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There was, indeed, something mysterious and miraculous about all his acquisitions, whether in love, in learning, in wit, or in wealth. How or when his stock of knowledge was laid in, nobody knew it was as much a matter of marvel to those who never saw him read, as the existence of the chameleon has been to those who fancied it never eat.
The great accession both of territory and trade by our acquisitions in North America and the West Indies, will sufficiently account for this, without supposing any diminution in the capital stock of the society.
Long after these boyish days we find him, in the words of "The man of the Hill," thus eloquently acknowledging the debt of humanity, and doubtless his own, to those inestimable treasures bequeathed to the world by ancient Greece: "These Authors, though they instructed me in no Science by which Men may promise to themselves to acquire the least Riches, or worldly Power, taught me, however, the Art of despising the highest Acquisitions of both.
That Philip from a mean and humble origin has grown mighty, that the Greeks are jealous and quarreling among themselves, that it was far more wonderful for him to rise from that insignificance, than it would now be, after so many acquisitions, to conquer what is left; these and similar matters, which I might dwell upon, I pass over.
However this might be, he offered, with delight, to go to Muscovy; and when he received the refusal of his preceptor, he began to entreat, to implore him incessantly to recall it. 'Science calls me thither, he said, 'do not deprive her of new acquisitions, perhaps of important discoveries.
The distinction between the common inheritance of the nations and their own subsequent acquisitions in manners and in language is still far from having been wrought out in all the variety of its details and gradations.
But the living nerve of the Christian religion, which was its closest bond to the highest spiritual acquisitions of the ancient Greek world, was thus severed. First, the Logos, the Word, the Son of God, was misunderstood, and mythology was employed to make the dogma, thus misconceived, intelligible.
But since this pious purpose is not in the minds of everyone, and instead the desire for material acquisitions pervades everyone's hearts, God ordained holy wars in our time, so that the knightly order and the erring mob, who, like their ancient pagan models, were engaged in mutual slaughter, might find new way of earning salvation.
Among mental as among bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful. Not only in times past, but almost as much in our own era, that knowledge which conduces to personal well-being has been postponed to that which brings applause.
We fall in love, we marry and are given in marriage, we promote and take part in international alliances, but when the curtain goes up again, our accumulations, acquisitions whatever you choose to call them have disappeared. We are not to the superficial eye the spinster-philanthropist, the bride to be, the wife of a year; we are the same old Salemina, Francesca and Penelope.
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