bettered the conditions of life for skilled workingmen and the middle class,
but we have allowed our cities to fester with dark ghettos and slimy slums.
We frolic in our emancipation from theology, but have we developed a
natural ethic–a moral code independent of religion–strong enough to keep
our instincts of acquisition, pugnacity, and sex from debasing our
civilization into a mire of greed, crime, and promiscuity? Have we really
outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it from religious to national,
ideological, or racial hostilities? Are our manners better than before, or
worse? “Manners,” said a nineteenth-century traveler, “get regularly worse
as you go from the East to the West; it is bad in Asia, not so good in
Europe, and altogether bad in the western states of America”;
and now
the East imitates the West. Have our laws offered the criminal too much
protection against society and the state? Have we given ourselves more
freedom than our intelligence can digest? Or are we nearing such moral and
social disorder that frightened parents will run back to Mother Church and
beg her to discipline their children, at whatever cost to intellectual liberty?
Has all the progress of philosophy since Descartes [Descartes, René (1596-
1650)] been a mistake through its failure to recognize the role of myth in
the consolation and control of man? “He that increaseth knowledge
increaseth sorrow, and in much wisdom is much grief.”
Has there been any progress at all in philosophy since Confucius
[Confucius (551-479 B.C.)]? Or in literature since Aeschylus [(525-456
B.C.)]? Are we sure that our music, with its complex forms and powerful
orchestras, is more profound than Palestrina [Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi
da (1526?-1594)], or more musical and inspiring than the monodic airs that
medieval Arabs sang to the strumming of their simple instruments?
(Edward Lane [Lane, Edward (1801-76)] said of the Cairo musicians, “I
have been more charmed with their songs… than with any other music that
I have ever enjoyed.”
) How does our contemporary architecture–bold,
original, and impressive as it is–compare with the temples of ancient Egypt
or Greece, or our sculpture with the statues of Chephren [Chephren (or
