The Vanity Of Civilization
To suppose that arts and sciences are exhausted subjects, is doing them a kind of dishonor. The divine mechanism of creation reproves such folly, and shows us by comparison the imperfection of our most refined inventions. I cannot believe that this species of vanity is peculiar to the present age only. I have no doubt but that it existed before the Flood, and even in the wildest ages of antiquity. It is folly we have inherited, not created; and the discoveries which every day produces have greatly contributed to dispossess us of it. Improvement and the world will expire together; and till that period arrives, we may plunder the mine, but can never exhaust it! That “We have found out all things,” has been the motto of every age.
Let our ideas travel a little into antiquity, and we shall find larger portions of vanity than now; and so unwilling were our ancestors to descend from this mountain of perfection, that when any new discovery exceeded the common standard the discoverer was believed to be in alliance with the Devil. It was not the ignorance of the age only, but the vanity of it, which rendered it dangerous to be ingenious. The man who first planned and erected the first tenable hut, was perhaps called an able architect; but he who first improved it with a chimney could be no less than a prodigy: yet had the same man been so unfortunate as to have embellished it with glass windows, he might probably have been burnt for a magician.
Our fancies would be highly diverted could we look back and behold a circle of original Indians haranguing on the sublime perfection of the age; yet it is not impossible but future times may exceed us almost as much as we have exceeded them.
—Thomas Paine.
Home, in one form or another, is the great object of life.
—J. G. Holland.
Alternate Reading: Daniel 5.