TWO:Not that the vitality of Hellenic reason gave way simultaneously at every point. The same independent spirit, the same imaginative vigour which had carried physical speculation to such splendid conquests during the first two centuries of its existence were manifested with equal effect when the energies previously devoted to Nature as a whole concentratedxv themselves on the study of conduct and belief. It was thus that Socrates could claim the whole field of human life for scientific treatment, and create the method by which it has ever since been most successfully studied. It was thus that Plato could analyse and ideally reconstruct all practices, institutions, and beliefs. It was thus that Aristotle, while definitely arresting the progress of research, could still complete the method and create the language through which the results of new research have been established, recognised, and communicated ever since. It was thus that the Stoics advanced from paradox to paradox until they succeeded in co-ordinating morality for all time by reference to the three fundamental ideas of personal conscience, individual obligation, and universal humanity. And not only were dialectics and ethics at first animated by the same enterprising spirit as speculative physics, but their very existence as recognised studies must be ascribed to its decay, to the revolution through which philosophy, from being purely theoretical, became social and didactic. While in some directions thought was made stationary and even retrogressive by the very process of its diffusion, in other directions this diffusion was the cause of its more complete development. Finally, ethics and logic were reduced to a scholastic routine, and progress continued to be made only in the positive sciences, until, here also, it was brought to an end by the triumph of superstition and barbarism combined.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla pretium lectus vel justo iaculis blandit. Nulla facilisi. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.
THREE:I myself was not very safe either, for frequently236 bursting shells fell near me. I therefore thought it safer to cross to a farm-house a hundred yards farther on, where I might find shelter. Before I got there an officer of a passing division took me violently by the arm and asked who I was and what I was doing there? His eyes glittered savagely, and he as well as his men seemed to be fearfully excited.The analogy between modern Europe and the Roman262 empire is, however, as we have already hinted, merely superficial. It has been shown in the course of our analysis that to ensure the triumph of superstition in the old world something more was necessary than the destruction of aristocratic government. Every feeling of libertyexcept the liberty to dieand almost every feeling of self-respect had to be crushed out by the establishment of an authoritative hierarchy extending from the Emperor down to the meanest slaves, before the voice of Hellenic reason could be hushed. But among ourselves it is rather of the opposite faultof too great independence and individualismthat complaints are heard. If we occasionally see a hereditary monarch or a popular minister invested with despotic power, this phenomenon is probably due to the circumstances of a revolutionary period, and will in course of time become more and more exceptional. Flatterers, parasites, and will-hunters are not an increasing but a diminishing class. Modern officers, as a body, show none of that contempt for reasoning and amenability to superstition which characterised the Roman centurions; in France, military men are even distinguished for their deadly hatred of priests. And, what is more important than any other element in our comparison, the reserves which modern civilisation is bringing to the front are of a widely different intellectual stature and equipment from their predecessors under Augustus and the Antonines. Since the reorganisation of industry by science, millions of working-men have received an education which prepares them to understand the universality of law much better than the literary education given to their social superiors, which, indeed, bears a remarkable resemblance to the rhetorical and sophistical training enjoyed by the contemporaries of Maximus Tyrius and Apuleius. If as much cannot be said of the middle classes, they are at any rate far more enlightened than Roman provincials, and are likely to improve still further with the spread of educationanother peculiarly modern phenomenon.263 On this point we have, indeed, something better to argue from than priori probabilities. We see before our eyes the rationalistic movement advancing pari passu with the democratic movement, and, in some countries, overtly aided by it. To say that this alliance has been provoked by an accidental and temporary association of monarchy and aristocracy with Church establishments, is a superficial explanation. The paid advocates of delusion know well where their interest lies. They have learned by experience that democracy means the education of the people, and that the education of the people means the loss of their own prestige. And they know also that, in many cases, the people are already sufficiently educated to use political power, once they have obtained it, for the summary destruction of organised and endowed superstition. What has been said of popular influence applies equally to the influence of women. When they were either not educated at all or only received a literary education, every improvement in their position was simply so much ground gained for superstition. The prospect is very different now. Women are beginning to receive a training like that of men, or rather a training superior to what all but a very few men have hitherto enjoyed. And the result is that, wherever this experiment has been tried, they have flung aside traditional beliefs once supposed to be a necessity of their nature even more decisively and disdainfully than have the professors by whom they are taught.- Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
- Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
- Nulla lorem ipsum sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.