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Are We Modern
Barba
rians
?
1 " y we had the power to
choose, what period to live
in, whether nowadays, or
l,n some period before our
■birth, then most of us would
■with conviction choose the
■present. All of us take pleas
ure in vociferously berating
■ •hr many absurdities of mod-
Irrn life; most of us will occa-
Isionally have the feeling that
the mechanization of our lives
i% cheating us of the true sense
of life. Nonetheless, there is
so deeply implanted in us,
even in those who deny it, the
notion of evolution, of prog
ress, that instinctively and
without further examination
we consider our ways of life
and our institutions to be bet
ter than earlier ones.
Repeatedly poets, writers,
have amused themselves by
throwing different periods
pellmell together, by trans
planting contemporary human
beings into earlier times, or
the men of previous periods
into our times. Think of Os
car VY ilde or H. G. Wells or
Mark 1'wain. 1 believe that
it is no idle pastime to open
up this problem. It appears
promising to me to inquire
whether we white races have
made use of our amazing and
justly lauded technology' in or
der to fashion our lives more
rationally, whether we are less
dull, whether we are happier
nowadays than, say 2,000
years ago.
I m not referring to the barbarian inhabitants
°* the Europe of that period. That our civiliza
tion has broadened out since 2,000 years ago, that
*t has come also to embrace regions then bar-
'ariau. that it today encompasses almost all of the
white man’s world, that is patent. But in this
aspect the problem seems to me too aimless. If
wc are to reach a meaningful result we must limit
ourv
whu
An Analysis of Two Thousand Years of Civilization
By Lion Feuchtwanger
Lion Feuchtwanger
The distinguished German Jewish au
thor in which he contrasts dispassion
ately our modern age with the ancient
world. He arrives at a startling an
swer to the query—“Are We Modern
Barbarians f”
v es for our comparison to those regions
were at that time civilized, that is, the
n of the Roman Empire. Let us then put
luestion thus: w’ould an ancient Roman of
iperial period, placed among our present con-
get on any w’orse than we, or w'ould one
irselves, put back into the Roman Empire,
rt er than its own citizens?
I t s take a look, first of all, at a child, a child
r lav, born let us say, into the most favorable
<nment, let us ask: has this child, as a result
? attainment of the 2,000-ycars-long develop-
• a nature different from that of an infant
years ago?
w possible to test this problem experimentally,
dom
our
the
ditit
of ,
do
en\
of
me
2,0
and this has been done. Infants
of our race have been compared
with infants of primitive tribes,
culturally on a level above which
we rose thousands of years ago.
The results showed that the so
cial instinct of our children, up
to an amazingly advanced age, is
not a jot more highly developed
than the social instinct of the
children of primitive peoples. We
may hold, positively, that our
white civilization has not suc
ceeded in civilizing the instincts
of the individual the least bit
above the instinctive level of 2,-
000 years ago. Probably we have
grown somewhat in social insight
—I shall revert to this later; the
social instinct, how'ever, is just
as weakly rooted today as it w'as
2,000 years ago, and if it comes
into serious conflict with older
mature urges, the sexual one and
the destructive one, then most
commonly one of these tw-o older
drives will win the day.
As definitely as we must deny
any growth of the social instinct
or the native intelligence of the
race, just as definitely may w'c
claim that the bodily efficiency
of the white race has at least not
declined.
On the contrary. 'The life-
expectancy of the contemporary
child, its chances of reaching old
age, are nowadays incomparably
better than they were 2,000 years
ago. We are dependent on esti
mates, but w'e shall not be going
too far in assuming that a child
born today has four times better
chances of remaining in good health and of reach
ing an age of at least 50 years, than had the child
of 2,000 years ago.
The ancient world, by the way, was as fond as
we are of drawing comparisons with the past, and
it indulged in psychological child experiments, that
tended in the direction of our own. Only their
experiments were somewhat more robust. Diony
sius, the tyrant of Syracuse, for example, wanted
to ascertain whether language was inborn in man
or not, that is, whether a child without receiving
any instruction could of his own accord come to
communicate by words, for this purpose he made
the following experiment. On a secluded island
he had placed a number of children who were
looked after exclusively by deaf-and-dumb attend
ants. The result of the experiment was; that
when the children were grown up they could ut
ter but inarticulate sounds. The same result w'as
obtained when 1,500 years later Frederick the
Second, the German emperor, repeated the experi
ment.
Let us return to our starting point. Very well,
you may say, the evolution of civilization in the
last 2,000 years has not been able to heighten our
race's native power of judgment. But we know
how infinitely long it takes before qualities become
instincts. To change an instinct takes ten thou
sands of years. Y'et, have w f c not perhaps in these
2,000 years at least changed the fVeltanschauung
of the adult to such an extent that from the be
ginning his attitude or conduct in many situations,
nay, in most situations, will be different from that
of the man of antiquity? Has not his attitude to
ward nature become clarified? Have not his re
ligious ideas become deeper, less childish, in these
last 2,000 years?
No, they have not. You will counter; the an
cient world believed in gods in a thoroughly child
like w f ay, and the ancient world in a thoroughly
childlike manner believed in miracles.
Granted that that was so in broad masses of
the people, but those broad masses had for coun
terfoil equally broad masses that decidedly denied
the real existence of the popular gods and the prov
idence supposedly exercised by them. 'The domi
nant IVeltanschauung—world viewpoint—of the
educated was that of the Stoa, whose teaching
did not, indeed, deny the gods, but sublimated
them to such an extent as to reduce them to forces
of Nature. Betw'een the conception which an
educated member of the ancient world entertained,
say, of the god Vulcan, and the conception of
electricity entertained by an educated person of
today, there’s hardly much difference. And when
one of the ancients talked of the power of Venus,
he said hardly more—and didn’t mean to say more
—than, that the sex instinct plays an important
role in life.
The views of the time are most characteristi
cally expressed in Pliny’s natural history. As for
himself, so explains this great scientist of antiquity,
(iod and nature cannot be separated. Nature, he
asserts, is the mother of all things. Only the
weakness of man makes him seek the image and
form of the deity. All mythology is childish
claptrap. It is very doubtful, whether the su
preme power, whatever that may be, cares about
human beings. For maintaining human society in
good order, the belief of the uneducated in the
guidance of human affairs by Heaven is indeed of
undoubted utility: as also is the idea that mis
deeds unfailingly incur penalties. For the imper
fection of human nature, Pliny adds ironically,
there is a special solace in the circumstance that
(Jod, too, cannot do everything. The possibility
of suicide, for instance, that nature has given to
much-plagued man, is denied to God. Neither
can God prevent two times ten being twenty.
Pliny reaches the conclusion that it is wiser to
identify God with Nature, and to employ the be
lief in the deity, as such, only as an educational
instrument among the lower classes.
This was written exactly 1,860 years ago, in a
pretty villa on the shore of Lago di Como; its
foundation-w'alls stiil stand today. I leave it to
you to decide how far Pliny’s views are congruent
with those of the powers that be today, but I can’t
help citing, side by side (Please turn to page 10)
Th
SOUTHERN ISRAELITE *
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