You desired proof of this? Very well.
Take a spade and dig into the soil. What did you find?
Beautiful old statues. Beautiful old vases. Ruins of ancient
buildings. All these things were made by the people of the
greatest empire that ever existed. They ruled all the world
for a thousand years. They were strong and rich and handsome
(just look at that bust of the Emperor Augustus!). Of
course, they were not Christians and they would never be
able to enter Heaven. At best they would spend their days
in purgatory, where Dante had just paid them a visit.
But who cared? To have lived in a world like that of
ancient Rome was heaven enough for any mortal being. And
anyway, we live but once. Let us be happy and cheerful for
the mere joy of existence.
Such, in short, was the spirit that had begun to fill the
narrow and crooked streets of the many little Italian cities.
You know what we mean by the ``bicycle craze'' or the
``automobile craze.'' Some one invents a bicycle. People who
for hundreds of thousands of years have moved slowly and
painfully from one place to another go ``crazy'' over the prospect
of rolling rapidly and easily over hill and dale. Then
a clever mechanic makes the first automobile. No longer is it
necessary to pedal and pedal and pedal. You just sit and
let little drops of gasoline do the work for you. Then everybody
wants an automobile.
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