Athenian society decayed at last, not at all because its artists had reached the limit of human invention, or its philosophers the necessary term of human thought, but because the moral faculties and tastes which should have presided in that society were not developed in proportion to the esthetic and intellectual powers which added to its ornament. It was outwardly like the statue of Minerva in the Parthenon, of costly ivory, overlaid with gold; but it was wood within; and the wood rotted; that is all that can be said of it. Then the cunning of the ivory, and the splendor of the gold, fell and were broken, and the nations gathered the shining fragments.—Richard S. Storrs.
(589)
COSMOLOGY, PRIMITIVE
Knowing nothing of the planetary system, early man had to account in his own way for the apparent fixity of the earth, and as the Greeks invented the giant Atlas, the Hindus contrived a huge turtle to bear the world upon its patient back. What sustained the giant or the monster, the ancient mind inquired not. To make everything out of anything and believe with implicit faith in his own creations was the happy faculty of early man, not entirely fallen from possession in these days of all-questioning. The first Egyptians knew that the heavens and the earth were formed by the breaking of the cosmic egg, an idea suggested by the resemblance of the skies to the half of an eggshell. That is as poetic and more agreeable than the Norse idea of a giant dashed to pieces to make earth, water, and starry firmament. The Mexican legend as to the creation of man resembles the Hebraic, clay and the breath of life admitted. But the North American Indians explain the mixt nature of man by declaring that the daughter of the Great Spirit, living in the wigwam, Mount Shasta, stole forth one day, was seized by a patriarchal grizzly, who took her home and wedded her to his son. Man was the result of this union. As a punishment for the sacrilege in contaminating the race of the Great Spirit, grizzlies were deprived the power of speech and made to wander ever after on all fours.—Chicago Inter-Ocean.
(590)
Cosmopolitanism—See [Americanism, True].
Cosmopolitanism in Education—See [Education by Travel].
Cost of Disease—See [Health and Science].
COST RECKONED
When your child throws away a piece of bread, make him pick it up again and tell him the history of that piece of bread. Tell him what has been requisite that that bread might exist. Tell him of the toils of the plowman and of the sower, under the sky, inclement and changeful; the obscure bursting of the seed in the ground, the long sleep under the snow, the awakening in the spring, when the green life along the furrows makes its orisons to the sun, source of life. Describe the hope of the farmer when the corn puts forth its ears, and his anguish when the storm rises on the horizon. Do not forget the harvester who wields his scythe in the dog-day heat, and that poor prisoner of the cities, pledged to nocturnal toil in overheated cellars, the baker. (Text.)—Charles Wagner, “The Gospel of Life.”