Self Check Quiz
Standard
FCAT LA.A.2.4.1
Practice Test
1.
Buddha's Sermons
Oral tradition
OVERVIEW
Buddhism arose in India around 528 B.C., after Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) found enlightenment and began preaching his new religion. After his death, Buddha's followers spread his teachings by word of mouth. It was not until after about 250 B.C. that Buddha's sermons, including those below, were put into writing.
2. The first sermon
These two extremes, O monks, are not to be practised by one who has gone forth from the world. What are the two? That conjoined with the passions, low, vulgar, common, ignoble, and useless, and that conjoined with self-torture, painful, ignoble, and useless. Avoiding these two extremes the Tathâgataą has gained the knowledge of the Middle Way, which gives sight and knowledge, and tends to be calm, to insight, enlightenment, nirvâna.
What, O monks, is the Middle Way, which gives sight…? It is the noble Eightfold Path, namely, right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This, O monks, is the Middle Way….
(1) Now this, O monks, is the noble truth of pain: birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, death is painful, sorrow, lamentation, dejection, and despair are painful. Contact with unpleasant things is painful, not getting what one wishes is painful. In short the five khandhas of grasping are painful.˛
(2) Now this, O monks, is the noble truth of the cause of pain; that craving which leads to rebirth, combined with pleasure and lust, finding pleasure here and there, namely, the craving for passion, the craving for existence, the craving for non-existence.
(3) Now this, O monks, is the noble truth of the cessation of pain: the cessation without a remainder of that craving, abandonment, forsaking, release, non-attachment.
(4) Now this, O monks, is the noble truth of the way that leads to the cessation of pain: this is the noble Eightfold Path, namely, right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration….
As long as in these noble truths my threefold knowledge and insight duly with its twelve divisions was not well purified, even so long, O monks, in the world with its gods, Mâra,ł Brahmâ,4 with ascetics, brâhmins, gods, and men, I had not attained the highest complete enlightenment. Thus I knew, Knowledge arose in me; insight arose that the release of my mind is unshakable; this is my last existence; now there is no rebirth.
3. The synopsis of truth
Thus have I heard. Once when the Lord was staying at Benares in the Isipatana deerpark, he addressed the almsmen as follows: It was here in this very deerpark at Benares that the Truth-finder, Arahat [arhat] all-enlightened, set a-rolling the supreme Wheel of the Doctrine—which shall not be turned back from its onward course by recluse or brâhmin, god or Mâra or Brahmâ or by anyone in the universe—the announcement of the Four Noble Truths, the teaching, declaration, and establishment of those Four Truths, with their unfolding, exposition, and manifestation.
What are these four?—The announcement, teaching . . . and manifestation of the Noble Truth of suffering—of the origin of suffering—of the cessation of suffering—of the path that leads to the cessation of suffering.
Follow, almsmen, Sâriputta and Moggallâ and be guided by them; they are wise helpers unto their fellows in the higher life…Sâriputta is able to announce, teach . . . and manifest the Four Noble Truths in all their details.
Having thus spoken, the Blessed One arose and went into his own cell.
The Lord had not been gone long when the reverent Sâriputta proceeded to the exposition of the Truth-finder's Four Noble Truths, as follows:
What, reverend sirs, is the Noble Truth of suffering?—Birth is a suffering; decay is a suffering; death is a suffering; grief and lamentation, pain, misery and tribulation are sufferings; it is a suffering not to get what is desired—in brief all the factors of the fivefold grip on existence are suffering.
Birth is, for living creatures of each several class, the being born or produced, the issue, the arising or the re-arising, the appearance of the impressions, the growth of faculties.
Decay, for living creatures of each several class, is the decay and decaying, loss of teeth, grey hair, wrinkles, a dwindling term of life, sere faculties.
Death, for living creatures of each several class, is the passage and passing hence, the dissolution, disappearance, dying, death, decease, the dissolution of the impressions, the discarding the dead body.
Grief is the grief, grieving, and grievousness, the inward grief and inward anguish of anyone who suffers under some misfortune or is in the grip of some type of suffering.
Lamentation is the lament and lamentation, the wailing and the lamenting of anyone who suffers under some misfortune or is in the grip of some type of suffering.
Pain is any bodily suffering or bodily evil, and suffering bred of bodily contact, any evil feeling.
Misery is mental suffering and evil, any evil feeling of the mind.
Tribulation is the tribulation of heart and mind, the state to which tribulation brings them, in anyone who suffers under some misfortune or is in the grip of some type of suffering.
There remains not to get what is desired. In creatures subject to birth—or decay—or death—or grief and lamentation, pain, misery, and tribulation—the desire arises not to be subject thereto but to escape them. But escape is not to be won merely by desiring it; and failure to win it is another suffering.
What are in brief all the factors of the fivefold grip on existence which are sufferings?—They are: the factors of form, feeling, perception, impressions, and consciousness.
The foregoing, sirs, constitutes the Noble Truth of suffering. What now is the Noble Truth of the origin of suffering? It is any craving that makes for re-birth and is tied up with passion's delights and culls satisfaction now here now there – such as the craving for sensual pleasure, the craving for continuing existence, and the craving for annihilation.
Next, what is the Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering?—It is the utter and passionless cessation of this same craving, and aversion from craving.
Lastly, what is the Noble Truth of the Path that leads to the cessation of suffering?—It is just the Noble Eightfold Path, consisting of right outlook, right resolves, right speech, right acts, right livelihood, right endeavour, right mindfulness and right rapture of concentration.
Right outlook is to know suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path that leads to the cessation of suffering.
Right resolves are the resolve to renounce the world and to do no hurt or harm.
Right speech is to abstain from lies and slander, from reviling, and from tattle.
Right acts are to abstain from taking life, from stealing, and from lechery. Right livelihood is that by which the disciple of the Noble One supports himself, to the exclusion of wrong modes of livelihood.
Right endeavour is when an almsman brings his will to bear, puts forth endeavour and energy, struggles and strives with all his heart, to stop bad and wrong qualities which have not yet arisen from ever arising, to renounce those which have already arisen, to foster good qualities which have not yet arisen, and, finally, to establish, clarify, multiple, enlarge, develop, and perfect those good qualities which are there already.
Right mindfulness is when realizing what the body is—what feelings are—what the heart is—and what the mental states are—an almsman dwells ardent, alert, and mindful, in freedom from the wants and discontents attendant on any of these things.
THE HETERODOX SYSTEMS
Right rapture of concentration is when, divested of lusts and divested of wrong dispositions, an almsman develops, and dwells in, the first ecstasy with all its zest and satisfaction, a state bred of aloofness and not divorced from observation and reflection. By laying to rest observation and reflection, he develops and dwells in inward serenity, in [the] focussing of heart, in the zest and satisfaction of the second ecstasy, which is bred of concentration—passing thence to the third and fourth ecstasies.
This, sirs, constitutes the Noble Truth of the Path that leads to the cessation of suffering.
ą "Thatâgata" is a name for the Buddha. Literally it means one who has "thus come."
˛ The five khandhas (groups or aggregates) are form, feeling (or sensation), perception (volitional disposition), predispositions (or impressions), and consciousness.
ł The goddess of temptation.
4 God in the role of creator.
Source: A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, edited by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore
According to Buddha, what happens after a person reaches "highest complete enlightenment"?
a.
He will not be reborn.
b.
He will be reborn.
c.
He will be able to end others' suffering.
d.
He will be godlike.
2.
The Bonus Army
Malcolm Cowley
OVERVIEW
The so-called Bonus Army was made up of about 15,000 World War I army veterans and their families. Poor and desperate, they marched on Washington in 1932, to ask for early payment of bonus certificates not owed them until 1945. After Congress failed to pass the Bonus Bill, many veterans departed. The veterans who remained camped in shacks and threatened the peace of the capital. Using tanks, machine guns, and tear gas, the United States Army drove out the veterans and burned their camps. The following selections are from an article by Malcolm Cowley, which appeared in the New Republic on August 17, 1932. Cowley witnessed the event.
When the veterans of the Bonus Army first tried to escape, they found that the bridges into Virginia were barred by soldiers and the Maryland roads blocked against them by state troopers. They wandered from street to street or sat in ragged groups, the men exhausted, the women with wet handkerchiefs laid over their smarting eyes, the children waking from sleep to cough and whimper from the tear gas in their lungs. The flames behind them were climbing into the night sky. About four in the morning, as rain began to fall they were allowed to cross the border into Maryland, on condition that they move as rapidly as possible into another state.
The veterans were expected to disperse to their homes—but most of them had no homes, and they felt that their only safety lay in sticking together. Somehow the rumor passed from group to group that the mayor of Johnstown had invited them to his city. And they cried, as they rode toward Pennsylvania or marched in the dawn twilight along the highways, "On to Johnstown."
Their shanties and tents had been burned, their personal property destroyed, except for the few belongings they could carry on their backs; many of their families were separated, wives from husbands, children from parents. Knowing all this, they still did not appreciate the extent of their losses. Two days before, they had regarded themselves, and thought the country regarded them, as heroes trying to collect a debt long overdue. They had boasted about their months or years of service, their medals, their wounds, their patriotism in driving the Reds out of their camp; they had nailed an American flag to every hut. When threatened with forcible eviction, they answered that no American soldier would touch them: hadn't a detachment of Marines (consisting, some said, of twenty-five or thirty men, though others claimed there were two whole companies) thrown down its arms and refused to march against them?
But the infantry, last night, had driven them out like so many vermin. Mr. Hoover [President Herbert Hoover] had announced that "after months of patient indulgence, the government met overt lawlessness as it always must be met if the cherished processes of self-government are to be preserved." Mr. Hoover and his subordinates, in their eagerness to justify his action, were about to claim that the veterans were Red radicals, that they were the dregs of the population, that most of them had criminal records and, as a final insult, that half of them weren't veterans at all.
They would soon discover the effect of these official libels. At Somerset, on the Lincoln Highway, some of them asked for food. "We can't give you any," said a spokesman for the businessmen. "The President says that you're rebels—don't you understand? You're all outlaws now. . . ."
The heroes of 1918, now metamorphosed into "thieves, plug-uglies, degenerates," were preparing to gather in the outskirts of Johnstown in the campsite offered them at Ideal Park. And the leading citizens, aided by the state police, were planning to use any means short of violence to keep them from reaching it. Mr. Hoover's proclamation had done its work.
At Jennerstown is a barracks of the Pennsylvania State Police, looking for all the world like a fashionable roadhouse. In front of the barracks is a traffic light. The road ahead leads westward over Laurel Hill and Chestnut Ridge; the right-hand road leads nineteen miles northward into Johnstown. It was the task of the state troopers to keep the Bonus Army moving west over the mountains, toward Ligonier and the Ohio border.
In half an hour on Saturday morning, I saw more than a thousand veterans pass through Jennerstown—that is, more than fifty trucks bearing an average of twenty men apiece. Later I was told that the procession continued at irregular intervals until Sunday evening. The troopers would wait at the intersection, twenty men on their motorcycles like a school of swift gray sharks, till they heard that a convoy was approaching; then they would dart off to meet it in a cloud of dust and blue gasoline smoke, with their hats cutting the air like so many fins. One of the troopers stayed behind to manipulate the traffic light. As the trucks came nearer, he would throw a switch that changed it into a mere yellow blinker, so that all of them could shoot past the intersection without slackening speed. They were full of ragged men, kneeling, standing unsteadily, clinging to the sideboards; there was no room to sit down. Behind each truck rode a trooper, and there were half a dozen others mingled with the crowd that watched from in front of a filling station. . . .
. . . A few had seen that something was wrong, that they were being carried beyond their meeting place. They tried to pass the word from truck to truck, above the roar of the motors. As they went bowling through the level village street, there was no way of escape; but just beyond Jennerstown, the road climbs steeply up Laurel Hill; the drivers shifted into second gear – and promptly lost half their passengers. The others, those who received no warning or let themselves be cowed by the troopers were carried westward….
As for the veterans who escaped at Jennerstown, they lay by the roadside utterly exhausted. Their leaders had been arrested, dispersed, or else had betrayed them; their strength had been gnawed away by hunger or lack of sleep; they hoped to reunite and recuperate in a new camp, but how to reach it they did not know. For perhaps twenty minutes, they dozed there hopelessly. Then—and I was a witness of this phenomenon—a new leader would stand forth from the ranks. He would stop a motorist, learn the road to Johnstown, call the men together, give them their instructions—and the whole group would suddenly obey a self-imposed discipline. As they turned northward at the Jennerstown traffic light, one of them would shout, "We're going back!" and perhaps half a dozen would mumble in lower voices, "We're gonna get guns and go back to Washington."
Mile after mile we passed the ragged line as we too drove northward to the camp at Ideal Park. . . .
It seemed the ragged line would never end. Here the marchers were stumbling under the weight of their suitcases and blanket rolls, here they were clustered round a farmhouse pump, here a white man was sharing the burden of a crippled Negro, here white and Negro together were snoring in a patch of shade. . . . In France, fifteen years before, I had seen gaunt men coming out of the trenches half-dead with fatigue, bending under the weight of their equipment. The men on the Johnstown road that day were older, shabbier, but somehow more impressive: they were volunteers, fighting a war of their own. "And don't forget it, buddy," one of them shouted as the car slowed down, "we've enlisted for the duration."
Source: New Republic, August 17, 1932
In Cowley's opinion, the members of the Bonus Army were
a.
patriotic Americans.
b.
not really veterans at all.
c.
illegal aliens.
d.
vermin.
3.
The Fourteen Points Speech
Woodrow Wilson
OVERVIEW
Even while World War I continued President Woodrow Wilson planned for the peace that would follow. The president addressed Congress on January 8, 1918, stating his war aims and setting forth a basis for peace. With his Fourteen Points, Wilson hoped to establish a new world order.
Gentlemen of the Congress . . .
It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the objects it has in view.
We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The programme, the only possible programme, as we see it, is this:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of an autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.
For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this program does not remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this program and impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world – the new world in which we now live – instead of a place of mastery.
Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination.
We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test.
The Fourteen Points were most immediately influenced by
a.
the Spanish-American War.
b.
the Zimmermann telegram.
c.
World War II.
d.
World War I.
4.
This passage is taken from the memoir of a woman who emigrated as a young girl from Germany to America.
We all expected to see a long line of people waiting to be processed at Ellis Island. But what awaited us was not a line, but rather a sea of people. It rippled like the ocean, with waves of felt hats, black and gray wool overcoats, and leather-strapped cases. As I caught my first glimpse of it, I felt my stomach rise into my throat. All those men, women, and children, from all over the world, waiting to get inside. What a wondrous place America must be!
My father's worried expression was now permanently engraved on his face. I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that we had spent everything we had to buy our passage. All that we had left was the telegram from my father's second cousin, stating his address and the promise that he would give my father a job and a room in which we could live. What if we couldn't find him? What if he were dead? How would we survive?
My mother, on the other hand, had no such cares. She never had designs on a great deal of money. Her concern was only for our health. She would wipe our hands and faces incessantly, and admonish us not to touch anything or anyone, lest we "catch our death." Hoping that her glances would escape our detection, she would furtively look over toward the side of the hall where she knew the medical examinations were administered, where those who were not healthy enough would have to wait in quarantine before being allowed into the country. She would immediately re-examine our hands and faces, and rush to interpose herself between us and anyone whom she suspected of breathing on us.
As we approached the front of the line, my father tried to have all of our papers ready for the immigration officials. "Name?" the officer barked at my father. Uncertain as to whether he meant first name or last name, my father spoke hesitatingly, "Oskar . . . Oskar Schn—" and with that, the impatient officer cut him off, saying, "Good. Mr. and Mrs. Ossar." My father stared in disbelief as the hurried officer wrote "OSSAR" in his ledger. He tried to explain, in German, but the officer waved us off. I looked at my sister and we giggled to ourselves; how like a game it all seemed. Imagine that—an officer who didn't even understand German!
We had no conception of the enormity of what had just happened. Not only had we left behind our country and our acquaintances, but our name as well. A few minutes later we stood outside in the bright sun of our new home: re-born, re-baptized . . . like newborn infants, with nothing but possibilities in front of us.
The author sees more people waiting to be processed at Ellis Island than she expected. She concludes that
a.
she will have to wait a very long time in line.
b.
America is not accepting new residents that day.
c.
America must be a great place to live.
d.
she will never get into America.
5.
The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli
OVERVIEW
Niccolo Machiavelli wrote this famous treatise on politics in 1517. A manual that took a decidedly cynical view of mankind, The Prince provided advice to rulers of Machiavelli's day on how to get and hold onto political power. The following excerpt is a small sample of Machiavelli's opinions on princely influence.
It is the custom of those who are anxious to find favor in the eyes of a prince to present him with such things as they value most highly or in which they see him take delight. Hence offerings are made of horses, arms, golden cloth, precious stones and such ornaments, worthy of the greatness of the Prince. Since therefore I am desirous of presenting myself to Your Magnificence with some token of my eagerness to serve you, I have been able to find nothing in what I possess which I hold more dear or in greater esteem than the knowledge of the actions of great men which has come to me through a long experience of present-day affairs and continual study of ancient times. And having pondered long and diligently on this knowledge and tested it well, I have reduced it to a little volume which I now send to Your Magnificence. Though I consider this work unworthy of your presence, nonetheless I have much hope that your kindness may find it acceptable, if it be considered that I could offer you no better gift than to give you occasion to learn in a very short space of time all that I have come to have knowledge and understanding of over many years and through many hardships and dangers. I have not adorned the work nor inflated it with lengthy clauses nor pompous or magnificent words, not added any other refinement or extrinsic ornament wherewith many are wont to advertise or embellish their work, for it has been my wish either that no honor should be given it or that simply the truth of the material and the gravity of the subject should make it acceptable….
As for the exercise of the mind, the prince should read the histories of all peoples and ponder on the actions of the wise men therein recorded, note how they governed themselves in time of war, examine the reasons for their victories or defeats in order to imitate the former and avoid the latter, and above all conduct himself in accordance with the example of some great man of the past. . . .
We now have left to consider what should be the manners and attitudes of a prince toward his subjects and his friends. As I know that many have written on this subject I feel that I may be held presumptuous in what I have to say, if in my comments I do not follow the lines laid down by others. Since, however, it has been my intention to write something which may be of use to the understanding reader, it has seemed wiser to me to follow the real truth of the matter rather than what we imagine it to be. For imagination has created many principalities and republics that have never been seen or known to have any real existence, for how we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation. A man striving in every way to be good will meet his ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to remain in power, to learn how not to be good and to use his knowledge or refrain from using it as he may need. . . .
Here the question arises; whether it is better to be loved than feared or feared than loved. The answer is that it would be desirable to be both but, since that is difficult, it is much safer to be feared than to be loved, if one must choose. For on men in general this observation may be made: they are ungrateful, fickle, and deceitful, eager to avoid dangers, and avid for gain, and while you are useful to them they are all with you, offering you their blood, their property, their lives, and their sons so long as danger is remote, as we noted above, but when it approaches they turn on you. Any prince, trusting only in their words and having no other preparations made, will fall to his ruin, for friendships that are bought at a price and not by greatness and nobility of soul are paid for indeed, but they are not owned and cannot be called upon in time of need. Men have less hesitation in offending a man who is loved than one who is feared, for love is held by a bond of obligation which, as men are wicked, is broken whenever personal advantage suggests it, but fear is accompanied by the dread of punishment which never relaxes. . . .
Hence a wise leader cannot and should not keep his word when keeping it is not to his advantage or when the reasons that made him give it are no longer valid. If men were good, this would not be a good precept, but since they are wicked and will not keep faith with you, you are not bound to keep faith with them. . . .
So a prince need not have all the aforementioned good qualities, but it is most essential that he appear to have them. Indeed, I should go so far as to say that having them and always practicing them is harmful, while seeming to have them is useful. It is good to appear clement [merciful], trustworthy, humane, religious, and honest, and also to be so, but always with the mind so disposed that, when the occasion arises not to be so, you can become the opposite. It must be understood that a prince and particularly a new prince cannot practice all the virtues for which men are accounted good, for the necessity of preserving the state often compels him to take actions which are opposed to loyalty, charity, humanity, and religion. Hence he must have a spirit ready to adapt itself as the varying winds of fortune command him. As I have said, so far as he is able, a prince should stick to the path of good but, if the necessity arises, he should know how to follow evil.
A prince must take great care that no word ever passes his lips that is not full of the above-mentioned five good qualities, and he must seem to all who see and hear him a model of piety, loyalty, integrity, humanity, and religion. Nothing is more necessary than to seem to possess this last quality, for men in general judge more by the eye than the hand; as all can see but few can feel. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few experience what you really are and these few do not dare to set themselves up against the opinion of the majority supported by the majesty of the state. In the actions of all men and especially princes, where there is no court of appeals, the end is all that counts. Let a prince then concern himself with the acquisition or the maintenance of a state; the means employed will always be considered honorable and praised by all, for the mass of mankind is always swayed by the appearances and by the outcome of an enterprise….
I am not ignorant of the fact that many have held and hold the opinion that the things of this world are so ordered by fortune and God that the prudence of mankind may effect little change in them, indeed is of no avail at all. On this basis it could be argued that there is no point in making any effort, but we should rather abandon ourselves to destiny. This opinion has been the more widely held in our day on account of the great variations in things that we have seen and are still witnessing and which are entirely beyond human conjecture. Sometimes indeed, thinking on such matters, I am minded to share that opinion myself. Nevertheless I believe, if we are to keep our free will, that it may be true that fortune controls half of our actions indeed but allows us the direction of the other half, or almost half.
Source: The Prince, by Machiavelli, translated by Thomas G. Bergin
Machiavelli thinks that it is best for a ruler to
a.
have many good qualities.
b.
have the appearance of many good qualities.
c.
have many bad qualities.
d.
have the appearance of many bad qualities.
6.
On Wealth
Andrew Carnegie
OVERVIEW
Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie made an enormous fortune from his steel business, which he sold in 1901. He then retired and turned to philanthropy. He contributed to many libraries, colleges and universities, and foundations, including the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1889 he published an article called "Wealth" (later known as "The Gospel of Wealth"), excerpts of which appear here.
We accept and welcome . . . as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves great inequality of environment, the concentration of business—industrial and commercial—in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these as being not only beneficial but essential for the future progress of the race. Having accepted these, it follows that there must be great scope for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the manufacturer who has to conduct affairs upon a great scale. That this talent for organization and management is rare among men is proved by the fact that it invariably secures for its possessor enormous rewards, no matter where or under what laws or conditions. The experienced in affairs always rare the man whose services can be obtained as a partner as not only the first consideration but such as to render the question if his capital scarcely worth considering, for such men soon create capital; while, without the special talent required, capital soon takes wings. Such men become interested in firms or corporations using millions; and estimating only simple interest to be made upon the capital invested, it is inevitable that their income must exceed their expenditures and that they must accumulate wealth. Nor is there any middle ground which such men can occupy, because the great manufacturing or commercial concern which does not earn at least interest upon its capital soon becomes bankrupt. . . .
Objections to the foundations upon which society is based are not in order because the condition of the race is better with these than it has been with any others which have been tried. Of the effect of any new substitutes proposed, we cannot be sure. The socialist or anarchist who seeks to overturn present conditions is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilization itself rests, for civilization took its start from the day that the capable, industrious workman said to his incompetent and lazy fellow, "If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap," and thus ended primitive Communism by separating the drones from the bees. One who studies this subject will soon be brought face to face with the conclusion that upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends – the right of the laborer to his $100 in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions. . . .
We start, then, with a condition of affairs under which the best interests of the race are promoted, but which inevitably gives wealth to the few. Thus far, accepting conditions as they exist, the situation can be surveyed and pronounced good. The question then arises—and, if the foregoing be correct, it is the only question with which we have to deal—What is the proper mode of administering wealth after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown it into the hands of the few? And it is of this great question that I believe I offer the true solution. It will be understood that fortunes are here spoken of, not moderate sums saved by many years of effort, the returns from which are required for the comfortable maintenance and education of families. This is not wealth but only competence, which it should be the aim of all to acquire.
There are but three modes in which surplus wealth can be disposed of. It can be left to the families of the decedents; or it can be bequeathed for public purposes; or, finally, it can be administered during their lives by its possessors. Under the first and second modes most of the wealth of the world that has reached the few has hitherto been applied. Let us in turn consider each of these modes.
The first is the most injudicious. In monarchical countries, the estates and the greatest portion of the wealth are left to the first son that the vanity of the parent may be gratified by the thought that his name and title are to descend to succeeding generations unimpaired. The condition of this class in Europe today teaches the futility of such hopes or ambitions. The successors have become impoverished through their follies or from the fall in the value of land. . . . Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened. . . .
As to the second mode, that of leaving wealth at death for public uses, it may be said that this is only a means for the disposal of wealth, provided a man is content to wait until he is dead before it becomes of much good in the world. Knowledge of the results of legacies bequeathed is not calculated to inspire the brightest hopes of much posthumous good being accomplished. The cases are not few in which the real object sought by the testator is not attained, nor are they few in which his real wishes are thwarted. In many cases the bequests are so used as to become only monuments of his folly. . . .
The growing disposition to tax more and more heavily large estates left at death is a cheering indication of the growth of a salutary change in public opinion. . . . Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public ends would work good to the community, should be made to feel that the community, in the form of the state, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavily at death the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life. . . .
There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortunes; but in this we have the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth. . . . It is founded upon the present most intense individualism, and the race is prepared to put it in practice by degrees whenever it pleases. Under its sway we shall have an ideal state in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of the many, because administered for the common good; and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see this and to agree that great sums gathered by some of their fellow citizens and spent for public purposes, from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to them than if scattered among them through the course of many years in trifling amounts. . . .
Poor and restricted are our opportunities in this life; narrow our horizon; our best work most imperfect; but rich men should be thankful for one inestimable boon. They have it in their power during their lives to busy themselves in organizing benefactions from which the masses of their fellows will derive lasting advantage, and thus dignify their own lives. . . .
This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: first, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community – the man of wealth thus becoming the mere agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves. . . .
In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assistance. . . .
Thus is the problem of rich and poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; entrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself.
Andrew Carnegie said that increased taxes on large estates at death were
a.
a cheering indication of the growth of salutary change in public opinion.
b.
a despicable attempt to bring the country to socialism and to eliminate the upper class.
c.
a disaster brought on by the election of President Theodore Roosevelt.
d.
a temporary measure espoused by the Democrats to win elections.
7.
From
His Promised Land
John P. Parker
While I am on the subject of John Brown, I am reminded of the most important incident that ever took place at Ripley, during all the years of the activities of the abolition group. Strange as it may seem, no one placed any importance to the episode when it occurred, because we did not know what was in the mind of Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was she who took the incident and wove it into the pages of Uncle Tom's Cabin, making it one of the most appealing and forceful attacks of this epoch-making book.
I am referring to that incident of Eliza with her babe in arms crossing on the ice, chased by dogs to the water's edge. This all really happened, and it took place at Ripley. I was not involved in this adventure, so I have to depend upon my friends who were and what I actually heard, though I did not know at the time what the trouble was.
I have the story directly from Rev. John Rankin, to whom Eliza told her story within an hour after she had made the crossing, as she sat by his fireside in his hilltop home. Eliza was a young mulatto woman who lived back in Kentucky. She was not married but her baby was ascribed to the overseer of the plantation. The day before her flight, a slave dealer had been in close conference with her master, which meant some of the slaves were being sold down the river, as Kentucky was a slave-breeding and not to any extent a slave-using state. This alarmed her to the point she decided she would run away with her baby, rather than be sent to the cotton fields, which had a bad reputation for treatment of slaves.
Making her plans for escape, she left home early in the morning in midwinter, without any preparations for the journey or knowing how she would get across the river or to whom she was to apply for aid. In other words, she up and left, trusting to the future taking care of itself. How she stood the journey carrying her baby is still a mystery to me.
But she did it with a mother's determination and courage, arriving on the banks of the Ohio after dark, exhausted and driven to desperation by the cold. Seeing a light in a cabin, she took her chances, opened the door, and walked right into the arms of a white man. She was badly scared, but so utterly miserable she did not care what happened to her. Fortunately, the man was a gentleman living alone, and was not a slave owner. Her condition so aroused the sympathy of the man he immediately made a place for her by his fire.
While she was thawing out [he] prepared food for her. While she ate, he accused her of being a runaway, which she freely confessed. Then he told her how helpless her case was; though the river was still frozen over, it had been thawing for several days and the ice was so rotten that no one dared go on, let alone attempt to cross on it.
He further advised her to giver herself up and go back home. She admitted she had about made up her mind to follow the . . . [gentleman's] advice when she heard the baying of the dogs, which she knew were on her trail. This madder her so afraid she determined to go ahead and take her chances.
When the white man heard the dogs he became greatly agitated, again and again advising . . . Eliza to abandon her plans, which meant sure death. Seeing that she was determined to make the venture, the old fellow gave her a woolen shawl to put around her baby. He then led the way out of his cabin towards the river. On the way he took a long wooden rail off the top of his fence, advising her that when she broke through the ice, the rail would catch on both sides of her, preventing her from being drowned. He then went back to his cabin, leaving her alone.
She had gotten down to the river's edge, stepped on soft ice, and went through. This made her stop and hesitate. As she was standing there trying to make up her mind [what] to do, the men and the dogs came down the bank at her, with such a rush she was forced to hurry on or be captured.
As she ran out on the ice the dogs were at her heels, but refused to go further. Strange as it may seem, the ice held until she disappeared in[to] the darkness. When the men came down the bank they yelled for her to come back and then began firing their pistols over her head. The sound of the bullets drove her on faster and faster until, coming to a weak spot, she went through the soft ice into the river. Throwing her baby from her, she clung fast to the rail, thus was prevented from sinking to the bottom of the river.
Scrambling out as best she could, she felt around in the darkness for her baby. She did not know what way she had thrown [it] in her desperate effort to save herself, [so] it was some time before she found it. All the while the dogs on the bank kept up a fearful noise, while the men were yelling and firing in her direction.
These unnerving things set her more determinedly on her way, until again she broke through the ice, and again she threw the baby from her, while she held onto the rail. Now cold, wet, and weary, she struggled out to find her baby and wearily continued her journey. A third time she broke through and a third time she had to go to the same efforts to secure her baby. This time she was so weak and exhausted, her clothes frozen to her body, she did not have the strength to even pull the rail along with her, so simply left to trust that the ice would hold, or else it would swallow her and her baby up.
The ice did hold until she reached the firm land. As she stepped off the shore ice onto the land, weary and disheartened, a caring hand came from some unknown source out of the dark and grabbed her. She told Rev. Rankin this was the last straw. She sank down onto the ground and began to cry, feeling she was lost. Then the baby began to cry and a voice out of the darkness said, "Any woman who crossed that river, carrying her baby, has won her freedom."
It was Chance Shaw, one of the Ohio patrol. Shaw now helped her to her feet [and], threw the wet shawl away, which the old gentleman had given her to protect the baby. Carrying the baby in his arms, he helped Eliza up the bank, guiding her through the streets of the Rankin beacon light, which shone every night in the window. Pointing to the light, he told her if she would follow it she would find friends. The first any of the Rankin household knew of the presence of Eliza was when Rev. John heard someone poking the fire in the sitting room. The door being always open to refugees, she made her way into the house and was poking the fire to warm her cold body and restore comfort to the baby. Later Rankin supplied dry clothes for mother and baby. While she sat by the fire, she told the story of the escape and crossing to Rev. Rankin . . .
On the subject of Eliza, she [Harriet Beecher Stowe] had this to say: "Last spring while the author was in New York, a Presbyterian clergyman of Ohio came to me and said: 'I understand they dispute the fact about the woman's crossing the river. Now I know all about that; for I got the story from the very man that helped her up the bank. I know it is true, for she is now living in Canada.'"
The Presbyterian minister we now know was Rev. John Rankin, as he was of that denomination. Furthermore, he was the only one that could know that Eliza had traveled to Canada over the Underground Railroad, of which he was an active conductor at that time. Rev. John Rankin did not dare confess his knowledge of Eliza openly; nor could Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe associate him with the crossing. If she had, he and his sons would have been sent to jail, their property confiscated. So there was every reason why neither the minister [n]or Mrs. Stowe should openly declare his connection with the affair, nor specify Ripley as the point where the episode took place.
Why does Eliza flee her home?
a.
She has a new job opportunity elsewhere.
b.
She is following other family members.
c.
She is afraid of being sent to the cotton fields.
d.
She does not like her new masters.
8.
A Great Athenian Naval Victory
Plutarch
OVERVIEW
The Greek biographer Plutarch here recounts the Battle of Salamis, in which a small Athenian fleet routed a huge Persian force of some 600 ships, commanded by Xerxes. Before the battle, Athenian leader Themistocles saw little choice but to fight the Persians. Unfortunately, Athens alone had little hope of winning—her allies ignored calls for help—and the people of Athens were at first unwilling to fight. As Plutarch shows, however, Themistocles managed to trick the Athenians into taking up the fight; then he tricked Xerxes into doing battle in a narrow strait. This tactic allowed the small but highly maneuverable Athenian fleet to cut the Persian flotilla to pieces.
Themistocles, perceiving that he could not by the force of human reason prevail with the multitude, set his machinery to work, as a poet would do in a tragedy, and had recourse to prodigies and oracles. The prodigy he availed himself of, was the disappearing of the dragon of Minerva, which at that time quitted the holy place; and the priests, finding the daily offerings set before it untouched, gave it out among the people, at the suggestion of Themistocles, that the goddess had forsaken the city, and that she offered to conduct them to sea. Moreover, by way of explaining to the people an oracle then received, he told them that, by wooden walls, there could not possibly be any thing meant but ships; and that Apollo, now calling Salamis divine, not wretched and unfortunate, as formerly, signified by such an epithet that it would be productive of some great advantage to Greece. His counsels prevailed, and he proposed a decree that the city should be left to the protection of Minerva, the tutelary goddess of the Athenians; that the young men should go on board the ships, and that every one should provide as well as he possibly could for the safety of the children, the women, and the slaves. . . .
The embarkation of the people of Athens was a very affecting scene. What pity! what admiration of the firmness of those men, who, sending their parents and families to a distant place, unmoved with their cries, their tears, or embraces, had the fortitude to leave the city, and embark for Salamis! What greatly heightened the distress, was the number of citizens whom they were forced to leave behind, because of their extreme old age. . . .
Eurybiades, by reason of the dignity of Sparta, had the command of the fleet; but, as he was apprehensive of the danger, he proposed to set sail for the Isthmus, and fix his station near the Peloponnesian army. Themistocles, however, opposed it.
While Themistocles was maintaining his arguments upon deck, some tell us an owl was seen flying to the right of the fleet,ą which came and perched upon the shrouds. This omen determined the confederates to accede to his opinion, and to prepare for a sea fight. But no sooner did the enemy's fleet appear advancing toward the harbor of Phalerius in Attica, and covering all the neighboring coasts, while Xerxes himself was seen marching his land forces to the shore, than the Greeks, struck with the sight of such prodigious armaments, began to forget the counsel of Themistocles, and the Peloponnesians once more looked toward the Isthmus. Nay, they resolved to set sail that very night, and such orders were given to all the pilots. Themistocles, greatly concerned that the Greeks were going to give up the advantage of their station in the straits,˛ and to retire to their respective countries, contrived that stratagem which was put in execution by Sicinus. This Sicinus was of Persian extraction, and a captive, but much attached to Themistocles, and the tutor of his children. On this occasion Themistocles sent him privately to the King of Persia, with orders to tell him that the commander of the Athenians, having espoused his interest, was the first to inform him of the intended flight of the Greeks; and that he exhorted him not to suffer them to escape; but while they were in this confusion, and at a distance from their land forces, to attack and destroy their whole army.
Xerxes took this information kindly, supposing it to proceed from friendship, and immediately gave orders to his officers, with two hundred ships, to surround all the passages, and to inclose the islands, that none of the Greeks might escape, and then to follow with the rest of the ships at their leisure. Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, was the first that perceived this motion of the enemy; and though he was not in friendship with Themistocles, but had been banished by his means, he went to him, and told him they were surrounded by the enemy. Themistocles, knowing his probity, and charmed with his coming to give this intelligence, acquainted him with the affair of Sicinus, and entreated him to lend his assistance to keep the Greeks in their station; and, as they had a confidence in his honor, to persuade them to come to an engagement in the straits. Aristides approved the proceedings of Themistocles, and going to the other admirals and captains, encouraged them to engage.
As soon as it was day, Xerxes sat down on an eminence to view the fleet and its order of battle. He placed himself, as Phanodemus writes, above the temple of Hercules, where the isle of Salamis is separated from Attica by a narrow frith; but according to Acestodorus, on the confines of Megara, upon a spot called Kerata, the horns. He was seated on a throne of gold, and had many secretaries about him, whose business it was to write down the particulars of the action. . . .
As to the number of the Persian ships, the poet Eschylus speaks of it, in his tragedy entitled Persae, as a matter he was well assured of:
A thousand ships (for well I know the number)
The Persian flag obey'd: two hundred more
And seven, o'erspread the seas.
The Athenians had only one hundred and eighty galleys; each carried eighteen men that fought upon deck, four of whom were archers, and the rest heavy armed.
If Themistocles was happy in choosing a place for action, he was no less so in taking advantage of a proper time for it; for he would not engage the enemy till that time of day when a brisk wind usually arises from the sea, which occasions a high surf in the channel. This was no inconvenience to the Grecian vessels, which were low built and well compacted; but a very great one to the Persian ships, which had high sterns and lofty decks, and were heavy and unwieldy; for it caused them to veer in such a manner that their sides were exposed to the Greeks, who attacked them furiously. During the whole dispute, great attention was given to the motions of Themistocles, as it was believed he knew best how to proceed. Ariamenes, the Persian admiral, a man of distinguished honor, and by far the bravest of the king's brothers, directed his maneuvers chiefly against him. His ship was very tall, and from thence he threw darts and shot forth arrows as from the walls of a castle. But Aminias the Decelean, and Sosicles the Pedian, who sailed in one bottom, bore down upon him with their prow, and both ships meeting, they were fastened together by means of their brazen beaks; when Ariamenes boarding their galley, they received him with their pikes, and pushed him into the sea. Artemisiał knew the body among others that were floating with the wreck, and carried it to Xerxes. While the fight was thus raging, we are told a great light appeared, as from Eleusis; and loud sounds and voices were heard through all the plain of Thriasia to the sea, as of a great number of people carrying the mystic symbols of Bacchus in procession. A cloud, too, seemed to rise from among the crowd that made this noise, and to ascend by degrees, till it fell upon the galleys. Other phantoms also and apparitions of armed men, they thought they saw, stretching out their hands from Egina before the Grecian fleet. These they conjectured to be the Eacidae, to whom, before the battle, they had addressed their prayers for succor.
The first man that took a ship was an Athenian named Lycomedes, captain of a galley, who cut down the ensigns from the enemy's ship, and consecrated them to the laurelled Apollo. As the Persians could come up in the straits but few at a time, and often put each other in confusion, the Greeks equaling them in the line, fought them till the evening, when they broke them entirely, and gained that signal and complete victory, than which (as Simonides says) no other naval achievement, either of the Greeks or barbarians, ever was more glorious. This success was owing to the valor, indeed, of all the confederates, but chiefly to the sagacity and conduct of Themistocles.4
1 The owl was sacred to Minerva, the protectress of the Athenians.
2 If the confederates had quitted the Straits of Salamis, where they could equal the Persians in the line of battle, such of the Athenians as were on that island must have become an easy prey to the enemy, and the Persians would have found an open sea on the Peloponnesian coast, where they could act with all their force against the ships of the allies.
3 Artemisia, Queen of Halicarnassus, distinguished herself above all the rest of the Persian forces, her ships being the last that fled, which Xerxes observing, cried out that the men behaved like women, and the women with the courage and intrepidity of men. The Athenians were so incensed against her that they offered a reward of ten thousand drachmas to any one that should take her alive. This princess must not be confounded with that Artemisia who was the wife of Mausolas, king of Caria.
4 In this battle, which was one of the most memorable we find in history, the Grecians lost forty ships, and the Persians two hundred, besides a great many more that were taken.
How did Themistocles get the people of Athens to go to war?
a.
by logic and reason
b.
by bribery and treachery
c.
by bread and circuses
d.
by prodigies and oracles
9.
Amerigo Vespucci
OVERVIEW
Amerigo Vespucci's exploration of the coast of Brazil in 1502 included a visit with a group of native South Americans. Here are excerpts of Vespucci's account of South America and its people.
This land is very pleasing, full of an infinite number of very tall trees which never lose their leaves and through the year are fragrant with the sweetest aromas and yield an endless supply of fruits, many of which are good to taste and conducive to bodily health. The fields produce many herbs and flowers and most delicious and wholesome roots. Sometimes I was so wonder-struck by the fragrant smells of the herbs and flowers and the savour of the fruits and the roots that I fancied myself near the Terrestrial Paradise. What shall we say of the multitude of birds and their plumes and colours and singing and their numbers and their beauty? I am unwilling to enlarge upon this description, because I doubt if I would be believed.
What should I tell of the multitude of wild animals, the abundance of pumas, of panthers, of wild cats, not like those of Spain, but of the antipodes; of so many wolves, red deer, monkeys, and felines, marmosets of many kinds, and many large snakes? We saw so many other animals that I believe so many species could not have entered Noah's ark. We saw many wild hogs, wild goats, stags and does, hares, and rabbits, but of domestic animals, not one.
Let us come to rational animals. We found the whole land inhabited by people entirely naked, the men like the women without any covering of their shame. Their bodies are very agile and well proportioned, of light colour, with long hair, and little or no beard. I strove a great deal to understand their conduct and customs. For twenty-seven days I ate and slept among them, and what I learned about them is as follows.
Having no laws and no religious faith, they live according to nature. They understand nothing of the immortality of the soul. There is no possession of private property among them, for everything is in common. They have no boundaries of kingdom or province. They have no king, nor do they obey anyone. Each one is his own master. There is no administration of justice, which is unnecessary to them, because in their code no one rules. They live in communal dwellings, built in the fashion of very large cabins. For people who have no iron or indeed any metal, one can call their cabins truly miraculous houses. For I have seen habitations which are two hundred and twenty paces long and thirty wide, ingeniously fabricated; and in one of these houses dwelt five or six hundred persons. They sleep in nets woven out of cotton, going to bed in mid-air with no other coverture. They eat squatting upon the ground. Their food is very good: an endless quantity of fish; a great abundance of sour cherries, shrimps, oysters, lobsters, crabs and many other products of the sea. The meat which they eat mostly is what one may call human flesh a´la mode. When they can get it, they eat other meat, of animals or birds, but they do not lay hold of many, for they have no dogs, and the country is a very thick jungle full of ferocious wild beasts. For this reason they are not wont to penetrate the jungle except in large parties.
The men have a custom of piercing their lips and cheeks and setting in these perforations ornaments of bone or stone; and do not suppose them small ones. Most of them have at least three holes, and some seven, and some nine, in which they set ornaments of green and white alabaster, half a palm in length and as thick as a Catalonian plum. This pagan custom is beyond description. They say they do this to make themselves look more fierce. In short, it is a brutal business. . . .
Their women do not make any ceremony over childbirth, as do ours, but they eat all kinds of food, and wash themselves up to the very time of delivery, and scarcely feel any pain in parturition.
They are a people of great longevity, for according to their way of attributing issue, they had known many men who had four generations of descendants. They do not know how to compute time in days, months, and years, but reckon time by lunar months. When they wished to demonstrate something involving time, they did it by placing pebbles, one for each lunar month. I found a man of advanced age who indicated to me with pebbles that he had seen seventeen hundred lunar months, which I judged to be a hundred and thirty-two years, counting thirteen moons to the year.
They are also a warlike people and very cruel to their own kind. All their weapons and the blows they strike are, as Petrarch says, 'committed to the wind', for they use bows and arrows, darts, and stones. They use no shields for the body, but go into battle naked. They have no discipline in the conduct of their wars, except that they do what their old men advise. When they fight, they slaughter mercilessly. . . . Those whom they seize as prisoners, they take for slaves to their habitations. . . . We purchased from them ten creatures, male as well as female, which they were deliberating upon for [human] sacrifice, or better to say, the crime. Much as we reproved them, I do not know that they amended themselves. That which made me the more astonished at their wars and cruelty was that I could not understand from them why they made war upon each other, considering that they held no private property or sovereignty of empire and kingdoms and did not know any such thing as lust for possession, that is, pillaging or a desire to rule, which appear to me to be the causes of wars and of every disorderly act. When we requested them to state the cause, they did not know how to give any other cause than that this curse upon them began in ancient times and they sought to avenge the deaths of their forefathers.
According to Amerigo Vespucci, the inhabitants of Brazil were
a.
prone to disease and lived only a short while.
b.
subject to rickets and lived only four decades.
c.
in need of medical help and lived an average of 20 years.
d.
of great longevity, meaning they lived a long time.
10.
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson
OVERVIEW
Aquatic biologist Rachel Carson became known around the world for her book Silent Spring, which warned of the dangers of environmental pollution. The book sparked a federal investigation, eventually leading to tougher laws regarding the use of harmful chemicals. A brief portion of the 1962 book appears here.
The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
During the past quarter century this power has not only increased to one of disturbing magnitude but it has changed in character. The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world – the very nature of its life. Strontium 90, released through nuclear explosions into the air, comes to the earth in rain or drifts down as fallout, lodges in soil, enters into the grass or corn or wheat grown there, and in time takes up its abode in the bones of a human being, there to remain until his death. Similarly, chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in the soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until they emerge and, through the alchemy of air and sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. As Albert Schweitzer has said, "Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation."
It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth—eons of time in which that developing and evolving and diversifying life reached a state of adjustment and balance with its surroundings. The environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it supported, contained elements that were hostile as well as supporting. Certain rocks gave out dangerous radiation; even within the light of the sun, from which all life draws its energy, there were short-wave radiations with power to injure. Given time—time not in years but in millennia—life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time.
The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature. Radiation is no longer merely the background radiation of rocks, the bombardment of cosmic rays, the ultraviolet of the sun that have existed before there was any life on earth; radiation is now the unnatural creation of man's tampering with the atom. The chemicals to which life is asked to make its adjustment are no longer merely the calcium and silica and copper and all the rest of the minerals washed out of the rocks and carried in rivers to the sea; they are the synthetic creations of man's inventive mind, brewed in his laboratories, and having no counterparts in nature.
To adjust to these chemicals would require time on the scale that is nature's; it would require not merely the years of a man's life but the life of generations. And even this, were it by some miracle possible, would be futile, for the new chemicals come from our laboratories in an endless stream; almost five hundred annually find their way into actual use in the United States alone. The figure is staggering and its implications are not easily grasped—500 new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year, chemicals totally outside the limits of biological experience.
Among them are many that are used in man's war against nature. Since the mid-1940's over 200 basic chemicals have been created for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents, and other organisms described in the modern vernacular as "pests"; and they are sold under several thousand different brand names.
These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes—nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the "good" and the "bad," to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in the soil—all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called "insecticides," but "biocides."
The whole process of spraying seems caught up in an endless spiral. Since DDT was released for civilian use, a process of escalation has been going on in which ever more toxic materials must be found. This has happened because insects, in a triumphant vindication of Darwin's principle of the survival of the fittest, have evolved super races immune to the particular insecticide used, hence a deadlier one has always to be developed—and then a deadlier one that that. . . .
The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
What is the main point of the first paragraph of the excerpt?
a.
Humans only recently acquired the ability to change the earth.
b.
The earth is adapting well to humans.
c.
The earth changes faster than humans.
d.
Humans change slowly compared to the earth.
