|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: Neither of these tendencies was favourable to literature. There was no
sense of beauty either in language or in art. The Greek world became
vacant, barbaric, oriental. No one had anything new to say, or any
conviction of truth. The age had no remembrance of the past, no power of
understanding what other ages thought and felt. The Catholic faith had
degenerated into dogma and controversy. For more than a thousand years not
a single writer of first-rate, or even of second-rate, reputation has a
place in the innumerable rolls of Greek literature.
If we seek to go deeper, we can still only describe the outward nature of
the clouds or darkness which were spread over the heavens during so many
ages without relief or light. We may say that this, like several other
|
