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Any worshipper can suspend the scientific part of his mind while worshipping. But a religious belief that is morally contemptible is in serious danger, because when the religious emotions surge up the moral emotions are not far away. And the clash cannot be hidden. This collapse of the traditional religion of Greece might not have mattered so much if the form of Greek social life had remained.
Now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of Norway have been trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious creatures, for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy, and who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and delicacy of constitution, but actually taking the lead in every educational and social reform.
He lay there, in the traditional garb of the fraternity, like a young cavalry man of the time of the Great Elector with his blue, gold-braided doublet, close-fitting breeches of white leather and mighty boots whose flapping tops swelled out over his firm thighs.
All religion begins, it seems to me, by an outburst of moral force, an attempt to simplify, to get a principle; and then the people who don't understand it begin to make it technical and defined; uncritical minds begin to attribute all sorts of vague wonders to it things unattested, natural exaggerations, excited statements, impossible claims; and then these take traditional shape and the poor steed gets hung with all sorts of incongruous burdens."
Progress has demolished this ideal, with many others equally fine and inspiring; and now all kings are so, by right of descent merely. Whether they be infirm or palsied, weak or wise, sane or crazed, still are they as of old elected; only no more as the Strongest, but simply as the Sign-posts of a traditional bygone authority.
And yet those women the sweet and gracious ornaments of a self-respecting society were full of spirit, of modest pride in their position, were familiar with much good literature, could converse with piquancy and understanding on subjects of general interest, were trained in the subtleties of a solid theology, and bore themselves in any company with that traditional breeding which we associate with the name of lady.
In course of time people came to forget the traditional custom of considering a spectre to be the thirteenth guest. He was, however, associated in their minds with the notion of death, and thus the belief has grown that though a thirteenth person at table is no longer a corpse, one of the party is destined, at any rate, to speedily become one.
She has admitted into her story various classes of society which traditional Virginia fiction regularly neglects; she has enriched her narrative with fresh and sweet descriptions of the soft Virginia landscape; she has bound her plot together with the best of all ligatures intelligence.
While we make no effort to impose our institutions upon the inhabitants of other countries, and while we adhere to our traditional neutrality in civil contests elsewhere, we can not be indifferent to the spread of American political ideas in a great and highly civilized country like France.
They can hardly hope to cite the past as a guide for the future, for traditional lines are being obliterated and new lines are being marked out for civilization, including education in its larger and newer import. In a significant degree the present is the heritage of the past, and any critical appraisement of the present must take cognizance of the influence of the past.
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