When the Greek lost the sterner virtues,
when his soldiers lost the fighting edge, and his statesmen grew
corrupt, while the people became a faction-torn and pleasure-loving
rabble, then the doom of Greece was at hand, and not all their
cultivation, their intellectual brilliancy, their artistic
development, their adroitness in speculative science, could save the
Hellenic peoples as they bowed before the sword of the iron Roman.
What is the lesson to us to-day? Are we to go the way of the older
civilizations? The immense increase in the area of civilized activity
to-day, so that it is nearly coterminous with the world's surface; the
immense increase in the multitudinous variety of its activities; the
immense increase in the velocity of the world movement--are all these
to mean merely that the crash will be all the more complete and
terrible when it comes? We cannot be certain that the answer will be
in the negative; but of this we can be certain, that we shall not go
down in ruin unless we deserve and earn our end. There is no necessity
for us to fall; we can hew out our destiny for ourselves, if only we
have the wit and the courage and the honesty.
Personally, I do not believe that our civilization will fall. I think
that on the whole we have grown better and not worse.
Pages:
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149