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Eudaimonia

Eudaimonia: Perspectives for Music Learning asserts the fertile applications

of eudaimonia—an Aristotelian concept of human flourishing intended to
explain the nature of a life well lived—for work in music learning and teach
ing in the twenty-first century. Drawing insights from within and beyond the
field of music education, contributors reflect on what the “good life” means in
music, highlighting issues at the core of the human experience and the heart
of schooling and other educational settings. This pursuit of personal fulfill
ment through active engagement is considered in relation to music education
as well as broader social, political, spiritual, psychological, and environ
mental contexts. Especially pertinent in today’s complicated and contra
dictory world, Eudaimonia: Perspectives for Music Learning is a concise
compendium on this oft-overlooked concept, providing musicians with an
understanding of an ethically guided and socially meaningful music-learning
paradigm.

Gareth Dylan Smith is Assistant Professor of Music (Music Education) at

Boston University, a founding editor of the Journal of Popular Music Educa
tion, and a drummer.

Marissa Silverman is Associate Professor of Music at the John J. Cali

School of Music at Montclair State University.
Routledge New Directions in Music Education Series
Series Editor: Clint Randles

The Routledge New Directions in Music Education Series consists of

concise monographs that attempt to bring more of the wide world of music,
education, and society into the discourse in music education.

Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy

Daniel J. Shevock

The Music Profiles Learning Project

Let’s Take This Outside
Radio Cremata, Joseph Michael Pignato, Bryan Powell, and
Gareth Dylan Smith

A Different Paradigm in Music Education

Re-examining the Profession
David A. Williams

Eudaimonia
Perspectives for Music Learning
Edited by Gareth Dylan Smith and Marissa Silverman
Eudaimonia
Perspectives for Music Learning

Edited by Gareth Dylan Smith and

Marissa Silverman
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The rights of Gareth Dylan Smith and Marissa Silverman to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested

ISBN: 978-0-367-21029-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-26494-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents

Series Foreword vii

Preface viii

1 Eudaimonia: Flourishing through Music Learning 1

GARETh DYLAN SMITh AND MARISSA SILVERMAN

2 Music Education and the Continuity of Mind and Life 14

DYLAN VAN DER SChYFF

3 The Hull House: A Case Study in Eudaimonia for Music

Learning 30
MARISSA SILVERMAN

4 The Happy Basket 44

KAThLEEN DEAN MOORE

5 Musicophilia, Biophilia, and the Human Prospect 50

DAVID W. ORR

6 Weaponizing Racism in the Age of Trump 60

hENRY A. GIROUX

7 An Ecology of Eudaimonia and its Implications for Music

Education 71
JUNE BOYCE-TILLMAN

8 Listening and the Happiness of the Musician 90

SOPhIE hAROUTUNIAN-GORDON AND
MEGAN JANE LAVERTY
vi Contents
9 Eudaimonia and Well-Doing: Implications for Music
Education 107
DAVID J. ELLIOTT

Notes on Contributors 121

Index 122
Series Foreword

The Routledge New Directions in Music Education Series consists of concise

monographs that attempt to bring more of the wide world of music, educa
tion, and society—and all of the conceptualizations and pragmatic implica
tions that come with that world—into the discourse of music education. It is
about discovering and uncovering big ideas for the profession, criticizing our
long-held assumptions, suggesting new courses of action, and putting ideas
into motion for the prosperity of future generations of music makers, teachers
of music, researchers, scholars, and society.
Clint Randles, Series Editor
Preface

The thinking and activist apparatus of eudaimonia has become so important

for both of us over the last several years, thus the impulse to curate this col
lection. The concept of “eudaimonia” provides especially fertile ground for
work in music and learning. however, resources that discuss eudaimonia,
music, and learning in one place are relatively scarce. Therefore, we felt there
ought to be somewhere that collated writings on these topics, at the very least
to provide a jumping-off point for further exploration. Music learning never
takes place in a vacuum. Musicians of all stripes and stages constantly draw
inspiration and provocation from action and thought in spaces and places that
are not explicitly musical or pedagogical. Music-making beings undertake
their work and make sense of their lives and relationships in the full richness
of the joys, challenges, ambiguities, and contradictions of the world. For this
reason, this volume houses some contributors who deal directly with music
and learning while others write about the broader social, political, ethical,
spiritual, psychological, environmental, and philosophical contexts in which
people act out their lives. The thread of eudaimonia unites these essays; all
speak to aspects of how to live well and flourish—ideals which for many
people music must involve making music.
Both editors work in the field of music education and both have arrived
here through specializing in adjunct fields; although we have earned eight
degrees between us, only one of these is in music education. Much of what
we bring to the field comes from music and music-learning contexts outside
of educational establishments, which is why we made an eleventh-hour deci
sion to change the title of this book from Eudaimonia: Perspectives for Music
Education, to Eudaimonia: Perspectives for Music Learning. This small
semantic shift is important, as we believe the writing in here 1) examines
much more than what may be bounded by the phrase “music education,” and
2) speaks to colleagues interested in music doing and music learning, broadly
construed. Notably, we were keen to include voices of scholars who speak
about eudaimonia without necessarily relating it much or indeed at all to
music learning, and whose work can deeply inform debate and discussion,
 Preface ix
enriching mindful praxis of readers—ourselves included. We relish the oppor
tunity to live with the questions, comforts, and challenges of eudaimonia: per
spectives for music learning.
We are very grateful that the esteemed authors whose work is included
herein agreed to be part of this collection—thank you. We wish to acknow
ledge the help of Yunshu Tan, who assisted with the consistency of format
ting references for this book; thank you, Yunshu. We would also like to thank
the New Directions series editor, Clint Randles, and Constance Ditzel at
Routledge for seeing value in our vision for the volume and for supporting it
all the way to publication. The theme of Eudaimonia: Perspectives for Music
Learning seems especially well-suited to this book series that aims at “putting
ideas into motion for the prosperity of future generations of music makers,
teachers of music, and society” (Randles, 2019).
Gareth Dylan Smith and Marissa Silverman
January 1, 2020

Reference
Randles, C. (2019). Routledge new directions in music education series. Retrieved
from: http://clintrandles.com/?page_id=89. [Accessed 7.12.2019].
1 Eudaimonia
Flourishing through Music Learning
Gareth Dylan Smith and Marissa Silverman

What is “Eudaimonia”?
In After virtue, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (2007) draws our attention to a
potential, fictional world in which our planet experiences “catastrophic”
environmental disasters, the cause of which are blamed on all scientists. The
result of such catastrophe is not only “riots,” but also the “laboratories are burnt
down, physicists are lynched, books and instruments are destroyed” (p. 1). Fur
thermore, in MacIntyre’s “imaginary” world, “a Know-Nothing political move
ment takes power” and removes science from the curriculum in schools and
universities, and imprisons and executes any scientists left in the world (p. 1).
MacIntyre continues to imagine further results of this, including but not limited
to an eventual reimagining of science based on half-truths which, in turn, would
promote pseudoscience and a language that is as imprecise as it is harmful. This
is not a wholly original premise. Dystopian writers have created similar-
sounding spaces (e.g., Brave new world, 1984, The handmaid’s tale).
Still, MacIntyre’s thought experiment reveals how easy it is to lose “our
comprehension, both theoretical and practical,” and, most importantly
perhaps, our morality (p. 2). And what might the more pernicious result of
this be? According to MacIntyre, in the end, unless we rightly understand the
world in which we live, and make value judgements that are ethically and
truthfully sound, we cannot have any hope of living humanistically or pur
posefully, or, in others words, virtuously. Where do we learn how to live
virtuously? According to MacIntyre—who interprets and expands upon Aris
totle and Thomas Aquinas—“it is always through the engagement” in “a
variety of practices, including those of making and sustaining families and
households, schools, clinics, and local forms of political community” that we
can reflect critically on what matters and determine how best to live (p. xv).
Furthermore, without living “virtuously”—living in a way that engenders
generosity of spirit and person—we run the risk of dismantling the import
ance of asking truly essential questions: “Why?” Why live? Why make
music? Why teach and learn anything?
2 G. D. Smith and M. Silverman
In offering some potential answers to these questions, this volume rests on
the premise that the purpose of engagement in/with/through music making—
and music teaching and learning—widely seen across a variety of community
music sites, programs, and formal school environments—is to engage and
pursue lifelong fulfillment and flourishing and, in doing so, to live a “good
life,” a life of meaningfulness and significance (Silverman, 2013). But what
does it mean to live a “good life”?
As some of the chapters in this volume propose, the answer to this ques
tion involves the concept of eudaimonia. This Greek term derives from “eu,”
meaning “good” or “well,” and “daimon” meaning “a spirit,” or “one’s per
sonal fortune.” Literally, then, it means something like “having a good
guardian spirit,” or “a good divine power,” or “good fortune.” Time and
again, eudaimonia is translated as “happiness.” But, as Gordon Graham
(2011) notes, this translation is not very helpful (p. 47). Moreover, interpret
ing Aristotle, Graham explains that well-being is often “misconceived as
mere contentment.” Rather, he states, a sense of well-being in this context is
exercising “healthy appetites, imaginative and productive use of one’s mental
faculties, and the establishment of good personal, professional, and public
relationships” (pp. 47–48). “Eudaimonia,” then, is most often translated as
“human flourishing,” which requires deeper consideration (Elliott & Silver
man, 2014, 2015).
According to Aristotelian ethics, human flourishing and self-reflective
happiness are the rewards of a life of virtue. Aristotle states, “The human
good turns out to be the soul’s activity that expresses virtue, and if there is
more than one virtue … it will be in a complete life” (Nicomachean Ethics,
pp. 1098a2, 12–21). As Graham continues, eudaimonia helps to explain the
nature of a person’s life filled with “active engagement, rather than passive
experience” (p. 47). For Aristotle, eudaimonia describes people possessing
“excellence,” meaning those who live for the betterment of themselves and
their community, thus maintaining a feeling of contentment, well-being, and
comfort. Human flourishing and, thereby, well-being can be achieved when
one lives for the betterment of oneself and one’s community. This notion of
the “good life” and, therefore, “well-being” is at the heart of “artistry” and
what it means to rightly live in the world with others (e.g., Wiles, 2016).
Still, commonplace interpretations of eudaimonia—e.g., first-person
“happiness” and self-centered flourishing—denote “arguably an ideologically
liberal and, indeed, neoliberal stance inherent in [a] eudaimonic lifestyle and
philosophy” (Smith, 2016, p. 162). Understanding eudaimonism as concerned
only or primarily with seeking purpose and meaning in one’s own life (Dier
endonck & Mohan, 2006; Norton, 1976; Waterman, 1992), while consistent
with an ideology pervading certainly the USA and increasingly in other con
temporary Western nation states, “contradicts Aristotle’s definition of eudai
monia as the fulfillment of one’s deepest nature in harmony with the
 Eudaimonia: Flourishing through Learning 3
collective welfare” (Della Fave, Brdar, Friere, Vella-Brodrick, & Wissing,
2011, p. 204). Therefore, it is eudaimonism in its fuller, most generous form,
for which the authors in this volume advocate. Why? Increased emphasis on
individualism and isolation, instead of community and collaboration, can lead
to the death of democracy and the rise of narcissists and ignorant populists
whose hunger for power threatens to harm millions of people, almost indis
criminately (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). The current fashion for selfishness,
myopia, and willful ignorance threatens to undermine the chances of human
civilization—in anything like its current forms—surviving at all (Orr, this
volume). These pernicious ideologies perpetuated by a powerful few (Giroux,
this volume; Sachs, 2019; Wilson & Pickett, 2019) are incredibly challeng
ing, but hopefully not insurmountable obstacles to realizing a more utopian
vision for a world guided more by compassion and eudaimonic thriving.

Eudaimonia, Music, and Learning

A belief in the value and pursuit of eudaimonia is called eudaimonism, and
we are eudaimonists. We are not advocating for the more selfish version of
eudaimonia. Instead, we wish to underline the potential dangers of such a
narrow reading and advocate for a more balanced understanding of eudaimo
nia. We are reminded of bell hooks’ (1994) words: that teachers “who
embrace the challenge of self-actualization will be better able to create ped
agogical practice so that engage students, providing them with ways of
knowing that enhance their capacity to live fully and deeply” (p. 22). This
seems to strike at the core of the symbiotic eudaimonic dyad—flourishing of
oneself and of others.
In the contemporary United States where we both reside, such an ideal as
that to which Aristotle aspired seems almost unthinkable. People actually
flourishing—outside of a consumerist, neoliberal capitalist ideology—is a
narrative that runs counter to everything on which contemporary Western
societies and national and international power structures are premised.
Runaway neoliberalism is defined by the ideas that there is no greater good
than the “free” market, and that relentless buying and selling and consuming
are the primary purposes of the populace—despite obvious and demonstrated
fallacies of “trickle-down” economics and the idea that a few wealthy people
will create wealth and better lives for everyone else too, just so long as we all
work long and hard enough for them (Chomsky, 1999).
Hannah Arendt (1958) describes market-oriented instrumentalism as
meaning that “whatever we do, we are supposed to do for the sake of ‘making
a living’ ” (p. 126), and that “not even the ‘work’ of the artist” is exempt from
this logic; “it is dissolved into play and has lost its worldly meaning. The
playfulness of the artist is felt to fulfill the same function in the laboring life
process of society as the playing of tennis or the pursuit of a hobby fulfills in
4 G. D. Smith and M. Silverman
the life of an individual” (p. 128). Arendt assumes here that the “worldly
meaning” of artistry is reification—that art-making, including music-making,
somehow transcends the commonplace, the ordinary, the hobby. Such a per
spective, however, is at odds with a more holistic eudaimonic view of
music(k)ing in which the value of making music is largely in the fulfillment
derived from the doing, the process—not in any external value that may be
placed on the output (Elliott & Silverman, 2015). Smith (2019), for instance,
noted that “rock drumming for me is a particularly autotelic experience. I do
it because I need to feel that autotelic experience as part of a meaningful life
being me. I do it because it is intrinsically valuable in and of itself” (p. 284).
Flourishing in music is possible beyond the canon of “great works” and com
mercial success.
Since 2012, the United Nations has published several World Happiness
Reports, looking at “happiness” in ways that align with a eudaimonic notion
of well-being as flourishing. One of the 2019 report’s authors, Jeffrey D.
Sachs, recalls the Easterlin Paradox, noting a negative correlation between
GDP increase per capita and reduced subjective well-being among adults in
the United States (Easterlin, 1974; Sachs, 2019). He points to three factors
likely contributing this situation:

1. “A discrepancy between our evolutionary heritage and our current life

conditions” (Sachs, 2019, p. 128), inasmuch as humans have evolved to
crave and over-indulge in food when it is available; the over-abundance
of foodstuffs today means obesity and associated health risks are very
high (Goldman, 2015; Sachs, 2019, p. 128);
2. “High and rising income inequality in high-income societies leads to
stress,” addiction, and other dysfunctional coping behaviors (Wilkinson
& Pickett, 2019); and
3. “A core design feature of a market economy: addictive products boost
the bottom line. Americans are being drugged, stimulated, and aroused
by the work of advertisers, marketers, app designers, and others who
know how to hook people on brands and product lines” (Sachs, 2019,
p. 128).

This third hypothesis is supported by another contributing author in the 2019

World Happiness Report. Jean M. Twenge discusses a decline in well-being
among US American adolescents, which she attributes in large part to mas
sively increased addictive use of digital technologies, primarily via smart
phones, and the concomitant reduction in time that people spend together
socially, face to face in leisure time. Arendt (1958) also urges us to be wary
of finding ourselves with too much leisure time, warning that, left unchecked,
humans would greedily fill our free time with endless consumption, leading
to a dearth of fulfillment for people and destruction of our planet’s resources
 Eudaimonia: Flourishing through Learning 5
(p. 133). We are inclined to be more optimistic than Arendt, though, seeing
music(k)ing as a way to flourish without falling prey to the innately human
desire to consume.
Active involvement in music-making plays a vital role in many people’s
leisure time, providing deep fulfillment for people of all ages and abilities,
across styles, demographics, and geographies (Mantie & Smith, 2016; Steb
bins, 2014). Individuals flourish though personal and communal music
making with others who also flourish through these communal activities in
contexts that include extreme metal music (Riches, 2016), university march
ing bands (Weren, Kornienko, Hill, & Yee, 2016), recording studios (Ward &
Watson, 2016), Indigenous music-dance (Fox, 2016), video games (O’Leary
& Tobias, 2016), YouTube (Cayari, 2016), social media (Trobia & Lo Verde,
2016), and sacred harp singing (Malone, 2016). Active participation in
making music can provide “pleasure, relaxation, and an opportunity for self-
expression” along with “structure to life … friendships … and spiritual fulfill
ment” (Hallam, Creech, & Varvarigou, 2016, p. 41). Other manifest benefits
of making music include “social networks, a sense of belonging, pride in pro
gress made … with a subsequent impact of self-concept, cognitive, and health
benefits” (Hallam, Creech, & Varvarigou, 2016, p. 50); the authors duly note
also that any such benefits arising in learning contexts will depend on the
quality and qualities of particular teaching and learning experiences.
Not everyone has the luxury or free time in which to undertake leisure
activity; the very notion of “leisure” implies privilege. Full-time carers, incar
cerated populations, and others may not have time to dedicate to what may
seem like frivolous or extraneous activity such as making music. Howell,
Higgins, and Bartleet (2016) write about collaborative music-making that is
distinct from “more general music-as-leisure.” They construe community
music as an “‘interventionist’ mode” of communal music making that works
“to enable musical and reflexive responses to the social or health needs of a
particular target group, and through this action to cultivate some kind of
change or transformation” (p. 605). The ends of such “interventionist” com
munity music, then, align with eudaimonism, especially when we consider
that in these settings, skilled facilitators “consciously engage with people to
find pathways through which making music might allow them to personally
flourish” (p. 605). Furthermore, Lee Higgins (2007) draws on the philosophy
of Jacques Derrida to explain how community musicians approach facilitated
music-making opportunities as places of “unconditional hospitality” (p. 87).
This is a demanding outlook that challenges some assumptions about and
approaches to music learning. Without and within formal institutional set
tings, in music learning contexts of all kinds, teachers, mentors, and facilita
tors of learning can turn classrooms, studios, rehearsal rooms, and other
spaces into liminal places of eudaimonic potential for all present (Smith &
Shafighian, 2013; Tuan, 1977).
6 G. D. Smith and M. Silverman
Wealthy countries of the West and the global North provide many of their
citizens with ample opportunities to flourish beyond meeting their most basic
needs. The financial and material abundance of these dominant nations that
affords their inhabitants these life chances, comes at the expense of much
poorer countries and the people living in them. Those populations are held in
servitude by world powers and the Euro-American businesses that boom in
those countries. Indeed, it is precisely such inequity of abundance that means
we authors have the luxury of writing this essay and co-editing this volume
on a niche philosophical topic in music learning, for a publisher to distribute
at a high price-point to a tiny market of people studying for graduate and
postgraduate degrees in pedagogy and the arts. Curating this collection has
been eudaimonic for us both, but flourishing in music learning need not be so
esoteric or abstruse (Smith, 2015).
If power brokers wanted to create a more just world order, in which oppor
tunities and resources were more equitably distributed, they could make that
choice. Such a utopia may seem especially unachievable as the United States
and other militarily dominant nations strategically shore up their access to the
world’s finite natural resources in order to maintain their positions atop the
world’s financial pyramid as they hasten the planet ever faster toward cata
strophic climate change. At the very least, though, an orientation toward
eudaimonism is arguably at the heart of which it means to be an ethical,
loving, compassionate educator, co-learner, student, facilitator, participant,
and maker of music. We propose that it is possible to enact and embody this
ideal in at least three ways:

1. Understanding that the world is horribly unjust and that recognizing our
place in the global system of brutal capitalist plutocracy may help us to
envision and act for a more equitable and just world;
2. Taking part in music-making activity that curates mutually flourishing
communities where individuals and the collective flourish and thrive and
feel the meaningfulness created by and for one another; and
3. Curating spaces for music making, where flourishing through learning is
the primary objective.

An ethic of care for others is a vital part of embracing and living eudaimonia.
Karin Hendricks’ (2018) approach to music learning thus resonates with
eudaimonia, as an ethos characterized by “compassion … a relationship of
experience-sharing in which one might offer support to another based on a
shared understanding of feelings, hopes, and/or desires” (p. 5). Higgins
(2007), drawing on Lenk (2006), describes communities of music making in
which “members are responsible for each other without their personal or indi
vidual responsibilities being reduced” (p. 87). David Elliott, Marissa Silver
man, and Wayne Bowman (2016) describe something similar, invoking
 Eudaimonia: Flourishing through Learning 7
music-making and learning as a form of “ethically guided citizenship” (p. 6,
emphasis in original), based on the premise that “artistry involves civic-
social-humanistic-emancipatory responsibilities, obligations to engage in art
making that advances social ‘goods’ ” (Elliott, Silverman, & Bowman, 2016,
p. 7). One of the fundamental premises of a eudaimonic orientation is that
music and music learning can serve and epitomize human flourishing. The
power of music to engender feelings of competence, agency, and community
is extraordinary. Music is certainly not uniquely capable in this regard, but
we believe, and hope readers may find too, that thinking and acting with
eudaimonia is invigorating and exciting.
The notion that each of us should be able to flourish, and not be subject to
conditions preventing us from doing so, is a key tenet of anarchism (Bakunin,
1972; Chomsky, 2013; Rocker, 1938). Noam Chomsky (2013) invokes
Rudolf Rocker (1938) to explain how contemporary anarchism embraces the
eudaimonic dyad of flourishing of the self and others, describing it as the con
fluence of liberalism and socialism. As a politically motivated, socially con
scious alternative construal of educational purpose and praxis, Allan Antliff
(2012) describes “anarchist pedagogy” as concerned with “subverting and
transcending oppressive social formations” (p. 328). He further explains that:

Rooted in antiauthoritarian values often at odds with the “mainstream,”

anarchists conceive of education as a site of critical reflection and crea
tive license, where life and learning comingle, giving rise to ways of
being that prefigure and realize our ideals on a practical level, as a lived
reality. (p. 326)

In the context of the stifling global neoliberal consensus, “anarchy is the polit
ical blank slate of the early twenty-first century. It is shorthand for an eternal
now, for a chance to reset the clock” (Schneider, 2013, p. ix). Ruth Wright
(2019) considers the implications of anarchism for music learning, rooting
her concerns in the need to act to challenge the devastation being wrought on
education systems by rampant neoliberalism. Citing Geoffrey Baker (2014),
Wright (2019) looks at diverse music-making practices that occur outside of
schooling institutions and suggests, “we music-makers might perhaps always
have been anarchists at heart and perhaps our mistake has been to try to sys
tematise and codify these practices within education” (p. 221).
All music-making and music-learning practices are to an extent codified
and systematized (Cremata, Pignato, Powell, & Smith, 2018; Hebert, Abramo,
& Smith, 2017), in order to be recognized as practices. Notwithstanding these
semantics, it is an alluring conviction – that empowering, agentive, demo
cratic music learning may only be possible in small anarchist communities
(inside or outside of schools) that are able to resist the imperatives and pres
sures of oppressive hegemonic power. Or at least it may be more possible to
8 G. D. Smith and M. Silverman
achieve flourishing—eudaimonia—for individuals and groups in anarchist
settings. The idea of anarchist music learning communities recalls the polis—
the ancient Greek context in which Aristotle defined and for which he envi
sioned eudaimonia. Perhaps it is not possible for all members of society to
thrive in so big and unlikely and diverse a conglomerate as a modern nation
state such as the US. Under one flag, people are supposed to share values and
ideals but there is such great richness and diversity of wealth, experience, and
culture that to suggest we can all thrive under the banner of a nation state is
absurd.

The Present Volume

Eudaimonia is an ancient and multifaceted concept, one which includes a
variety of virtues—e.g., mindfulness, connectivity, habits, and, importantly,
ethics. The concept of eudaimonia is especially pertinent because we live in
complicated, contradictory, and frequently uncertain space/time. Whether
we’re critically reflecting upon our political realities, higher education, or the
communities in which we live, it is essential we revisit questions of “why.”
And even though Steven Pinker (2018) argues that our worlds are better off
today than they were years ago, it is still imperative we have answers to
larger, ethical questions that should motivate and inform everyday living. We
construed this book from the outset to be one that contained perspectives that
could provide insight for music learning, rather than solely about music learn
ing. We were therefore keen to invite thinkers and practitioners from both
within the fields of music making and music teaching and learning, but also
those beyond these domains of scholarship to interrogate issues surrounding
the concept of eudaimonia. Indeed, many valuable insights about “why live”
come from outside our fields. Some authors speak more explicitly and at
greater length about eudaimonia than others. Our decision to embark on this
project was sparked as much by interests in music-making, music-learning
and eudaimonia, as by the contemporary socio-political climate in which we
live. The world is full of beauty and harmony, while also being violent, dan
gerous, threatening, terrifying, and unjust. We two alone cannot remake the
world for the better, but we felt personally, professionally, and morally
obliged to curate a book that framed some of the challenges and potential of
eudaimonia.
This book combines perspectives from key contemporary thinkers, who,
respectively, consider eudaimonia in conjunction with topics that include
music education philosophy, sociology, and spirituality; climate change and
the environment; the body, the natural world, the social world, and the cosmic
scene; embodiment, community music, and application of theoretical work in
collegiate settings and school music classrooms. As such, we aimed to
demonstrate how, through eudaimonic music making and music teaching and
 Eudaimonia: Flourishing through Learning 9
learning, it is possible to traverse socio-political positionalities that appear
increasingly entrenched in the national and international political discourses
in which music education takes place. Notably, while eudaimonia is an
ancient ethical orientation, it speaks to issues at the core of contemporary life
and to the places, purposes, and practicalities of music and music teaching
and learning today.

* * *
Dylan van der Schyff describes a recent move from Enlightenment aesthetics
and a “technological enframing” of music education toward an increased
focus on collaboration and musical activity construed as positive social inter
action. van der Schyff explains various ancient Greek understandings of
knowledge and ways of being, travelling through phusis, poiesis, and ekstasis
before lighting on phronesis, which describes a caring disposition. This con
nects with orexis—how humans reach out to the world and to nature to make
meaning. The author argues that music learning, conceived as socially ori
ented musical praxes, is essential to humanity.
The aims and achievements of Jane Addams’s Hull House and Hull House
Music School provide the springboard for Marissa Silverman’s examination
of the actual and potential relationships that can be created among music,
social ethics, politics, and citizenship. After probing several dimensions of
Addams’s achievements, her work is considered next to the writings of John
Dewey (who was largely influenced by Addams) and several of today’s
leading feminist theorists. The work of these feminist scholars is especially
important in building a more nuanced and balanced understanding of the
“ethics of care” that underpinned Addams’s musical-communal-ethical work
and, today, points us toward a robust concept of democratic school and com
munity music education.
Kathleen Dean Moore’s chapter recounts her experiment keeping brief
notes over a 12-month period, documenting experiences that made her feel
happy. This essay reads as a brief clutch of beautiful, deeply personal recol
lections, detailing the meaningful, surprising, and mundane. Moore lists
things that made her feel truly happy, indicates necessary conditions for
enabling these, and lists recurring themes. Overlapping with other chapters in
the book, happiness themes including contact with the natural world, stimu
lating ideas, meaningful work, celebratory arts, and time to pause, reflect, and
enjoy. The editors gratefully acknowledge permission granted by Shambhala
to reproduce this essay that first appeared in Wild comfort: The solace of
nature (2010).
Environmentalist David W. Orr discusses the possibility of eudaimonia by
reminding readers that the human race is rushing headlong toward cata
strophic climate change. Prioritizing consumerism, greed, and isolation, our
species is increasingly disconnected from understandings of “biophilia” and
Another random document with
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 “No! why not? Do you think yourself better than other children?”
No answer.
“Is it because people tell you you are rich, you won’t play?”
The young lady was gone. He stretched his hand to arrest her, but
she wheeled beyond his reach, and ran quickly out of sight.
“An only child,” pleaded Miss Wilcox; “possibly spoiled by her
papa, you know; we must excuse a little pettishness.”
“Humph! I am afraid there is not a little to excuse.”

CHAPTER II.

Mr. Ellin—the gentleman mentioned in the last chapter—was a

man who went where he liked, and being a gossiping, leisurely
person, he liked to go almost anywhere. He could not be rich, he
lived so quietly; and yet he must have had some money, for, without
apparent profession, he continued to keep a house and a servant.
He always spoke of himself as having once been a worker; but if so,
that could not have been very long since, for he still looked far from
old. Sometimes of an evening, under a little social conversational
excitement, he would look quite young; but he was changeable in
mood, and complexion, and expression, and had chamelion eyes,
sometimes blue and merry, sometimes grey and dark, and anon
green and gleaming. On the whole he might be called a fair man, of
average height, rather thin and rather wiry. He had not resided more
than two years in the present neighbourhood; his antecedents were
unknown there; but as the Rector, a man of good family and
standing, and of undoubted scrupulousness in the choice of
acquaintance, had introduced him, he found everywhere a prompt
reception, of which nothing in his conduct had yet seemed to prove
him unworthy. Some people, indeed, dubbed him “a character,” and
fancied him “eccentric;” but others could not see the appropriateness
of the epithets. He always seemed to them very harmless and quiet,
not always perhaps so perfectly unreserved and comprehensible as
might be wished. He had a discomposing expression in his eye; and
sometimes in conversation an ambiguous diction; but still they
believed he meant no harm.
Mr. Ellin often called on the Misses Wilcox; he sometimes took tea
with them; he appeared to like tea and muffins, and not to dislike the
kind of conversation which usually accompanies that refreshment; he
was said to be a good shot, a good angler.—He proved himself an
excellent gossip—he liked gossip well. On the whole he liked
women’s society, and did not seem to be particular in requiring
difficult accomplishments or rare endowments in his female
acquaintance. The Misses Wilcox, for instance, were not much less
shallow than the china saucer which held their teacups; yet Mr. Ellin
got on perfectly well with them, and had apparently great pleasure in
hearing them discuss all the details of their school. He knew the
names of all their young ladies too, and would shake hands with
them if he met them walking out; he knew their examination days
and gala days, and more than once accompanied Mr. Cecil, the
curate, when he went to examine in ecclesiastical history.
This ceremony took place weekly, on Wednesday afternoons, after
which Mr. Cecil sometimes stayed to tea, and usually found two or
three lady parishioners invited to meet him. Mr. Ellin was also pretty
sure to be there. Rumour gave one of the Misses Wilcox in
anticipated wedlock to the curate, and furnished his friend with a
second in the same tender relation; so that it is to be conjectured
they made a social, pleasant party under such interesting
circumstances. Their evenings rarely passed without Miss Fitzgibbon
being introduced—all worked muslin and streaming sash and
elaborated ringlets; others of the pupils would also be called in,
perhaps to sing, to show off a little at the piano, or sometimes to
repeat poetry. Miss Wilcox conscientiously cultivated display in her
young ladies, thinking she thus fulfilled a duty to herself and to them,
at once spreading her own fame and giving the children self-
possessed manners.
It was curious to note how, on these occasions, good, genuine
natural qualities still vindicated their superiority to counterfeit,
artificial advantages. While “dear Miss Fitzgibbon,” dressed up and
flattered as she was, could only sidle round the circle with the
crestfallen air which seemed natural to her, just giving her hand to
the guests, then almost snatching it away, and sneaking in
unmannerly haste to the place allotted to her at Miss Wilcox’s side,
which place she filled like a piece of furniture, neither smiling nor
speaking the evening through—while such was her deportment,
certain of her companions, as Mary Franks, Jessy Newton, &c.,
handsome, open-countenanced little damsels—fearless because
harmless—would enter with a smile of salutation and a blush of
pleasure, make their pretty reverence at the drawing-room door,
stretch a friendly little hand to such visitors as they knew, and sit
down to the piano to play their well-practised duet with an innocent,
obliging readiness which won all hearts.
There was a girl called Diana—the girl alluded to before as having
once been Miss Sterling’s pupil—a daring, brave girl, much loved
and a little feared by her comrades. She had good faculties, both
physical and mental—was clever, honest, and dauntless. In the
schoolroom she set her young brow like a rock against Miss
Fitzgibbon’s pretensions; she found also heart and spirit to withstand
them in the drawing-room. One evening, when the curate had been
summoned away by some piece of duty directly after tea, and there
was no stranger present but Mr. Ellin, Diana had been called in to
play a long, difficult piece of music which she could execute like a
master. She was still in the midst of her performance, when—Mr.
Ellin having for the first time, perhaps, recognized the existence of
the heiress by asking if she was cold—Miss Wilcox took the
opportunity of launching into a strain of commendation on Miss
Fitzgibbon’s inanimate behaviour, terming it lady-like, modest, and
exemplary. Whether Miss Wilcox’s constrained tone betrayed how far
she was from really feeling the approbation she expressed, how
entirely she spoke from a sense of duty, and not because she felt it
possible to be in any degree charmed by the personage she praised
—or whether Diana, who was by nature hasty, had a sudden fit of
irritability—is not quite certain, but she turned on her music-stool:—
“Ma’am,” said she to Miss Wilcox, “that girl does not deserve so
much praise. Her behaviour is not at all exemplary. In the
schoolroom she is insolently distant. For my part I denounce her airs;
there is not one of us but is as good or better than she, though we
may not be as rich.”
And Diana shut up the piano, took her music-book under her arm,
curtsied, and vanished.
Strange to relate, Miss Wilcox said not a word at the time; nor was
Diana subsequently reprimanded for this outbreak. Miss Fitzgibbon
had now been three months in the school, and probably the
governess had had leisure to wear out her early raptures of partiality.
Indeed, as time advanced, this evil often seemed likely to right
itself; again and again it seemed that Miss Fitzgibbon was about to
fall to her proper level, but then, somewhat provokingly to the lovers
of reason and justice, some little incident would occur to invest her
insignificance with artificial interest. Once it was the arrival of a great
basket of hothouse fruit—melons, grapes, and pines—as a present
to Miss Wilcox in Miss Fitzgibbon’s name. Whether it was that a
share of these luscious productions was imparted too freely to the
nominal donor, or whether she had had a surfeit of cake on Miss
Mabel Wilcox’s birthday, it so befel, that in some disturbed state of
the digestive organs Miss Fitzgibbon took to sleep-walking. She one
night terrified the school into a panic by passing through the
bedrooms, all white in her night-dress, moaning and holding out her
hands as she went.
Dr. Percy was then sent for; his medicines, probably, did not suit
the case; for within a fortnight after the somnambulistic feat, Miss
Wilcox going upstairs in the dark, trod on something which she
thought was the cat, and on calling for a light, found her darling
Matilda Fitzgibbon curled round on the landing, blue, cold, and stiff,
without any light in her half-open eyes, or any colour in her lips, or
movement in her limbs. She was not soon roused from this fit; her
senses seemed half scattered; and Miss Wilcox had now an
undeniable excuse for keeping her all day on the drawing-room sofa,
and making more of her than ever.
There comes a day of reckoning both for petted heiresses and
partial governesses.
 One clear winter morning, as Mr. Ellin was seated at breakfast,
enjoying his bachelor’s easy chair and damp, fresh London
newspaper, a note was brought to him marked “private,” and “in
haste.” The last injunction was vain, for William Ellin did nothing in
haste—he had no haste in him; he wondered anybody should be so
foolish as to hurry; life was short enough without it. He looked at the
little note—three-cornered, scented, and feminine. He knew the
handwriting; it came from the very lady Rumour had so often
assigned him as his own. The bachelor took out a morocco case,
selected from a variety of little instruments a pair of tiny scissors, cut
round the seal, and read:—“Miss Wilcox’s compliments to Mr. Ellin,
and she should be truly glad to see him for a few minutes, if at
leisure. Miss W. requires a little advice. She will reserve explanations
till she sees Mr. E.”
Mr. Ellin very quietly finished his breakfast; then, as it was a very
fine December day—hoar and crisp, but serene, and not bitter—he
carefully prepared himself for the cold, took his cane, and set out. He
liked the walk; the air was still; the sun not wholly ineffectual; the
path firm, and but lightly powdered with snow. He made his journey
as long as he could by going round through many fields, and through
winding, unfrequented lanes. When there was a tree in the way
conveniently placed for support, he would sometimes stop, lean his
back against the trunk, fold his arms, and muse. If Rumour could
have seen him, she would have affirmed that he was thinking about
Miss Wilcox; perhaps when he arrives at the Lodge his demeanour
will inform us whether such an idea be warranted.
At last he stands at the door and rings the bell; he is admitted, and
shown into the parlour—a smaller and a more private room than the
drawing-room. Miss Wilcox occupies it; she is seated at her writing-
table; she rises—not without air and grace—to receive her visitor.
This air and grace she learnt in France; for she was in a Parisian
school for six months, and learnt there a little French, and a stock of
gestures and courtesies. No: it is certainly not impossible that Mr.
Ellin may admire Miss Wilcox. She is not without prettiness, any
more than are her sisters; and she and they are one and all smart
and showy. Bright stone-blue is a colour they like in dress; a crimson
bow rarely fails to be pinned on somewhere to give contrast; positive
colours generally—grass-greens, red violets, deep yellows—are in
favour with them; all harmonies are at a discount. Many people
would think Miss Wilcox, standing there in her blue merino dress and
pomegranate ribbon, a very agreeable woman. She has regular
features; the nose is a little sharp, the lips a little thin, good
complexion, light red hair. She is very business-like, very practical;
she never in her life knew a refinement of feeling or of thought; she
is entirely limited, respectable, and self-satisfied. She has a cool,
prominent eye; sharp and shallow pupil, unshrinking and
inexpansive; pale irid; light eyelashes, light brow. Miss Wilcox is a
very proper and decorous person; but she could not be delicate or
modest, because she is naturally destitute of sensitiveness. Her
voice, when she speaks, has no vibration; her face no expression;
her manner no emotion. Blush or tremor she never knew.
“What can I do for you, Miss Wilcox?” says Mr. Ellin, approaching
the writing-table, and taking a chair beside it.
“Perhaps you can advise me,” was the answer; “or perhaps you
can give me some information. I feel so thoroughly puzzled, and
really fear all is not right.”
“Where? and how?”
“I will have redress if it be possible,” pursued the lady; “but how to
set about obtaining it! Draw to the fire, Mr. Ellin; it is a cold day.”
They both drew to the fire. She continued:—
“You know the Christmas holidays are near?”
He nodded.
“Well, about a fortnight since, I wrote, as is customary, to the
friends of my pupils, notifying the day when we break up, and
requesting that, if it was desired that any girl should stay the
vacation, intimation should be sent accordingly. Satisfactory and
prompt answers came to all the notes except one—that addressed to
Conway Fitzgibbon, Esquire, May Park, Midland County—Matilda
Fitzgibbon’s father, you know.”
 “What? won’t he let her go home?”
“Let her go home, my dear sir! you shall hear. Two weeks elapsed,
during which I daily expected an answer; none came. I felt annoyed
at the delay, as I had particularly requested a speedy reply. This very
morning I had made up my mind to write again, when—what do you
think the post brought me?”
“I should like to know.”
“My own letter—actually my own—returned from the post-office,
with an intimation—such an intimation!—but read for yourself.”
She handed to Mr. Ellin an envelope; he took from it the returned
note and a paper—the paper bore a hastily-scrawled line or two. It
said, in brief terms, that there was no such place in Midland County
as May Park, and that no such person had ever been heard of there
as Conway Fitzgibbon, Esquire.
On reading this, Mr. Ellin slightly opened his eyes.
“I hardly thought it was so bad as this,” said he.
“What? you did think it was bad then? You suspected that
something was wrong?”
“Really! I scarcely knew what I thought or suspected. How very
odd, no such place as May Park! The grand mansion, the grounds,
the oaks, the deer, vanished clean away. And then Fitzgibbon
himself! But you saw Fitzgibbon—he came in his carriage?”
“In his carriage!” echoed Miss Wilcox; “a most stylish equipage,
and himself a most distinguished person. Do you think, after all,
there is some mistake?”
“Certainly, a mistake; but when it is rectified I don’t think Fitzgibbon
or May Park will be forthcoming. Shall I run down to Midland County
and look after these two precious objects?”
“Oh! would you be so good, Mr. Ellin? I knew you would be so
kind; personal inquiry, you know—there’s nothing like it.”
“Nothing at all. Meantime, what shall you do with the child—the
pseudo-heiress, if pseudo she be? Shall you correct her—let her
know her place?”
“I think,” responded Miss Wilcox, reflectively—“I think not exactly
as yet; my plan is to do nothing in a hurry; we will inquire first. If after
all she should turn out to be connected as was at first supposed, one
had better not do anything which one might afterwards regret. No; I
shall make no difference with her till I hear from you again.”
“Very good. As you please,” said Mr. Ellin, with that coolness
which made him so convenient a counsellor in Miss Wilcox’s opinion.
In his dry laconism she found the response suited to her outer
worldliness. She thought he said enough if he did not oppose her.
The comment he stinted so avariciously she did not want.
Mr. Ellin “ran down,” as he said, to Midland County. It was an
errand that seemed to suit him; for he had curious predilections as
well as peculiar methods of his own. Any secret quest was to his
taste; perhaps there was something of the amateur detective in him.
He could conduct an inquiry and draw no attention. His quiet face
never looked inquisitive, nor did his sleepless eye betray vigilance.
He was away about a week. The day after his return, he appeared
in Miss Wilcox’s presence as cool as if he had seen her but
yesterday. Confronting her with that fathomless face he liked to show
her, he first told her he had done nothing.
Let Mr. Ellin be as enigmatical as he would, he never puzzled Miss
Wilcox. She never saw enigma in the man. Some people feared,
because they did not understand, him; to her it had not yet occurred
to begin to spell his nature or analyze his character. If she had an
impression about him, it was, that he was an idle but obliging man,
not aggressive, of few words, but often convenient. Whether he were
clever and deep, or deficient and shallow, close or open, odd or
ordinary, she saw no practical end to be answered by inquiry, and
therefore did not inquire.
“Why had he done nothing?” she now asked.
“Chiefly because there was nothing to do.”
“Then he could give her no information?”
 “Not much: only this, indeed—Conway Fitzgibbon was a man of
straw; May Park a house of cards. There was no vestige of such
man or mansion in Midland County, or in any other shire in England.
Tradition herself had nothing to say about either the name or the
place. The Oracle of old deeds and registers, when consulted, had
not responded.
“Who can he be, then, that came here, and who is this child?”
“That’s just what I can’t tell you:—an incapacity which makes me
say I have done nothing.”
“And how am I to get paid?”
“Can’t tell you that either.”
“A quarter’s board and education owing, and masters’ terms
besides,” pursued Miss Wilcox. “How infamous! I can’t afford the
loss.”
“And if we were only in the good old times,” said Mr. Ellin, “where
we ought to be, you might just send Miss Matilda out to the
plantations in Virginia, sell her for what she is worth, and pay
yourself.”
“Matilda, indeed, and Fitzgibbon! A little impostor! I wonder what
her real name is?”
“Betty Hodge? Poll Smith? Hannah Jones?” suggested Mr. Ellin.
“Now,” cried Miss Wilcox, “give me credit for sagacity! It’s very
odd, but try as I would—and I made every effort—I never could really
like that child. She has had every indulgence in this house; and I am
sure I made great sacrifice of feeling to principle in showing her
much attention; for I could not make any one believe the degree of
antipathy I have all along felt towards her.”
“Yes. I can believe it. I saw it.”
“Did you? Well—it proves that my discernment is rarely at fault.
Her game is up now, however; and time it was. I have said nothing to
her yet; but now—”
 “Have her in whilst I am here,” said Mr. Ellin. “Has she known of
this business? Is she in the secret? Is she herself an accomplice, or
a mere tool? Have her in.”
Miss Wilcox rang the bell, demanded Matilda Fitzgibbon, and the
false heiress soon appeared. She came in her ringlets, her sash, and
her furbelowed dress adornments—alas! no longer acceptable.
“Stand there!” said Miss Wilcox, sternly, checking her as she
approached the hearth. “Stand there on the farther side of the table. I
have a few questions to put to you, and your business will be to
answer them. And mind—let us have the truth. We will not endure
lies.”
Ever since Miss Fitzgibbon had been found in the fit, her face had
retained a peculiar paleness and her eyes a dark orbit. When thus
addressed, she began to shake and blanch like conscious guilt
personified.
“Who are you?” demanded Miss Wilcox. “What do you know about
yourself?”
A sort of half-interjection escaped the girl’s lips; it was a sound
expressing partly fear, and partly the shock the nerves feel when an
evil, very long expected, at last and suddenly arrives.
“Keep yourself still, and reply, if you please,” said Miss Wilcox,
whom nobody should blame for lacking pity, because nature had not
made her compassionate. “What is your name? We know you have
no right to that of Matilda Fitzgibbon.”
She gave no answer.
“I do insist upon a reply. Speak you shall, sooner or later. So you
had better do it at once.”
This inquisition had evidently a very strong effect upon the subject
of it. She stood as if palsied, trying to speak, but apparently not
competent to articulate.
Miss Wilcox did not fly into a passion, but she grew very stern and
urgent; spoke a little loud; and there was a dry clamour in her raised
voice which seemed to beat upon the ear and bewilder the brain. Her
interest had been injured—her pocket wounded—she was
vindicating her rights—and she had no eye to see, and no nerve to
feel, but for the point in hand. Mr. Ellin appeared to consider himself
strictly a looker-on; he stood on the hearth very quiet.
At last the culprit spoke. A low voice escaped her lips. “Oh, my
head!” she cried, lifting her hands to her forehead. She staggered,
but caught the door and did not fall. Some accusers might have been
startled by such a cry—even silenced; not so Miss Wilcox. She was
neither cruel nor violent; but she was coarse, because insensible.
Having just drawn breath, she went on, harsh as ever.
Mr. Ellin, leaving the hearth, deliberately paced up the room as if
he were tired of standing still, and would walk a little for a change. In
returning and passing near the door and the criminal, a faint breath
seemed to seek his ear, whispering his name—
“Oh, Mr. Ellin!”
The child dropped as she spoke. A curious voice—not like Mr.
Ellin’s, though it came from his lips—asked Miss Wilcox to cease
speaking, and say no more. He gathered from the floor what had
fallen on it. She seemed overcome, but not unconscious. Resting
beside Mr. Ellin, in a few minutes she again drew breath. She raised
her eyes to him.
“Come, my little one; have no fear,” said he.
Reposing her head against him, she gradually became reassured.
It did not cost him another word to bring her round; even that strong
trembling was calmed by the mere effects of his protection. He told
Miss Wilcox, with remarkable tranquillity, but still with a certain
decision, that the little girl must be put to bed. He carried her
upstairs, and saw her laid there himself. Returning to Miss Wilcox,
he said:
“Say no more to her. Beware, or you will do more mischief than
you think or wish. That kind of nature is very different from yours. It is
not possible that you should like it; but let it alone. We will talk more
on the subject to-morrow. Let me question her.”
 Under Chloroform.
Most people take an interest in any authentic account of the mode
in which important surgical operations are performed, whenever
opportunity is offered of gratifying their very natural curiosity. Such
opportunities are however somewhat rare. The columns of the
newspaper press not unfrequently supply brief, and sometimes
curiously incorrect, particulars of the injuries resulting from “an
appalling accident” of the night previous, to some unfortunate
workman who has fallen from a scaffold, or been mutilated by a
railway train. Scraps of hearsay are eagerly gathered up by the
penny-a-liner, who, like the fireman’s dog of notorious ubiquity, is
always first on the spot after the occurrence of a catastrophe; and a
remarkable combination of technical phrases culled from the brief
remarks of the surgeon in attendance, and from the slender stock
which has accumulated in the reporter’s brain from previous
experiences, makes its appearance in to-morrow’s daily journals,
and is certain to be reproduced in all the weeklies of Saturday next.
Then it is the great public learns with profound horror that some poor
victim’s shoulder-joint has been dislocated in three places, that the
carotid artery was pronounced (surgeons are invariably said to
“pronounce”) to be fractured, or that there was great contusion and
ecchymosis (always a trying word for the compositor) about the
spine, and that amputation would probably be necessary.
But sometimes it happens that an over-prying public, with a
curiosity not much in this instance to be commended, peeps within
the pages of the medical press, hoping to unravel some of the
mysteries of professional craft. Ten to one that it gets nothing but
error for its pains. The technicalities which medical men must
necessarily employ when writing for each other, are instructive only
to the initiated, and are pregnant with blunders for the simple reader.
And few people make more mistakes than our medical amateur who,
on the strength of a weekly perusal of The Lancet at his club, sets up
as an authority in the social circle on questions of physiology and
physic.
Occasionally, moreover, after dinner, when the ladies have left the
table, and the men alone remain to empty decanters and derange a
dessert, one has the gratification of meeting some very young
gentleman, who, the week before last, presented his proud father
with the diploma of “the college,” elegantly framed and glazed, in
return for an education which has cost five years and a thousand
pounds, and who astonishes his elderly associates with a highly-
tinted sketch of some operative achievement, in which perchance he
assisted at the hospital. As he surveys the auditory, silent and
absorbed by his heart-stirring description, and complacently
witnesses the admiration which such evidence of his own familiarity
with harrowing scenes, and of his apparent absence of emotion,
elicits, it is to be feared that its influence, associated with that of the
port, a beverage appreciated by our young friend, if one may judge
by the quantity he imbibes, tends to render the information obtained,
as one may say almost at first hand, not so absolutely trustworthy as
a man of fact is accustomed to desire.
After a due survey then of the varied sources from which most
people obtain information respecting the topics in question, and after
some observation of the character and quality of the knowledge so
acquired, we have formed the deliberate conclusion that they
possess very erroneous, and very inadequate notions about the
nature of a surgical operation. No doubt all admire the sang-froid and
skill, possession of which is necessary to make a good surgical
operator—qualities, by the way, which are perhaps more frequently
developed by training, than found already existing as a natural
inheritance. But it is germane to our purpose to remember that
everybody has a direct practical concern in the existence of an
available supply of the necessary talent to meet a certain demand on
the part of the body politic, for no one knows how soon his own
personal necessities may not be such as to give him the strongest
possible interest in its exercise: a demand that is absolutely
inevitable;—for be assured that, without any wish to alarm you,
gentle reader, Mr Neison will, if requested to make the calculation,
inform us at once what the numerical chances are that your own
well-proportioned nether limb will, or will not, fall before the
surgeon’s knife, or that that undoubtedly hard and well-developed
cranium may not yet be scientifically explored by “trepan” or
“trephine.” He will estimate with unerring certainty the probability (to
nine places of decimals, if you demand it) that your own fair person
may become the subject of some unpleasing excrescence; and also
what the chances are that you must seek the surgeon’s aid to
remove it. While Mr. Buckle will stoutly maintain, and you will find it
hard to gainsay him, that, given the present conditions of existence,
a certain ascertainable number of tumours, broken legs, and natural-
born deformities will regularly make their appearance every year
among the human family. And he will probably add, that it is perfectly
within the province of possibility to calculate, if we had all the
required data, the exact number of individuals who have the requisite
courage to submit to operation; as of those who will not have heart to
do so, and who will inevitably die without benefit of surgery; together
with the exact per-centage to the population of those who will, and
who will not, put faith in the blessed boon of chloroform.
It is a blessed boon; and in olden times the possessor of such a
secret would have been the most potent wizard of which the earth
has yet heard tell. What miracles might not have been performed by
it! What dogmas might not have been made divine and true by its
influence! Happy was it that those great powers, the magic of
chemical and electrical discovery, have been brought to light in a
time when they can be used mainly to enlighten and bless, and not
to darken and oppress mankind!
But that word chloroform is happily significant that it is to no scene
of suffering that we would introduce our readers. There is no need to
shrink, or to question the taste which exhibits the details of a surgical
operation to the vulgar eye. It is not designed, even in this stirring
time, after the fashion of ancient Rome, to deaden our sensibilities,
or to accustom our youth to witness deeds of blood and violence
without shrinking. No trace of suffering will be visible in the picture
which shall pass before us. So great is the triumph which modern
surgical art displays, so great the boon which it has conferred upon
humanity! It is this which we propose to illustrate, by describing the
single and simple process involved in cutting off a leg.
Permit us first, however, to cast a passing glance, by way of
contrast, to the established and orthodox fashion of performing that
operation some centuries ago. Bear with us but a moment, and in
imagination hope that then, when painless surgery was unknown, no
patient lacked support in his hour of trial (long hours then, in truth!)
from that great and never-failing source which flows, unmeasured
and unfathomable, for all humanity, alike in every age.
Until the last three or four hundred years, amputation of a limb was
very rarely performed, except when, from injury or disease, its
extremity had begun to mortify; and then, few surgeons ventured to
make incisions in the sound portion, but limited themselves to an
operation through the tissues which had already lost their vitality.
This timidity was due to the fact that they were unacquainted with
any effectual means of stopping the bleeding from the larger arteries
divided by the knife. Certain and easy as is the control of such
bleeding now, by the simple process of tying a piece of thread or silk
round the extremity of the bleeding vessel (as we shall hereafter
see), it was unknown, at all events as applicable to amputation, to
any surgical writer from Hippocrates, 400 b.c., or from Celsus, who
flourished in the first Christian century, to the fifteenth. Consequently,
the numerous instances of injury and disease, in which life is now
saved by a timely resort to amputation, were then always fatal.
Hence, also, arose the various expedients which the more
adventurous operators of the time resorted to, in order to stop fatal
bleeding, with the effect only of increasing the patient’s torture, and
with the attainment of no good result. Thus the incisions were
performed with a red-hot knife, that the divided vessels, seared and
charred by the horrible contact, might contract, or become plugged,
and so be prevented from bleeding (Albucasis, 11th century).
Effective for the instant, the force of the circulation quickly
overpowered the slender obstruction, and fatal hæmorrhage, sooner
or later, took place. Yet this plan continued more or less in vogue
down to the discovery of the ligature in the 16th century, and was
practised even later in Germany by the celebrated Hildanus (1641);
although he subsequently adopted the new method. According to
another fashion, the surgeon, after making a tedious division of the
flesh down to the bone, with studied endeavour not to divide the
arteries until the last moment, relied on applications of red-hot irons,
or of some styptic fluid, usually a powerful acid or astringent, to
arrest the bleeding. If these were not successful, a vessel of boiling
pitch was at hand, ready prepared, into which the bleeding stump
was plunged. Between Scylla and Charybdis, the patient rarely
escaped with life; either he died from loss of blood in a few hours, or
less; or if the dreadful remedies succeeded, he survived a day or
two, to die of fever or exhaustion. After an earlier method, that of
Guido di Caulico (1363), a bandage of plaster was made to encircle
the member so tightly that mortification attacked all the parts below,
which then, after the lapse of months, dropped off, a horribly
loathsome and offensive mass. Another surgeon, Botalli (1560),
invented a machine to sever the limb in an instant by a single stroke;
and it was not uncommon at this period to effect the same purpose
by the hatchet, or by a powerful mallet and chisel.
It is to Ambrose Paré, the great French surgeon, who flourished in
the 16th century, that we owe the application of the ligature (used
long before in ordinary wounds) to the bleeding arteries in
amputation. He discarded the use of the red-hot cautery, and of all
the frightful adjuncts already described; and accomplished his
purpose by carrying the thread round the vessel by means of a
needle passed through the soft parts adjacent—a method of
adjustment which, although still in use, is now employed only in
exceptional instances. Richard Wiseman, sometimes styled the
father of English surgery, who practised about the middle of the 17th
century, is believed to have been the first to employ the ligature in
our own country, and to relinquish the application of heated irons. At
this era also, the circulation of the blood was discovered by the
renowned Harvey, and the distinction between arteries and veins
being thenceforth clearly understood, the value of the ligature was
rendered more than ever obvious.
But enough of this: let us soothe our ruffled nerves by seeing how
the thing is done to-day. We will take a quiet post of observation in
the area of the operating theatre at one of our metropolitan hospitals,
in this year of our Lord 1860. Notice is posted that amputation of the
thigh will be performed at 2 o’clock p.m., and we occupy our seat ten
minutes before the hour.
The area itself is small, of a horse-shoe form, and surrounded by
seats rising on a steep incline one above another, to the number of
eight or nine tiers. From 100 to 150 students occupy these, and pack
pretty closely, especially on the lower rows, whence the best view is
obtained. For an assemblage of youths between eighteen and
twenty-five years, who have nothing to do but to wait, they are
tolerably well-behaved and quiet. Three or four practical jokers,
however, it is evident, are distributed among them, and so the time
passes all the quicker for the rest. The clock has not long struck two,
when the folding-doors open, and in walk two or three of the leading
surgeons of the hospital, followed by a staff of dressers, and a few
professional lookers-on; the latter being confined to seats reserved
for them on the lowest and innermost tier. A small table, covered with
instruments, occupies a place on one side of the area; water,
sponges, towels, and lint, are placed on the opposite. The surgeon
who is about to operate, rapidly glances over the table, and sees that
his instruments are all there, and in readiness. He requests a
colleague to take charge of the tourniquet, and with a word deputes
one assistant to “take the flaps,” another to hold the limb, a third to
hand the instruments, and the last to take charge of the sponges.
This done, and while the patient is inhaling chloroform in an
adjoining apartment, under the care of a gentleman who makes that
his special duty, the operator gives to the now hushed and listening
auditory, a brief history of the circumstances which led to an
incurable disease of the left knee-joint, and the reasons why he
decides on the operation about to be performed. He has scarcely
closed, when the unconscious patient is brought in by a couple of
sturdy porters, and laid upon the operating table, a small, but strong
and steady erection, four feet long by two feet wide, which stands in
the centre of the area. The left being the doomed leg, the right is
fastened by a bandage to one of the supports of the table, so as to
be out of harm’s way; while the dresser, who has special charge of
the case, is seated on a low stool at the foot of the table, and
supports the left. The surgeon who assists, encircles the upper part
of the thigh with the tourniquet, placing its pad over the femoral
artery, the chief vessel which supplies the limb with blood, and
prepares to screw up the instrument, thus to make sure that no
considerable amount of the vital fluid can be lost. The operator,
standing on the left side of the corresponding leg, and holding in his
right hand a narrow, straight knife, of which the blade is at least ten
inches long, and looks marvellously bright and sharp, directs his eye
to him who gives the chloroform, and awaits the signal that the
patient has become perfectly insensible. All is silence profound:
every assistant stands in his place, which is carefully arranged so as
not to intercept the view of those around.
The words “quite ready” are no sooner whispered, than the
operator, grasping firmly with his left hand the flesh which forms the
front part of the patient’s thigh, thrusts quietly and deliberately the
sharp blade horizontally through the limb, from its outer to its inner
side, so that the thigh is transfixed a little above its central axis, and
in front of the bone. He next cuts directly downwards, in the plane of
the limb, for about four inches, and then obliquely outwards, so as to
form a flap, which is seized and turned upwards out of the way by
the appointed assistant. A similar transfixion is again made,
commencing at the same spot, but the knife is this time carried
behind the bone; a similar incision follows, and another flap is
formed and held away as before. Lastly, with a rapid circular sweep
round the bone he divides all left uncut; and handing the knife to an
assistant, who takes it, and gives a saw in return, the operator
divides the bone with a few workmanlike strokes, and the limb is
severed from the body. A rustling sound of general movement and
deeper breathing is heard among the lookers-on, who have followed
with straining and critical eyes every act which has contributed to the
accomplishment of the task; and some one of the younger students
is heard to whisper to his neighbour, “Five and thirty seconds: not
bad, by Jove!”
The operator now seats himself on the stool just vacated by the
dresser, who has carried away the leg, and seeks in the cut surfaces
before him the end of the main artery on which to place a ligature.
There is no flow of blood, only a little oozing, for the tourniquet holds
life’s current hard and fast. Only five minutes’ uncontrolled flow of the
current from that great artery now so perfectly compressed, and our
patient’s career in this world would be closed for ever. How is it
permanently held in check? and what have we to substitute now for
the hissing, sparkling, and sputtering iron, and the boiling pitch? The
operator takes hold of the cut end of the artery with a slender,
delicately made pair of forceps, and draws it out a little, while an
assistant passes round the end so drawn out a ligature of
exceedingly fine whipcord, fine but strong, and carefully ties it there
with double knot, and so effectually closes the vessel. A similar
process is applied to perhaps six or seven other but smaller vessels,
the tourniquet is removed, and no bleeding ensues. Altogether the
patient has lost little more than half-a-pint of blood! The flaps are
placed in apposition, the bone is well covered by them, a few
stitches are put through their edges, some cool wet lint is applied all
around the stump, and the patient, slumbering peacefully, is carried
off to a comfortable bed ready prepared in some adjacent ward. Half
an hour hence that patient will regain consciousness, and probably
the first observation he makes will be, “I am quite ready for the
operation, when is it going to begin?” And it takes no little repetition
of the assurance that all is over to make him realize the happy truth.
So it is that he who loses the limb knows less about the process
than any one concerned; infinitely less, my gentle reader, than you
who have shared with us the quiet corner, and have seen all without
losing consciousness, or fainting. It was an early day in the medical
session, and many new men were there; one at least was observed
to become very—very pale, and then slowly disappear: no one
knows how or where, for neither we in the area nor those elsewhere
had leisure or care to inquire.
What might have happened to somebody else had he been
witness before these blessed days of chloroform, can, in the nature
of things, be only a matter for speculation. It may even be surmised
by some theorist, and without hazarding a very improbable guess,
that a similar catastrophe might, perhaps, under such aggravating
circumstances, and at a greener age, have rendered utterly futile, on
his part, any attempt to describe what modern skill and science now
accomplish in cutting off the leg of a patient Under Chloroform.