Woodworth's Sermon Discusses 'Deep Well'

"I want to speak directly to you, about your own life, and about two or three great ideas, great books, and great words, which have always been a help to me in my life as student and teacher." This was the theme of yesterday's Radcliffe Baccalaureate sermon, delivered in Memorial Church by G. Wallace Woodworth '24, James Edward Ditson Professor of Music.

Speaking before Radcliffe seniors and their families. Woodworth drew together concepts from the works of Alfred North Whitehead, from the Bible, and from a biography of Coleridge by John Livingston Lowes. Perhaps the most important of these notions was that of "the habitual vision of greatness," which Woodworth took from Whitehead.

"Understanding in the heart," said Woodworth, "and wisdom in the inward parts" come "most readily, most surely, most happily" from this vision--which is to be found in "the world of nature" and "in the beauty of music, and poetry, and art, and literature, in the empire of the mind."

Draw on Well

Woodworth had more to say about the way in which music, poetry, art and literature could affect a man's life. He discussed at length "the Deep Well of human experience"--a phrase used in Lowe's The Road to Xanadu--and he hoped his listeners would be able to draw upon this well "for solace, and comfort, and strength, and inspiration, and joy."

"Now what are some of the deposits in the Deep Well?" Woodworth asked. He suggested several: "Poetry, painting, novels, Milton, Shakespeare, Sophocles, the Bible, nature, and landscape, and the heavens above." And there is also, he said, "the Well of human associations: Your fellow students, a true friend, inspiring teacher."

"Sparks of Imagination"

It is the Deep Well, in which occur "obscure and powerful reactions below the level of conscious mental processes," which Woodworth felt to be the underlying foundation of "the kingdom of poetry, the world of the creative imagination, and one's own personal life."

And, he cautioned, "when your mind gives off sparks of imagination, as it did for Coleridge, and as it surely will for you in, your own way, and in your own field, don't be afraid of them."

An idea which Woodworth took from Whitehead dealt with the educational process. Whitehead wrote that "culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty, and humane feeling." Woodworth said that this "trilogy of virtues should be [the student's] deepest concern." He also stressed, as had Whitehead, that learning must go through a complete cycle--"from romance, through precision, to generalization."

"Observe," Woodworth continued, "that Whitehead linked together "receptiveness to beauty" and "activity of thought"--"romance" and "precision," the transport of joy and the discipline of the mind. Woodworth called this juxtaposition "the paradox of discipline and freedom"; he illustrated it with a feeling he said occurred often among musicians--"only when each individual voice, each personality, each idiosyncracy is somehow lost in selfless allegiance to the music, only then come those unforgettable moments when the singers feel a sense of elation, indeed, of power and of freedom.