And finally the last of my four great accomplishments during our very first class of the year was establishing a legitimizing incantation, at least that's what Bo had earlier called it at the Chester School in London, and I liked his expression, and have been using it ever since, in my private thoughts, I mean "legitimizing incantation". That's what Carpe Diem is, and of course that's what Seize The Day is as well.

And what a wonderful technique it is for tightening control over a group! First, put the fear of death into the students. Best would have been to take them to a graveyard, dig up a corpse, say about a week old, make them examine it closely, expect that several of them will start vomiting at the smell, then tell them that that was going to be them in just a few short years. Very effective, especially if a worm could actually be seen eating out an eyeball, say. But can't really pull this off. It's illegal. And worms have a hard time getting into modern coffins. So instead I show them photos of boys who had once been in their shoes, students in Welton Academy in the distant past, and so who today are probably all lying in their coffins.

And then tell my boys that they should seek compensation for this death that awaits them the compensation of Seizing The Day. In other words, since life is going to be brief, pack as much into it as possible.

And my little test of passivity, how well that went too! It is like having a meat thermometer in a roast which tells you when it's done that's what my test of passivity is like, and it tells me whether the students have reached the desired state of passivity yet or not, have stopped thinking, have handed their brains over to me, or in other words have put me in absolute control of their intellects and their emotions. The test is to make a statement which is obviously false, and to see how much protest it triggers. I did make such a statement, and I did get not a peep of protest, and so I knew I had put my boys into a state of passivity so total that it pretty much qualified as a hypnagogic trance, which sounds like a bad thing until you learn to recognize that it is the attainment of Samadhi, which is Union with the Divine, and what can be better than Union with the Divine?

My test statement was that the students in the old photographs on display in the foyer had the "same haircuts" as themselves, than which nothing could be more obviously false, as the most popular cut in the old photographs had a part right down the middle of the head which strikes today's boys as peculiar or comical or even absurd.

I was delighted as well with the success of my doggie-level delivery which I had learned in London from my Transcendental Therapist and Eastern-Mysticism Guru, Maharishi Menshi Yogi, whose teaching focusses on the importance of the altitude above ground from which a communication is delivered, there being four significant heights worm, dog, man, and eagle. If a teacher speaks with his mouth at, or close to, the altitude which is optimal for the material being taught, then the room reverberates in sympathy with that material, and as a result the students grasp every idea instantaneously, and the idea is stored securely in memory from which it cannot fade or be dislodged, and, in short, learning proceeds optimally. However, if the idea is delivered from the wrong level, sympathetic vibration is largely absent, and as a result comprehension is muddled, memory is improperly stocked, education turns to chaos.

The optimal level, of course, is one wave length from the ground, the wave length being very small for some subjects, as for example the properties of metals in chemistry which definitely can be explained clearly only with the teacher's mouth almost in contact with the ground, which is to say, at worm level; and large for other subjects, as for example Marxian economics which benefits from eagle-level exposition, which can be adequately approximated in a classroom by the teacher standing up on his desk. I recommended to both the chemistry master at Chester and the history master that they at least put Maharishi Menshi Yogi's altitude-of-delivery doctrine to a test in their lecturing, but they refused peremptorily, demonstrating that their teaching methodology was dictated by tradition rather than by the more modern criterion of experimental verification.

As my early pilot studies in London proved, establishing a legitimizing incantation is best done from doggie level, and so it became necessary for me in the Welton Academy foyer to squat somewhat, and also bend over, which a few students found disconcerting for the reason, perhaps, that what seemed like doggie-level delivery to a crouching speaker seemed like crotch-level-delivery to his standing audience. For example, when I was behind Richard Cameron he of the flaming red hair done up in an ostentatious brush cut I dipped particularly low, and elicited from him a frown of severe disapproval, as if I were a dog goosing him with its nose. But I think all the other students recognized and appreciated the increased clarity with which doggie-level delivery was able to transport the Carpe Diem message from my brain to theirs. In many situations, by the way, the speaker can avoid having his doggie-level delivery give the impression of audience-crotch-level delivery by having his audience crouch down along with him, or at least sit, but which remedies in the instant case were unavailable as there were no chairs in the foyer, and in any case the boys needed to stand erect in order to properly view the photographs in the display cases.

My great relief at the effortless addition, with the cooperation of my American boys, of Carpe Diem to my arsenal of available thought-control weapons stands in sharp contrast to the obstacles I had earlier encountered in my London pilot studies because of the lack of cooperation of my London boys, especially that Bodan Kozak. When I tried to deliver pretty much the same Carpe Diem message in London, all hell broke loose. Bodan approached me not long after class saying that he had been reading a book called Jrn Uhl, in English translation from German, and English not being his first language, a passage from which confused him, and he wondered if he could read it to me and have me clarify its relation to my Carpe Diem doctrine. "Doctrine" was his word, which I am not sure I liked, as it could have been intended respectfully as "unimpeachable truth" or disrespectfully, as "benighted dogma". Nevertheless, I agreed, and we found a bench out on the lawn, where I had at first wanted to skim the Jrn Uhl passage with my own eyes, and thus all the faster dispose of the matter, but because he anticipated this, and feared that my superficial reading would leave me unacquainted with the details and nuances of the passage, wanted me particularly to attend to every word, and so insisted on reading it aloud to me, which he did well, pronouncing carefully and distinctly, and wherever the drift was intricate or hard to follow, reading with appropriate intonation and pauses which laid bare the structure of the sentence, and clarified its meaning, and which with rushed or careless reading would have been lost. As I listened to him, I was transported into the scene described, and watched it as if it was taking place before me.On one farm the wife herself put the brown horses into the cart, and put on the silver-mounted harness, and drove into town and asked the magistrates for a declaration of her husband's incapacity. She spread out before them the documents which she had brought with her, and showed how much of her own marriage dowry he had squandered. She placed the little lad she had with her on the green table, drew down his trousers, and showed the bruises her drunken husband had made, and she bared her full, white bosom and showed the marks of his fingers, and demanded that she should be made administrator of the property.

The magistrate was a young man, and though he had stood by many a woman's side, he had never yet stood face to face with one. He made a motion toward the bell, and said it wasn't such an easy matter, according to the law, to do what she wanted; and then hebeganto recount the various steps it would be necessary to take. They were many and intricate.

Then she began to say hard things about the law of her native land, maintaining that it was as clumsy as an old cow, and that it was as much a woman-hater as a hardened old bachelor. Her words rang right through the office into the corridor. And at last she said there was, thank God, another sort of justice, which she would in future put into application. And sheraisedher hand threateningly to illustrate her meaning. She would find a way out of her distress without magistrates and law-courts a cheaper way, too, faith. But if it should happen that her husband should some fine day find his way hither to complain ofher, then they'd better send him back about his business; else she'd give him such a drubbing that he wouldn't be able to stir a step for a fortnight.

In this way did this wretched woman speak, made desperate by her long years of misery, and then drove unmolested home again. Many a time afterward folks saw her driving through the village, always with two smart horses. She had sold the silver-mounted harness next day; her horses pull in good strong hempen trappings up to the present day, and she looks neither to left nor right. She has become a hard woman. The farm-servants and produce-dealers are afraid of her; her children have turned out well the boys a little shy, and the girls strong-willed women. Her husband shuffled out of life one day after sneaking along the walls of his own house for many a year. He lies buried in a neglected grave, near that of one of his workmen, old Peter Back, which is always kept fresh and neat. It is said that the wife of one of his sons once quietly tidied up the farmer's grave, but the widow found it out, and got seeds of stinging nettles from a weed plot near, and sowed them on it. And what made this more remarkable was the story that older folk of the village told how, long ago on her wedding-day, she had not been able to contain herself for happiness, and how, after their mutual "Yes" had been exchanged, she had thrown her arms around her young husband's neck, laughing and weeping at the same time, without caring a jot for the people who were there. Out of love so warm there had come such bitter hate.

"Well," said Bo, "my first question is whether this wife, when she approaches the magistrate and presents reasons why she should be given administration of the family property, is she not taking decisive and courageous action to staunch the hemorrhaging of the family estate, and to emancipate herself from the brutal oppression of her husband?"

"Maybe so," I answered guardedly, not knowing what he was getting at, but sensing that he was leading me into a trap for purposes of humiliation.

"Then might not she be said to be Seizing the Day?"

"Well, and suppose that she is?"

"And at the end of the passage I just read, which describes her on her wedding day having been unable to contain herself for happiness, and throwing her arms around her young husband's neck, laughing and weeping at the same time would her marrying with such joy not be an example of Gathering Rosebuds While Ye May?"

"Maybe!"

"And Seizing the Day at the same time?"

"The two are almost synonymous."

"Well," said Bodan, "what confuses me is that her Gathering Rosebuds on her wedding day seems to have been a tragic mistake which she had done better to avoid, whereas your presentation to the class earlier today seemed to assume that Gathering Rosebuds was always desirable and beneficial. And the same, of course, goes for Seizing The Day sometimes it brings good, and sometimes it brings harm; sometimes Seizing The Day means uniting out of love, and sometimes it means separating out of hate. And so the Gather-Ye-Rosebuds poem, read in full," he said opening his blue book on page 542 and handing it to me, "seems to warn virgins to marry as quickly as they can so as to avoid spinsterhood gives only half the warning that young people need to be given."Robert Herrick. 15911674

To the Virgins, to make much of Time

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying:And this same flower that smiles to-day To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he's a-getting,The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer;But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may, go marry:For having lost but once your prime, You may for ever tarry.

"The other half of the warning that the young need to be given is that they should take time to find a worthy spouse, because relying on only the emotion of the moment may result in a ruined life. The other half of the warning can be condensed into six words: 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure' six words that in nine cases out of ten give better advice for the young than the more numerous words of Gather Ye Rosebuds. In other words, perhaps it is the case that over-haste produces many times the pain of over-caution. Perhaps while needing to be warned of the danger of tarrying, youth needs more often to be warned of the danger of rushing."

Bo closed the Jrn Uhl book, and placed it on the bench between us, saying "allow me to present this book to you as a gift. It teaches a number of worthy morals." Which is what makes it possible for me to reproduce Bo's reading exactly today, especially given that Welton has just purchased its first Xerox machine.

But Bo was not finished. "And so if the wife can Seize The Day by casting off her husband after many years of marriage, would she not also have been able to Seize The Day by casting him off at the altar, just before they were married? And could she not also have Seized The Day assuming she had been armed with skill in reading character and foreseeing the future an hour after meeting him, by casting him off even as early as that?"

"Well, yes," I had to admit. Bo was cunningly leading me into admissions that I could see were eroding my foundations, and yet each of which was too obviously true to deny.

"But if marrying the idiot because you love him is Seizing The Day, and if dumping the idiot because you hate him is also Seizing The Day, and if dumping him when you love him because you can foresee that you will grow to hate him is also Seizing The Day, then no matter what the wife does, and no matter when she does it, it can be called Seizing The Day. In other words, Seizing The Day has no meaning, it can be applied to any and all actions, it does not steer us in any particular direction, and so we may call it not a description of only some of the things that may be happening, but rather an incantation which bestows a blessing on whatever is happening, or in other words we can call it a legitimizing incantation whose purpose is to wash away guilt from every action to which it happens to be affixed."

"I commend you for an insightful analysis," I answered, "but you do not take into account that Seizing The Day encourages action as opposed to remaining in a state of passivity," to which Bo replied instantaneously, as if he had dealt with this argument many times before, and had his answer ready, "which seems to make sense if we think of a choice as one between acting or not acting, and which we might call Doing A or Not Doing A. However, the same choice can be described differently, which is to say as Doing A or Doing B. A girl being able to Marry A or Not Marry A can be described instead as the girl being able to Marry A or Start Dating B. No matter what we do, we do something. In poker, we are faced with the option of raising a bet or not, but which can be re-phrased as raising or checking, as either seizing the opportunity to raise, or seizing the opportunity to check. Whether in poker or in life, refusing to take an action can always be depicted as taking some alternative action, and that alternative action can lead to higher winnings either on the poker table or in life."

I sat silently. Bo was too much for me. Too much nattering, which I did not think worth following. I had retreated into a state of Samadhi. Why need I struggle to follow the nattering of this teenager when I was United With The Divine? Bo could have used some of the same, seemed to me some of the same Uniting With The Divine in order to cool his fevered brain.

"And does not my 'insightful analysis' as you call it call for some qualification to be imparted to the class?" continued Bo, relentlessly.

The whippersnapper was becoming intolerable! I gave him my coldest stare. He, in turn, abruptly took his leave, as if not so satisfied with my attitude that he could exchange pleasantries, and yet not so dissatisfied as to justify pressing his argument beyond what he already had. Of course, I had no intention of presenting my class with anything like a retraction of my Carpe Diem directive, because no leader is able to lead without at least one legitimizing incantation. No matter what any follower is commanded to do, a legitimizing incantation gives leadership the power to reassure that follower of the rectitude of his obedience. For the incantation to work, however, it is essential that the follower be kept from recognizing that he is free to apply that same incantation to whatever other action he chooses, even the action of disobeying a command, and it is essential that the follower resign himself to allowing his commander to supply fresh definitions of the legitimizing incantation as they are needed. The military commander who announces that disobedience in battle will be regarded as cowardice does not want his soldiers to recognize even while he speaks that "Many would be cowards if they had courage enough" meaning that many would run from battle if they only had enough courage to run from battle, enough courage to face the disapproval of the warmongers who were ordering them into battle. A military leader will lose his power to command once his soldiers beginning telling each other that disobeying his orders would be heroic.

As I want my students to love poetry, I define reading poetry as Seizing The Day; if I had wanted them to love engineering, then it would be studying engineering that I would define as Seizing The Day. It's simple, but it works. And as I also wanted them to become sexually promiscuous, I called sexual promiscuity which I euphemistically referred to as Gathering Rosebuds Seizing The Day; had I wanted them to exercise discretion in sex, to establish enduring love and commitment to a single carefully-selected and worthy mate, then I would have defined that as Seizing The Day.

Without the power to control the thoughts and emotions of my students with the help of some legitimizing incantation, my influence over them would be weakened, and my plans for them would stand in danger of failing. The only effect of Bo's meddling in my affairs was to motivate me to get him kicked out of my class, and expelled from the entire school if possible. Yes, getting Bo kicked out of Chester was the answer. The Chester School was not big enough for both of us. One of us was going to have to go, and it wasn't going to be me. And a corollary of my conclusion was that in any future attempt to establish a Dead Poets Society, among my first steps must be the identification and removal of troublemakers like Bo.

That the differences between me and Bo had not in fact been resolved soon became evident in the case of Howard Humes, whose initial interest at the Chester School had centered on poetry, but who began to view poetry as a frivolous playing with words where the world's needs could be better served with action, and who with the encouragement of his teachers of science and mathematics had begun to dream of becoming a hydraulic engineer, to which I, of course, responded with incredulity and disapproval. All he would be concerning himself with for the rest of his professional life would be moving water from one place to another. Being a glorified plumber did not promise to give either spiritual or intellectual gratification, I warned him. He spoke of bringing potable water to millions who drank out of puddles, of irrigating parched fields, of offering ships shortcuts through canals and locks, of bringing electricity to homes presently lighted only by candles. He had hanging in his dormitory room not the healthy pictures of Playboy Playmate foldouts, but neurotic photographs of Roman aqueducts, of the Panama Canal, of the Hoover Dam. He read the unabridged Les Miserables because he wanted full detail on the sewers of Paris in 1832, at which I sneered "Nobody reads the unabridged Les Miserables, or at least if they pretend to, they really skip those tiresome chapters on nothing but the history of the sewers of Paris, which chapters do not advance the plot in the least, but merely show off what Victor Hugo hopes will be admired as his meticulous scholarship and his prodigious memory." I warned Howard Humes that if he persisted in his folly, he should expect to discover, when he came to die, that he had not lived, that he should, rather, follow the Latin injunction Carpe Diem, Seize The Day, should give expression to joy and love, explore the mysteries of Bacchus through wine, music, and ecstatic dance, free his soul from anxiety and toil.

I was beginning to make headway toward preventing this erring student from throwing away his life on glorified plumbing projects, when Bodan learned of my efforts, and impudently began to intervene, passing along to the would-be-plumber his propaganda identifying Carpe Diem as a "legitimizing incantation", and said further, both to myself and to the would-be plumber, Howard Humes, that Seizing The Day could as well be applied could better be applied to what Humes had spontaneously been doing choosing to abandon poetry in favor of hydraulic engineering because hydraulic engineering would save lives and reduce suffering and relieve hunger. Putting a cup of water into the hands of a man dying of thirst, Bo told the would-be plumber, was more beautiful than any poem ever written, and more gratifying than any drunken debauchery. Give mankind what it urgently cries out for, and you earn mankind's gratitude and respect. Mankind does not urgently cry out for more poetry, it hasn't even seen fit to read the tiniest fraction of the poetry already written. Read a poem to a man dying of hunger or thirst or cholera, and you earn his contempt.

Oh, and that bunkum of arriving at the end of your life and finding you have not lived! Of course the man we are picturing on his death bed saying this has in fact lived, as every man does live until he dies. How can he arrive at the end of his life if there has been no life? What the dying speaker means by "I have not lived" is "I have not had as much fun as I had hoped". But this is not the discovery of a truth, it is an expression of disappointment. What the speaker of these words really means is that at the end of his life he feels he could have had more fun, which sense of disappointment any man might feel at the end of any life. Such disappointment is equally likely to arise in the breast of the would-be-poet who becomes an engineer instead, but misses the fun of having been a poet; as in the breast of the would-be engineer who becomes a poet instead, but misses the fun of having been an engineer. We can, if we wish, imagine either one of them feeling on his death bed that he has not had as much fun as he had hoped he would, and expressing this regret in the hyperbolic words that he had discovered that he had not lived. But only children are impressed by such word games.

And so from all these experiences at the Chester School in London, I learned the importance of ridding a classroom of any devils who appeared in the guise of students, and these learning experiences were excellent preparation for my present teaching at the Welton Academy in Vermont, and so thorough had been my preparation that in my very first class at Welton, I accomplished perfectly what in London I was still struggling to accomplish very imperfectly after three months. With my American boys at Welton, then, after only a single meeting, my students have learned four important things, a level of accomplishment which I think may be unequalled in the annals of education.

(1) They have learned to rely on mental telepathy as their chief mode of communication.

(2) They have learned to submit to my absolute control under the title of O-Captain-My-Captain.

(3) They have acceded to their names being ridiculed, and to being generally abused, in the interests of further strengthening my power of command.

(4) They have accepted Carpe Diem as their chief legitimizing incantation, and of course have left the definition of what does or does not constitute Seizing The Day entirely in my hands.

In view of which first-day accomplishments, I am forced to conclude that education at Welton Academy, at least in my own classroom, is proceeding with the highest imaginable efficiency, and that at least my students can reasonably look forward to a profitable and gratifying academic year.