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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: Zealand, or like the inhabitant of a Massachusetts town in tho
seventeenth century. Otherwise Gauls Samnites, or Bithynians, as
savage as North American Indians, would be sure to encamp upon
the blackened ruins of his town. Moreover, the Greek cities had
their quarrels with each other, and their laws of war were very
barbarous. A conquered city was liable to be razed to the ground,
its male inhabitants put to the sword, its women sold as slaves.
Under such circumstances, according to Taine's happy expression,
a citizen must be a politician and warrior, on pain of death. And
not only fear, but ambition also tended to make him so. For each
city strove to subject or to humiliate its neighbours, to acquire
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
