Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3): The Turks in Their Relation to Europe; Marcus Tullius Cicero; Apollonius of Tyana; Primitive ChristianityNewman, John Henry
HistoryHistory
Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3): The Turks in Their Relation to Europe; Marcus Tullius Cicero; Apollonius of Tyana; Primitive Christianity
Newman, John Henry
Apollonius, of Tyana; Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600; Cicero, Marcus Tullius; Turkey -- History
And now I have said enough, and more than enough, of the original state
of the Turkish race, as exhibited in the Chozars and Turcomans:--it is
time to pursue the history of that more important portion of it with
which we are properly engaged, which received some sort of education,
and has proved itself capable of social and political union. I observed
just now, that that education was very different in its mode and
circumstances from that which has been the lot of the nations with which
we are best acquainted. Other nations have been civilized in their own
homes, and, by their social progress, have immortalized a country as
well as a race. They have been educated by their conquests, or by
subjugation, or by the intercourse with foreigners which commerce or
colonization has opened; but in every case they have been true to their
fatherland, and are children of the soil. The Greeks sent out their
colonies to Asia Minor and Italy, and those colonies reacted upon the
mother country. Magna Graecia and Ionia showed their mother country the
way to her intellectual supremacy. The Romans spread gradually from one
central city, and when their conquests reached as far as Greece, "the
captive," in the poet's words, "captivated her wild conqueror, and
introduced arts into unmannered Latium."[20] England was converted by
the Roman See and conquered by the Normans, and was gradually civilized
by the joint influences of religion and of chivalry. Religion indeed,
though a depraved religion, has had something to do, as we shall see,
with the civilization of the Turks; but the circumstances have been
altogether different from those which we trace in the history of
England, Rome, or Greece. The Turks present the spectacle of a race
poured out, as it were, upon a foreign material, interpenetrating all
its parts, yet preserving its individuality, and at length making its
way through it, and reappearing, in substance the same as before, but
charged with the qualities of the material through which it has been
passed, and modified by them. They have been invaded by no conqueror,
they have brought no captive arts or literature home, they have
undergone no conversion in mass, they have been taught by no commerce,
by no international relationship; but they have in the course of
centuries slowly soaked or trickled, if I may use the words, through the
Saracenic populations with which they came in contact, and after being
nationally lost to the world, as far as history goes, for long periods
and through different countries, eventually they have come to the face
of day with that degree of civilization which they at present possess,
and at length have usurped a place within the limits of the great
European family. And this is why the path southwards to the east of the
Aral was, in matter of fact, the path of civilization, and that by the
Caucasus the path of barbarism; this is why the Turks who took the
former course could found an empire, and those who took the latter have
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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