Homo unius libri
Encyclopedia
Homo unius libri (Latin, meaning "man of one book") is a phrase that is generally attributed to Thomas Aquinas
. According to a literary tradition at least three centuries old, Saint Thomas Aquinas is reputed to have employed the phrase "hominem unius libri timeo" (meaning "I fear the man of a single book").
Joseph Needham
, in the general conclusions to his masterwork, the series Science and Civilisation in China, observed of the familiar tag, "It could mean that this man has only read one book, has only written one book, does not possess more than one book, or puts his faith in one book only. The fear that is felt may be on behalf of the man himself. Having read so little he is quite at the mercy of his one book!"
The poet Robert Southey
recalled the tradition in which the quotation became embedded:
Southey quotes Lope de Vega
in the same vein (translation):
Southey's version of the quote was taken up by John Bartlett
(1820-1905), the compiler of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
(ninth edition, 1902, p. 853).
The familiar thought was paralleled by the Augustan poet Alexander Pope
:
Edward Everett
applied the remark "not only to the man of one book, but also to the man of one idea, in whom the sense of proportion is lacking, and who sees only that for which he looks."
Aquinas' phrase was consciously turned on its head by John Wesley
, who informed a correspondent that it was "in 1730 I began to be homo unius libri, to study (comparatively) no book but the Bible." He wrote privately on another occasion
Wesley used it more publicly in the Preface to his collected sermons;
Wesley's point, made emphatic through hyperbole
, was the primacy for him of Scripture. Tradition, reason and experience, along with scripture were all part of his hermeneutical model. They were, however, not all equal: the Bible was sufficient. Wesley's spiritual heirs, in the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church (1996) affirm that:
Like Methodists in the strict Wesleyan tradition of depending upon the One Book, many seventeenth century and modern radical Protestants pride themselves on being homines unius libri. The poet William Collins
in his deranged condition, met by chance his old friend Dr. Samuel Johnson, who found Collins carrying a New Testament. "I have but one book," said Collins, "but it is the best". Collins' epitaph in Chichester Cathedral
reads, in part:
Sought on one book his troubled mind to rest,
And wisely deemed the book of God the best.
The writer and naturalist Charles Kingsley
, following the tradition laid down by Gilbert White
in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), invoked the proverb in favour of knowing completely one small area. "A lesson is never learnt till it is learnt over many times, and a spot is best understood by staying in it and mastering it. In natural history the old scholar's saw Cave hominem unius libri may be paraphrased by, 'He is a thoroughly good naturalist who knows one parish thoroughly.'"
In Samuel Butler
's The Way of All Flesh
(1903), a publisher uses the phrase to describe the novel's protagonist, Ernest Pontifex, who is a writer with only one commercially or critically successful work: "'Mr Pontifex,' he
said, 'is a homo unius libri, but it doesn't do to tell him so.'"
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
. According to a literary tradition at least three centuries old, Saint Thomas Aquinas is reputed to have employed the phrase "hominem unius libri timeo" (meaning "I fear the man of a single book").
Interpretations
Aquinas's phrase has been interpreted in various ways. The literary critic Clarence Brown described the phrase in his introduction to a novel by Yuri Olesha:- "[Aquinas's] words are generally quoted today in disparagement of the man whose mental horizons are limited to one book. Aquinas, however, meant that a man who has thoroughly mastered one good book can be dangerous as an opponent. The Greek poet ArchilochusArchilochusArchilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...
meant something like this when he said that the foxFoxFox is a common name for many species of omnivorous mammals belonging to the Canidae family. Foxes are small to medium-sized canids , characterized by possessing a long narrow snout, and a bushy tail .Members of about 37 species are referred to as foxes, of which only 12 species actually belong to...
knows many things but the hedgehogHedgehogA hedgehog is any of the spiny mammals of the subfamily Erinaceinae and the order Erinaceomorpha. There are 17 species of hedgehog in five genera, found through parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and New Zealand . There are no hedgehogs native to Australia, and no living species native to the Americas...
knows one big thing."
Joseph Needham
Joseph Needham
Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, CH, FRS, FBA , also known as Li Yuese , was a British scientist, historian and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941, and as a fellow of the British...
, in the general conclusions to his masterwork, the series Science and Civilisation in China, observed of the familiar tag, "It could mean that this man has only read one book, has only written one book, does not possess more than one book, or puts his faith in one book only. The fear that is felt may be on behalf of the man himself. Having read so little he is quite at the mercy of his one book!"
The poet Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
recalled the tradition in which the quotation became embedded:
- "When St Thomas Aquinas was asked in what manner a man might best become learned, he answered, 'By reading one book'; 'meaning,' says Bishop TaylorJeremy TaylorJeremy Taylor was a clergyman in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of expression and was often presented as a model of prose writing...
, 'that an understanding entertained with several objects is intent upon neither, and profits not. The homo unius libri is indeed proverbially formidable to all conversational figurantes. Like your sharp-shooter, he knows his piece perfectly, and is sure of his shot." — Robert Southey, The Doctor, p. 164.
Southey quotes Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega
Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...
in the same vein (translation):
- For a noteworthy student is he,
- The man of a single book.
- For when they were not filled up
- With so many extraneous books,
Southey's version of the quote was taken up by John Bartlett
John Bartlett (publisher)
John Bartlett was an American writer and publisher whose best known work, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, has been continually revised and reissued for a century after his death.-Biography:...
(1820-1905), the compiler of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, often simply called Bartlett's, is an American reference work that is the longest-lived and most widely distributed collection of quotations...
(ninth edition, 1902, p. 853).
The familiar thought was paralleled by the Augustan poet Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
:
- A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
- Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
- There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
- And drinking largely sobers us again. —
Edward Everett
Edward Everett
Edward Everett was an American politician and educator from Massachusetts. Everett, a Whig, served as U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator, the 15th Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and United States Secretary of State...
applied the remark "not only to the man of one book, but also to the man of one idea, in whom the sense of proportion is lacking, and who sees only that for which he looks."
Aquinas' phrase was consciously turned on its head by John Wesley
John Wesley
John Wesley was a Church of England cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield...
, who informed a correspondent that it was "in 1730 I began to be homo unius libri, to study (comparatively) no book but the Bible." He wrote privately on another occasion
- "I receive the written word as the whole and sole rule of my faith..... From the very beginning, from the time that four young men united together, each of them was homo unius libri... They had one, and only one, rule of judgement with which to regard all their tempers, words and actions; namely, the oracles of God."
Wesley used it more publicly in the Preface to his collected sermons;
- "He came from heaven; He hath written it down in a book. O give me that Book! At any price, give me the Book of God. I have it; here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri!"
Wesley's point, made emphatic through hyperbole
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally....
, was the primacy for him of Scripture. Tradition, reason and experience, along with scripture were all part of his hermeneutical model. They were, however, not all equal: the Bible was sufficient. Wesley's spiritual heirs, in the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church (1996) affirm that:
- "Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience and confirmed by reason."
Like Methodists in the strict Wesleyan tradition of depending upon the One Book, many seventeenth century and modern radical Protestants pride themselves on being homines unius libri. The poet William Collins
William Collins (poet)
William Collins was an English poet. Second in influence only to Thomas Gray, he was an important poet of the middle decades of the 18th century...
in his deranged condition, met by chance his old friend Dr. Samuel Johnson, who found Collins carrying a New Testament. "I have but one book," said Collins, "but it is the best". Collins' epitaph in Chichester Cathedral
Chichester Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, otherwise called Chichester Cathedral, is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Chichester. It is located in Chichester, in Sussex, England...
reads, in part:
Sought on one book his troubled mind to rest,
And wisely deemed the book of God the best.
The writer and naturalist Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the Church of England, university professor, historian and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and northeast Hampshire.-Life and character:...
, following the tradition laid down by Gilbert White
Gilbert White
Gilbert White FRS was a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist.-Life:White was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He was educated at the Holy Ghost School and by a private tutor in Basingstoke before going to Oriel College, Oxford...
in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), invoked the proverb in favour of knowing completely one small area. "A lesson is never learnt till it is learnt over many times, and a spot is best understood by staying in it and mastering it. In natural history the old scholar's saw Cave hominem unius libri may be paraphrased by, 'He is a thoroughly good naturalist who knows one parish thoroughly.'"
In Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh...
's The Way of All Flesh
The Way of All Flesh
The Way of All Flesh is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler which attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family. It represents a relaxation from the religious outlook from a Calvinistic approach, which is presented as...
(1903), a publisher uses the phrase to describe the novel's protagonist, Ernest Pontifex, who is a writer with only one commercially or critically successful work: "'Mr Pontifex,' he
said, 'is a homo unius libri, but it doesn't do to tell him so.'"
External links
- Johnston McMaster, Hermeneutics in the Wesleyan Understanding
- Eugene H. Ehrlich, Amo Amas Amat and More: How to use Latin to Your Own Advantage and the Astonishment of Others, p. 279. "An observation attributed to Aquinas"
- Robert Southey, The Doctor, &c, (1848), Interchapter VII (e-text)