Milesians

“ I had often imagined what the condition of our world would be when it smiles under the light of the Millennium, but I minimized the glory that is yet to come to us, judging by what I saw on this delightfully charming planet. I have no assurance, however, that the coming Millennium of our world will be altogether similar to the one I saw. ”

“ And, this creation effected—so what one tribe or generation might ascribe to the single personification of a passion, a faculty, or a moral and social principle, another would just as naturally refer to a personal and more complex deity:—that which in one instance would form the very nature of a superior being, in the other would form only an attribute—swell the power and amplify the character of a Jupiter, a Mars, a Venus, or a Pan. ”

“ We, on the other hand, have been taught by the primeval philosophers of Greece, by the priests of ancient Egypt, and the sages of Babylon, to recognise in them the universal powers of nature, those children of the all- quickening spirit, which are but various emanations of the one primeval unity—say rather, various phases of that unity, as it has been variously conceived, according to the differences of climate and race, by the wise of different nations. ”

“ Self-renunciation guards the way to the 'tree of life.' That lesson was specially needed by 'Greeks,' for ignorance of it was the worm that gnawed the blossoms of their trees, whether of art or of literature. It is no less needed by our sensuously luxurious and eagerly acquisitive generation. ”

“ If the people will not serve the devil another moment whilst they live, if this congregation is possessed of that spirit and resolution, here in this house is the Millennium. Let the inhabitants of this city be possessed of that spirit, let the people of the territory be possessed of that spirit, and here is the Millennium. Let the whole people of the United States be possessed of that spirit, and here is the Millennium, and so will it spread over all the world. ”

“ The actual fact is that this Life has, profoundly or remotely, touched every personal life in Europe for a thousand years and has been the goal and standard for all aspiring souls. He is the pattern in the mount, the a fronte force which has drawn the individual and the race steadily up to their higher destiny. On the spiritual side of “the great divide” [36] the goal is in sight and the goal is an efficient factor in the process of the evolution of the man within man. ”

“ Then the millennium will come, the great vegetable millennium, in which the whole human race will stretch from world's end to world's end like rows of cabbages, each in his own place in straight lines, and all seated on the ground, as the hymn says. Why, the whole glory of the human race is that we're not content, not happy, missing something always, yearning for something that eludes us and glorifies our search.... ”

“ Every hour that passes increases our chances of holding out and conquering. It may be said, I know, that, from the point of view of beauty, enjoyment and the harmonious understanding of life, some nations—the Greeks and the Romans of the commencement of the Empire, for instance—were superior to ourselves. The fact none the [Pg 345] less remains that the sum total of civilization spread over our globe was never to be compared with that of to-day. ”

“ He had thought of little Greece and little England, and had realized that races, like individuals, are developed by adversity; and he had felt that in our strength there lay a weakness; in our extent, our numbers, and our wealth, a menace to our future. ”

“ When one looks back on that century as a whole,—on the turmoils and contrasts of its outer life, and on the results of its mental activity,—one is inclined to apply the old Greek saying to our academic commonwealths; "It is not the walls that make the city, but the men." ”

“ The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance, — as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, — to heap itself on that ridge, and to solidify and hem in the life. ”

“ Still, you know, from the point of view of society, which is a force we have always to reckon with—a constant, in fact, that we may call Pi—there can be no doubt in the world that to have been on the Continent is a differentiating factor in one’s social position. ”

“ From the study of the soul the mind moves easily to the upward movement of the race, as man journeys from hut to house, from tent to temple, from force to self-government and education and literature, from his flaming altar to the rising hymn and aspiring prayer. This tells us what contribution each race, Hebrew and Greek, Roman and Teuton, has made to civilization. Then come the books of life, wherein the qualities to be emulated are capitalized in the lives of the great, for biography is one of man's best teachers. ”

“ It was at first a wondrous Being, called the 'Initiator," and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings." Without at all attempting to explain the real nature of this mysterious Being or Race, we may assume that one of the things hinted at is the consciousness of united being possessed by these ancient Adepts. Walking abroad over the earth as instructors of a less progressed humanity, their wisdom and power had a common root. They taught truth from a heart-perception of life, ever fresh and eternal, everywhere pervading nature and welling up in themselves. ”

“ And the great mass of the Middle part of our community, the part which comes between those who labour with their hands, on the one side, and people of fortune on the other, is brought up at establishments of this kind, although there is a certain portion broken off at the top which is educated at better. But the great mass are both badly taught, and are also brought up on a lower plane than is right, brought up ignobly. And this deteriorates their standard of life, their civilization. ”

“ I have learned long ago that the thoughts and expressions of men are very diversified; if, indeed, their thoughts or ideas are similar, I know their words differ widely; so should I find a great many different opinions among this people, with regard to the real essence and effect of the Millennium. ”

“ It seems to me that the millennium is to come by an infusion into all society of a truer culture, which is neither of poverty nor of wealth, but is the beautiful fruit of the development of the higher part of man's nature. ”

“ So, here in the heart of England, was a self-dependent, self-supporting little colony of working folk, trying to better their condition by using the means close at hand; and if More's Utopia was not realised, as Sir Miles often felt it was not by a very long way, still, he thought he had set the feet of these people on the first rung of the ladder towards its attainment, and he could scarcely hope to do more, and must not attempt too much at once. ”

“ It is not confined, like other religions, to any one race—to any one clime—or any one form of political constitution. While it transmigrates freely from race to race, and clime to clime, its chief home; too, is still in the bosom of enterprise, wealth, science, and civilisation; and it is at this moment most powerful amongst the nations that have most of these. ”

“ Out of the medley state, which has now been described, the sciences file in the order of their simplicity, generality, and remoteness from religious, poetic, and political emotion.
The development of knowledge and of civilization, therefore, like that of the animal kingdom, is commensurate with the degree in which labour is divided, while perfect unity is retained. “Now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him. ”

“ I will take it as a basis and proceed [50] for my own purposes to discuss the Greek conceptions about progress. Those conceptions were complex, and, speaking roughly, we may say this: if belief in real progress implies belief in three things, namely, (1) an absolute standard apprehended, however dimly, by man, (2) a causal connexion between existence and perfection, and (3) a persistent advance through time, then the Greeks held to the first two and doubted, or even denied, the third. ”

“ Could those individuals in our time, who predict the near approach of the Millennium, see the length and breadth of this vast country, with its three hundred millions of souls, they would surely pause and reflect before they published their absurd and foolish predictions. ”

“ Sometimes philosophers say that the history of civilization is the history of great men. Confessing this, let us go on and note that the history of all great men is the history of their ideal hours, realized in conduct and character. Waking at midnight in his bleak garret, the vision splendid rose before John Milton. ”

“ The charm of Millais’s nature, with its swift alternation between absolute confidence in his own powers—in the form of its expression sometimes verging upon harmless arrogance—and those rarer moods of discouragement and self-abasement, was aptly imaged in his person and bearing. ”

“ His science was His Kingdom, therefore it was not of this world, and theirs being of this world, he called it the Kingdom of Darkness. To enter into Christ's Kingdom, or science, was to enter into the laws of knowledge, of curing the evils of this world of darkness. ”

“ This incessant interruption, he, one of the most impatient of men, submitted to, and wrote under that interruption several volumes of his History and all else that he had to write during those years.
The only thing besides Greek, that I learnt as a lesson in this part of my childhood, was arithmetic: this also my father taught me: it was the task of the evenings, and I well remember its disagreeableness. But the lessons were only a part of the daily instruction I received. Much of it consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father’s discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. ”

“ Only one great race in past ages, the Greek race, to whom we owe the inheritance of our ideas, succeeded in raising it to the level of chivalrous enthusiasm. Nevertheless, we find it present everywhere and in all periods of history. ”

“ Only one who has delved long in the biography and literature of this great age can realise the stupendous scholarship of the men of this period,—Coke, Selden, Bacon, Newton, Milton, and their contemporaries across the Channel, Grotius, Spinoza, and Galileo,—who, with the men of action of their day, make the century in which they lived one of the most significant since time began. ”

“ It was a question of race. This race of ours has been gifted by Providence with the qualities of manliness, of endurance, of a resolution which never flags. It has been its destiny to conquer and to maintain. ”

“ As my subject interests mankind in general, I shall endeavour to make use of a style adapted to all nations, or rather, forgetting time and place, to attend only to men to whom I am speaking. I shall suppose myself in the Lyceum of Athens, repeating the lessons of my masters, with Plato and Xenocrates for judges, and the whole human race for audience. ”

“ Therefore, when we speak of ourselves as divided into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace, we must be understood always to imply that within each of these classes there are a certain number of aliens, if we may so call them,—persons who are mainly led, not by their class spirit, but by a general humane spirit, by the love of human perfection ”

“ To what cause, then, do modern civilized peoples owe the victorious outburst of the instinct of causality which among the ancients found no adequate or methodical expression, or was satisfied with futile reasons? Must we say that among the Kelts and Germans, who soon vied with the Latin peoples in their ardor to share in this newly-awakened intellectual activity, this instinct was naturally stronger than among the Greeks and Romans? ”

“ And perhaps what human nature demands in civilization, over and above all those obvious things which first occur to our thoughts — what human nature, I say, demands in civilization, if it is to stand as a high and satisfying civilization, is best described by the word interesting. Here is the extraordinary charm of the old Greek civilization — that it is so interesting. Do not tell me only, says human nature, of the magnitude of your industry and commerce; of the beneficence of your institutions, your freedom, your equality ”

“ One instance in the book, by which the young Miles elucidates the connection of the subjective reason with the objective—that is of man's with that of God, has struck me from the same cause—namely, how different minds in far distant countries and under different circumstances arrive at the same results of thought ”

“ It may, in particular, seem surprising that the Greeks, who were so fertile in their speculations on human life, did not hit upon an idea which seems so simple and obvious to us as the idea of Progress. ”

“ After two or three hundred years of talking in the market place and of philosophic discussions prolonged until morning, such of the Greeks as were predisposed to speculation had thought all the thoughts and uttered all the criticisms of commonly accepted beliefs and of one another that could by any possibility occur to those who had little inclination to fare forth and extend their knowledge of the so-called realities of nature by painful and specialized research and examination. ”

“ European civility is the triumph of talent, the extension of system, the sharpened understanding, adaptive skill, delight in forms, delight in manifestation, in comprehensible results. Pericles, Athens, Greece, had been working in this element with the joy of genius not yet chilled by any foresight of the detriment of an excess. ”

“ He has fought every foot of the ground before us. We have to 'run the race'—to take another metaphor—'that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,' the great Leader, and in His own self the Perfecter of the faith which conquers. ”