The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1874-02-14

it that we can hope 10 improve upon the
fate of Greece and Rome. America has
based her institutions upon the intelligence
of the masses, not upon the will of fav-
ored aristocracy.
The contrast between America and Rome
is that in one. education is general and
justice, peace and humanity are inculcated,
in the other the people were trained almost
exclusively for war; while the government
rested for its stability upon the will of the
aristocracy, much of which was sunk in
| the lowest ignorance; labor was disgrace
! ful and the mass of the people were sVaces
/ Rome may have been model republic but
! it was not based as any permanent govern
ment must be, upon general intelligence.
Nothing but popular ignorance, and that
dense enough to be felt, could have per-
mitted the Triumvirate or the despotisms
( of Tiberus, Nero or Commodus. Her
later rulers too based their power on the
} ignorance and slavery of the lower classes
and the corruption of the higher ones.
This can never happen in America as no
matter how corrupt the wealthior classes
may become, there is substratum of intel
! ligence below them on which the govern
ment can safely rest.
! Greece fell because the teachings Of the
/ Academus reached so few. Could those
I teachings have been made general her fate
might have been better. Sparta came as
. Jar ca
under control of the state as has ever been
/ done, but the mass OF the people were
/ ignorant slaves, and their ignorant vicious
ness re-actng upon the citizens helped to
drag both down to ruin. \ class reared in
ignorance, is always everywhere 4 source
OF weakness as the mind that knowledge
does not reach is sure to adopt unframed
viciousness instead. No mind can be kept
blank; if no other harvest is produced
crop of weeds is always to be secured.
{ We are making the same experiment
| Greece and Rome made, but they depended
on an aristocracy of birth or wealth, we
have substituted political equality and uni
versal education. 1t is dependent on how
! faithfully we carry out those ideas whether
or not our fate is to be better than theirs.
| The hope of America to-day is in its public
schools. UairersM suffrage can on1y be
| sustained By unicersal education.
| What learning there may have been in
! Rome in the Augustan era, appears to
have been pretty well dissipated against
/ a. 6
ready to plunge into the moral, social and
political darkness of the middle ages
| While it may be said that it was barbaric
invasions that overthrow the little intel
decay of literature and its consequent
social Generalization that made those bar
/ barian attacks successful.
| To us it seems strange how the wild
stitions, its hopeless idolatry, could have
arisen, but the answer was, simple, univer-
sal ignorance. One of the mistakes of the
early church seems to have been that ii
discouraged al study OF the Old Latin lit
erature, the council of Carthage in 39S
| going so far as to forbid the reading of sec
! ular books No wonder that under such
| circumstances even the language became
corrupt, until at last it ceased to be a
spoken tongue, while half dozen others
sprung from it as a common root. When
| Latin ceased to be the spoken language the
/ very treasury Of ancient literature was
| 1a+n tha
| pie, and all legal instruments being in
! Latin, the knowledge Of letters was so far
/ forgotten that it was rare for a layman to
! be able to read or write. 1t would seem
not write their names, yet such was the
case a few hundred years ago among those
simple great ones, gone forever and ever
by" May God forbid that such should
ever return.
So dense was the ignorance in those
ages that it is said neither Charlemagne
nor Frederic Barbarossa could read or
write. Under such circumstances it was
giant power it did. An era of almost uni
versal ignorance gave the opportunity to
build up a system, preserving all that was
vicious in all the ancient religions. An
ignorant people, sunk in slavery, vice and
misery, believing that the priesthood held
the keys of heaven, too ignorant to either
understand or condemn the immortality Of
the church, gave an opportunity for the
! Of ba nf
as can never happen again.
One name here and there looms up
through the universal gloom of those ages,
but they only serve to make the darkness
more apparent. Gerbert, one Of the grand
est scholars of his time. reached the papal
chair, but he is considered by his church to
have been wizard for whose soul Satan
himself came when the time was up for
which he had sold himself. The story
that after lie had slept in his tomb for Gen.
turtles, that or opening the coffin the body
was found reposing as in life, but that
while the bystanders were looking on, it
disappeared in blaze of sulphureous
flames, is still told and is no doubt as au-
thentic as most of the miracles of the
"church.'
Monkery seems one of the strangest per-
versions of reiig ious thought in history,
yet it illustrates the principle that insttu.
tions wholly evil may produce good results.
The monastic institutions were less trou-
bled by the almost incessant turmols of
war and SO furnished safer repositories for
the few books that did exist, and among
those books some little taste for student
life was developed. Some monk looking
vainly for the elixir of life, or the philoso-
piers stone was the father Of modern
chemistry; monkery arranging the clois-
ter's manuscripts caught taste for histor-
zeal writing or scholastic studies.
To US, familiar with all the absurditics
of modern spiritualism or the wild enthu-
siastc excitements of camp-meeting relig-
ion, it is too early to condemn absolutely
the supcrstitons of the past. We can
understand partially at least the causes