Selections from the Prose Writings of John Henry Cardinal Newman: For the Use of SchoolsNewman, John Henry
Religion
Selections from the Prose Writings of John Henry Cardinal Newman: For the Use of Schools
Newman, John Henry
English essays -- 19th century
I think it is clear, that, if my account be only
in the main correct, the Turkish power certainly
is not a civilized, and is a barbarous power.
The barbarian lives without principle and
without aim; he does but reflect the successive 25
outward circumstances in which he finds himself,
and he varies with them. He changes
suddenly, when their change is sudden, and is as
unlike what he was just before, as one fortune
or external condition is unlike another. He
moves when he is urged by appetite; else, he
remains in sloth and inactivity. He lives, and
he dies, and he has done nothing, but leaves the 5
world as he found it. And what the individual
is, such is his whole generation; and as that
generation, such is the generation before and
after. No generation can say what it has been
doing; it has not made the state of things better 10
or worse; for retrogression there is hardly room;
for progress, no sort of material. Now I shall
show that these characteristics of the barbarian
are rudimental points, as I may call them, in the
picture of the Turks, as drawn by those who 15
have studied them. I shall principally avail
myself of the information supplied by Mr.
Thornton and M. Volney, men of name and ability,
and for various reasons preferable as authorities
to writers of the present day. 20
"The Turks," says Mr. Thornton, who, though
not blind to their shortcomings, is certainly
favorable to them, "the Turks are of a grave
and saturnine cast ... patient of hunger and
privations, capable of enduring the hardships of 25
war, but not much inclined to habits of
industry.... They prefer apathy and indolence to
active enjoyments; but when moved by a
powerful stimulus they sometimes indulge in pleasures
in excess." "The Turk," he says elsewhere, 30
"stretched at his ease on the banks of the Bosphorus,
glides down the stream of existence
without reflection on the past, and without
anxiety for the future. His life is one continued
and unvaried reverie. To his imagination the
whole universe appears occupied in procuring him 5
pleasures.... Every custom invites to repose,
and every object inspires an indolent
voluptuousness. Their delight is to recline on soft verdure
under the shade of trees, and to muse without
fixing the attention, lulled by the trickling of a 10
fountain or the murmuring of a rivulet, and
inhaling through their pipe a gently inebriating
vapor. Such pleasures, the highest which the
rich can enjoy, are equally within the reach of
the artisan or the peasant." 15
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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