Pages From An Oxford Diary by Paul Elmer More - 1938 - Oxford Group
Sale
Original price
$500
Original price
$500
-
Original price
$500
Original price
$500
Current price
$295
$295
-
$295
Current price
$295
Pages From An Oxford Diary by Paul Elmer More
2nd Printing 1938 Original Dust Jacket
This 1938 printing is a difficult find; 1951 and later versions are listed for as much as $400. This book is in excellent condition with an original dust jacket (clipped) and NO writing or marks in the book. This book was completed just prior to More's death.
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Paul Elmer More
Though few remember Paul Elmer More (1864-1937) now, he once stood with his closest friend, Irving Babbitt, as the leader of the so-called “New Humanist” movement. An editor of The Nation and a classicist at Princeton University, More influenced many of the greats of the 20th century—especially through his friendships.
Pages from an Oxford Diary
In his autobiographical Pages from an Oxford Diary, More explored the role of faith in culture and in the self. He labeled the book “a kind of informal prayer.”
He claimed that he was once—as a young man—very taken with the idea of a materialist “New Philosophy which should prove once for all that the world and men are the product of a fatalistic Law of Chance and Probability.”
More lost this idea when he discovered that such a materialism must lead to the conclusion that men are just machines and automatons, incapable of free will. At the same moment in his life, he also deeply resented the idea that he needed redemption through an acceptance of grace.
To reconcile these two things, More turned to reading published letters, autobiographies, and biographies, searching for the key to a successful life. After extensive reading, More believed that almost all such successful lives still seemed empty, devoid of something. “Almost invariably in the correspondence of writers and scholars and men of affairs the last letters are filled with open or ill-concealed despondency.”
Ultimately, and perhaps finally (though not completely), More settled upon Plato’s understanding of the “True, the Good, and the Beautiful.” Still, something nagged at More’s soul. “But here, I could not rest,” More recorded, echoing the words of St. Augustine. “Is that realm of Ideas a cold vacuum of inanimate images? . . . what I still needed was God.” After all, he admitted to himself, “long ago Jehovah rebuked Job for his presumption: ‘Shalt though by reasoning find out God’”?
As More finally decided, the gift of free will allows a man to choose grace rather than pride. Typically, though, one chooses pride: