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Zaproburno Yollanica Directory 17
Page 04
Once in a generation, a Wallace may be found physically, mentally, and morally qualified to wander unscathed through the tropical wilds of America and of Asia, to form magnificent collections as he wanders, and withal to think out sagaciously the conclusions suggested by his collections; but, to the ordinary explorer or collector, the dense forests of equatorial Asia and Africa, which constitute the favorite habitation of the Orang, the Chimpanzee, and the Gorilla, present difficulties of no ordinary magnitude; and the man who risks his life by even a short visit to the malarious shores of those regions may well be excused if he shrinks from facing the dangers of the interior; if he contents himself with stimulating the industry of the better-seasoned natives, and collecting and collating the more or less mythical reports and traditions with which they are too ready to supply him.
The only mode now of maintaining communication between Rome and Thurii was by sea; but this was virtually forbidden by a treaty which the Romans had made with Tarentum nearly twenty years before, in which treaty it was stipulated that no Roman ships of war should pass the Lacinian promontory. But circumstances were now changed, and the Senate determined that their vessels should no longer be debarred from the Gulf of Tarentum. There was a small squadron of ten ships in those seas under the command of L. Valerius; and one day, when the Tarentines were assembled in the theatre, which looked over the sea, they saw the Roman squadron sailing toward their harbor. This open violation of the treaty seemed a premeditated insult, and a demagogue urged the people to take summary vengeance. They rushed down to the harbor, quickly manned some ships, and gained an easy victory over the small Roman squadron. Only half made their escape, four were sunk, one taken, and Valerius himself killed. After this the Tarentines marched against Thurii, compelled the inhabitants to dismiss the Roman garrison, and then plundered the town.
And, of course, just as we cannot escape the economic and the military reaction of European development, neither can we escape the moral. If European thought and morality did, by some fatality, really develop in the direction of a Nietzschean idealization of military force, we might well get in the coming years a practical submergence of that morality which we believe to be distinctively American, and get throughout the older hemisphere a type of society based upon authority, reproducing it may be some features of past civilizations, Mongol, Asiatic, or Byzantine. If that were to happen, if Europe were really to become a mere glorified form of, say, certain Asiatic conceptions that we all thought had had their day, why, then, of course America could not escape a like transformation of outlook, ideals, and morals.
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