Evening star., 1933-09-10

say In conclusion that the notion Of God and
of nature Of DEATH Of fortune, 1000 years ago
was exactly as it Is today-only tolerance ana
freedom OF thought we're greater.
flnd In the ways In which the ancients
viewed the world one single conception that
appears to me fundamentally different from
ours I refer TO the wholly different attitude
of the ancients toward suicide. Only II we en-
ploy much imagination and auxiliary construc-
tions can We conceive what an immense role
this idea played In the life Of antiquity.
OUR churches forbid suicide, the laws Of
~ many countries even punish the attempt
In the ancient world a boy was taught and had
it impressed upon him from infancy that sui
eide was something immensely honorable. Sui
eide was intimately connected with the IDEA
Of liberty and Of personality; the resource OF
suicide made the human being independent OF
fate of the gods of emperors and OF tyfants
The whole existence Of the man of antiquity
was permeated by the idea OF suicide An un-
commonly large number Of the great men OF
antiquity-one out of three-are reported to
have ended by suicide. A dignified death bal
anced all failure.
Undoubtedly the thought Of being able to
extract ones self from all suffering by vol
untary death was. for those people a certain
solace in every bad situation: this thought
gave them throughout life the feeling Of abso-
lutte independence and spurred them on 70 the
most daring enterprises. Even in the girls
schools the most popular figure in the school
reader Is the wife who, after the failure OF
political enterprise stabs herself and hands
the dagger to- her husband with the woros
"Paetus 1t doesn't hurt"
On the other hand, antiquity lacked an IDEA
which we cannot at all imagine missing from
our conception Of the world. 1t was without
the concept Of race, Of the Nation and OF every
thing concerned Herewith. The ancient world
was spared all the evil which these two empty
words have brought upon US. For the con-
cept Of the race the ancients had not even
word. And with ama1ement We face the fact
that q region now needing 70 national Ian
guages and employing "a different codes OF
law at that time got along on three highly de-
veloped languages for both daily use and htera-
ture and on q single grandiose code Of law.
Nation-that was an empty echo-nefe
sound The Roman government at all events,
showed uncommon tolerance toward all re-
ligions nations, world PHILOSOPHERS. races. Even
during the Jewish war, for example, which was
waged with the greatest bitterness the Roman
government did not dream Of molesting IN the
least the millions of Jews then living OUTSIDE
of Judea on Roman territory. This freedom
from nationalism meant that the Roman En-
that constantly infects our civilizations-1 mean
miitarism
The fact that in the Roman Empire Europe
and the contiguous Asia and Africa remained
welded together during three centuries in
peaceful, highly civilized unity. such as never
has been attained a second time since then
allows no other explanation than that the
greatly preponderant majority of those people
were in accord with the governmental and
ol ordor hat III,
was not military force that kept 10O, 600 hu-
man beings together long time. may be
proved by very simple consideration. The
territory Of the Roman Empire is nowadays
inhabited by three times more people than then
But the army that kept order among those peo-
pie numbered not. as one might suppose, one
third of the troops required nowadays, but, de-
spite their inconceivably inferior armament.
only the fourteenth part of the troops of today
Concerning the strength Of the imperial
Roman army We have reliable figures Sixteen
thousand men were enough as garrison for
10000 600 Egyptians, 5000 for the populous Bal
kans 100 for densely settled France-on an
average of one soldier to town. Two hundred
thousand men without firearms sufhced for
population of 10O, 900 600.
h low please don't believe that am an un-
" critical humanistic extoller of ancient
times OF course, admire the organizing per-
Torrance of those Romans who created the
United States of Europe, unattained by US since
then. Longingly picture to myself that struc-
ture, free of militarism, united by law. What
an extraordinary feeling Of security must the
human being of that period have enjoyed, what
strength must he have derived from feeling
himself emplaced in a meaningfully composed
organism, and how little feeling Of security
k,oc r{v 70 otv fo fto fvdtV
Now you will promptly and justly reply that
the grandiose organization of that time was
bought at the price Of an enormous barbarism.
namely, the institution of slavery. I don't