Note E30 — Chapter XXV · EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM—HISTORIC. AMERICA.
Reading edition
The speculative habit has so debauched public sentiment in England and America that distinguished authors hesitate not to give free expression to a feeling of contempt for the ancients because of their failure to engage in colossal swindling operations, as witness the following:
“The charges of fraud [in the Attic courts], which are many, are of the vulgarest and simplest kind, depending upon violence, on false swearing, and upon evading judgment by legal devices. There is not a single case of any large or complicated swindling, such as is exhibited by the genius of modern English and American speculators. There is not even such ingenuity as was shown by Verres in his government of Sicily to be found among the clever Athenians.”—“Social Life in Greece,” p. 408. By the Rev. J. P. Mahaffy, F.T.C.D. London: Macmillan & Co., 1883.
[E31] “On all hands of us, there is the announcement, audible enough, that the Old Empire of Routine has ended; that to say a thing has long been, is no reason for its continuing to be. The things which have been are fallen into decay, are fallen into incompetence; large masses of mankind, in every society of our Europe, are no longer capable of living at all by the things which have been. When millions of men can no longer by their utmost exertion gain food for themselves, and ‘the third man for thirty-six weeks each year is short of third-rate potatoes,’ the things which have been must decidedly prepare to alter themselves!”—“Lectures on Heroes,” p. 157. By Thomas Carlyle. Chapman & Hall’s People’s Edition.
“Change the sources of a river, and you will change it throughout its whole course; change the education of a people, and you will alter their character and their manners:”—“Studies of Nature,” Vol. II., p. 575. By Bernardin St. Pierre. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1846.