Ancient history has never been my favorite period to study,
perhaps because it seems so far removed from our own times that imagination and
empathy require a great deal more effort. Nonetheless, my ancient history
course in college did gift me with the opportunity to work on strengthening
those skills and to expand my understanding of the world as it was and as it
is.
Among the ways this was accomplished was through my
professor’s use of original works for our textbooks. Thucydides, Plato,
Suetonius, and others—authors of the “classics”—became our tour guides to the
ancient world. And as my small group presented on St. Augustine’s City of God, I pondered what it was
about these works—indeed, any works—that make them “classics.” Five years
later, while reading another classic, I encountered the conclusion I had
reached in that Ancient History classroom.
The novel was Good
Wives by Louisa May Alcott (which is actually the second half of Little Women), and in her usual
insightfulness Alcott slips in powerful truth in a parenthetical statement. She
is describing the scene of Beth’s sickroom, made as cheerful as possible by the
March family, when she mentions, “father reading, in his pleasant voice, from
the wise old books which seemed rich in good and comfortable words, as
applicable now as when written centuries ago […]" (p. 244).
And there it was—the “old books” are “wise” because they
ring just as true today as they did when written. What else makes a classic if
not that? Just as the “old books” were still valued in Alcott’s 1860s world, so
her works, now old, are valued in ours. Of the countless books published over
the course of history, only a relative few have stood the test of time, and I
would suggest that those that have survived have done so because they contain
such perception, such enduring observations of and commentaries on human nature
that they are just as useful for our growth today as they were when penned. Or
as Alcott says, they are “as applicable now as when written centuries ago.”
Sometimes the application points may require a little more
effort to discover because of changes in language or syntax, but the concepts
and expressions that cause the reader to say, “Yes! I recognize this character
or world!” are those that make classics what they are. And in finding this
reality about the nature of classics, we stumble upon another, greater reality
about the nature of ourselves.
If classics are classics because they contain enduring
concepts, then classics are made possible because enduring concepts exist. In
other words, because human nature is constant, observations made about a human
mindset in 431 B.C. can also be made of a human mindset in A.D. 2018. This is
why words written hundreds or thousands of years before our time can still
affect us so powerfully. (It’s also why the Lessons from Literature series on
this blog is even possible.)
Classics help us see, then, that we really are all the same
at the root of things. As humans, we all have the same nature—the same capacity
for good because of God’s image that we bear and the same propensity for evil
because of our inherited fallen-ness. Realizing this truth should help us
demonstrate more kindness, empathy, understanding, and grace to our fellow
humans and should help us to see that there is a Being who created us all. His
design for us was perfect, and we’ve gone and twisted it until sometimes it’s
almost unrecognizable, but the core of our being is still dependent on Him and
receives its very definition from Him alone.
Enduring words and ideas can exist because there is an enduring
God who is Truth itself. He is the standard by which all “truth” is measured,
and He has made Himself and His truth known to us. What a blessing He has given
us to be able to comprehend truth ourselves, to receive it from those who have
gone before us, and to communicate it to those around us and those who are
still to come.
Source: Alcott, Louisa M. Good Wives: Little Women, Part II. New York: Penguin, 1994.
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