Modern philosophies are so different. Not many centuries ago, in those eras when few changes took place, men thought of the world as something to study, instead of to mold. It was something to appropriate and possess, to be sure, but not to transform.
Humpty-Dumpty sat on the wall, then. He hadn't begun his new life.
There were few inventors in those old times, and few of those few were honored. Edison among the Greeks would have been as lonely as Plato with us.
Civilization was Thought. It was measured by what men knew and felt of eternal things. It was wisdom.
Civilization to-day is invention: it is measured by our control over nature. If you remind a modern that nature is not wholly ductile, he is profoundly discouraged! "We expect to make over and control our world." We not only assume it is possible, we assume it is best.
What is democracy but a form of this impulse, says Professor George Plimpton Adams, "bidding man not to content himself with any political order thrust upon him, but actively to construct that order so that it does respond to his own nature"?
"Not contemplation ... but creative activity," that is our modern attitude.
Well, it's all very interesting.
Will and Wisdom are both mighty leaders. Our times worship Will.
