SNAP SHOTS
Middleton, George
SNAP SHOTS By George Middleton THE PASSION for "outlines" continues. The publishers seem to have sensed that the great mass of reading people are ever eager for shortcuts to knowledge, combined...
...The whitetail deer, which is now more numerous in the South than anywhere else, is also a great enemy of the rattler, Whitetail's hoofs are as sharp as knives...
...Rattler strikes at the descending hoofs, which cant be harmed, and the next instant he is mostiy has...
...The accumulation of knowledge, invention and criticism has been going on uninterruptedly since, let us say, the twelfth, century—that is for seven hundred years...
...after which, he makes a tasty meal off the scattered remains...
...Equally fascinating is Professor Breasted's account of the way the Persian language in cuneiform alphabet was first interpreted through the chance discovery of the triumphal monument to Darius the" Great on the cliffs of Be-histun...
...For this amazing new capability, transcend-tng merely physical development and the evo-hrtion of more efficient organs, disclosed a kind if buoyancy of the human spirit, never before displayed in the history of life on our planet...
...NATURELAND THE SOUTHERN states are ideal country for snakes yet they are not overrun by serpents...
...He hunches his four feet and, leaping into the air, comes down on the snake with the sharp points downward...
...There is a certain satisfaction that comes in seeing something from beginning to end...
...Thus seventy-five years ago Sir Henry Rawlinson unlocked the secrets of ancient Babylonian cuneiform and recovered the lost language and history of Babylonia and Assyria...
...From this was developed hieroglyphics, with the "hieratic" and "demotic" variations...
...On my desk as I write, curiously enough, lies a dedicated copy of his syllabus on "The History of the Intellectual Classes in Western Europe," which has always been a stimulus to me...
...These are but samples of how thrilling the facts of human progress really are and Pro-fessor Breasted loses not one iota of their drama as he presents them...
...Hence outline histories whether of art or o peoples or both, have a peculiar appeal...
...Slow and halting at first, it now proceeds with stupendous rapidity, in certain ranges...
...Today we are in the flux of our own time: we try to grope for meanings but we do not see clearly the forces at work...
...venom cannot reach the blood circulation...
...I would like to linger over this angle of his new volume, but I can only venture the hope that my readers will search for the charm of Professor Robinson's mind for themselves...
...re-reading the story of their rise and fall...
...James Henry Breasted needs no introduction to those who have before sampled his books, or heard his lectures...
...To be a success nowadays one can only master one's own...
...Once he spots a diamond backed rattlesnake, or copperhead, or cotton-mouthed moccasin—all of them deadly "pizen"—the razorback never lets up until he has torn his snakeship to pieces...
...Take the mere evolution of the alphabet and human writing in terms of language, for one isolated comment...
...but the actual study of man's career "from the earliest traces of his existence" is of more recent date...
...They bite him, of course, but it is said that his hide is so thick and tough that the...
...Yet just as human memory keeps the dead immortal for us, so do the repercussions of a civilization continue...
...It was my pleasure as a student to sit under Professor Robinson at Columbia, and it is a joy recalled to read these pages that re-vision his large tolerant view of life...
...Christianity has now entered the scene...
...The publishers seem to have sensed that the great mass of reading people are ever eager for shortcuts to knowledge, combined with a desire to get "a general idea" of a subject In this age of specialization all we can hope for is a bird's eye view of the other fellow's subject...
...for the facts are all in...
...Should this revision and enrichment of human ideas continue without a serious setback for several hundred years to come, it would he the first instance of such steady advances in man's history...
...preceded man are common...
...Whether they can ever learn enough to control the fluctuations of civilizations no one can say...
...They have not only suffered from blank ignorance, but from tremendous and grotesque misapprehensions in regard to their nature and surroundings...
...we can choose our own interpretation of the causes that made them pass...
...Then a drawn "leaf," for example, became the sign for the syllable "leaf...
...Laboratories dedicated to the study of what...
...And what makes this so exciting is to recall that all the written" records of these long centuries were indecipherable till the Rosetta stone was found early last century...
...Will they succeed in maintaining outworn and hampering notions of human, relationship and duty...
...This hasty com-, ment is only desired to call attention to these two books...
...To him, also, history is no mere succession of battles and political victories, though in this volume he has yielded a bit more in that direction than is his wont...
...The great mass movements of mankind, the cultural facts, the exciting phenomena of discovery—these are more important than boundary lines and political frontiers...
...I have glanced through quite z number but none seems to the more fascinating than the two volumes known as The Human Adventure, published by Harper's ($10.000 the set...
...Rome conquers Greece and pushes her under...
...But contacting once more civilizations that are dead and buried...
...Thus, with a "bee," the two signs would mean "belief...
...yet the Greek spirit, in the bodies of men made slaves, conquers Some...
...All original meaning of the two separate signs is lost and each becomes a "phonetic" sign...
...Thus 3.000 years before Christ they had an alphabet of twenty-four letters...
...I confess a growing interest in this phase of the world's history, not through any particular personal religious impulse, but because of its tremendous influence on the history of art and culture...
...and through the Oriental Institute a scientific effort is being made to recover all the facts of the early human civilization...
...The first volume is entitled The Coaauest of Civilization, and comes from one of the great-sst living authorities on the early ages...
...for the Egyptian finally possessed a series of signs each representing only a letter...
...Each volume is sofu separanery and the two together tell the complete story...
...His value is constantly bringing before us the major fact we are so complacently minded to forget: that many great civilizations have risen and fallen, civilizations that had ethical conceptions, philosophies and spiritual reaches equally as compelling in daily life as our own...
...and woman a vote, of the assumption that the people at large constitute the court of last resort—to mention only two or three of our innovations...
...So far it has certainly been drift rather than mastery . . . Civilization's steady progress is by no means assured...
...I might add, however, a quotation with which Professor Robinson begins his book, stating as it does a mood of questioning with which we are left on finishing it: "Men have hitherto ill understood themselves and their world...
...All of these and many others are unprecedented experiments and adventures...
...Professor Breasted takes us to this end of the Ancient World, and Prof...
...This was the first real writing and rose among the Nile-dwellers earlier than elsewhere...
...In the introduction, written curiously enough at Armageddon—where hosts if the past fought rhythmically for the mast-Rry of the then known world—Prof...
...But what are to be the effects of binding the peoples of the whole earth together, of giving every mar...
...then the arrival of so-called "phonetic" writing...
...James Harvey Robinson continues the story in the second volume, "The Ordeal of Civilization...
...Perhaps we see life through our temperaments as an artist does the life he paints...
...They rounded out their lives and the story is complete...
...Here we see "each object drawn had to gain a a fixed form, always the same and always recognized as the sign for a particular word denoting that object...
...Will they successfully oppose and check the progress and diffusion of scientific discovery...
...Will democracy continue to generate great combinations of ignorance and reaction—of which some impressive examples have already appeared—to perpetuate race, religious and economic prejudice and jealousy...
...This was later carried further...
...The credit for this is given mostly to the half wild razorback hog...
...A reading of the histories of Greece and Borne once more brings this vividly to mind...
...for obvious reasons it cannot do more...
...First are examples of "pictorial" writing, beyond which our native American Indians never passed...
...Space imits comment to more than eager recommen-latioa because the 1800 pages carry man from primitive beginnings through the great war and official peace...
...Breasted soints out that the greatest fact in the known universe is that man possessed the capacity to rise to civilisation from bestial savagery...
...In this volume, these farts are placed before us, enhanced by many illustrations with the most intelligent explanations one could demand...
Vol. 18 • December 1926 • No. 12
