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November
THE
How Near Is Democracy?
By Alice Hubbard
AN has an inheritance on
which there is no income-tax,
but on which he can have an
income if he has practical
wisdom. He is heir to the
truth of all the ages. All this,
if he can use it.
When there is a superman, he
will know history. He will
know what effects follow cer-
, tain causes; he will parallel
v-. e e ' the present with the past, and
I-Egg. he will never make the mis-
takes which anybody’s ancestors have made.
[L The superman is not yet, but we are antici-
pating him.
The signs of the times forecast events. The
wise heed them, as shippers and sailors obey
weather-signals.
We live today in a new environment, under a
new condition. But the human heart has not
changed. Man’s response to ambition, greed,
aspiration, joy, despair, pique, jealousy,
revenge, desires of all degrees, is the same as
it was in the time of Alexander, Caesar,
Napoleon. The emotions are always primitive.
(ISuccess is no more success now than it
was when Macbeth became King of Scotland.
Defeat need be no more defeat now than when
Jesus was captured and crucified. Sophistry
leads now as far away from a logical con-
clusion as it did in the time of the Sophists.
A Cassandra is no more popular today than >
in the Age of Myths. Catiline’s defiance and
Demosthenes’ Philippics did not convince
their opponents that they stood for truth
alone, and that they alone were unscathed.
Their orations were results of human emotions
and human intelligence, just as our campaign
eloquence is today. (I “ There is nothing either
new or old. There is only the rising and the
falling of the eternal tide.”
The Eternal City
DO not wonder that Rome was called the
Eternal City. I do not wonder that it was
said that all roads lead to Rome. I do not
wonder that Rome has been for many cen-
turies and is now the place for worship, for in
and about Rome there have been played all
the comedies and tragedies in the drama of
civilization so so
FEZFI
Sixty-one
Every question that has troubled the human
mind has been asked, agitated and answered
there--and still remains a question.
Every social and political problem, all uncer-
tainties which theology and religion have
attempted to settle, all fashions, customs,
habits, idiosyncrasies, traits, all social rela-
tions, originated, developed, flourished,
declined, died in Rome-all save one.
Rome has the most complete history accessible
to the modern mind.
We know her myths, her legends. We have
her half-myths, her half-legends. We have her
history complete. These cover a period of
from 753 B. C. to the end of the development
of Roman civilization.
Just as the development of the child mirrors
the evolution of the human race, so in Roman
history there is a parallel to almost every
thought and feeling of which humanity is
Capable so so
Rome began, like all nations, with the
patriarchal form of government, the patriarch
being supervised by deity. This evolved into
government by kings.
The abuse of power in the hands of kings
developed in the people the desire for a
government of the people, by the people, for
the people.
Then followed a constitution, then the organi-
zation of the army, prosperity, popular insti-
tutions, popular education, the growth of the
fine arts, the desire for a democracy, the
unsatisfactory results of the clumsy and
unskilled people to work together, the quarrels
and strifes of the proletariat who tried to rule.
The Balance of Power
N 510 B. C. began the first century of the
Republic. Then the Romans found that
men are not all born free and equal so There
were always the two classes, as there are
today : plebeians and patricians. There was the
friction between employee and employer. The
rapid transition of the plebeian into the posi-
tion of patrician produced the same results
from unwisdom then as now.
External and civil wars developed patriots
and statesmen. Then followed another some-
what successful attempt to amalgamate the
inhabitants. The result was a period of
conquest; the horrors of war; more conquest,
until the Mediterranean Sea was called the
Roman Lake.
Rome, like Greece, became so rich that the