Newsletter--2004
Last year, in these pages, my colleague Carl Vaught was very candid about his physical condition and health problems. I appreciated that very much, and this year I should do the same.You might condense what I have to say into just that, on February 26 of this year, I discovered that it really is true, as we tell our Logic classes, that all men are mortal.
February 26 was a Thursday, and, as all my students know, for the Duncans, Thursday is Beauty Shop day. So I took my wife to the shop early that afternoon. After we left the shop, at perhaps about 2:00 p. m., we stopped to look for something or other (I don't even recall what we were after now; I only recall we didn't find it), at the Office Depot. As I walked out to our car, my wife Rosemary walked ahead of me, and she gets annoyed if she gets to the car, and can't get in. So I reached out with my car keys to give that little double-click that opens her door.........and that's the last thing I remember before I woke up, the next day, in a cardiac care emergency room at the Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center. I was wearing a hospital gown, had needles with IVs sticking in various parts of my anatomy; there were things on the wall of the room showing my vital signs, etc. And standing somewhere near was Dr. Lundeen, now my cardiologist, trying to explain what had happened. Apparently, one or more arteries near my heart got sufficiently clogged that the whole system just shut down. He said the title given my problem was "Cardiac Death Syndrome," because death is the usual result; another doctor told me the survival rate is about 4%---which means that 96% of those who collapse as I did don't get up again.
If I did not before, I now believe in miracles. The story (which I still can't quite believe) is that, as we were getting ready to get into our car to leave the area of the Office Depot, a certain Dr. Plante, who works in the Emergency Room at Hillcrest, was pulling in....and he saw me fall. Rosemary says she did not see him; she just heard this voice, "I'm a doctor." But he needed the right rescue equipment. An emergency crew, headed by a certain Mr. Elan (I think of Bergson's "elan vital.") had stopped for a burger at Fuddrucker's--not 40 yards away. So work was begun almost at once, and I was soon on the way to the hospital. Interestingly, perhaps, the EMS people were new in town, and didn't know the quickest way to the hospital; Rosemary did. When we got to the Emergency Room, work continued in the attempt to revive me; they almost gave up. One version of the story has it that they would have given up, but Rosemary persuaded them to keep trying. Finally, I was brought to life again. There was some fear that I might have suffered brain damage, because I had stopped breathing, and my heart had stopped. I recall none of this, but am told that they asked the usual "How many fingers??" and such, and I responded appropriately. Whether or not I really have brain damage is not quite certain to me. My memory is good; I know about as much (or as little) as ever. But I do seem to have less emotional control, and some little things (figuring bank statements!!!) can upset me, as they previously did not.
For a time, at the hospital, I think I was in denial. Somehow, this had to be a mistake. They had to do a catharization to check for damage (on March 1), but I felt sure a few pills would make everything right again. The verdict was that I would need by-pass surgery, to be done by Dr. Young on March 3. Again, all went well. But since I had collapsed, I also had a defibrillator implanted (March 8), to assure (as far as possible) that this would not happen again. I am not sure the doctors in charge appreciated a clumsy attempt at humor, but as I was wheeled into surgery that March 8, I was muttering "We can rebuild him...We can make him better than he was...We have the technology..." (Remember Lee Majors in the Six Million Dollar Man??).
On March 9, I was sent home from the hospital. My students and colleagues were kind, showering me with cards (often signed by groups), food, and flowers. Erin Cline, super grad student, had a poster made, with a message in the center, "Dr. Duncan, we miss you and are happy to hear that you are on the mend! Best wishes for a speedy recovery from your students..." Students in my classes were invited to sign, and many did; I keep the poster in my office---and gain inspiration from it. I add only one small note. The thoughts of the students seem to me (and I may just be reading them that way) to fall into two groups. First, there are those that seem to say, "He's dying, poor man; we will pray for him."-----and I appreciate their prayers more than I can say. The other group sees me on the mend, and expects me back by Tuesday. Both groups are wrong. I'll be back, but it is a slow process. My recovery has been slowed by infections, inflammations, and resulting insomia. These are a little like poison ivy, in a way; they are not serious or life-threatening, but they are sure get your attention, and are uncomfortable. In such times, I recall that my father, who was a very wise man, used to say, "Everything changes; nothing remains the same." My Rehab, out at the Getterman Wellness Center, goes well--I am the star of my gym classes. So I will be fine.
I close this dreary (sorry about that) epistle with two final thoughts, or one thought, and a bit of information. First, I have never put much stock in religious experiences. I think Bertrand Russell said that some people drink gin and see pink elephants, while others take drugs and see God--but that proves nothing about the existence of pink elephants or of God. And, of course, he's right. But for all that, I offer the following. When I first awoke in the hospital on February 26, or maybe the next day, it all seemed like a Hollywood set. Remember, I was clearly in some sort of emergency room, and had no idea how I got there. The good book says the dead know not anything. I seemed to move from a thick darkness--thicker and more of nothingness than I had ever known--into the dazzling bright light of the emergency room. We usually associate light with good, and darkness with bad, or evil, but not this time. The emergency room was light enough, but was frightening, to say the least. By contrast, I had the distinct impression that in that darkness, I had nothing to fear. Later on, I thought of some of my favorite lines (from Tennyson, no less):
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone.
I do not claim that this experience has relieved me of all fear of death. But I do say that, when I next encounter that darkness, I won't be as frightened as before. When I recounted this story to him, my friend Sam Logan went further, and said, "The next time you wake up from that darkness will be even better!!" I have to think he's right.
Happily, that is not the end of the story. As I indicated above, I did rehab at something called the Getterman Wellness Center! I started well, but June was a tough month, with infections, irritations and inflammations slowing me down. July, however,was a great month, and as of August, 2004, I am doing very well, got a nice certificate of graduation (I think I may be the first to graduate in cap and gown!!) from the Center--plus a chance to hug all the nurses!! I plan to continue to work out at the Center--just call me "Arnold"!
Finally, back to the real world of affairs.... I have submitted my resignation, and decided to retire, effective June 1, 2005. So I will be teaching one more year. Actually, this has nothing to do with my heart attack. As of May 26, 2005, I'll be 72. That's time. It has been the plan all along that I would retire at 72. These bumps in the road, so to speak, have not changed that. I would only want to say, in closing, that Baylor has always been good to me. And I cannot say enough good things about my colleagues and my students. God!! I love this place!! And I love all of you.
Elmer H. Duncan.
EHD
The Turning Points of My Life
Whenever I begin an essay, a speech, or one of the few sermons I’ve given, I like to begin with a story. This time, I begin with two (sorry).
I have a sister, Ida, who is ten years older than I am, and she uses a computer to send me a lot of “forwards,” some of them wise, some clever. One concerned a small, rural, church that often gave over Wednesday night “Prayer Meetings” to what might be called “Testimony” meetings. At one such meeting, the preacher was emphasizing the fact that our Lord expects us to forgive our enemies. He began to call out the names of members of his small congregation, e. g., “Brother Jones, are you willing to forgive your enemies, as our Lord has commanded??” Sometimes the answer was slow in coming, but the preacher persuaded most of the group to be forgiving. There was one little old lady, who just had to be over 90 years old, sitting in the back pew. The preacher called on her, “Are you willing to forgive your enemies??”---and the woman instantly responded, “I have no enemies,” The preacher seemed stunned by the response---he must have found a saint---what kind of person would have no enemies?? So he called her to the front to be an example to the rest, and asked again, “How is it possible that you actually have no enemies??” The old woman snapped back---“I outlived all those no-good, filthy slime-bags {slightly censored; the original is worse}!!”
I suppose there is a sense in which one of the perks connected with growing older is that we outlive our enemies. But the face of the clown often masks tragedy; the sad part of this story is that we outlive our friends, too. When I was told that I could compile a list of people that I wanted to invite for this happy event of April 14, 2005, I thought at once of Haywood Shuford, who was my closest friend during my earliest years at Baylor, back in the 1960s. And I thought of Tommy Gardner, world’s finest choir director---how could we have a party without Tommy and Jenny Gardner? And I would so much love to have had Jack Kilgore here….as my Chairman during those early years, I confess Jack scared me half to death (as the saying goes), but in looking back, I see he was good to me, too. Baylor has always been good to me.
Move on. I have titled this document “The Turning Points of My Life.” The title is, of course, stolen from Mark Twain’s wonderful essay, “The Turning Point of My Life.” For a philosopher, that essay has some great lines. For example, after writing about events in his own life, Twain says that, after all (or maybe before all), the turning point of all our lives was God’s placing Adam and Eve in the Garden, knowing full well that they had temperaments of butter, surely to be melted by the Serpent, thus assuring the Fall. Twain then adds:
“What I cannot help wishing is, that Adam {and EVE} had been postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place--that splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have beguiled THEM to eat the apple. There would have been results! Indeed, yes. The apple would be intact today; there would be no human race; there would be no YOU; there would be no ME. And the old, old creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild would have been defeated.”
I love that!! It appeals to the Calvinist in me.
But I cannot choose just one event as the turning point in my life.. I have chosen 4. They were by no means arbitrarily chosen, though I suppose others could have been added to the list, and certainly some of those chosen were more important than others. First, then, as odd as it may sound, I think reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island was a turning point. Again, I suspect what I recall most from the book was not the adventure, or finding the treasure, or any of the things in this classic which attract most readers. What fascinated me most was the scene in which mother, son, and the doctor went upstairs to open the old sailor’s sea-chest:
“It was like any other seaman's chest on the outside, the initial "B" burned on the top of it with a hot iron, and the corners somewhat smashed and broken as by long, rough usage.
"Give me the key," said my mother; and though the lock was very stiff, she had turned it and thrown back the lid in a twinkling.
A strong smell of tobacco and tar rose from the interior, but nothing was to be seen on the top except a suit of very good clothes, carefully brushed and folded. They had never been worn, my mother said. Under that, the miscellany began--a quadrant, a tin canikin, several sticks of tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an old Spanish watch and some other trinkets of little value and mostly of foreign make, a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six curious West Indian shells. I have often wondered since why he should have carried about these shells with him in his wandering, guilty, and hunted life.
In the meantime, we had found nothing of any value but the silver and the trinkets, and neither of these were in our way. Underneath there was an old boat-cloak, whitened with sea-salt on many a harbour-bar. My mother pulled it up with impatience, and there lay before us, the last things in the chest, a bundle tied up in oilcloth, and looking like papers, and a canvas bag that gave forth, at a touch, the jingle of gold.
"I'll show these rogues that I'm an honest woman," said my mother. "I'll have my dues, and not a farthing over. Hold Mrs. Crossley's bag." And she began to count over the amount of the captain's score from the sailor's bag into the one that I was holding.
It was a long, difficult business, for the coins were of all countries and sizes--doubloons, and louis d'ors, and guineas, and pieces of eight, and I know not what besides, all shaken together at random. The guineas, too, were about the scarcest, and it was with these only that my mother knew how to make her count.”
When I was a little boy, my family could not afford a car, but the house in which we lived had a garage. To those who are so small, everything looks large, so I remember our garage as a huge, cavernous place, stuffed with all sorts of useless things. I found an old box, which I could pretend was a sea-chest, and tried to duplicate the contents of the one Stevenson had described. For reasons I cannot explain, this preoccupation with lists never left me. In later life, I’ve always loved to put together bibliographies and very detailed syllabi for my courses. I edited the annual bibliography for the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism the last years they had a bibliography, did a bibliographical column for Leonardo for about 10 years, etc. Today I work with computers a lot, because they make this sort of thing so much easier, and I flatter myself that my work in this area has been found useful by scholars at other universities.
The second turning point was a day in the Summer or early Fall of 1951. I had just finished high school, and was short (very!!) of money for college. So I decided to apply for a scholarship (to Ohio University), given by the Selby Shoe Company, where my father had worked since shortly after World War I.. There was to be an exam to be given at Portsmouth High School. I remember walking onto the Portsmouth High campus, and walking by two girls, and I heard one say to the other, “There are three girls applying, and a boy.” I recall how excited I felt as I thought, “I’m that boy!!”---because I knew this would afford a chance to meet this lovely girl! She was in my first Philosophy course. She made her ‘A,” as expected, and promised that if she got through that Philosophy course, she would never take another—and she never did! I stayed at this little evening-school “branch” of Ohio U. for two years. After just one year, she went to the main campus in Athens. Then I joined the Army, and was sent to Germany for two years (28 months, actually, keeping the world safe for democracy). I write better than I talk, so this probably helped our courtship…we were married when I was released from service in 1956.
I am told that PDA (Public Display of Affection) is in bad form, so I feel sure that long dissertations on why I love my wife would also be in bad form… I shall therefore refrain from any such. But I must at least say three things:
Enough of that. Move on to the third of these turning points of my life. It’s odd that small incidents can change everything. As I look back, I think that in the early 70s, I was searching for something, not knowing just what. For various reasons, largely changes in the “power structure” in charge of the American Society for Aesthetics, I had become somewhat disillusioned with aesthetics. In America, that society controls the discipline, by controlling our principal journal devoted to aesthetics, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. At about the same time, I became aware that my Kierkegaard studies had gone about as far as they could go unless I learned Danish—and I’m really not good at languages. At any rate, I have always enjoyed digging through old second-hand bookstores. At that time, there was, in our downtown area (such as it is, and it was even worse then), something called the Waco Book Store. It was run by a little old lady who seemed to know little (and care less) about books. When a family died, or maybe just when Great-granddad or Great-grandma died, she would get a box of books. Anything good was snapped up quickly; the junk ended up on the shelves. In the course of time, there seemed to be nothing left but a lot of junk on the shelves. On this particular day, they must have gotten in a new box. I purchased three books:
I am tempted to say, “And the rest is history…,” but that would sound a bit presumptuous. I thought I had seen (somewhere…) the names of Blair and Kames; the name of Joseph Haven meant nothing to me….
Perhaps I should add that all three books had belonged to a certain Miss Jennie H. Casseday, of Bullitt County, Kentucky (This caught my eye, since I was born in Kentucky), who had attended the Louisville Female Seminary, at least from 1868-1870. Pardon a stupid narrative, but some of us are old enough to recall that, in the 1970s, there was a period in which college-age girls wore long dresses—about the same time guys had long sideburns and wore those crazy “leisure suits!” I had a dream during those years that I was attending some sort of function in our old-fashioned Drawing Room of the Student Union Building at Baylor. Was it a book signing? Doubtful; I never had one…but it was something like that. I spoke to this girl for just a moment, and turned away. Then…there was this sudden shock of recognition, and I turned back around again, shouting…(Jennie!! Jennie!!)---but she was gone!!
A small enough incident, but those three books aroused my curiosity, leading ultimately to about a dozen visits to Scotland , from 1974-2001, and some of my more interesting (to me, at least) academic work and publications. I discovered, of course, that Lord Kames had been a member of the Court of Session (I think that’s the correct way to put it), the most important court in all of Scotland. Hugh Blair had been the minister of the “High Kirk” of Saint Giles, the most important church in Edinburgh, and again, thus the most important in all of Scotland. Both men were close friends of David Hume, and both played significant roles in that movement (of which I knew nothing) known as the Scottish Enlightenment. This turned up enough material to reward a lifetime of study. I think I had excellent instruction in my graduate work at the University of Cincinnati, but I did not know enough about Hume, and nothing about the sorts of criticism brought against his philosophy by such thinkers as George Campbell, James Beattie, and, best of all, by Thomas Reid. I don’t think I had ever heard the barest mention of Reid’s “Philosophy of Common Sense.” Suddenly, as the significance of all this began to dawn on me, I felt much like that character in Sartre’s Nausea. You remember, the “Self-taught man?”—the “Auto-didact”??---and remember the part in which he is about to make a small contribution to a conversation… then he stops himself, and says, “But I shouldn’t speak…one should have read everything.” And I had read nothing; I felt so inadequate. But Thomas Reid fascinated me, so I plunged in.
I was about to forget the third book bought that day, the one by Joseph Haven. Haven had taught at Amherst, and later at the University of Chicago. Again, it clicked in my memory. When I first came to Baylor in 1962, I was given a tour of something called the “Texas Collection,” by an old man (he was old even then) who had been a legend in the Baylor History Department, Dr. Guy B. Harrison. One thing he showed me was a sort of Presidents’ Collection, books which had belonged to former B. U. presidents. I thought the most impressive collection had belonged to William Carey Crane, who had been president of Baylor when the school was still down in Independence, Texas, from 1863-1885 (naturally, the job killed him). He had owned a copy of Haven’s work on “mental philosophy”. Permit me to shorten this bibliographical excursion (my friend Haywood Shuford once said my way of doing philosophy was “..not unlike sorting mail,” so I know some readers can become bored by all of this) by simply saying, dogmatically, that I discovered, to my absolute delight (sorry, there is no other way to say it) that the “Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense” was the dominant philosophy in America, from New England to Texas, from the Colonial period until at least 1867. There is much, much, more to be said about this, and I leave the saying of it, at least at Baylor, in the extremely capable hands of my two youngest colleagues, Todd Buras and Margaret Tate. I add only two small notes, one obvious, the other perhaps a bit less trivial. First, it should be clear that the date of 1867 was not arbitrarily chosen (though, of course, a lot of Scottish philosophy continued to be taught after that date); that was the date that the Journal ofSpeculative Philosophy began publication. This was the first journal published in America, devoted entirely to philosophy, and that philosophy was primarily German, not Scottish. The second point has, so far as I know, been little explored, simply why this shift from Scottish to German philosophy? I suspect much of the change had to do with American patterns of immigration. Many (most?) of the influential early immigrants to the East coast of America were British (I think it has been established that my earliest relative to reach these shores was “transported” after the disastrous battle of Dunbar in 1650). It is said that the American Revolution had a distinct Scottish accent (All right! So we lost at Culloden in 1746. Give us another chance; we can do better---remember Wallace, a.k.a. “Braveheart”! Remember Bannockburn!). The middle 19 th century, by contrast, saw the expansion, in cities such as St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee, of large German populations. And the Journal of SpeculativePhilosophy was founded and published by a group known as the “St. Louis Hegelians.”
The fourth, and almost really final, turning point can be more precisely dated—February 26, 2004. As almost everyone knows, on that date I suffered a cardiac arrest, what one of my doctors called Cardiac Death Syndrome, so called because death is the result in about 96% of the cases. And so I now believe in miracles, no matter what Hume said. But despite the popularity of the TV series, CSI, such topics as Cardiac Death Syndrome and various sorts of infections, irritations, and inflammations that are likely to follow it, make poor dinner or after-dinner reading or discussion. So let us dispense with all that.
I really have only two things to say on this general subject. First, must admit that such an event can lead people like me to a lot of self-pity. There were some warm days in late March and early April of 2004, and I can recall sitting out on our little patio, reading a book, The Purpose DrivenLife, which my neighbor, Mike Kopp, had given me. I remember shedding tears as I read the words of a poem in that book, by Russell Kelfer:
“No, the trauma you faced was not easy,
And God wept that it hurt you so;
But it was allowed to shape your heart
So that into his likeness you’d grow.
You are who you are for a reason,
You’ve been formed by the Master’s rod.
You are who you are, beloved,
Because there is a God!”
Yes, there was pain, but it was never that severe, or prolonged. I could handle that. What I hated was the feeling of weakness, disability, uselessness. If I may change the tone of this a bit, I often think of myself as like the little guy in one of my favorite stories, who wanted so much to play football, and asked his coach if he could try out for the high school team. The coach looked him over and said, “You’re a little small, aren’t you, son?” The boy responded, “Coach, I may not be very big, but I’m slow.” I am reconciled (no remedy for it) to being small and slow, but I was an Army sergeant once, in Germany, and I didn’t like being weak. It was in such times that I asked the age-old Philosophical/Theological question, “Why me? Why did this have to happen to me??” But the truth is there is a perfectly good, naturalistic, answer. I was 70 years old, and while I had never had heart problems diagnosed, there is a family history---my father died of heart problems at the age of 60… I eventually came to see that the real question was not the selfish “Why did this have to happen to me?? ---but rather one for which I still have not found an answer, “Why was I spared?” Surely the poet is right; things are permitted to happen for a reason, but fools such as I are sometimes left to grope in the dark, as it were, unable to comprehend what that reason could be. I’m just thankful that I was spared this time; I may never understand why (Anselm was right, too; we believe first, then hope to understand).
Perhaps the only good reason for my bringing up these things is to say that when such things happen to you, you discover who your friends are. In this case, there are really too many to name, but some attempt must be made. To begin, then, I’m not sure just how it happened, but I think our Pastor, Dr. Rebecca Whitaker, got to the hospital before I did (at least, she was conscious). She provided spiritual comfort to Rosemary, but this lady has had tragedy in her own life, and she just knows how to be helpful in a hospital setting. She was wonderful, and I am thankful for her every day. My wife’s help is beyond measure, but I did not want her to try to stay over at the hospital; I had lots of nurses to take care of me, so I didn’t need that. Even though my wife does a million things well, she does not drive a car. Somehow, it just so happened that my neighbor, Mike Kopp, was available just about every morning or evening, so she never wanted for transportation (what would we have done without him?) Our closest friends, the Gardners, did what they could, but even then, I think Tommy was beginning to be slowed by the illness that, later in the year, was to take his life. Early on, I know Bonnie Luft came to the hospital and, I don’t know how she got there, but I can recall, again early on, looking up into the face of Christina, our friend from Gregory’s in Salado. I remember being visited by my chairman, Bob Baird. I tried to tell him I would be out of the classroom for a while; he touched my shoulder, and said simply, “No, you’re through for the semester.“ Soon after, the Philosophy faculty met, and Baird took over one of my classes, Mike Beaty a second, and Bob Kruschwitz the third, and Donna Praesel, bless her, made it clear that she would be there whenever we needed her—and she was, too. Nothing more was said. There is an old saying that at Baylor, we do things a little differently…it’s true. And in the interest of fairness, it may not be out of place to say this kind of behavior is not new at Baylor. One of my earliest recollections (I think it was the Fall term of 1962, my first year here)…is that someone in the Religion Department (James Wood??) was injured in an auto accident. I recall Jack Kilgore (who had a second doctorate, a Th. D.) walking by me on the third floor,Tidwell, muttering, in what I saw as his usual grumpy way, “Well, I’m going downstairs…” and he went down, and volunteered to help with the teaching load of their injured prof---and they took him up on it.
When it became clear that I would need by-pass surgery, the first phone call I got was from our former Baylor President, Herbert H. Reynolds. I’ll never forget lying there, feeling everything was all over, and I would never be the same, when the phone rang. I picked up the receiver, and heard this voice, “Hi! This is Herb Reynolds!” I wanted to stand up and say, “Yes, Sir!!”----but all those IVs and such were restraining. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that he had been there, and I would be fine. In like manner, as the good book says, shortly after my surgery, I was visited by Ted Talbot (who also has had by-pass surgery). He told me that I would shortly be doing all (well, most…) of the things I had always done, and that, meanwhile, he would provide transportation to doctors’ appointments, and anything else I needed, and he did.
Pages could be filled, and I’m trying not to do that, with accounts of kindness by President Sloan, Nancy Cagle, Elaine Harknett (and the Honors College, my neighbors across the hall in the Morrison building). I was overwhelmed by gifts, cards, fruit, etc., and other acts of kindness, from my family (especially my nephew, Jack Jennings, and his wife Janie), Baylor colleagues, my church friends, and my students. One more group requires special mention—what I call the “Getterman Gang!” During this past year, I’ve learned that whenever we have major surgery, or other types of trauma, good doctors can patch us up, and send us home… But if we want to return to work, or just have a meaningful retirement, we must go to something like the Getterman Wellness Center. I am so very grateful to Ted and Sue Getterman, for giving us that marvelous facility, and for Chris and Roxanne, and the rest of their very professional, and very caring staff. They bring a lot of us to the point that weakness and lack of stamina are no longer problems. This eliminates a great deal of our pointless self-pity, and means the sympathy of all my well-wishers is no longer needed….but I know now that your friendship is needed, always, and have come to realize how much it means to me.
That’s too much on that subject. I began this over-long document with a quote from Mark Twain. As I come (at long last…!!) to a conclusion, permit me to add another, which I want to include because it sums up how I feel as Baylor (incredibly!) begins a conference to honor me. It was 1908, and Twain was about to sail for home, and was being honored by a literary society called the Lotus Club:
"I am now to say good-bye. Home is dear to all of us, and I am now departing to my home beyond the ocean. Oxford has conferred upon me the highest honor that has ever fallen to my share in this life's prizes, and which was the very one I would have chosen; it is the very one I would have chosen as being more gracious than any other honor that could be conferred upon me by men or state. And during my four weeks' stay here in England I have had another lofty honor, a continuous honor, an honor which has flowed willingly along without hold or cessation during all these twenty-six days, a most gratifying, most delightful honor in this, this treatment, the heartfelt grip of the hand, and the compliment that doesn't descend from the blue-gray matter of the brain, but rushes by red blood out of the heart, and, so voiced, is manifestly freighted with affection, that dearest reward that any man can earn by character or achievements in this world. And, My Lord, it makes me proud, and sometimes, sometimes it makes me humble. Many, many years ago I gathered an incident from Mr. Dana's Two Years before the Mast. It was like this: There was a poor little ignorant, self-satisfied skipper of a coasting sloop of New England engaged in the dried-apples and kitchen furniture trade, and he was always hailing every vessel that passed, and he only did it just to hear himself talk, and air his small greatness, just as I am always doing myself, always showing off, always trying to attract attention and notice. And that poor little man couldn't help that. He was born that way, and so was I.
"And one day a majestic Indiaman came floating by, with course on course of canvas towering into the sky, and with its decks and yards swarming with sailors, and full burdened to the Plimsoll line with spices, aromatic spices and gums, lading all the breezes with the gracious and mysterious odors of the Orient, a noble spectacle, a sublime spectacle, that great ship. Of course that little skipper hopped into the shrouds and squeaked out the hail, 'Ship ahoy! What ship is that, and whence, and whither?' And then-a deep and thunderous voice came back booming across the tops of the waves, 'The Begum of Bengal; one hundred and forty-eight days out from Canton; homeward bound. What ship is that?'
"And, you know, that just crushed that poor little creature flat, and he squawked back this: 'Only the Mary Ann; fourteen hours out from Boston; bound for Kittery Point.' Oh, the eloquence of that word, 'Only'; the eloquence of that phrase, 'Only the Mary Ann,' to express the depths of his humbleness.
"And that is just my case, My Lord; just my case. During one short hour in the twenty-four I pause and reflect; during one short hour in the silent watches of the night, with the music of your English welcomes still ringing in my ears, and I am humble; then I recognize, and then I confess to myself that I am 'Only the Mary Ann,' fourteen hours out, cargoed with vegetables, and bound-where? But during all the other twenty-three hours my satisfied vanity rides high on the white crests of your approval, and then I am the stately Indiaman, flying across the seas under a cloud of canvas, and laden to the Plimsoll mark with the most redolent spices that were ever passed to a wanderer alone in this world; and then my twenty-six days on this old mother soil seem ample for themselves, and I am the 'Begum of Bengal; one hundred and forty-eight days out from Canton; and homeward bound.'"
I now know just how the little fellow in the story must have felt, humble and crushed flat by all that you have done, yet riding the crest of satisfied vanity, all at the same time… So let me close; it can’t get better than that. In the above, I have all too often reminded you of times past, of events, practices, and traditions that go back into the history of our university, some long before my time. Old men tend to do that. Add just one more story, please. For 24 years, I had a huge office (now usurped—can’t resist that!!—by Scott Moore and his Great Texts Program) in the Tidwell Building. When I first moved in, the “back room” attached had a bunch of old things—books, notebooks, whatever—that belonged to Dr. Kilgore. I tried to put things in order back there, and one thing I ran across was a grade book which had belonged to Keith James—a young member of the Philosophy Department who had been killed in the 1953 tornado, which devastated downtown Waco. What was interesting is that the grade book showed no breaks or lack of continuity in Prof. James’ courses. My assumption is that Leonard Duce, who was Chairman then, and Dr. Kilgore, divided up his courses, and things continued on, much as usual, without interruption, and without excessive fanfare. What I am saying is that at the Baylor I’ve known these past 43 years, and especially in the Philosophy Department, there has been more than simple collegiality; there has been (yet once more) kindness, caring, ‘love’ is not too strong a word, mutual respect, and even a willingness to bear one another’s burdens, when needed. I am especially pleased that this wonderful event, call it the “Budfest,” or “Hume and his Critics,” or what you will, was the brainchild, and largely the work, of our department’s two youngest members, Todd Buras and Margaret Tate (and I know it required valuable time they could have spent getting out that next paper to help guarantee tenure). This provides reason to hope that the sort of spirit we have had in Baylor past will continue, long past 2012. Every Philosophy lecture or paper must have a moral---mine is simply that I hope we can always recall, as we strive to make Baylor at once more academically special and more Christian, that the early Christians were not distinguished by their doctrinal unity, and our department hasn’t been, either. Rather, it was said of them: “See how those Christians love one another,”
And I thank you—all of you—for sharing that love with me.
EHD
Just a Few Words…
Nothing could be more inappropriate than to use this time, especially in this place, to attempt to convert members of this group to the Presbyterian faith. But at the church I attend, our most central, and most important, sacrament, is a shared meal—now I think I understand why. That said, permit me to add that I have never, in a single room, been surrounded by so many people, who mean so much to me. I am just overwhelmed, and it seems too little to simply say thank you all for coming. I am so very grateful to all of you for being here. At such events as this (and I have attended a few), the honoree seems required to give a long talk on “How wonderful I am, and how I got that way.” Unfortunately, I’m not wonderful, so how I got that way would seem to be of little interest, and I don’t want to take valuable time from our featured speakers. Nevertheless, I do have some autobiographical things prepared, which I have asked to be made available in printed form; perhaps that will suffice.
For the moment, then, I’ll be brief (that’s unusual for me; I’m normally wired for 50 minutes!). Basically, I want to complain about one of my habits, an unfortunate tendency I may have acquired in my early years at Baylor. In 1962, my first year here, I recall hearing Billy Graham, no less, speaking over in the old McLean Gym, and he said, referring to the Baylor football team, that God had placed us in the Southwest Conference to keep us humble—and I need hardly add that, in the Big 12, our football team has really learned humility! I recall that, in those days, the team often finished the season at 5 and 5, 5 wins, 5 losses (not a problem in more recent seasons).
At the end of every season, loyal fans would think together…”Next year…we’ll get ‘em…. next year…” And I learned to think that way, too. At the end of every term of the 43 years I’ve taught at Baylor, I’ve had that time of sitting in the loneliness of my office, realizing that that term, I just hadn’t gotten it done. I had not taught the subject as I should have; I had not gotten the students to respond as I should have…I had failed. But next year…next year, I would get it all together, make it all work, do it right, etc...
Actually, this may be a Scottish trait, not just a Duncanean problem. I am certain I am not the only one here who has visited the final resting place of Adam Smith, on the grounds of the old Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh. It is claimed that he wrote the inscription for his tombstone himself. Recall it says something like:
Here lie the mortal remains of Adam Smith.
He was born, and it gives the date in 1723, and he died
And the date in 1790 is given
Then he skipped a few lines and added:
Author of
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
and
The Wealth of Nations
Surely he knew that, as long as people read books in English, those two must be read!
And yet, his biographers claim that as his last words, or among his last, he said:
“I could have done more..” Think of that—“I could have done more…”
Isn’t that a bit like saying, “Next time..” or “Next year…”?? or, “I just didn’t get it done…”?
I promised just a few words, so get to the point. My point is emphatically not the C.S. Lewis (though I admire his work), “…we come at last to the end of all the stories….” No, I look forward to teaching my Philosophy of Art course at least once more next term (this time, I’ll do it right…), and I want to do volunteer work out at the Getterman Center, if they’ll have me. I don’t know what I can do out there. But when someone has the experience of, as one of my doctors quaintly put it, dropping dead on the parking lot, there is a tendency to think, even if we survived that particular event, life as we knew it is over. Maybe I can tell somebody, as Dr. Reynolds and Ted Talbot told me, that that need not be true---and I am forever grateful to Chris, Roxanne, and little Jennie Snyder, and all the others out at the Center, for showing me that need not be the case.
But the real point of these “few words” is that the major problem with all this “next year” mentality is that, for example, if I really want to dream of a term in which that Philosophy of Art course seemed to work, how about last term, or the term before that?? And if, as we are all prone to do, I sometimes think neither my students nor my colleagues are as appreciative of me as they should be, how about last year (not to mention this present event!!)---just think of all that my students, and my colleagues, did for me!! Another way to get at what I am trying to say is that I could teach for another 43 years (not very likely) and not find better students than George Harris, or Janet Riola, or Darin Davis… Maybe there is, after all, nothing terribly wrong with someone in my position thinking about next year, and trying to improve. But at times such as this, it seems more appropriate to reflect upon the years I’ve already had here at Baylor, the times when things did go well… as well as to remember the incredible understanding and compassion shown to me when they didn’t, and recall that my students and my colleagues have always been so kind to me….and just be thankful.
May God bless you one and all, as you have been such a blessing to me.
Thank you.
EHD
