Convocation Remarks, 1998
Timothy J. Sullivan
August 28, 1998
I have a question. Why are we here? Now the question I am asking is not, I suspect, the one most of you have in mind which surely must be just exactly whose idea was it to gather us here in this heat, trapped between two wings of old brick that raise the temperature still higher? The short answer is that it was my idea. Mine. What I planned was an early ordeal designed to test your stamina and maybe even your character. So far, you are passing. Keep it up!
But that, as I said, is not the question I mean to ask. Why are we here? Here at William and Mary. Here at a place that has endured for 305 years in the service of learning, in the cause of mankind. What acts of faith or fate, what providential circumstance has caused us to come here to teach, to learn, to live? Something there is that has drawn us here, that stamps us as women and men joined enthusiastically in a cause whose object inspires shared resolve and unites us in common purpose.
The late Henry Steele Commager spoke wisely of the right purpose for a place like this. "What every college must do," he said, "is to hold up before the young the spectacle of greatness in history, in literature, in life." I admire those words and for two reasons. First, Commager tells us it is for greatness that we were made; second, he defines greatness broadly and properly in terms that embrace history, that embrace literature, that embrace life.
Are we great in the Commagerian sense? I believe so, but my case depends upon defining what makes for greatness in this College, this William and Mary.
First, above all else, there is the love of learning, not to a vocational end, not to some instrumental purpose, but for its own sake for the simple, soaring joy of knowing what we had not known before. Without this William and Mary might be admirable, useful even, great in some ways, but never would we be a great university.
Second, an exacting and objective sense of excellence applied consistently to all that matters in our work. In defining and deploying this standard, no notion of relative worth, no mitigation for "almost excellent" will do.
We must never be a Virginian version of Lake Woebegone, deluding ourselves by believing that everything we do is above average. John Henry Newman caught the critical difference between real and counterfeit excellence when he described scholars "who are as pointless as they are inexhaustible in their literary resources. They increase knowledge by bulk; as it lies in a rude block, without symmetry, without design. They are only possessed by their knowledge, not possessed of it."
Third, a sense of humility and a sense of humor. These two often travel together and, because they do, are sometimes confused one with the other. They are different.
By humility I mean an ever present sense of our own limitations an awareness that, however brilliant, we really don’t know it all and never can, that large and vital parts of the human experience are beyond our knowing and much, so very much, that matters in life cannot be felt or understood by simple exercise of intellect.
By a sense of humor I mean just that, the ability to laugh and feel that laughter deep within as we watch bemused the unfolding of our own conceits, our own follies, our own, not infrequent, quite perfect ridiculousness.
Fourth a sense of virtue. Some of you have heard me speak of this before. But its importance justifies this repetition. We live for the life of the mind, yes. That is what defines us as an academic endeavor. But we are also the College of William and Mary and we are defined, too, by our founders’ dreams and by the historical culture shaped by those dreams.
Three centuries of time’s threads have woven here a rich and strongly colored tapestry, preserving a pattern which not merely permits but demands our attention to the moral dimension of education. We teach honor, we inculcate self-discipline by example, we exalt the idea of service. We work hard, with mixed success, to insure that in, William Dean Howell’s memorable words, that for our students and for the rest of us too, money will not become "the romance, the only poetry of our age."
Fifth, and finally, a capacity for love. That great plague of authors who produce "how to" books on corporate success chatter endlessly about the criticality of "passion" in the pursuit of excellence. The right word is love not passion. Love leads to passion of the right kind. Without love, there is no greatness here or elsewhere. Love creates great art, great literature, great lives and, most assuredly, great institutions. At its core love liberates a powerful and empowering faith, a profound sense of transforming possibility and a joyous spirit of sacrificial sharing. Philip Larkin, I think meant just this, when he wrote, "we have an ‘almost instinct’ that what will survive of us is love." To the degree we love this place, our colleagues, our students and our work, to that degree and to that degree only, may we claim greatness for our College.
So now you know. My question "Why are we here?" was only rhetorical, and to borrow a line from John Prine, a not very famous but very brilliant songwriter-poet "a question is not really a question if you know the answer too."
Yet the question was still right to raise. It will do none of us harm and most of us good before we are captured by the really annoying and the truly trivial to remember how deeply important is the work we do here. To recall and to acknowledge, if only for this moment, how deeply we believe in this place, its history, its present, its future and in its power to make us wiser, to make us better.
So may we not now affirm with a sense of gratitude and a sense of pride that our task is to preserve the greatness of this College and to assure in this, its 306th, year that we will take care, take infinite care, to hold up before the young "the spectacle of greatness in history, in literature, in life."
