People of Note Andrew Greene ’78 and his family in Vineyard Haven August 2008. From left: Hannah, Sophie, wife, Sandy, Livia, and Nina.
I, for one, would define God first, like Augustine, then decide whether service is the best way to deal with the problem. Christianity—so I was taught—prizes single souls over the collective. It admires all of the Virtues, not just one or two. And it cherishes humanity, including, by corollary I believe, the waste that humans make. To stray from those precepts and let the motto stand, even a little, against self, profit, or the messy artifacts of our existence, seems to me to risk contradicting it. But your own translation matters more than anything I can say. We should not parrot the words of others, nor sing hymns to the fashions of our time. Instead, we should worship the mind, honor the self, and, as the circular logic goes, try to dodge service by serving God. In short, we must try to rule. Whether that means Christian leadership, or the earthly power that goes with “perfect fredome,” I cannot tell, but I hope that whether we choose to serve or command, we have at least spared a thought as to why. Cui servire est regnare is written in code, which makes it tricky to translate. Even Mr. Myers’ patient, fireside reading can only expose the moral cryptogram underneath. It is a riddle, but admitting that gives us a chance. To gain knowledge, we must perceive a shortage of it; therefore, having less hubris about the motto is one of the first things we can do to honor it.
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Augustine, soliloquia, 1.1.5 The translation is: God, through whom we both serve well and rule well. Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, The Soliloquies of St. Augustine, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company [1910]. ibid. Francis Proctor and Christopher Wordsworth, BREviARiUM Ad USUM iNSiGNiS ECCLESiAE SARUM, FASCiCULUS i, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [1882]. Thomas Cranmer, The booke of the common prayer, London: Edward Whitchurche [1549]. 26 U.S.C. \S501(c)(3). Augustine, confessiones, 8.6.15: “cuius rei causa militamus? maiorne esse poterit spes nostra in palatio quam ut amici imperatoris simus?” translated by Albert C. Outler, Philadelphia: Westminster Press [1955]. Groton’s first, short-lived motto, “Esse quam videri,” (“To be, rather than to seem to be”) made a related point.
Andrew Greene ’78 lives in London and works at Christofferson Robb & Company, a private money management firm that invests in the global credit markets.
Quarterly Fall 2009
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