Thomas Jefferson's Monticello
Presented on: Thursday, February 7, 1985
Presented by: Roger Weir
Hermetic America: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau
Presentation 6 of 13
Monticello: Symbol of the New Man
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, February 7, 1985
Transcript:
The date is February 7 1985. This is a sixth lecture in a series of lectures by Roger Weir on Hermetic America. Tonight's lecture is on Monticello, symbol of the new man.
So after five years of that kind of education I grew wise. Don't be deceived by what they do. What are say? What does that guy say?
Come on in, I'll wait. We have plenty of time.
We have, we have a lot of problems in hearing traditional wisdom. Our blind spot is traditional wisdom. We don't see it when we're presented with it. We don't hear it when someone talks to us. We discount it as if nothing happened. And of course the classic story and self development is always discovering that there are flat-out moments in our consciousness where we don't record. Where nothing occurs to us in terms of memory. Or in terms of imagination. And yet rationally we know that something has happened. And so reason becomes our guide. Reason becomes like the Greek term nous, n-o-u-s. You know us the nous is the guide saying yes something happened. You don't remember it and nothing developed from it but something did happen. Therefore your pattern of intelligence is incomplete. It is shallow. It is not recording certain deaths which also occur. And you are only remembering and imagining on the basis of surface reflection. The discovery that the mind is a mirror is a great advance. That the mind mirrors and that memory and imagination function very well in a mirroring situation. But reason does not. Reason shows the discontinuities in terms of memory and imagination. We go to sleep every night we wake up every morning. And in between we're sorely pressed remember what went on. Something went on.
Through experimentation one can discover that in that five or six or seven or eight hours, that the mind did not turn off. That that function which we know is reason metabolically, organically, consciously continues. It doesn't shut off. we can learn discursive detailed information while we sleep. Because reason is a continuous phenomena. And the discovery of this always changes the complexion of human experience. We then back away a step from our own lives and we ask yourself what is it that we are missing. And very often probing into that kind of a phenomenon, into those areas which are reasonable in this universe and yet discontinuous to us in terms of memory and imagination, reveal finally that the real arcane studies among men are the continuities of the great universal presence. Which we were even unaware of until reason guided us star-like out of our cave of mirrored experience. Out of our flatted out discontinuities into the realm as in the Vaudreyia(sp?) it reads of the sky blue meditation. That in fact there is no such thing as nothingness. That universal presence always occurs and it is us who do not keep in tune with it. And that our mirror like nature then is discontinuous. In discovering this man discovers the royal road to reality.
And over the millenia world round, in order to keep that discovery viable, freshened, the central focus of human endeavor, a sacred lineage was developed and evolved in all kinds of mankind. To pass on the continuous reasoned focus of their existence from one generation to another. The responsibility of passing that on was known as the divine kingship. And the discipline which kept that together. Because we only have the name of the ancient Indian tradition we have to use the Sanskrit. The name of that tradition was Raja yoga. And the original Sanskrit of it was Raja Guhya yoga. The secret of or the path of the kingly secret, how life and mankind are kept together. And from the time when we first know of a great king. The first great king that we know of in the civilizations that are most contiguous to us was Sargon the great about 2300 BC. And that beautiful stone frieze portrait of Sargon a looking magnificent. The first great semitic king of history and his beautiful poised profile. I'll bring it up sometime so you can see. The path of the kingly secret was the Raja yoga. And it was the responsibility of leaders of men. Not just those who happen to be tribal leaders. Not just those who are temporarily on top. But we're speaking out of the real esoteric kingship. That was the core all the way through. And in order for the kingship to be legitimate it had from time to time to be reconfirmed, rebaptised as it were, reblessed. And those individuals who reblessed them were the sages and the prophets, the visionaries, the magicians.
David in the Jewish tradition would not have been a legitimate King for there was no king before him. He was the first King. His legitimacy came from Samuel. And it was the wonderful humane divine eyesight, inner vision eyesight, of Samuel who realized that it was time to add to patriarchs and prophets a kingly line. That the Jewish people were ready. They were mature to have a kingly line. So David was consecrated. Merlin consecrated King Arthur. Made him happen. And in just this way Benjamin Franklin made Thomas Jefferson happen.
The American tradition begins with this most arcane of all happenings in the universe. The making of a real visionary leader of the people and the man who makes that happen, the magician, the Prophet, the sage, is not the first King. It is his pupil who is the first King. But the nature of kingship changed in that period called the Enlightenment, 200 years ago. something new was added because man had evolved. Mankind as an entity had grown up to a new phase and there needed to be a new kind of a king. Not a king who wore an objective crown but a king who expressed the fullness of the human potential. That was the crown of this new kind of a king. And they called him a president. And his scepter was the coherent vision of the future open purposes of the people, whatever they might choose to do. It was no longer looking back to preserve the past. To preserve the kingdom. But it was a metanoia on a grand scale to look toward the future and open it up for the people.
And Jefferson is the first transcendental King to open up man's vision and say all of our function is to see that those that come after us have a wide field of activity, a wide choice of possibilities. And we will do everything we can to see that they're born protected. That they're educated right. That they're given opportunities to develop themselves. That there are structures where they can come together and work together in groups as large as the whole nation. As large as the whole continent. because we don't know what man freed is going to do. And this is what jefferson inherited from Benjamin Franklin.
Yes he was mature on his own. Yes he was a great man on his own. But that contact of those two together makes the connection happen. It's just like Socrates making Plato happen. Without Socrates Plato would not have had the right focus. Benjamin Franklin brought Jefferson's great revision into focus. And we see time and time again the characteristics of Franklin's vision thirty years later, forty years later are carried over by Jefferson. it's the same movement. You almost see the same gesture. It's almost this **(inaudible)** gesture of welcome to light. what may we do to help you along?
Franklin is the first to eye the northern frontier and to set up forts. A whole string of forts. The first one to say that it's important to go as far north as we can and have Canada also in the Union if we can. He was the first to say we've got to look towards the Mississippi River. That if we stop here at the Allegheny Mountains we're going to be a fish out of water. We've got to look west as far as we can. Franklin is the first one to say we've got to go to France if we're going to have any kind of a balance with England. In this practical world we have got to go to France. And we have to go to France not like beggars with our hat in our hand but we have to go in a French way. We have to show them that we also are philosotes(?). Intelligent men capable of science and literature and government. And by God if need be of revolution. And Jefferson inherited all of these characteristics. brought them into himself again and again. And he learned also from Franklin that to fight the good fight you have to have a tenacity and a stamina which almost exceed the rational bounds of patience. One has to bring the spirit into play. And in Jefferson's life he manifested the raja guhya yoga in the most superior ways possible.
This is the paragraph on raja guhya yoga. This is from a book published in 1966 in India, Hymns From the Vedas by AC Bose. This is what he has to say. "The path of kingly secret. Also called Raja Vidya, the kingly science, has been held to be the supreme mode of approach to the divine. Here what is deepest in man faces the ultimate reality in a direct way. Without the mediation of the intellect. So the intellect which is the guide is a specific kind of a guide that gets out of the way at the right moment. That stands aside and points out the frame of the threshold and says it's through there. This is where the term guru came. He who points is the guru. He who trains in the Raja yoga. He is not pointing to a thing he is pointing to a threshold which occurs by virtue of the experiential field of endeavor coming to maturity. Coming to flower. So that one can see this way. Raja Yoga is the revelation of the divine within the soul of man. It rennes the veil of the unknown lying around the finite in temporal. And witness the vision of the infinite and eternal. The result is supreme knowledge valued as man's highest possession. It is this capacity to address oneself to the unknown that is the key flavor of Raja yoga. The ability to commit oneself to the unknown. And in that commitment build a relationality which engenders all of the forces and focuses which come then to rest in memory and an imagination as reality."
This capacity is a sacred duty. It used to be the province of the few and with Franklin and Jefferson it was realized that never again can it be the province of the few. It must be the province of every man or woman who will take that upon themselves. And it comes down in such little hamalties...homilies as eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty. And Liberty Columbia is her name is the new Athena. The new goddess of wisdom. A goddess who promises that if we will search she will light the way.
This tremendous capacity in Jefferson, of course, made him extremely problematic in his own time. most of the people in power who came into power after the Revolutionary period was over, in the formation period, the Constitution, the initial elections and so forth, hated Jefferson. He was the arch foe because he was in their way. At one time Jefferson enumerated in a letter to a friend of his who was on what side. And he said over here are the judiciary, the executive, a couple of houses of the legislature, all the people in power, all of the people in England who are in economic power and they're all together. And on this side we have the American people. And a few spokesmen like myself who refuse to give in.
That one coalition became known in retrospect as the Federalists. The Federalists. Centering around the ambitious mind of Alexander Hamilton. Who was very close to the mold of Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr. And those individuals like John Adams, who wanted to have authority, would rather have called Washington King than president. And all of the elected officials of the day, John Jay and so on, against this array. Jefferson stood out as the old grandpa of the revolution. The individual. The only one to have understood Benjamin Franklin. The only one to have understood a phrase which later on Lenin would make popular in his analysis of revolutions. That it is not the revolution that is difficult it is guarding against the counter-revolution that inevitably comes as a reaction to it. It is not the punch out here but it is the punch that's coming from the other side because it is going to come. And Jefferson lived long enough to see the French Revolution suffer from the counter punch of Napoleon. And he lived to see that through wisdom.
They were the most tumultuous times in world history. More so even than our times today. Because everything was nascent. Everything was new. There was nothing guaranteed. And almost all of it was problematical and unknown. There was no chance for Jefferson to point and say this is our tradition because they were making it day by day, year by year.
It's difficult to conceive of the innuendos of that time. By the time that the presidential election was held, Washington the first president, 1788. Jefferson was ending five years in France. The French Revolution was inevitably on its way. When he left in August of 1789 the National Assembly was already shouting. All of the leaders of that early stage of the French Revolution had come to Jefferson. He had taken the chair of Benjamin Franklin as senior statesman in the new world. That is in the new world that was emerging. Because you couldn't ask the councilors of the old order about the new order. They didn't know it. And the new order was so new they would have liked to have asked Benjamin Franklin but he was 84 and in the colonies. But Jefferson was there. He had taken his chair with the good man's blessings. We find again and again at Franklin's correspondence the quiet confidence that Mr. Jefferson will come and he'll handle this.
You know John Adams was already there. and John Jay was already there. Jay in Spain and Adams in Holland. And Franklin would have none of them. I know them he said their positivism offends everyone and squelches my incapacity. Well his incapacity was his polite way of saying these are unknown times. Everything is new and if you pretend that you know it's a sure sign that you don't. You don't even understand the times. Because everything is unknown. And the only way to comport yourself to this is like a scientist who's trying to observe a natural phenomena, you have to an enlightened, educated, reasonableness to yourself. Not a compromised toleration but an openness to accuracy that experience will deliver to man. Accuracy if he allows his reason to set up a field of coherence. So that the spotty memory and the spotty imagination will be filled in by his scientific understanding that these connections must exist. These patterns are moving they must still be moving even though we can't see them. This made Jefferson the apostle of Americanism as Gilbert Chinard called him.
And it was this nascent Americanism that keyed in the French Revolution, 1789. The last dinner that Jefferson gave, Lafayette was there. The great hero of the early revolution. You know the revolution didn't sour until Lafayette was exiled from France. Lafayette's grand courage when the mobs with their pitchforks marched from the Tuileries out to Versailles, shouting we want the head of the Queen. Lafayette stepped out alone with the Queen at his side and stared down the tens of thousands of the mob. And told them there is no glory anywhere on earth or in the heavens or in any history to take the life of this woman in this way. That whatever equality, liberty and fraternity was it was not that. And taking off his hat, the crowd quelled down. And when he was gone there was no one to quell the crowd. Until Napoleon simply shut them up.
Lafayette and Jefferson were the two great representatives of Franklin's man of action facing the unknown. They're the two individuals who most clearly exemplified this new kind of a character. We haven't seen this kind of a character before in world history. And so we have to take several steps back because we have fallen into the old ways again. There is no Raja Yoga in the contemporary world. The magician's are not training kings. The prophets are not training kings. The focuses of wisdom are basking in egotistical glory and pink Rolls Royces etc etc. And the people are perished. So it's very difficult for us to see these individuals as human beings. And then in the full scope of their vision. Franklin is almost totally invisible. Where is there a statue of Franklin in Washington DC? And Jefferson its difficult to make him invisible so they make him non understandable.
It's difficult to go through Jefferson's life so I won't try this year. Next year we'll do it all. next year we'll do Franklin and Jefferson on Tuesday nights and we'll just patiently go through until they emerge in the full scope of the human beings that they are. Still are.
Tonight I'm going to focus for you on Monticello. The only thing I think that I need to introduce here before we take a break and go to the Monticello slides, is has a short scenario of the rapid progression of events from 1789 to about 1812 in this country. Very rapidly. Washington was elected. He chose Jefferson to be his first secretary of state. Jefferson's main concerns were opening the West, always opening the west. Keeping a liaison with France and beginning to educate the new American people in this new style of reality. Opposing him almost in direct opposition the Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Who wanted to have a reestablishment of the liason with England. France was as an enemy, to not bother with the West. Let's consolidate our power here. And by consolidating our power we need a national bank. We need money which we can control. And we need to tax the citizens internally. And we need to keep power in the hands of those who can manipulate it.
When he was elected in 1800 one of the first things Jefferson did was abolish income taxes. He said they're not only unconstitutional but they cripple the structure of a free government. That when one understands that these are props keeping up weak plants you get rid of them because we're trying to grow something new. We're trying to make a building that's not post but is cantilevered out from an organic fullness. A structure of government called democracy where the strength of the people is the guarantee of the viability of the governmental form. And that this requires a new view of math. And that this has not been understood. And those who were in opposition formed more and more the Federalist party. Because the election of 1800 was the first political election in the United States. Washington was elected twice by acclaim. There was nobody to oppose Washington. When Adams came up for election in 1796, the voice of the people raised Jefferson up to oppose him. Jefferson had retired. He had left the Secretary of State's office. He had said to Washington I'm going to go back to my farm, to my books, to my people. But he was drawn out again by popular acclaim. He was the man of the people. They had no one else to turn to. Everyone else was getting very
comfortable getting their shoulders next to people in power. And getting very comfortable the kind of solidarity that dead static structures breed. And so Jefferson opposed Adams. And because of the electorial rules of that time Adams won but Jefferson was the vice president. And as he got involved more and more in his correspondence we see that Jefferson was very relieved. He said that the presidentsy was a splendid misery because it didn't go anywhere. That it wasn't working. and that the vice presidency was a very easy job.
But while he was vice president Jefferson, in the Franklin tradition of the new man facing the unknown, realized that a crisis was upon the new structure. Upon the nascent would-be American people. And that in fact the Federalists government with its taxation, with its courtly traditions coming back in, with its international monopolies coming back into play, was on the verge of squelching the new people before they could even be one generation raised. And so Jefferson realized that there was no way to fight this in terms of the legislative or executive or judicial branches. And so he, the first one to conceive strategically of the plan of combating federalism by states rights. And so he wrote anonymously the Kentucky resolutions of 1798. Don't I have them? Somewhere. here's how they began, the Kentucky resolutions of 1798, October month of revolutions. "Resolved that the several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government. But that by a compact under the style and title of a constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes only." And he enumerates them. "All other undelegated powers, acts are unauthoritative, avoid and of no force."
And this becomes prophetic because this was the basis on which the Civil War was fought. Not from the people against the government but by two federalist tendencies. And we'll see later on in this series, caught in the middle between two Federalists power systems, monopolistic tendencies of old courtly elite, Abraham Lincoln looking for some place to be would rediscover Jefferson. And he would say I'm really a Republican and an individual and the only constituency I have that has any power at all as the people. and Lincoln would emphasize very quietly in his way and the people would understand. That's right, the only real power that's around is us who do the work. Us who make it happen. But unfortunately there was no one to carry on from lincoln.
And we'll see in this course how the country went for two generations absolutely aimlessly mad with greed. Until Woodroe Wilson rediscovered the whole tradition had to be brought back in because now it was a crisis to all mankind and not just one country. And that fighting nationalism in the united states was fighting a tendency towards authoritarianism which was endemic in human nature. And that it had to be nipped in the bud because otherwise there was no alternative to endless war. And of course Woodroe Wilson would be ridiculed and hounded out of office. A lonely brokenhearted man because no one wanted to hear that. And since then we have had nothing but world war without end.
So Jefferson's Kentucky resolutions of 1798 are still on the money. Free human beings delegate the power temporarily to a focus. And the purpose of that focus is to develop the capacities for the people who delegated that power to live their lives out as they would. Increasing their design and capacity by education, by participation, by cooperation. And that there is no other basis for governments anymore. That that is the Raja yoga. That is the secret yoga, the secret power. There's no such thing as the boss anymore. there hasn't been for several hundred years.
The difficulty, of course, was to make it possible to understand that it wasn't just somebody anonymously in Kentucky writing this. So Madison wrote the Virginia resolutions. Also and the Federalists responded but the Aliens and Sedition Laws. Anybody writing this kind of material is guilty of sedition and they'll be jailed, punished or killed if we have to. and a lot of people were arrested. Almost all of them. The alien laws saying well all these people are foreigners. Well Jefferson was saying, you know we are we are all foreigners. All of us. Even the Indian now is a foreigner in this land. Because the old hunting ways required so much land and continuousness for game to develop and now that is no longer possible. Has not been possible for over a hundred years. And we have to face this situation. We have to face the situation that nobody can live in their old ways anymore. And that is the discovery of the nature of the United States. that everybody has to live in the new way. Which means facing the future which is always unknown. and so we have to educate ourselves train ourselves to be ready to commit ourselves to the unknown. To discover what might be there.
When Jefferson came in, in 1801, just barely winning. He was tied with Aaron Burr. The election went to the house. Burr had been the pet of the Federalists and they tried for 35 ballots to keep Jefferson out. And on the 36th ballot somebody got tired and Jefferson came in.
And in his first inaugural speech March 4th 1801, "Friends and fellow citizens called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country. I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow citizens which is here assembled. To express my grateful thanks to the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents. And that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the fees with the rich productions of their industry. Engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right. Advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye. When I contemplate these transcendent objects and see the honor, the happiness, the hopes of this beloved country, committed to the issue and the auspices of this day. I shrink from the contemplation and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking." This is how Jefferson was inaugurated. These kinds of words.
In the election of 1804 jefferson swept the nation. Only little delaware and little connecticut went to his foe. Jefferson had become the man of the people because in those few short years he had taken in hand the great strategic balancing of the destiny of the United States. He had successfully kept out of the French and British Wars. He had made sure that the United States was able to purchase the Louisiana territory, which more than doubled the size of the United States. He made sure that the Floridas stayed in possession of Spain, which was ineffectual to use it as a power base. And he made sure that the American people got off onto the right start. He said the first thing we need to do is free up the individual to become himself whatever that might be. And in order to help him become something dignified and noble we have to present to the people models from history, from philosophy, from experience, which are worth learning and following.
And one of the most important of these models is architecture. We have to have houses which exemplify the new man. We have to have buildings which exemplify the new man. We have to have cities which are planned to exemplify a new way of life. We have to get rid of these last vestiges, of this medieval dust cloud that has settled over everything. these courtly etiquette distinctions that are based upon power. And we have to reveal to man in the very structure of the buildings in which he lives and works and prays, a new version of men. The democratic man sees where no one has seen before in new ways. And so the whole spaciality in all of the forms, all of the balance needs to be resuscitated and refreshed from out of the cream of the classical tradition.
Jefferson of course in the second term fighting against the world power structures that were coming up. Napoleon said most dramatically and most correctly that he had awakened all ambition in the human spirit. Like some great demonic presence he had spurred forth all the dreams of glory and ambition in man. He said I have rewarded all virtue and have brought permanently to man visions of glory that were unattainable by past generations. So new scales of grasping and grabbing and power mongering came to the fore. And of course the British unconscious about the contaminated archetype that Napoleon was, went for him just like the story books say. And they became dragons in themselves by swallowing that dragon seed. And after Napoleon the British mentality becomes very much what the Romans became after they decimated the Carthaginians in the third Punic War. It's not just simple snootiness that everybody else is a wog except the privileged few who bask on Regent Street and find clothes. It is that this was destined. The English Victorians would say all mankind was in a sea of evolution but we have walked ashore and are exempted. And the First World War shocked them with the scale of buried in humanity and brutality.
The best example that I know of, of the shocked presence of the British psyche are the war poems of Wilfred Owen. and you can look him up. And read his poem on the glory of dying for your country at war when you are young.
Jefferson tried to keep the United States out of this imbroglio because he could see in his vision that it was a dead end. That there was no right side. That in entering it was the wrong thing. and so he did what Woodroe Wilson tried to do in the First World War. And what FDR tried to do in the Second World War. He, he tried to keep the United States out of it. And so Jefferson in an unheard of act put an embargo upon American commerce around the world. He said we...
Please turn your cassette now and it will commence playing on the other side after a brief pause.
END OF SIDE 1
Person in an unheard-of act put an embargo upon American commerce around the world. He said we will stay at home. We will not trade with anyone. No imports, no exports. Until it is over until they have become mature. And of course this embargo brought out this archetypal bestiality in the British. And as soon as the embargo was cracked after Jefferson left office the British lion came out and clawed at Fort Sumpter. And the war of 1812 was the perfect example in history of an archetypal reaction against a David who is dared to sling a stone at Goliath. How dare they!
Well I don't have much time because I have all of this to present you. But I want to read you an extract of a letter which was made public in 1797 and brought all the wrath down on Jefferson from the federalists. And after that he had to balance himself for the next dozen years in public office. Dozen years, several dozen years. Because any administration's of Madison and Monroe there was always the old man on the hill. When John was there at Monticello he said that you could see Oak Hill, Monroe's place a couple miles away, they used to signal each other but flags, pinafore flags on their front lawn. Because Madison and Monroe were Jeffersonians through and through. And Jefferson actually had six presidencies as we'll see.
This is an extract from the famous letter, that when it was made public constellated political parties in the United States. This is the seed root. This is what made it happen. Making this letter public. Was from Jefferson to a man named Philip Mazzai, M-A-Z-Z-A-I. April 24th 1796 from Monticello, you see he had retired. He had gone home. He was a private citizen. He was writing to another private citizen. But in the next year in the midst of coming back into prominence again he was political hey. here's the extract and then we'll have a break.
"The aspect of our politics has wonderfully changed since you left us. In place of that noble love of Liberty and Republican government, which carried us triumphantly through the war. An Anglican monarchical, aristocratical party has sprung up. Whose avowed object is to draw over us the substance as they have already done the forms of the British government. the main body of our citizens, however, remain true to the Republican principles. The whole landed interest is Republican and so was a great mass of talents. Against us are the executive, the judiciary, two of three branches of the legislature, all the officers of the government, all who want to be officers, all timid men who prefer the calm despotism to the boisterous sea of Liberty, British merchants and Americans trading on British capital, speculators and holders in the banks and public funds. A contrivance invented for the purposes of corruption. And for assimilating us in all things to the rotten as well as to the sound parts of the English model. It would give you a fever were I to name you the apostles who have gone over to these heresies. Men who were Sampsons in the field and Solomon's in the console. But who have had their heads torn by the harlot England. In short we are likely to preserve the Liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils. But we shall preserve it. And our massive weight and wealth on the good side is so great as to leave no danger that force will ever be attempted against us. We have only to awake and the little push and cords will snap with which we have been entangled during our first sleep. And then go on to our Labour's."
And so and we'll see if these will work. The copy that I had framed years and years ago was **(inaudible)** red. This particular print, photograph does not show us here at red.
Reddish tint to it.
**(inaudible question from room)**
Hara(?) tended to be reddish. He was tall. Is that about six two. people of the time would call him raw-boned. It's an American Way of saying that he was kind of a gangly, stringy wiry, muscular sort of man.
This is Monticello in 1871 when it was absolutely abandoned and derelict. And I chose this photograph because the photograph itself has that abandoned quality. They called it the period of reconstruction. But this photograph more than anything I know it shows the human character possessed by great. And it seems incredible that about the time that they were pounding the Golden Spike, laying the railroad across the continent, which was the mechanistic interpretation of Jefferson's vision. Monticello had broken windows and in total disrepair.
This is a view from Monticello looking out over the country, Jefferson's view. He loved to watch the sunsets and sunrises. He had a guest one time named Edmond Bacon who got up earlier and earlier trying to find Jefferson asleep and he never did. He said even before dawn the old man was out there on his walkways, which we'll see. Sizing it up. Tuning himself to the engine.
You have to forgive the bended pages here. We have to get our slides as we can.
An overview. You see the main house with the dome, the white dome. And then off to the right of that dome, as you look at it, there are two little brick houses that are connected by long walkways. Two big L's coming back to the main house. And under those walkways are structures, more buildings. The idea here was instead of to make a house one central object to break up the mass of the house into different objects which have a relationality. It's the same kind of principle as in Henry Moore's sculptures where he'll take three parts and have the relationship be the sculpture. It's the collection, the entity. And the relationality here between the blocks of the house is the walking pacing function of the man who lives there. He's on move. He's mobile. His essential nature is to be in motion. And that motion is to be developing. And so the primary characteristic of Jefferson comes out in his house.
This is Oak Hill. this is Monroe's house. Mostly designed by Jefferson as you can see. Was it three miles away or so.
And as we get in closer to Monticello. He wanted to convey the idea that the house was on one floor. Although Monticello was three stories high. He wanted to keep it low. Low to the ground. Low to the eye. Now the brick in here is made on his property. made right there. That of course the bricks that they made for the first Monticello. He started in 1769. The brick is a little too porous and really is that over fired sometimes. There are about 80,000 bricks in the Montello that we see here. All made there. Jefferson had the kilm set up. And even when he was in his second term as president he was still already thinking about getting everything arranged to work on Monticello. It is the house that symbolizes the man.
This is what he looked like when he first went to Paris. He had of course married Martha Wayles Skelton in 1772. And 10 years later, six children later she died. She made him promise that he would never set another woman, another mother over the children, which meant that he could not marry again. And kept that promise. He went to Paris two years after that death. She died in September 1782. And this is the portrait of himself that he gave to a famous actress of the day, Maria Cosway. Who's the subject of a letter of his which is a dialogue in Ben Franklin style of two parts of the body speaking to each other. The heart and the head. Saying what about this lady. So he gave her this portrait because he couldn't really give her himself. He came back in 1976 to this country. And when he finally made it gift of it for the Bicentennial committee.
This is the sketch of the first Monticello. You can see the two borders here. I don't know if your eye is used to architecture. These columns on the first story are of the Doric mode. They hold up. These are corinthian **(inaudbile)** The dorian is a straightforward tension and corinthian tends to detail in some of it.
This is a floor plan in Monticello. And the white is the original Monticello and everything else is what he added. And you can see that he started in the center up here with an octagon. That's one of his favorite devices. In one of his correspondences was how to construct three sides of an octagon from just a point, a bind and a compass. And he wrote up this geometric description of this at the time. but the octagon is carried open in the house. At this time the architecture of the cube is very important **(inaudible a few words)**. The room should be as high as it is wide as it was long, a cube. That there is something universal and free and open in life about being a cube. And high ceilings and enlightenment. And then became the idea of a double cube, the double cube. And Jefferson here is playing on the double cube by making one part of the cube an octagon. And so the parlor is a very symbolic room. And of course everything goes out on this and then ostensively doubles **(inaudible a few words)** the rest of this in Monticello. You can see parts of the octagon here.
And here's the portico from the rear. This is upside down, I'm sorry to say. The point in this slide. This is the ground floor. This is the upper story. And the windows in the second floor of Monticello are laid just a few inches about the floor. So that the windows can run together and be one unit. That when you see it, you see if there's a single window. It doesn't occur to you that this is two strories. And it also gives you the feeling that when you're on you the second floor that everything is looking down and not up. And the reason for that has been **(inaudible)**is to create a spatial differentiation between the earthward looking second level and what is on the third floor. You can see that. Because on the third floor is the dome.
And here again we have the railing coming through. Now look what Jefferson does here. The balance rods right here and run here right over this certain wall, so you can't put balance rods here. So that it gives a flat two-dimensional cut of wood just to carry the design across. This is two-dimensional. Slab. Shaped like those. Here the rail, run dead and intersects the window just at the right spot so that there's a preportion built in. Looking at how the beads are worked up above along the ridge of the dome. Tremendous detailing. Because everything is the proportionate here and in a key.
Here's the underside of one of those long walkways. And this is the top. So he could stroll around the top regardless of what the weather was. snow or rain or sunshine, night or day. And of course the places to sit and look out because the free person needs to contemplate nature in its openness. In its wholesomeness. The experience of nature in its wholesomeness resounds in the liberated person, in the enlightened person. And so a mark of enlightenment is the ability to position oneself in nature so that one participates in the wholesomeness of nature. And no longer is some differentiate ego struggling in opposition to it.
And we'll see of course that the American who would understand this more than any other person from Jefferson and carried on would be Henry David Thoreau. Because in the walks of Jefferson around his house, we get the prototype that allows Thoreau to walk in the Maine woods and the Concord woods and say that this is his home. That the whole forested landscape is his home. And he's walking the same way that Jefferson was walking but at the new generation that has taken this transcendental freedom of being to new heights. Jefferson lays the key.
These are the chimneys that come up from below and penetrate the deck there. See one of these little brick houses was the first thing that he built when he got married in 1772. That's the only thing that he had built is one of these little houses at the end of the walkway. This is underneath, tunneling(?) and there's the walkway up above.
This is the stable. Look how refined everything is. Remember now is stable for an estate like this would be refined. If you go out to the County Arboretum and you look at the old home that's out there and you look at the fine horse stables. That you took care of your horses. The horses had names. You raised them. You took care of them. There weren't just some junk place. So here the example of the stable in Monticello.
This is the wine room. I know it pains some of you that Jefferson drank wine. And to others it's a source of camaraderie. Not only did he have the wine room underneath there but he had these dumb waiters to carry the bottles up to the dining room, which was above it. And this is the dining room. And you can look out towards one of the wings here. Now here's another shot of this dining room from up above and you can see the sky lit skylight bringing light down. And when you look at this from this vantage point it's getting very close to Frank Lloyd Wright. The understanding of space and light. Of balance and freedom as a human coordinating mode. We're getting very close to Wright.
This is the kitchen, Monticello. Look at the floor. And of course it's all scrubable, washable brick, whitewash. And you can see a larder of the goodies at the time. A functional kitchen. A little stairwells, there were two little stairwells in Monticello to go up. Jefferson downplayed the grand stairway as being appropriate for the free men. Little stairwells will do. They'll get you up and they're inconspicuous and they're simple. Jeffersonian simplicity.
Fred(?) portico and I think you can see up above, you see the window. This is on the second floor. This is on the second floor. Second floor. These little square **(inaudible)** and it seems like they're just **(inaudible)**. But when we look inside here, all we see are these arches. We don't see what's up above. And
this is the entrance, the entryway to Monticello. And so the master wanting to disclose the architecture, his vision, his dream of himself as a prototypical American enlightened man.
On the ceiling he has the eagle. In America we spread out in visionary flight. It's almost like **(inaudible a few works)** come to deliver the new age. There are the stars in behind it and there are the stars in front of it. But the flight of this liberating Eagle is an ongoing creation of weary States. Jefferson's great plan, first plan, the Northwest ordinances 1784 was creating eight or ten new colonies. And beginning to get extends(?). And if you notice the claws of the eagle hold not the lightning, not the arrows but it holds here light because here's the chandelier coming down. So that the claws will of the Eagle of Liberty hold light and fly among the stars of the organizations of free men. This is the same room looking the other way. There's the lamp coming down. Looking in towards the parlour.
And there's the parlor. So when you would come into the parlor there's a dining room. So that when you come into the parlor, you sit her before the great mirror and you'd be chating with Jefferson here. And you get to point where he tried to explain to you how come he's writing this for so and so. And you motion and say well there he is, there's Benjamin Franklin right there. He bought that painting in Paris in 1785 and he's say you know this is the, this is the way we understood it. This is the way the Declaration of Independence was written. This is the way that this country was actually brought into being. There hasn't been another physical delivery of a vehicle for a man to become emancipated and enlightening in his whole family.
And so in his bedroom here, you have to crop the slide with your eyes, he could get out either side of his bed. I don't know if those dents look to you like the side of a 1949 Buick roadster. Or maybe a spaceship or, or what. and going through you can see beyond his bed there is a study with all of his inventions. If we can go in, yeah here's this study. Here this wonderful chair. And all his graphs and telescopes and various inventions. He loved to tinker. But of course he tinkered like Jefferson tinkers. He made it work.
Here's the library on through from the study, on through towards the front of the house. His first library of course was sold in 1815. About 6,000 volumes became the nucleus of the Library of Congress. And he said he couldn't live without books so he started collecting another library. The important thing to understand about Jefferson he didn't just collect books. Jefferson was the first person in history who understood what a library was for since Columbus. That a library is for organizing the rational mind. That's what a library is for. That when a library is patterned and integrated and built consciously it is a whole different function from a aggregate of books. From the collection. That a working library is like adding another mind. And it raises exponentially the integrating and synthesizing capacities of the mind. A library is extraordinarily important.
In fact towards the end of his life his great project was to make the University of Virginia. He did it in typical Jeffersonian fashion. At first it was going to be an academy and then a couple of years later while it call it a college. And two years later he said let's call it the University of Virginia. He designed the buildings. He designed a library. The initial library was six thousand eight hundred volumes. And when you look at the structure of it it's the catalog of Jefferson's original library plus the volumes that he had gotten before. Because the core of the University of Virginia library was exactly that pattern of expressed rationality that Jefferson through his lifetime of reading had come to integrate and understand. That's why he could plan it all out. The community of learning.
And the dome he didn't call a dome. He said this is my sky room. This is where I go. There was no, nothing up there. There was no function. It was empty so that Jefferson could experience at the crown of his house that elevation that the Sahasrara chakra delivers in Raja yoga. The expansive opening up of the rational pantheon of the natural structure of man's expressivity without any idols. And with only the model of opening up to nature.
And that's black elk in World War I. Saying peace brothers.
Well we'll come back to Jefferson next week.
END OF RECORDING