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Untitled Article
the wild and joyous wassailers of Lesser Asia * anj | , j ^ ^ |^ . te r d ^ y , the Demos of Athens , —these were the witnesses a ^ j | ie ^ tiieir intellectual prowess . Need we wopJK ^^^ C ^ ljtero were giants in those days' ? S | ^ * _ We may here notice one circumstance , eminently , though by
no means exclusively , characteristic of the civilization of antiquity , which perhaps is not generally estimated at its just value : we { neap the bustling , active , social sort of life commonly led by the ancients . The men of those days , we speak now of the Greeks only , were emphatically men of action . That division of labour which the unprecedented accumulation of employment has
necessitated with us in every branch of mental , as well as physical exertion , was comparatively unknown . The great thinkers of pld were not mere thinkers . They lived with their fellows ^ as weU as for them . The home of an Ath en ian was- the agora or the , camp ; debating or campaigning hi s ^ natural occupation , Take one instance out of many : the hand that has recorded for \ is the teachings of Socrates , wielded the sword at Coronaea , AncJ we do not know that the Memorabilia are the worse for tie
martial heroism , of tUe leader of the ten thousand . This regulate 4 union of action an < d contemplation , 1 ^ ls in every age formed great minds . To analyse its workings is'bey&nd and abpve us ; suffice it to name the nam . es of Dante , Camoens , Cervantes , and Milpon , as great and abiding evidences of the general fact , that the joint culture of our aptive and reflective powers , widely different as they $ , re , and discordant as they seem , gives life and strength to , eacji , In this hasty outline of the intellectual influences of antiquity ,
we have said nothing of tbjfehinderances which then assailed genius . The truth is , that as these Ufrere of a negative , rather than a positive cast , we apprehend they will readily suggest themselves on the . perusal of some subsequent parts of this paper . We . wilj therefore not stop to enumerate them now , but pass at once to the second head of our inquiry , under which we p ropose to adduce
some considerations respecting the bearings of the present age Ou the intellectual interests of man , And here the first thing that strikes us as deserving remark , jg , that from a multiplicity of circumstances , the converse in great measure of those which we have alread y noticed , the development of modern genius is attended with various and protracted Relays-It is a work of time . Intellect , in our days , has very much to
learn before it can undertake to teach , Or it would be more to th © point to say , it has much to learn from others , before it car * look for instruction to itself . Modern genius , on first awakening to a sense of its rights and duties in the great economy of thi ^ universe , finds much of that ground cleared and built on , over which antiquity roved in all the freedom and majesty of spUt ^ ry independence . It has a long and weary journey to accomplish ,
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On the Development efGfanwt . ## 9
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 559, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/55/
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