Charles William Eliot (1834–1926)

I thought these essays were claptrap when I had to read some of them in school. Now forty years later my opinion is confirmed. One can see how appropriate is Mr. Emerson's best known quotation ("Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"). "English Traits" (one of the more readable of the pieces in this collection) is one of the most inconsistent works I've ever come across. But Emerson is not all harmlessly quaint. I don't see how anybody familiar with the history of the 20th century can show more read "Self Reliance", his most famous and once popular essay, without a shudder. show less

After reading the first volume of President Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, I'm afraid I really do wonder about the President's mindset. It's not that these works of Mr. Franklin, Mr. Woolman and Mr. Penn are not worth reading--they certainly are, and in the cases of Mr. Woolman and Mr. Penn, in parts "inspiring". But all three raise more questions than they provide answers. I read Franklin in high school and remembered mostly his table or scheme for self-improvement, which to a high school boy show more seemed rather absurd. This time, though, I found more sympathy for old Ben and noticed what I had not seen before, his humorous touches.

But why in the world would these be chosen as the first volume of Mr. Eliot's ambitious effort? Was he serious? If so, what was his point? show less

This book was a slow read, and I haven't read all of the series, but I did enjoy reading this a great deal as I learned a lot about people and things I hadn't known much about before. It was a good change from all the fiction I tend to read, and I think it's a great idea to read at least one volume of the Harvard Classics for all serious readers. My goal was to read the entire set of Harvard Classics, but I got bogged down somewhere in the second one and my try again when my kids are older.

Burke's comments on the contemporary French Revolution were important, however, they were confusing and mixed up with his fairly novel (at the time) concept of the importance of "property rights" to liberty. While brilliant, it is nonsense.

So is his defense of the English colonials in America based on their "antient" [his repeated word, which I think he made up?] rights as Englishmen. Just nonsense, but he just could never get himself to recognize that all people -- not just those of "the show more nobility"--are not only entitled to liberty but are collectively the source of all authority.

Wikipedia has done a great bio of him, and now I realize that "conservatives" have misled us in appropriating him as one of theirs. He is not. Not only did he almost get hung for his support of the American Revolution, but he also savaged the British East India Company and its "CEO". His peers thought him a "liberal". Lord Acton named him as one of the three great liberals -- see also Gladstone, Thos B Macaulay.

The Wiki article has quoted from his other work and in those he is genuinely eloquent. In addition, although it appears he began as a paid pigeon, he matured into an independent voice of genuine principle, with unequaled eloquence.

Of course, the effect of Burke's remonstrations against the most extreme forms of "Leftist" expressions was to embolden the Right. In effect, the British joined with the entire ancien regime in attacking the upstarts in France and went to a war. The war only forced the French people to defend themselves, which they did with unity and zeal they would not otherwise have exerted. The French managed to win the war in their "people's defense" against the entire "nobility" of Europe. But this of course, pushed them into the nasty little embrace of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Burke could not seem to focus on what the constitutes a "danger" to Liberty. show less