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| Evan Clark Class of 2020 |
As my senior year of high school drew to a
close, the teachers from the History Department collectively presented me with
a gift they believed I would thoroughly enjoy – Ron Chernow’s celebrated
biography of Alexander Hamilton. While
this biography inspired the world-famous musical Hamilton, I cherished the book because I had never read a full
biography of Hamilton. After all, summer
afforded me ample time to delve into the life of this immensely important
founder. As I began reading, however, I
found a great deal of information about the man that I had not studied
previously, a backstory that not only detailed Hamilton’s illegitimate birth
and his early years in the West Indies, but also how swiftly he attached himself
to the affairs of Colonial America after his arrival in Great Britain’s North
American colonies.
Even as I ventured into years of
Hamilton’s life of which I possessed greater prior knowledge, I still found the
biography fascinating – primarily because it provided me a glimpse into the
mind of Hamilton, weaving a recollection of his inner motivations and
conflicts. The most puzzling
characteristic of the first Secretary of the Treasury I found in the work
centered around Chernow’s portrayal of Hamilton as a man of extreme
intellectual brilliance and far-sighted vision, yet also a man who fell victim
to “one of history’s most mystifying cases of bad judgment” even at the peak of
his influence (362). The biographer
spoke of Hamilton’s infamous affair with Maria Reynolds, a boorish blunder in
which Hamilton not only proved he could be tricked into continuing on a
woefully mistaken path of adultery, but also proved himself capable of
intentionally informing his wife to stay away from Philadelphia so she would
not discover his unfaithfulness (Chernow 365, 367). How, you might ask, could an ingenious figure
like Hamilton fall victim to the whims of his passions and allow himself to be
sucked into a black hole of an affair that would ultimately be made known? (Chernow
417). Indeed, Chernow reflects that Hamilton’s
“moral laxity and absurd willingness to risk exposure…remain a baffling
conundrum” (409).
Reviewing Hamilton’s abhorrent
affair brought to my attention the lessons I learned from the most recent
discussion of Plato’s Republic. Dr. Gregg taught us about Plato’s concept
that the human soul possesses three parts:
reason, spirit, and appetite. Appetite,
we were told, embodies selfishness, always craving for more physical pleasures
that will appease a person’s self-seeking desires. Reason, in contrast, makes up the force that
pushes individuals to do what is right, just, and logical. Yet it is the third element of the soul, the
spirit, which can throw its power of emotional inspiration and determination
behind either of the two other elements.
If a person trains his or her spirit so he or she will emphatically
desire to do what is right and feel motivated to seek after reason, that person
will be able to avoid petty scandals and rather focus on diligently pursuing
his or her full potential. However, if
the spirit is not adequately disciplined and subjected to the will of reason,
it can be easily manipulated by the power of the appetite to call upon the
individual to give in to his or her degenerate wishes, wishes that, if
fulfilled, have the capacity to severely damage the individual’s image and character
for a very long time to come.
While all of us can admire Hamilton for
his invaluable contributions to the Continental war effort in the American
Revolution, his illustrious writings on political ideas in The Federalist, and his great service as the first United States Secretary
of State, he still fell victim to the urges of his appetite during the Maria
Reynolds affair. Why? He did not adequately train his spirit to
resist the pressures of the appetite and to instead support the admonitions of
reason. Even though Hamilton would
eventually cease his affair and would even confess his wrongdoing years later,
his experience reminds us all that even figures of immense intellectual and
leadership ability face problems in controlling their spirits. We should continually keep in mind that it is
not the depth of one’s academic achievements, nor the height of one’s social
skills, nor even one’s adeptness at inspiring others and projecting an
appearance of blamelessness that makes an individual complete, but the mastery
of the spirit so it favors the constructive path of reason, not the destructive
path of appetite. This advice applies to
every individual, but especially to aspiring leaders who must learn to shut out
distracting influences that could suddenly and violently drag them from the verge
of prosperity to the abyss of a shattered reputation. Let us bend our ears to reason, not to base
cravings, and let us use sound judgment to choose what is best for ourselves
and for those we serve. I recognize no
one attains perfection in this regard, but we should nevertheless strive to
improve in our control of the spirit as much as possible. For if we do not strive to improve ourselves
in this way, we will never move forward in our leadership abilities, nor in our
moral resolve. So let us tame our
spirits and allow them to guide us to choose the path that will lead us not to the
fleeting fulfillment that appetite offers, but to true and lasting fulfillment
in all of life’s endeavors.
Citations: Chernow,
Ron. Alexander
Hamilton. Penguin, 2004.
Evan Clark, of Owensboro, Ky., is a freshman McConnell Scholar studying political science, Spanish, and history.