Might vs Right

In what I find the most crucial scene in T.H. White's excellent Arthurian retelling The Once and Future King, the newly-crowned Arthur is trying to discern his role as the King of All England. Beset by the rebellion of King Lot and the Orkney faction of the North, Arthur is about to face the first real test of his reign in the Battle of Bedegraine. In the passage I will quote he is trying to articulate what Merlyn has been trying to teach him throughout his long tutorship. This is what he decides:

"'Now what I have thought,' said Arthur, 'is this. Why can't you harness Might so that it works for Right? I know it sounds nonsense, but I mean, you can't just say there is no thing. The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can't neglect it. You can't cut it out, but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean, so that it was useful instead of bad.'

The audience was interested. They leaned forward to listen, except Merlyn.

'My idea is that if we can win this battle in front of us, and get a firm hold of the country, then I will institute a sort of order of chivalry. I will not punish the bad knights, or hang Lot, but I will try to get them into our Order. We shall have to make it a great honor, you see, and make it fashionable and all that. Everybody must want to be in. And then I shall make the oath of the order that Might is only to be used for Right. Do you follow? The knights in my order will ride all over the world, still dressed in steel and whacking away with their swords--that will give an outlet for wanting to whack, you understand, an outlet for what Merlyn calls the fox hunting spirit--but they will be bound to strike only on behalf of what is good, to defend virgins against Sir Bruce and to restore what has been done wrong in the past and to help the oppressed and so forth. Do you see the idea? It will be using the Might instead of fighting against it, and turning a bad thing into a good. There, Merlyn, that is all I can think of. I have thought as hard as I could, and I suppose I am wrong, as usual. But I did think. I can't do any better. Please say something!'

The magician stood up as straight as a pillar, stretched out his arms in both directions, looked at the ceilinged said the first few words of the Nunc Dimittis."

The Nunc Dimittis is the prayer of Simeon from Luke's gospel, beginning "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." In other words, at this declaration of Arthur Merlyn sees his life's purpose fulfilled, to form the great king into the man who will undo the cycle of pointless death that characterized their culture. He can depart in peace.

Might still trumps Right in so much of our world. But the greatest dreams of humanity have been to harness Might for the work of Right. The infinitive there is imperative--to harness Might, which as Arthur acknowledges can never fully be sublimated. We will always bear within us that "fox hunting spirit." But the first condition for true democracy and true freedom is that Might be under the dominion of Right.

White named the book The Once and Future King. The name comes from the legend that King Arthur (and Merlyn) will return to England (or Logres) and restore it to its former glory. He is, like Christ, the once and future king. He will return and redemption will follow. It is a beautiful idea and one that always gives me goosebumps to think about.  

A Thing I Try While Teaching

As the new school year dawns I have been meditating on my profession. I have believed for some time that we do children no favors by talking down to them, even fewer favors by dumbing down the content of what we teach them. If we are "over their heads" we can do it in an aspirational way, helping them desire to be better, smarter, wittier, and more verbose than they currently are. It is a hard line to toe, especially given the disparate intellectual capacities in a given classroom, but it is a goal I find it worth shooting for. 

I read the following in T.H. White's excellent Arthurian novel The Once and Future King. It is describing the early days of Arthur's education at the hands of Merlyn.

"The Wart (young Arthur's unpleasant nickname) did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of a porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas."

This is the goal--to make them reach and to help them delight in so doing.