Human antiquity

“ As a necessary consequence of this, the dramas of antiquity were destitute of those feelings of PIETY, which form so important a part in the most elevated characters of modern Europe. The ancients carried mere human virtue to the very highest point; in their poetry, their tragedies, their philosophy, they represented man resting on himself alone in the noblest aspect. ”

“ The learned, who were chiefly in the possession of this knowledge, and who were incapable of distinguishing themselves by works of their own, claimed for the ancients an unlimited authority, and with great appearance of reason, since they are models in their kind. Maintaining that nothing could be hoped for the human mind but from an imitation of antiquity, in the works of the moderns they only valued what resembled, or seemed to bear a resemblance to, those of the ancients. ”

“ And yet this innate tendency to magnify and extend into the dim, illimitable regions of antiquity whatever of human effort is deemed most worthy, is a source of difficulty to the conscientious student. Amid the wild growth of myth and marvel the antiquary or archæologist warily treads his way to surer ground, and out of scattered fragments of a by-gone age constructs anew an old order of existence, or opens a vista to the mind’s eye through which glimpses may be gained of the habits and inner life of our remote ancestors. ”

“ In the mean time, the manners, monuments, customs, practices, and opinions of antiquity, by forming so strong a contrast with those of our own times, and by exhibiting human nature and human inventions in new lights, in unexpected appearances, and in various forms, are objects which forcibly strike a feeling imagination. ”

“ One of these kinds of antiquity consists in the study of the habits and works of our distant predecessors and forefathers, who lived on this earth, and perhaps in this segment of it, many ages ago. The other kind of antiquity consists of the study of those archaic human habits and works which may, in some corners of the world, be found still prevailing among our fellow-men—or even among our own fellow-countrymen—down to the present hour, in despite of all the blessings of human advancement, and the progress of human knowledge. ”

“ So much of human frailty attaches to these, as to all other labours of the human head and hand, as should exclude a fond or superstitious regard to them;—yet the amount of error is far from being enough to shake our confidence in the genuineness and integrity of these precious relics of antiquity—taken as a whole. ”

“ Beyond question, this new land "within" is the home, the cradle, of the human race, and viewed from the standpoint of the discoveries made by us, must of necessity have a most important bearing on all physical, paleontological, archaeological, philological and mythological theories of antiquity. ”

“ The accounts of the discoveries of prehuman remains, connecting by gradations with races now living, are extending into remote periods our conception of the antiquity of man. These matters arouse interest and discussion, and the sweep of all these discoveries brings with it a widening of the horizon of human understanding. ”

“ This all-around development of the whole man, as essential to human evolution, is everywhere insisted upon by all the great Masters of antiquity, and is illustrated and exemplified in the genuine Greater Mysteries. ”

“ Through their eyes, as it were, we are enabled to visualize prehistoric times; and, as a result of their work, modern man gains a new conception of the antiquity of his race and speech; he is able to understand better than ever before the unfolding of the human spirit as it occurred in very early times. ”

“ To the human world, thus unveiling itself, the individual who sought to make it serve his purposes required a guide; and the guide was found in the ancient literature of Greece and Rome. Hence the whole transformation, which presently extended from Italy to Northern Europe, is known as the Renaissance, or rebirth of classical antiquity. ”

“ When it was written the subject was a particularly thorny one to handle, and it undoubtedly required much courage to tackle the origin and development of the human race from a purely critical and scientific standpoint. It must be admitted on all hands that the result was eminently successful, taking into account the paucity of the available material, and the "Antiquity of Man" must ever remain one of the classics of prehistoric archaeology. ”

“ Another common mistake is that of confusing art with archaeology. The veneration born of antiquity is one of the best traits in the human character, and fain would we have it cultivated to a greater extent. The old masters are rightly to be honoured for opening the path to future enlightenment. ”

“ and, as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity. ”

“ We are the Greeks and the Romans, made what we now are by their deeds and thoughts and experiences, our world their world, at a later stage of an evolution never interrupted but always one and single. Our births and deaths are but a sleep and a forgetting in the unbroken biography of a spirit, not above but in us all, which is the hero of the history of European civilization, itself a part of the history of Humanity. Thus the history of Antiquity, and especially of Classical Antiquity, is the record of the thoughts and deeds of our own youth. ”

“ Antiquitas seculi iuventus mundi; what we call antiquity and are accustomed to revere as such was the youth of the world. But it is the old age and increasing years of the world—the time in which we are now living—that deserves in truth to be called antiquity. ”

“ AS my own knowledge of and interest in anthropology are confined to the great outlines, rather than to the special details of the science, I propose to give a very brief and general sketch of the modern doctrine as to the Antiquity and Origin of Man, and to suggest certain points of difficulty which have not, I think, yet received sufficient attention.
Many now present remember the time (for it is little more than twenty years ago) when the antiquity of man, as now understood, was universally discredited. ”

“ To my Lord PEMBROKE. I Have sometimes in travelling been apt, within my own mind, to make a comparison between the excellence of the study of Philosophy, and that commonly called Antiquity, that is, ancient history. ”

“ All the arguments, archæological and philological, erected and advanced by mere erudition will not convince me to the contrary. To some people antiquity is a living [224] thing, a warm and glowing environment, a world with the paths and manners of which they are better acquainted than with the streets of every day. ”

“ The various facts, above alluded to, serve to connect the literary remains of antiquity—now in our hands, with the period of their pristine existence:—we traverse the long era of general ignorance—that wide gulf which separates the intelligence and civilization of antiquity from the intelligence and civilization of modern times, and we land, as it were, upon the native soil of these monuments of Mind, and we once more find ourselves surrounded by that abundance of evidence which belongs to an advanced state of knowledge. ”

“ We use the term in deference to universal custom, although Francis Bacon protested 250 years ago that “Antiquity, as we call it, is the young state of the world; for those times are ancient when the world is ancient, and not those we vulgarly account ancient by computing backwards—so that the present time is the real Antiquity.”—Advancement of Learning, I. See also Novum Organum. ”

“ In the light of this idea, the historian felt that he had come to understand all the better ancient civilisation and our own, and that his eyes were able to pierce more deeply into the shadowy depths of human destiny. ”

“ Ancients, were indeed new in all things, and properly formed the infancy of mankind; and since to their knowledge we have joined the experience of the ages which have followed them, it is in ourselves that is to be found that antiquity which we revere in others. ”

“ My aim is simply to show that the old civilization can boast of its glories in literature, as well as in art, and that the mind of man never more nobly asserted its power than in Greece and Rome. Our present civilization delights in those philosophers, poets, and historians, who caught their inspiration from the great pagan models which have survived the wreck of material greatness. The human intellect achieved some of its greatest feats before Christianity was born. ”

“ And when men appeal to antiquity and tell us that "this is not the primitive tradition," the Church answers: Were you ever in antiquity, or anyone that belongs to you? I was there, and as a perpetual witness antiquity is to me nothing but my early days. Antiquity exists in my consciousness to this hour, as men grown to riper years remember their childhood. Men of the world know that the contemporaneous interpretation of a law is the most authentic and certain interpretation. ”

“ For they had little knowledge of the present workings of nature, and they read the records of geologic time as a child reads the history of Rome or Greece, and fancies that antiquity was grand, heroic, and unlike the present because it is unlike his little experience of the present. ”

“ But we, whose thoughts have been so multiplied and who speak with so many tongues, are in a position, as our fathers were not, to realise to what elements in our own speech, to what stage of our own past, the language and thoughts of each epoch of antiquity correspond, and, realising this, to give the great works of antiquity a rendering which, if sometimes suffering from the defects of a compromise, is absolutely the best possible. ”

“ The principal facts of ancient history, and the authenticity of the works from which chiefly our knowledge of antiquity is derived, are now freely admitted, after a few exceptive instances have been set off, which are unproved, or doubtful. ”

“ How fascinating is Antiquity!—in what a golden haze the ancients lived their lives! We, too, are ancients. Of our enchanting time Posterity's great poets will sing immortal songs, and its archaeologists will reverently uncover the foundations of our palaces and temples. ”

“ Far-sighted were the initiates of antiquity. They realized that nations come and go, that empires rise and fall, and that the golden ages of art, science, and idealism are succeeded by the dark ages of superstition. ”

“ And so it may seem strange to some that we should go on troubling ourselves to acquire an idea of antiquity, although we have nothing before us but ruins, out of which we must first painfully reconstruct the very thing we wish to form an idea of. ”

“ ANCIENTS AND MODERNS.
No. I.
It has been ascertained by the researches of a curious investigator, [270] that many celebrated philosophers of recent times have, for the most part, taken what they advance from the works of the ancients. These modern acquisitions are numerous and important; and as it is presumed that many may be instructed, and more be surprised by their enumeration, a succinct account of them is proposed.
It appears as unjust to praise and admire nothing but what savours of antiquity, as to despise whatever comes from thence, and to approve of nothing but what is recent. ”

“ We glance with admiration at his morning work in iron and bronze and brass, his noontime of Athenian culture, his late hours of reflection and invention, and we seek however feebly to illumine the night of his future; but we tend to overlook the antiquity of man, the record of other days and years, and to avoid the question whether civilization is not, after all, still in the experimental stage—whether we ourselves are not next-door neighbors to the barbarian. ”

“ Nor was this all; the influence of the civilization of the Renaissance, of a civilization directly issued from the Middle Ages, was entirely at variance with the influence of antique civilization through the medium of ancient art; the Middle Ages and Antiquity, Christianity and Paganism, were even more opposed to each other than could be the statue and the easel picture, the fresco and the bas-relief. ”

“ The Renaissance of science and art in the fifteenth century, together with the resurrection of the knowledge of antiquity, revived the philosophical and aesthetical ideals of Greek life and transferred them to modern life. ”

“ It is only slowly making its way towards the recognized method and the recognized principles which even an art requires. Here, it seemed, a student of ancient history might proffer parallels from antiquity, and especially from the Hellenistic and Roman ages, which somewhat resemble the present day in their care for the well-being of the individual. ”

“ To a complete knowledge of this civilization belongs all that the ancients possessed or did, all that they thought or wrote, whether or not any particular part of it had an influence upon later times or is, in itself, interesting or valuable now. All parts alike are phenomena of the life of these ancient peoples and so of the life of the human race. ”

“ Truly ‘the lines have fallen to us in pleasant places, and we have a goodly heritage.’ But it were unjust to look back to antiquity and compare the beauties of the present day with the deformities of ancient times; to attribute exclusive perfection to ourselves and deprive our ancestors of their real worth and merit; for we know not the period among them when wisdom and virtue were lightly esteemed. ”