“Of course one should bring order into history,” Jacobus thundered. “Every science is, among other things, a method of ordering, simplifying, making the indigestible digestible for the mind. We think we have recognized a few laws in history and try to apply them to our investigations of historical truth. Suppose an anatomist is dissecting a body. He does not confront wholly surprising discoveries. Rather, he finds beneath the epidermis a congeries of organs, muscles, tendons, and bones which generally conform to a pattern he has brought to his work. But if the anatomist sees nothing but his pattern, and ignores the unique, individual reality of his object, then he is a Castalian, a Glass Bead Game player; he is using mathematics on the least appropriate object. I have no quarrel with the student of history who brings to his work a touchingly childish, innocent faith in the power of our minds and our methods to order reality; but first and foremost he must respect the incomprehensible truth, reality, and uniqueness of events. Studying history, my friend, is no joke and no irresponsible game. To study history one must know in advance that one is attempting something fundamentally impossible, yet necessary and highly important. To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.”
Among the remarks of Father Jacobus which Knecht at the time quoted in letters to his friends, here is one more characteristic outburst:
“Great men are to youth like the raisins in the cake of world history. They are also part of its actual substance, of course, and it is not so simple and easy as might be thought to distinguish the really great men from the pseudo-greats. Among the latter, it is the historical moment itself, and their ability to foresee its coming and seize it, that gives them the semblance of greatness. Quite a few historians and biographers, to say nothing of journalists, consider this ability to divine and seize upon a historical moment — in other words, temporary success — as in itself a mark of greatness. The corporal who becomes a dictator overnight, or the courtesan who for a while controls the good or ill humor of a ruler of the world, are favorite figures of such historians. And idealistically minded youths, on the other hand, most love the tragic failures, the martyrs, those who came on the scene a moment too soon or too late. For me, since I am after all chiefly a historian of our Benedictine Order, the most attractive and amazing aspects of history, and the most deserving of study, are not individuals and not coups, triumphs, or downfalls; rather I love and am insatiably curious about such phenomena as our congregation. For it is one of those long-lived organizations whose purpose is to gather, educate, and reshape men’s minds and souls, to make a nobility of them, not by eugenics, not by blood, but by the spirit — a nobility as capable of serving as of ruling. In Greek history I was fascinated not by the galaxy of heroes and not by the obtrusive shouting in the Agora, but by efforts such as those of the Pythagorean brotherhood or the Platonic Academy. In Chinese history no other feature is so striking as the longevity of the Confucian system. And in our own Occidental history the Christian Church and the Orders which serve it as part of its structure, seem to me historical elements of the foremost importance. The fact that an adventurer contrives to conquer or found a kingdom which lasts twenty, fifty, or even a hundred years, or that a well-meaning idealist on a royal or imperial throne once in a while brings greater honesty into politics, or attempts to carry some visionary cultural project to fruition; that under high pressure a nation or other community has been capable of incredible feats of achievement and suffering — all that interests me far less than the ever-recurrent efforts to establish such organizations as our Order, and that some of these efforts have endured for a thousand or two thousand years. I shall say nothing of holy Church itself; for us believers it is beyond discussion. But that communities such as the Benedictines, the Dominicans, later the Jesuits and others, have survived for centuries and, despite their ups and downs, the assaults upon them, and the adaptations they have made, retain their face and their voice, their gesture, their individual soul — this is, for me, the most remarkable and meritorious phenomenon in history.”
