Publisher description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 edition. Excerpt: ...of early societies was that they had to bring wild men with rudimentary social instincts to live together in States. The caste-system effected this admirably, and hence the early civilizations were all distinguished by the rigid and rigorous character of the social Organization. But subsequently, as the structure consolidated and ossified, it became incompatible with the mobility requisite; the ancient civilizations were, as it were, stifled in the armour which had protected them; their institutions became too rigid to be adapted to the changing conditions of life. And above all, the system depressed individuality too completely. The time came when there was need for it, when the individual's energy and sense of responsibility alone could save the State, and when they were not forthcoming. What wonder then that the earliest civilizations decayed and perished, and that their cumbrous organizations collapsed for the same reasons as the State of the Incas collapsed when Pizarro had seized its ruler? So, too, the Persians could not conquer Greece; because the blind onset of slaves was no match for the voluntary combination of intelligent men who knew the value of individual effort. Again, Greek civilization was in some ways more perfect than ours; their ideas of the formal perfection of science, of ethics, and of a noble life generally, were higher than any to which we dare to aspire. But the basis of Greek civilization was extremely narrow, and so it was fatally unstable. It developed the individual to an unequalled perfection, but at a heavy cost The economic basis of the "noble" life of social leisure was slavery. The Greek ideal of life was 1 "Physics and Politics." THE REASON OF THE FALL OF GREECE. 2 2"J one for
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Riddles of the Sphinx; A Study in the Philosophy of Evolution
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