Charlemagne and Otto the Great were called ``Roman Emperors,''
but they had as little resemblance to a real Roman Emperor
(say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as ``King'' Wumba
Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers
of Sweden or Denmark. They were savages who lived amidst
glorious ruins but who did not share the benefits of the
civilisation which their fathers and grandfathers had destroyed.
They knew nothing. They were ignorant of almost every fact
which a boy of twelve knows to-day. They were obliged to go
to one single book for all their information. That was the
Bible. But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the
history of the human race for the better are those chapters of
the New Testament which teach us the great moral lessons of
love, charity and forgiveness. As a handbook of astronomy,
zoology, botany, geometry and all the other sciences, the venerable
book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth century, a
second book was added to the mediaeval library, the great
encyclopaedia of useful knowledge, compiled by Aristotle, the
Greek philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why
the Christian church should have been willing to accord such
high honors to the teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas
they condemned all other Greek philosophers on account of
their heathenish doctrines, I really do not know.
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