Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2: Studies from the Chronicles of RomeCrawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
History
Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2: Studies from the Chronicles of Rome
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Rome (Italy) -- Description and travel
Civilization has nothing to do with morality. That is rather a shocking
statement, perhaps, but it is a true one. It may be balanced by saying
that civilization has nothing to do with immorality either. The early
Christians were looked upon as very uncivilized people by the Romans of
their time, and the meanest descendants of the Greeks secretly called
the Romans themselves barbarians. In point of civilization and what we
call cultivation, Alcibiades was immeasurably superior to Saint Paul,
Peter the Hermit or Abraham Lincoln, though Alcibiades had no morality
to speak of and not much conscience. Moreover, it is a fact that great
reformers of morals have often been great enemies of art and destroyers
of the beautiful. Fra Bartolommeo, who is thought by many to have
equalled Raphael in the latter's early days, became a follower of
Savonarola, burned all his wonderful drawings and studies, and shut
himself up in a monastery to lead a religious life; and though he
yielded after several years to the command of his superiors, and began
painting again, he confined himself altogether to devotional subjects as
long as he lived, and fell far behind Raphael, who was certainly not an
exemplary character, even in those days.
In Europe, and in the Latin languages, there is a distinction, and a
universally accepted one, between education and instruction. It is
something like that which I am trying to make clear between Civilization
and Progress. An 'instructed man' means a man who has learned much but
who may have no manners at all, may eat with his knife, forget to wash
his hands, wear outlandish clothes, and be ignorant even of the ordinary
forms of politeness. An 'educated person,' on the contrary, may know
very little Latin, and no Greek, and may be shaky in the multiplication
table; but he must have perfect manners to deserve the designation, and
tact, with a thorough knowledge of all those customs and outward forms
which distinguish what calls itself civilized society from the rest of
the world. Anyone can see that such instruction, on the one hand, and
such education, on the other, are derived from wholly different
sources, and must lead to wholly different results; and it is as common
nowadays to find men who have the one without the other, as it ever was
in ancient Greece or Rome. I should like to assert that it is more
common, since Progress is so often mistaken for Civilization and tacitly
supposed to be able to do without it, and that Diogenes would not be
such a startling exception now as he was in the days of Alexander the
Great. But no one would dare to say that Progress cannot go on in a high
state of Civilization. All that can be stated with absolute certainty is
that they are independent of each other, since Progress means 'going on'
and therefore 'change'; whereas Civilization may remain at the same high
level for a very long period, without any change at all. Compare our own
country with China, for instance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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