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Updated: June 23, 2025
If the twelfth century was the age of great Bibles, the thirteenth is the age of small ones. Thousands of these exist, written with amazing minuteness and uniformity. Only less common are the Aristotles, the Sentences, the Summæ, and the other works of the golden age of scholasticism.
The last night of this short-lived holiday-time, the party, after staying out on the lake to a later hour than usual, stood lingering still on the lawn of the villa; and their host, who was rather addicted to superficial studies of the positive sciences, including, of course, the most popular of all, astronomy, kept his guests politely listening to speculative conjectures on the probable size of the inhabitants of Sirius, that very distant and very gigantic inhabitant of heaven who has led philosophers into mortifying reflections upon the utter insignificance of our own poor little planet, capable of producing nothing greater than Shakspeares and Newtons, Aristotles and Caesars, mannikins, no doubt, beside intellects proportioned to the size of the world in which they flourish.
Happily, it is not expected of us, of anybody, to be Aristotles or Humboldts now. I like very much the Philadelphia Library Public Reading Course, carried on for the last seven or eight years. The Readers there give, twice every week, summary oral accounts of all that has been last printed in all parts of the world; one hour each evening being given to literature, and another hour to science.
The last night of this short-lived holiday-time, the party, after staying out on the lake to a later hour than usual, stood lingering still on the lawn of the villa; and their host, who was rather addicted to superficial studies of the positive sciences, including, of course, the most popular of all, astronomy, kept his guests politely listening to speculative conjectures on the probable size of the inhabitants of Sirius, that very distant and very gigantic inhabitant of heaven who has led philosophers into mortifying reflections upon the utter insignificance of our own poor little planet, capable of producing nothing greater than Shakspeares and Newtons, Aristotles and Caesars, mannikins, no doubt, beside intellects proportioned to the size of the world in which they flourish.
"Ho," said Houseman, sullenly, "and was it not for saying that you feared this, and its probable consequences, that you well-nigh stifled me, but now? so truth may be said one moment with impunity, and the next at peril of life! These are the subtleties of you wise schoolmen, I suppose. Your Aristotles, and your Zenos, your Platos, and your Epicurus's, teach you notable distinctions, truly!"
We must not forget that a principle of government is reserved for our days that we shall not find in our Aristotles, or even in the forests of Tacitus, nor in our Saxon Wittenagemotes, nor in our Plantagenet parliaments. Opinion is now supreme, and Opinion speaks in print. The representation of the Press is far more complete than the representation of Parliament.
His Plus ultra is a review of modern improvements of useful knowledge. His spirit is displayed in the remark that more gratitude is due to the unknown inventor of the mariners' compass "than to a thousand Alexanders and Caesars, or to ten times the number of Aristotles.
ARISTOTLES suum THEODORETUM laudavit quendam peritum Tragaediarum actorem, CICERO suum ROSCIUM: nos Angli TARLETONUM, in cujus voce et vultu omnes jocosi affectus, in cujus cerebroso capite lepidae facetiae habitant.
He was a religious and intellectual missionary preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission, and he declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed.
"Ho," said Houseman, sullenly, "and was it not for saying that you feared this, and its probable consequences, that you well-nigh stifled me, but now? so truth may be said one moment with impunity, and the next at peril of life! These are the subtleties of you wise schoolmen, I suppose. Your Aristotles, and your Zenos, your Platos, and your Epicurus's, teach you notable distinctions, truly!"
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