the spirits.

CANTO XXII: Beatrice reassures Dante. St. Benedict appears. He tells of the founding of his Order, and of the falling away of its brethren. Beatrice and Dante ascend to the Starry Heaven. The constellation of the Twins. Sight of the Earth.

CANTO XXIII: The Triumph of Christ.

CANTO XXIV: St. Peter examines Dante concerning Faith, and approves his answer.

CANTO XXV: St. James examines Dante concerning Hope. St. John appears, with a brightness so dazzling as to deprive Dante, for the time, of sight.

CANTO XXVI: St. John examines Dante concerning Love. Dante’s sight restored. Adam appears, and answers questions put to him by Dante.

CANTO XXVII: Denunciation by St. Peter of his degenerate successors. Dante gazes upon the Earth. Ascent of Beatrice and Dante to the Crystalline Heaven. Its nature. Beatrice rebukes the covetousness of mortals.

CANTO XXVIII: The Heavenly Hierarchy.

CANTO XXIX: Discourse of Beatrice concerning the creation and nature of the Angels. She reproves the presumption and foolishness of preachers.

CANTO XXX: Ascent to the Empyrean. The River of Light. The celestial Rose. The seat of Henry VII. The last words of Beatrice.

CANTO XXXI: The Rose of Paradise. St. Bernard. Prayer to Beatrice. The glory of the Blessed Virgin.

CANTO XXXII: St. Bernard describes the order of the Rose, and points out many of the Saints. The children in Paradise. The angelic festival. The patricians of the Court of Heaven.

CANTO XXXIII: Prayer to the Virgin. The Beatific Vision. The Ultimate Salvation.

Test C: First series of questions about the Divine Comedy of Dante

1. Dante divides his work into (a) three (b) four (c) six major parts.

2. The major parts are titled (a) Earth, Moon, Heaven, Angelic Circles (b) Hell, Purgatory, Paradise (c) Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso.

3. The major parts are subdivided into (a) cantos (b) chapters (c) sections.

4. The number of subdivisions in each of the major parts (a) are approximately equal (b) are either 33 or 34 (c) range between 23 and 44.

5. The total number of subdivisions in the work is (a) 99 (b) 100 (c) 101.

6. The main division of Hell seems to be into (a) circles (b) ledges (c) pouches.

7. The main division of Purgatory seems to be into (a) circles (b) ledges (c) pouches.

8. The main division of Paradise seems to be according to (a) the order of the virtues and vices (b) the order of the angelic hierarchy (c) the order of the planets of the solar system.

9. In Hell, the movement is (a) downwards (b) upwards. In Purgatory the movement is (a) downwards (b) upwards.

10. The Earthly Paradise is found by Dante (a) in the part of the poem titled Purgatory (b) in the part of the poem titled Paradise.

Turn to p. 414 for the answers to Test C.

Now, having skimmed the table of contents of the Divine Comedy and answered this first series of questions, take twenty minutes to read the table of contents superficially.

Test D: Further questions about Dante’s Divine Comedy

1. Dante is guided through Hell by (a) Beatrice (b) Virgil (c) Lucifer.

2. Virgil is sent to help Dante by (a) Beatrice (b) God (c) St. Bernard.

3. Dante’s main concern is to describe (a) life after death (b) the kinds of lives men live on earth.

4. The Divine Comedy is (a) essentially a comic poem (b) a poetic treatment of selected theses in moral theology (c) an imaginative construct of the entire universe.

5. On which of the following ideologies and teachings does the poem seem to be most dependent? (a) Humanistic (b) Greek and Latin (c) Christian.

6. The Slothful are punished on the Fourth Ledge of Purgatory. Is it significant that before leaving this ledge Dante falls asleep? (Yes or No?)

7. In Canto 34 of Hell Dante and Virgil reach the center of the universe. Why?

8. In Canto 9 of Purgatory seven P’s are inscribed on Dante’s forehead, and one of these P’s is removed as Dante passes upward past each of the ledges of the Mountain of Purgatory. What is the significance of the P’s?

9. Virgil accompanies Dante to the Earthly Paradise (Cantos 28-33 of Purgatory) but departs in Canto 30 and does not go with Dante to Paradise. Why?

10. In Cantos 11 and 12 of Paradise St. Thomas Aquinas narrates the life of St. Francis and St. Bonaventura narrates the life of St. Dominic. What is the significance of this?

The last five questions in Test D, which deal mainly with the symbolism of Dante’s Divine Comedy, may be difficult or even impossible to answer on the basis of reading the table of contents alone. For that reason, if for no other, we have provided quite full answers to these questions. The justification for asking such questions is twofold. First, we are not certain that they cannot be answered from the table of contents alone. Second, and more important, they are designed to suggest one of the major characteristics of Dante’s great work: that is, that it is symbolic through and through. Almost every statement Dante makes, and almost every person and event he describes, has at least two meanings, and often three or four. We think that fact is probably clear from reading the table of contents alone, even if the details are not all spelled out. Hence it might be interesting to try to answer Questions 6-10 in this test without any outside help whatever even if you have never read Dante before or read about him. In other words, if you have to guess, how close are your guesses?

Turn to p. 414 for the answers to Test D.

The biography of Charles Darwin and the table of contents of his The Origin of Species that appear on the following pages are taken from Volume 49 of Great Book of the Western World. Besides The Origin of Species, that volume also contains The Descent of Man, in which Darwin applied his general theory, as expounded in the Origin, to the puzzling question of the evolution of the human species.

As in the case of Dante, read the biography of Darwin quickly—in five or six minutes—and then skim or pre-read the table of contents of The Origin of Species, devoting no more than ten minutes to the task.

CHARLES DARWIN
1809-1882

In evaluating the qualities that accounted for his “success as a man of science,” Charles Darwin in his modest autobiography, written “because it might possibly interest my children,” traces from his early youth “the strongest desire to understand and explain” whatever he observed. His childhood fantasies were concerned with fabulous discoveries in natural history; to his schoolmates he boasted that he could produce variously colored flowers of the same plant by watering them with certain colored fluids.

His father, a highly successful physician, was somewhat puzzled by the singular interest of his second son as well as by his undistinguished career in the classical curriculum of Dr. Butler’s day school; he accordingly decided to send him to Edinburgh to study medicine. At Edinburgh Darwin collected animals in tidal pools, trawled for oysters with Newhaven fishermen to obtain specimens, and made two small discoveries which he incorporated in papers read before the Plinian Society. He put forth no very “strenuous effort” to learn medicine.

With some asperity, Dr. Darwin proposed the vocation of clergyman as an alternative. The life of a country clergyman appealed to young Darwin, and, after quieting his doubts concerning his belief in “all the dogmas of the Church,” he began this new career at Cambridge. He proved unable, however, to repress his scientific interests and developed into an ardent entomologist, particularly devoted to collecting beetles; he had the satisfaction of seeing one of his rare specimens published in Stephen’s Illustrations of British Insects. As at Edinburgh, he enjoyed many stimulating associations with men of science. It was a professor of botany at Cambridge, J. S. Henslow, who arranged for his appointment as naturalist on the government ship, H. M. S. Beagle.

From 1831 to 1836 the Beagle voyaged in Southern waters. Lyell’s researches into the changes wrought by natural processes, set forth in Principles of Geology, gave direction to Darwin’s own observations of the geological structure of the Cape Verde Islands. He also made extensive examinations of coral reefs and noted the relations of animals on the mainland to those of the adjacent islands, as well as the relation of living animals to the fossil remains of the same species.

Darwin described the voyage of the Beagle as “by far the most important event in my life.” Besides making him one of the best qualified naturalists of his day, it developed in him the “habit of energetic industry and of concentrated attention.” This new pur-posefulness on the part of his son was succinctly noted by Dr. Darwin, who remarked upon first seeing him after the voyage: “Why, the shape of his head is quite altered.”

After his return, Darwin settled in London and began the task of organizing and recording his observations. He became a close friend of Lyell, the leading English geologist, and later of Hooker, an outstanding botanist. In 1839 he married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and toward the end of 1842, because of Darwin’s chronic ill-health, the family moved to Down, where he lived in seclusion for the rest of his days. During the six years in London, he prepared his Journal from the notes of the voyage and published his carefully documented study of Coral Reefs.

The next eight years were spent in the laborious classification of barnacles for his four-volume work on that subject. “I have been struck,” he wrote to Hooker, “with the variability of every part in some slight degree of every species.” After this period of detailed work with a single species, Darwin felt prepared to attack the problem of the modification of species which he had been pondering for many years.

A number of facts had come to light during the voyage of the Beagle that Darwin felt “could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified.” Later, after his return to England, he had collected all the material he could find which “bore in any way on the variation of plants and animals under domestication.” He soon perceived “that selection was the keystone of man’s success. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some time a mystery.” One day, while reading Malthus on Population, it suddenly occurred to him how, in the struggle for existence, which he had everywhere observed, “favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species. Here then I had at last a theory by which to work.”

He confided this theory to Hooker and Lyell, who urged him to write out his views for publication. But Darwin worked deliberately; he was only half through his projected book, when in the summer of 1858, he received an essay from A. R. Wallace at Ternate in the Moluccas, containing exactly the same theory as his own. Darwin submitted his dilemma to Hooker and Lyell, to whom he wrote: “Your words have come true with a vengeance—that I should be forestalled.” It was their decision to publish an abstract of his theory from a letter of the previous year together with Wallace’s essay, the joint work being entitled: On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.

A year later, on November 24, 1859, The Origin of Species appeared. The entire first edition of 1,250 copies was sold on the day of publication. A storm of controversy arose over the book, reaching its height at a meeting of the British Association at Oxford, where the celebrated verbal duel between T. H. Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce took place. Darwin, who could not sleep when he answered an antagonist harshly, took Lyell’s advice and saved both “time and temper” by avoiding the fray.

In his work, however, he stayed close to his thesis. He expanded the material of the first chapter of the Origin into a book, Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication (1868). In The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), Darwin fulfilled his statement in the Origin that “light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” The Expression of the Emotions (1872) offered a natural explanation of phenomena which appeared to be a difficulty in the way of acceptance of evolution. His last works were concerned with the form, movement, and fertilization of plants.

Darwin’s existence at Down was peculiarly adapted to preserve his energy and give direct order to his activity. Because of his continual ill-health, his wife took pains “to shield him from every avoidable annoyance.” He observed the same routine for nearly forty years, his days being carefully parcelled into intervals of exercise and light reading in such proportions that he could utilize to his fullest capacity the four hours he devoted to work. His scientific reading and experimentation, as well, were organized with the most rigorous economy. Even the phases of his intellectual life non-essential to his work became, as he put it, “atrophied,” a fact which he regretted as “a loss of happiness.” Such non-scientific reading as he did was purely for relaxation, and he thought that “a law ought to be passed” against unhappy endings to novels.

With his wife and seven children his manner was so unusually “affectionate and delighful” that his son, Francis, marvelled that he could preserve it “with such an undemonstrative race as we are.” When he died on April 19, 1882, his family wanted him to be buried at Down; public feeling decreed that he should be interred in Westminster Abbey, where he was laid beside Sir Isaac Newton.

TABLE OF CONTENTS OF The Origin of Species

AN HISTORICAL SKETCH INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION

Causes of variability. Effects of habit and the use or disuse of parts. Correlated variation. Inheritance. Character of domestic varieties. Difficulty of distinguishing between varieties and species. Origin of domestic varieties from one or more species. Domestic pigeons, their differences and origin. Principles of selection, anciently followed, their effects. Methodical and unconscious selection. Unknown origin of our domesic productions. Circumstances favourable to man’s power of selection.

CHAPTER II. VARIATION UNDER NATURE

Variability. Individual differences. Doubtful species. Wide ranging, much diffused, and common species vary most. Species of the larger genera in each country vary more frequently than the species of the smaller genera. Many of the species of the larger genera resemble varieties in being very closely, but unequally, related to each other, and in having restricted ranges.

CHAPTER III. STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

Its bearing on natural selection. The term used in a wide sense. Geometrical ratio of increase. Rapid increase of naturalized animals and plants. Nature of the checks to increase. Competition universal. Effects of climate. Protection from the number of individuals. Complex relations of all animals and plants throughout nature. Struggle for life most severe between individuals and varieties of the same species: often severe between species of the same genus. The relation of organism to organism the most important of all relations.

CHAPTER IV. NATURAL SELECTION; OR THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Natural selection. Its power compared with man’s selection. Its power on characters of trifling importance. Its power at all ages and on both sexes. Sexual selection. On the generality of intercrosses between individuals of the same species. Circumstances favourable and unfavourable to the results of Natural Selection, namely, intercrossing, isolation, number of individuals. Slow action. Extinction caused by natural selection. Divergence of character, related to the diversity of inhabitants of any small area, and to naturalisation. Action of natural selection, through divergence of character and extinction, on the descendants from a common parent. Explains the grouping of all organic beings. Advance in organisation. Low forms preserved. Convergence of character. Indefinite multiplication of species. Summary.

CHAPTER V. LAWS OF VARIATION

Effects of changed conditions. Use and disuse, combined with natural selection; organs of flight and of vision. Acclimatisation. Correlated variation. Compensation and economy of growth. False correlations. Multiple, rudimentary, and lowly organised structures variable. Parts developed in an unusual manner are highly variable; specific characters more variable than generic: secondary sexual characters variable. Species of the same genus vary in an analogous manner. Reversions to long-lost characters. Summary.

CHAPTER VI. DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY

Difficulties of the theory of descent with modification. Absence or rarity of transitional varieties. Transitions in habits of life. Diversified habits in the same species. Species with habits widely different from those of their allies. Organs of extreme perfection. Modes of transition. Cases of difficulty. Natura non facit saltum. Organs of small importance. Organs not in all cases absolutely perfect. The law of unity of type and of the conditions of existence embraced by the theory of natural selection.

CHAPTER VII. MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION

Longevity. Modifications not necessarily simultaneous. Modifications apparently of no direct service. Progressive development. Characters of small functional importance, the most constant. Supposed incompetence of natural selection to account for the incipient stages of useful structures. Causes which interfere with the acquisition through natural selection of useful structures. Graduations of structure with changed functions. Widely different organs in members of the same class, developed from one and the same source. Reasons for disbelieving in great and abrupt modifications.

CHAPTER VIII. INSTINCT

Instincts comparable with habits, but different in their origin. Instincts graduated. Aphides and ants. Instincts variable. Domestic instincts, their origin. Natural instincts of the cuckoo, molothrus, ostrich, and parasitic bees. Slavemaking ants. Hive-bee, its cell-making instinct. Changes of instinct and structure not necessarily simultaneous. Difficulties of the theory of the natural selection of instincts. Neuter or sterile insects. Summary.

CHAPTER IX. HYBRIDISM

Distinction between the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids. Sterility various in degree, not universal, affected by close interbreeding, removed by domestication. Laws governing the sterility of hybrids. Sterility not a special endowment, but incidental on other differences, not accumulated by natural selection. Causes of the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids. Parallelism between the effects of changed conditions of life and of crossing. Dimorphism and trimorphism. Fertility of varieties when crossed and of their mongrel offspring not universal. Hybrids and mongrels compared independently of their fertility. Summary.

CHAPTER X. ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD

On the absence of intermediate varieties at the present day. On the nature of extinct intermediate varieties; on their number. On the lapse of time, as inferred from the rate of denudation and of deposition. On the lapse of time as estimated by years. On the poorness of our palaeontological collections. On the intermittence of geological formations. On the denudation of granitic areas. On the absence of intermediate varieties in any one formation. On the sudden appearance of groups of species. On their sudden appearance in the lowest known fossiliferous strata. Antiquity of the habitable earth.

CHAPTER XI. ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS

On the slow and successive appearance of new species. On their different rates of change. Species once lost do not reappear. Groups of species follow the same general rules in their appearance and disappearance as do single species. On extinction. On simultaneous changes in the forms of life throughout the world. On the affinities of extinct species to each other and to living species. On the state of development of ancient forms. On the succession of the same types within the same areas. Summary of preceding and present chapters.

CHAPTER XII. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

Present distribution cannot be accounted for by differences in physical conditions. Importance of barriers. Affinity of the productions of the same continent. Centres of creation. Means of dispersal by changes of climate and of the level of the land, and by occasional means. Dispersal during the glacial period. Alternate glacial periods in the north and south.

CHAPTER XIII. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, continued

Distribution of fresh-water productions. On the inhabitants of oceanic islands. Absence of batrachians and of terrestrial mammals. On the relation of the inhabitants of islands to those of the nearest mainland. On colonisation from the nearest source with subsequent modification. Summary of the last and present chapters.

CHAPTER XIV. MUTUAL AFFINITIES OF ORGANIC BEINGS, MORPHOLOGY, EMBRYOLOGY, RUDIMENTARY ORGANS

Classification, groups subordinate to groups. Natural system. Rules and difficulties in classification, explained on the theory of descent with modification. Classification of varieties. Descent always used in classification. Analogical or adaptive characters. Affinities, general, complex, and radiating. Extinction separates and defines groups. Morphology, between members of the same class, between parts of the same individual. Embryology, laws of, explained by variations not supervening at an early age, and being inherited at a corresponding age. Rudimentary organs: their origin explained. Summary.

CHAPTER XV. RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION

Recapitulation of the objections to the theory of natural selection. Recapitulation of the general and special circumstances in its favour. Causes of the general belief in the immutability of species. How far the theory of natural selection may be extended. Effects of its adoption on the study of natural history. Concluding remarks.

Test E: Questions about Darwin and about The Origin of Species

1. In The Origin of Species Darwin undertakes to describe the origin and evolution of man. (True or False?)

2. The work is divided into (a) 12 (b) 15 (c) 19 chapters.

3. The book emphasizes the role of domestication in natural selection. (True or False?)

4. Darwin asserts that the struggle for life is (a) more severe (b) less severe between individuals of the same species than it is between individuals of different species.

5. Darwin takes no account of, and does not try to answer, difficulties of and objections against his theory. (True or False?)

6. Darwin was unable to complete The Origin of Species, and the book therefore lacks a chapter summing up his theory and his conclusions. (True or False?)

7. Darwin enjoyed taking part in the disputes that developed as a consequence of his work. (True or False?)

8. In the famous debate at Oxford between T. H. Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce, which man defended Darwin and his theory?

9. Darwin described as “by far the most important event in my life” (a) his reading of Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (b) his youthful study of medicine (c) his voyage on the Beagle.

10. Darwin thought that “a law ought to be passed” against (a) novels (b) pornographic novels (c) novels having scientists as their main characters (d) novels with unhappy endings.

Turn to p. 415 for the answers to Test E.

Those questions were all very easy ones. Now take another twenty minutes to read the table of contents of The Origin of Species (see p. 395) superficially, and then we will ask you to consider some more difficult questions.

Test F: Further questions about Darwin and The Origin of Species

1. Darwin, making extensive use of the geological record, considers it (a) complete and satisfactory (b) incomplete but an invaluable source of data on the origin of species.

2. Species refers to a group of animals or plants (a) lower (b) higher than a genus.

3. Members of a species share common characteristics, and can interbreed and reproduce their kinds. (True or False?)

4. Members of a genus share common characteristics, but are not necessarily able to interbreed and reproduce their kind. (True or False?)

5. Of the following factors, which ones play a major role and which a minor role in natural selection?

MAJOR

MINOR

(a) The struggle for existence

______

______

(b) Variation of individuals

______

______

(c) Heritability of traits

______

______

6. Darwin compares the power of natural selection to that of man’s selection. Which does he think is greater?

7. The Latin phrase Natura non facit saltum appears in the table of contents. Can you translate this phrase? Can you state the significance of the phrase for Darwin’s theory?

8. What is the significance of geological dispersion and of natural barriers such as the oceans on the evolution of species?

9. In his Introduction to The Origin of Species, Darwin refers to the origin of species as “that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.” Can you state fairly exactly the problem that his work sets out to solve? You might try to do this in no more than a sentence or two.

10. What is Darwin’s theory—in a nutshell? Can you state it in no more than 100 words?

Turn to p. 415 for the answers to Test F.

You have now completed the two-part exercise at the second level of reading. As before, you will have noted that the questions draw not only on the texts read but also on historical and other information. Indeed, you may feel that some of the questions were eminently unfair. And so they would be, if any critical decision depended on your ability to answer them. That, of course, is not so. We hope that the questions you were unable to answer, or that you found it very difficult to answer, will not irritate you, but will instead lead you to search in the works that have been only superficially discussed here for better answers than the ones we have given. Better answers are available in the works themselves. And also answers to many more interesting questions that we have not had the time, the space, or the wit, to ask.

III. Exercises and Tests at the Third Level of Reading: Analytical Reading

The text used for the exercises in this part of the Appendix is this book itself. We would prefer it if this were not so. There are many books that it would be better and more fruitful to practice analytical reading on. But over against that preference there is one overriding consideration: this book is the only one that we can be sure that all persons taking this test have read. The only alternative would be to reprint another book along with this one, and that is out of the question.

You will recall that the analytical reader must always attempt to answer four questions about whatever book he is reading: (1) What is the book about as a whole? (2) What is being said in detail, and how? (3) Is the book true, in whole or part? (4) What of it? The fifteen rules of reading, as they are listed on pp. 163-64 and discussed at length in Part Two, are designed to help the analytical reader answer these questions. Can you answer them about this book?

You must be the judge of whether you can or not. There are no answers at the end of this Appendix to these four questions. The answers are in the book itself.

Not only is it true that we have done the best job we could of making these matters clear in writing the book. It is also true that in an important sense it would be inappropriate to try to help you any more than we already have. Not only is analytical reading work—it is lonely work. The reader is alone with the book he is reading. Basically, there is no resource to exploit except his own thought; there is no place to go for insight and understanding except into his own mind.

We have explained how the questions must be answered for, and the rules applied to, different kinds of books. But we cannot state how they are to be applied to any given work. The reader himself must be the one to do that.

There are, nevertheless, a few things that can be said with out exceeding the proprieties. We have not concealed the fact that this is a practical book, so applying the first rule of structural analysis is easy enough. We think we have also made it pretty clear what the book is about as a whole, although now you should state this more briefly than we have done in any one place. We hope that our organization into four parts and twenty-one chapters is perspicuous. However, in outlining the book, it might be desirable to comment on the unequal treatment, in terms of numbers of pages, accorded the various levels of reading. The first level of reading—elementary reading —receives relatively short shrift in this book, although it is of undoubted importance. Why? The third level of reading—analytical reading—receives much more extensive and intensive coverage than any of the other levels. Again, why?

With regard to the fourth rule of structural analysis, we want to emphasize that the problem we set out to solve cannot be defined simply as teaching you to read. There is nothing in this book, for example, that would be of much help to a first- or second-grade teacher. We have concentrated instead on reading in a certain way, and with certain goals in mind. In applying the fourth rule of reading, that way and those goals should be described with precision.

Similarly with the second stage of analytical reading-interpretation. The first three rules at that stage must be applied by the reader without our help: the rules that require you to come to terms, to find the key propositions, and to construct the arguments. There would be no point in our trying to list what we think are the terms of this work—the important words that must be understood commonly by you and by us if the work as a whole is to communicate knowledge, or impart skill. Nor will we repeat the propositions that we have asserted, and that the reader, if he has read analytically, should be able to state in his own words. Nor will we repeat the arguments. To do so would be to write the book over again.

Something can be said, however, about the problems that we did and did not solve. We believe we did solve the main problem that faced us at the beginning—the problem that you must have identified in your application of the fourth rule of structural analysis. We do not believe that we solved all of the problems of reading that face students and adult readers today. For one thing, many of these problems involve individual differences between human beings. No book on a general subject can ever hope to solve such difficulties.

The criticism of a book as a communication of knowledge involves, as you will recall, the application of seven rules, three of which are general maxims of intellectual etiquette, and four of which are specific criteria for points of criticism. We have done what we could to recommend the maxims of intellectual etiquette (they are discussed in Chapter 10). With regard to the first three points of criticism, we can have nothing to say. But a few remarks about the last of the four criteria of criticism—to show wherein the analysis in the book is incomplete—are not inappropriate.

We would say that our analysis or account is incomplete in two respects. The first is in regard to the first level of reading. There is much more to be said about elementary reading, but we do want to emphasize that that was not our primary concern. Nor would we claim for our discussion of the subject any degree of finality. Elementary reading could be discussed, and has been discussed, in quite different ways.

The other respect in which our analysis is incomplete is much more important. We did not say all that could be said—perhaps not even all that we could say—about syntopical reading. There are two reasons for this.

First, syntopical reading is extraordinarily hard to describe and explain without having the texts of various authors in front of one. Fortunately, we will have the opportunity in the last part of this Appendix, which follows, of presenting an actual exercise in syntopical reading. But even there we will be confined to two short texts by only two authors. A full-scale exercise would involve many texts from many authors, and the examination of many complex questions. Space limitations prohibit that here.

Second, it is almost impossible to describe the intellectual excitement and satisfaction that come from syntopical reading without actually sharing the experience of doing it. Nor is the understanding that one finally arrives at attained in a day. Often, it takes months or years to unwind the twisted thread of the discussion of an important point, a thread that may have been in the process of becoming twisted over centuries. Many false starts are made, and many tentative analyses and organizations of the discussions must be proposed, before any real light is thrown on the subject. We have suffered through many of these problems, and we know how disheartening the business can be at times. As a result, however, we also know how wonderful it can be when one finally wins one’s way through to a solution.

Are there other respects in which our analysis is incomplete? We can think of a few possibilities. For example, does the book fail to differentiate sufficiently between what might be called first-intentional reading (that is, reading a text) and second-intentional reading (that is, reading a commentary on that text)? Is enough said about reading heretical in contradistinction to canonical texts; or enough about the reading of texts that stand detached, above so-called canonical and heretical texts? Is enough attention paid to the problems raised by special vocabularies, especially in science and mathematics? (This aspect of the general problem of reading is mentioned in the chapter on reading social science.) Perhaps not enough space is devoted to the reading of lyric poetry. Beyond that, we are not sure that we know of anything that deserves criticism on this last count. But we would not be surprised to discover that some defects or failures that are not at all obvious to us are perfectly obvious to you.

IV. Exercises and Tests at the Fourth Level of Reading: Syntopical Reading

Two texts are used for the exercises in this fourth and last part of the Appendix. One consists of selected passages from the first two chapters of Book I of Aristotle’s Politics. The other consists of selected passages from Book I of Rousseau’s The Social Contract—a. sentence from the Introduction to the book, and passages from Chapters 1, 2, 4, and 6.

Aristotle’s Politics appears in Volume 9 of Great Books of the Western World. Volumes 8 and 9 of the set are devoted to the complete works of Aristotle; besides the Politics, Volume 9 includes the Ethics, the Rhetoric, and the Poetics, as well as a number of biological treatises. Rousseau’s Social Contract appears in Volume 38 of the set, a volume that includes other works by Rousseau as well—the essay On the Origin of Inequality, and On Political Economy— together with another important eighteenth-century French political book, Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws.

You will recall that there are two stages of syntopical reading. One is a preparatory step, the other is syntopical reading proper. For the purposes of this exercise we assume that the first or preparatory step has already been taken—that is, that we have decided on the subject we wish to consider and have also decided on the texts we want to read. The subject in this case may be defined as “The Nature and Origin of the State”—a subject of importance about which a great deal has been thought and said. The texts are as described above.

We must assume further, if this exercise is not to exceed the limits set by the space available to us, that we have narrowed the question to be considered here, with the help of these two texts, to a single inquiry, which can be stated as follows: Is the State a natural arrangement, with all that that implies of goodness and necessity—or is it merely a conventional or artificial arrangement?

That is our question. Now read the two texts carefully, taking as much time as you wish or need. Speed is never important in syntopical reading. Make notes if you want to, and underline or otherwise mark passages when that seems desirable. And return to the texts as often as you wish in considering the questions that follow.

FROM BOOK I OF ARISTOTLE’S Politics

FROM CHAPTER 1

Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view of some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good….

FROM CHAPTER 2

The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men’s everyday wants, and the members of it are called by Charandas ‘companions of the cupboard’, and by Epimenides the Cretan, ‘companions of the manger’. But when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed is the village. And the most natural form of the village appears to be that of a colony from the family, composed of the children and grandchildren, who are said to be ‘suckled with the same milk’. And this is the reason why Hellenic states were originally governed by kings; because the Hellenes were under royal rule before they came together, as the barbarians still are….

When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best.

Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal….

Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.

Further, the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better than that. But things are defined by their working and power; and we ought not to say that they are the same when they no longer have their proper quality, but only that they have the same name. The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

FROM BOOK I OF ROUSSEAU’S The Social Contract

I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration, men being taken as they are and laws as they might be….

FROM CHAPTER 1. SUBJECT OF THE FIRST BOOK

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer….

FROM CHAPTER 2. THE FIRST SOCIETIES

The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from the obedience they owed to the father, and the father, released from the care he owed his children, return equally to independence. If they remain united, they continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily; and the family itself is then maintained only by convention….

The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage….

FROM CHAPTER 4. SLAVERY

Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among men….

FROM CHAPTER 6. THE SOCIAL COMPACT

I suppose men to have reached the point at which the obstacles in the way of their preservation in the state of nature show their power of resistance to be greater than the resources at the disposal of each individual for his maintenance in that state. That primitive condition can then subsist no longer; and the human race would perish unless it changed its manner of existence.

But, as men cannot engender new forces, but only unite and direct existing ones, they have no other means of preserving themselves than the formation, by aggregation, of a sum of forces great enough to overcome the resistance. These they have to bring into play by means of a single motive power, and cause to act in concert.

This sum of forces can arise only where several persons come together: but, as the force and liberty of each man are the chief instruments of his self-preservation, how can he pledge them without harming his own interests, and neglecting the care he owes to himself? This difficulty, in its bearing on my present subject, may be stated in the following terms:

“The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.” This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution….

If then we discard from the social compact what is not of its essence, we shall find that it reduces itself to the following terms:

“Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.”

At once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting party, this act of association creates a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly contains votes, and receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its life and its will. This public person, so formed by the union of all other persons, formerly took the name of city (polis), and now takes that of Republic or body politic; it is called by its members State when passive, Sovereign when active, and Power when compared with others like itself. Those who are associated in it take collectively the name of people, and severally are called citizens, as sharing in the sovereign power, and subjects, as being under the laws of the State. But these terms are often confused and taken one for another: it is enough to know how to distinguish them when they are being used with precision.

We will ask you to entertain two sets of questions about these two texts, after which we will suggest some tentative conclusions that we believe can justifiably be drawn from the texts.

Test G: Here is the first set of questions about Aristotle and Rousseau

1. Aristotle identifies three different types of human association. What are they?

2. These three types of association have certain things in common and also differ in significant respects. What do they have in common and how do they differ?

3. The three types of association differ in regard to their inclusiveness. Can you order them on a scale going from less to more inclusive?

4. All three types of association aim at fulfilling some natural need—that is, they achieve some good. The good achieved by the family—that is, the security of its members and the perpetuation of the race—is also achieved by the village, but in a higher degree. Is the good aimed at or achieved by the state merely the same good in an even higher degree, or is it a different good altogether?

5. Another way to get at this difference is by still another question. Given that, for Aristotle, all three types of association are natural, are they natural in the same way?

6. Before turning to some questions about Rousseau in this first set of questions, we must mention the one remark of Aristotle’s that raises a difficulty. Aristotle praises highly the man who first founded the state. Would he speak similarly of the man who first founded the family or the village?

7. What is the main problem that Rousseau poses about the state?

8. Does Rousseau pose this same problem about the family?

9. What is the opposite of the natural for Rousseau?

10. What is the basic or founding convention that, for Rousseau, makes the state legitimate?

Turn to p. 416 for the answers to Test G.

After this first set of questions about the two texts, we appear to have arrived at an interpretation of the two texts that sees them in disagreement on the question we have been considering. That question is, as you will recall: Is the state natural, or is it conventional or artificial? Rousseau appears to say that the state is conventional or artificial; Aristotle appears to say that it is natural.

Now take a few moments to consider whether this interpretation is correct. Is there anything about the problematic remark of Aristotle’s we mentioned that calls the interpretation in doubt? Is there anything that Rousseau says that we have not discussed and that also must cause us to doubt this interpretation?

If you see why this interpretation is not correct, you will probably already have anticipated the few remaining questions we want to ask.

Test H: Here is the second set of questions

1. For Rousseau, is the state natural as well as conventional?

2. Does Aristotle agree in this?

3. Can this basic agreement between Aristotle and Rousseau be extended to further points?

4. In the answer to the last question, we spoke of the “good” that the state achieves which cannot be achieved without it. Is this “good” the same for Rousseau as for Aristotle?

5. One final question. Does the agreement we have found on our primary question mean that these two texts, short as they are, are in agreement on all points?

Turn to p. 418 for the answers to Test H.

We said at the beginning of this exercise that there are certain conclusions that can justifiably be drawn from the careful reading of these two important political texts. Among them are these: First, it is a basic truth about man that he is a political animal—you may use some other adjective if you wish —as contradistinguished from other social or gregarious animals: that is, that man is a rational social animal who constitutes a society to serve other than merely biological ends. It follows from this that the state is both natural and conventional—that it is both more and less natural than the family; and it follows also that the state must be formally constituted: other societies are not true states. Second, we may reasonably conclude that the state is a means, not an end. The end is the common human good: a good life. Hence man is not made for the state, but the state for man.

These conclusions seem to us to be justified, and we also believe that the answers we have given to the questions are correct. But more than feeling or belief is required in a genuine project of syntopical reading. We noted, in our discussion of this level of reading, that it is always desirable to document one’s answers and conclusions from the texts of the authors themselves. We have not done that here. You might want to try to do it for yourself. If you are puzzled by any of our answers, see if you can find the passage or passages in the text, either by Aristotle or Rousseau, that must have formed the basis of the answer we give. And if you disagree with any of our answers or conclusions, see if you can document your disagreement by means of the words of the authors themselves.

Answers to Questions

TEST A (p. 370)

1. (c) 2. (b) If you said (a) and (b) you would not really be wrong. 3. (a) and (b) 4. (b) 5. (c) Is it pedantic to say that (b) is an incorrect answer? Would the situation be different if (c) were not available as an answer? 6. (b) 7. (a), (c), and (d) The text indicates that Bentham was the most influential. 8. (d) 9. (a) and (b) Likely; (c) and (d) Not Likely. 10. (a), (b), and (d)

TEST B (P. 376)

1. (c) 2. (c) 3. False 4. (b) 5. (a) and (b) 6. (b) 7. (b) The first answer (“Why apples fall”) might have been considered correct if it had been phrased “How apples fall,” although of course there is no mention of apples in the Principia. The point is that the work describes gravity and expounds its operation, but it does not say why it operates. 8. (a) 9. (b) and (c) 10. This striking statement has impressed generations of Newton idolaters. In commenting on it, you probably discussed the modesty of its author. Did you also make any mention of the metaphor that Newton employs? It is a memorable one.

TEST C (p. 389)

1. (a) 2. (b) Dante’s own titles were the ones that appear in (c); if you gave that as your answer we would therefore have to count it as correct. 3. (a) 4. (a) and (b) 5. (b) This is no accident, of course. Each major division of the poem (called in Italian a cantiche) contains 33 cantos: the first canto of Hell introduces the whole work. 6. (a) Only the Eighth Circle is divided into pouches. 7. (b) Circles (a) is not really wrong. 8. (c) But (b) would also be correct, as in Dante’s cosmology the nine orders of angels correspond to the nine heavenly bodies. 9. (a); (b) 10. (a)

TEST D (P. 390)

1. (b) 2. (a) Beatrice acts for God, so (b) is not incorrect. 3. (b) 4. (b) and (c) Dante had not read Aristotle’s Poetics, though he had read a synopsis of it suggesting that Aristotle defined a comedy as any work that ends fortunately. Dante’s poem ends in Heaven, hence fortunately, and therefore he titled it The Comedy: but of course it is not a comic work. 5. (c) The poem is dependent on all three, but the Christian themes are the most important. 6. Yes. Dante felt that sloth had been one of his main sins, and he here symbolizes this by falling asleep. 7. In Dante’s cosmology, the earth is the center of the universe, and Hell is at the center of the earth. 8. The P’s stand for the Latin word peccata, sins: there are seven P’s because there are seven deadly sins, from ‘each of which the souls are absolved in their ascent up the Mountain of Purgatory. 9. Virgil, in the poem, is the symbol of all human knowledge and virtue. But, as a pagan who died before the birth of Christ, he cannot accompany Dante into Paradise. 10. The Franciscans and the Dominicans were the two great monastic orders of the Middle Ages. The Franciscans were contemplatives, the Dominicans were scholars and teachers. Dante here symbolizes the heavenly resolution of all differences between the two orders by having St. Thomas, the greatest representative of the Dominicans, narrate the life of St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscans; while St. Bonaventura, the representative of the Franciscans, narrates the life of St. Dominic, the founder of the Dominicans.

TEST E (P. 399)

1. False 2. (b) 3. False. In fact, the statement is meaningless. 4. (a) 5. False 6. False 7. False 8. Huxley defended Darwin. 9. (c) 10 (d) To lovers of Darwin, this is one of the most charming facts about the man.

TEST F (P. 400)

1. (b) 2. (a) 3. True. In fact, this comes close to being the definition of a species. 4. True. Members of a genus can interbreed and reproduce their kind only if they are also members of the same species. 5. (a), (b), and (c) all play major roles in natural selection. 6. Natural selection. Would Darwin change his mind if he were alive today, in the face of the evidence of man’s destructive effect on the environment? Perhaps. But he might still continue to insist that in the long run, nature is more powerful than man. And then, too, man is himself a part of nature. 7. The phrase can be translated “Nature makes no jumps”—that is, sudden, great and abrupt variations do not occur naturally, but only small and gradual ones. Even if you were not able to translate the Latin, was the sense of this statement clear from the table of contents? The idea is significant because Darwin, taking it as true, explains the fact that there is great differentiation between species by the hypothesis of gaps in the geological record—so-called missing links—instead of by the hypothesis of created differences between species. 8. According to Darwin, if two varieties of a single species are widely separated over a considerable period of time so that they are physically hindered from interbreeding, the varieties tend to become separate species—that is, become incapable of interbreeding. It was his discovery of quite distinct species of birds on the oceanic islands during his service on the Beagle that first led him to see this fundamental point. 9. There are probably many ways to state the problem, but one way to do it is to ask two apparently simple questions. First, why are there many kinds of living things, instead of just one or a few? Second, how does a species come into existence, and how does it pass away—which, Darwin and his contemporaries knew from the geological record, had happened many times? It may be necessary to think about these questions for a while to realize why they are so very difficult and so very mysterious—but they are well worth thinking about. 10. We are not sure that an adequate answer to this question can be arrived at on the basis of a mere perusal, however intensive, of the table of contents of The Origin of Species. If you were able to state the theory in a hundred words without having read the book, you are an extraordinary reader. Indeed, the question is not easy to answer briefly even if one has read the book; you might refer to our attempt to summarize the theory in Chapter 7. In a short passage in his own Introduction to the work, Darwin may have done it himself, and we quote the passage in its entirety here for what it is worth:

As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitably to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.

TEST G (P. 410)

1. The family, the village, the state.

2. They have in common that they are all modes of human association and that they are all natural. Aristotle is clear on the latter point: “It is evident,” he says, “that the state is a creation of nature.” However, the differences between the types of association are important. If you have not yet identified these differences, as Aristotle describes them, some further questions may be of help.

3. The family is the least inclusive. The village includes several families and is therefore more inclusive than the family. The state is the most inclusive of all, for it comes into existence “when several villages are united in a single complete community.”

4. Aristotle says the state originates in “the bare needs of life,” but that it continues in existence “for the sake of a good life.” A “good life” seems to be different in kind from mere “life.” In fact, this seems to be the main difference between the state and the other two types of human association.

5. Though the types of association are indeed natural, they are not natural in the same way. Aristotle observes that many animals as well as men live in families; and he notes that such animals as bees seem to have organizations that are analogous to the village. But man differs in that, while being social like many other animals, he is also political. In his discussion of man’s unique possession of speech, Aristotle is saying that man alone is political. He is naturally a political animal, and so the state, which serves the needs of this aspect of his being, is natural. But only the state, among the types of association that he experiences, serves this particular need.

6. Apparently Aristotle would not praise highly the man who first founded the village or the family, as he does the man who first founded the state. And this remark causes a difficulty, for if the state was first founded by someone, then it can be said to have been invented, and if it was invented, then is it not artificial? But we have concluded that it is natural.

7. The main problem Rousseau poses about the state is its legitimacy. If the state were not legitimate, Rousseau asserts, then its laws would not have to be obeyed.

8. He does not pose the same problem about the family. He clearly says that the basis of the family is a natural need—the same natural need that Aristotle describes.

9. The conventional. For Rousseau, the state is conventional; for if the state were like the family, that fact would legitimize paternal rule—the rule of a benevolent despot, which is what the father is to his family. Force—which is what the father has—cannot make a state legitimate. Only an agreed-upon understanding—a convention—can do that.

10. The Social Contract is, for Rousseau, the founding convention, undertaken at a first moment when all members of the state are unanimous in desiring and choosing it. It is this that legitimizes the institution of the state.

TEST H (P. 412)

1. Yes! He clearly says that men by nature need the state, for the state comes into existence at a time when life in the condition of nature is no longer possible for men, and without the state they could no longer continue to exist. Therefore, we must conclude that, in the view of Rousseau, the state is both natural and conventional. It is natural in the sense that it serves a natural need; but it is legitimate only if it is based on a founding convention—the Social Contract.

2. Yes, Aristotle and Rousseau agree that the state is both natural and conventional.

3. Aristotle and Rousseau also agree that the naturalness of the state is not like that of animal societies. Its naturalness arises from need or necessity; it achieves a good that cannot be achieved without it. But though the state is natural—that is, necessary—as a means to a naturally sought end, it is also a work of reason and will. The key word to define or identify this further agreement between the two writers is “constitution.” For Aristotle, he who first “constituted” a society “founded” a state. For Rousseau, men by entering into a convention of government or social contract “constitute” a state.

4. No, the “good” the state achieves is not the same for Rousseau as for Aristotle. The reasons are complex, and are not really documented in the passages reprinted here. But Aristotle’s conception of the “good life,” which is the end that the state serves, is different from Rousseau’s conception of the “life of the citizen,” which for him is the end that the state serves. Fully to understand this difference would require reading further in the Politics and The Social Contract.

5. Clearly the two works are not in full agreement throughout. Even in these short selections, each of the authors raises points that the other does not discuss. For example, there is no mention in the Rousseau text of a notion that is certainly important to Aristotle—namely, that man is essentially a political, as well as a social, animal. Nor does the word “justice” appear in the Rousseau text, although it seems to be a key term for Aristotle. On the other hand, there is no mention in the Aristotle text of such key terms and basic ideas as the social compact, the liberty of the individual, the alienation of that liberty, the general will, and so forth, all of which seem to be central in Rousseau’s treatment of the subject.