History Can Predict Nothing Except That Great

In Order To Begin An Analysis, There Must Already Be A Synthesis Present In The Mind.

Today The Average Inhabitant Of The Western Hemisphere Knows A Little Of Everything. He Has The Newspaper On His Breakfast Table And Wireless Within Reach. For The Evening There Is The Film, Cards, Or A Meeting To Complete A Day Spent In The Office Or Factory Where Nothing That Is Essential Has Been Learnt. With Slight Variation This Picture Of A Low Cultural Average Holds Good Over The Entire Range From Factory-hand Of Clerk To Manager Or Director. Only The Personal Will To Culture, In Whatever Field And However Pursued Raises Modern Man Above This Level.

The Spirit Of Playful Competition Is, As A Social Impulse, Older Than Culture Itself And Pervades All Life Like A Veritable Ferment. Ritual Grew Up In Sacred Play; Poetry Was Born In Play And Nourished On Play; Music And Dancing Were Pure Play....we Have To Conclude, Therefore, That Civilization Is, In Its Earliest Phases, Played. It Does Not Come From Play...it Arises In And As Play, And Never Leaves It.

When The World Was Half A Thousand Years Younger All Events Had Much Sharper Outlines Than Now. The Distance Between Sadness And Joy, Between Good And Bad Fortune, Seemed To Be Much Greater Than For Us; Every Experience Had That Degree Of Directness And Absoluteness Which Joy And Sadness Still Have In The Mind Of A Child

History, As The Study Of The Past, Makes The Coherence Of What Happened Comprehensible By Reducing Events To A Dramatic Pattern And Seeming Them In A Simple Form.