A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII.
WE have arrived. Again I am in the court-yard of this palace of learning. Together we mount the steps. As we proceed towards an alcove, more of earnestness comes in all their faces—noticeable in every group taking places for study.
My darlings all have removed hats, and are seated.
At his mother's request, Frederick reads from book of reference:
"These strange-looking implements were used by those half-brutal people to destroy life, when they coveted the possessions of other communities, or to avenge any insult to their vanity. So merciless were they that, not content with annihilating their own kind in their frightful encounters, they also killed vast numbers of an elegant animal called the horse. Many writers of the twenty-first century affirm that its intelligence often exceeded that of its owner. For further information see the interesting work entitled 'Where is the Horse?' by Z. Darrin, said to have ascended from an ancient writer named Darwin, who, with a few others of his time, met with great opposition and vituperation, because they used their reason more than was customary in those ages."
"Of course," says the mother, "no writers of that early time could have reached the present stage of knowledge, and they were consequently at fault in many of their deductions. But that was not the cause of the foolish gibes with which unthinkers assailed them. It was the atom of truth they had surely discovered, which was so offensive to the ignorance and prejudice of their contemporaries. (Turning to the cases facing their alcove.) Now examine those representations—you will there see how little removed from brutes were the men of that fierce age."
In one half of first case are correct models of an arsenal and "munition of war." The other half shows two opposing armies preparing for attack.
The second case well demonstrates the small value of life in our times. Heaps of horses and men dead or dying! The "Conquering Heroes" (so they are labelled) are cruelly illusing every living being, even women and children.
Another represents the two "Crowned Heads," who had directed all these horrors, shaking hands. "The one whose murderous implements had destroyed the most, having thus compelled the other to call a piece of land by another name; all people living upon it to be subject to the conqueror—henceforth to act and feign to think according to his mighty will. Such terrible injustice was frequently perpetrated when one chief or monarch uttered some puerile insult concerning another—or, more often, when he coveted some country not ruled over by him."
I extract the foregoing from book of reference.
As the students examine those horrors and savage pomp, their feelings become too excited for utterance. After observing them during a few minutes, their mother says:
"Yes, my darlings truly a most shocking and pitiable sight—yet those atrocities, and others even exceeding them, were frequently committed under the cloak of religion. So great were their vanity and ignorance of noble ideas that they made loud boasts of their 'victories'—so those murders were called—and myth-men in their churches thanked their God for them. Tender innocent children were constantly undergoing scourgings and other barbarous punishments in their schools, for being unable to remember lessons containing names of those slaughters and the principal slaughterers."
I can attest the truth of this! When between six and seven years of age I have been kept standing on a form until my delicate limbs ached, and had frequently to undergo similar torture—to say nothing of sundry cuffings and other assaults—because my young mind refused to be saturated with knowledge of those bloody deeds. Rote lessons on unnecessary subjects have done, and are doing, immense harm to the young.
Her eyes wear the expression of looking back through intervening ages. Mournful, and so beautiful, in her large-minded pity! nobility—real nobility—stamped on every feature. Reflectively she continues:
"There are some, besides students, who think the deeds of those ignorant times ought to be consigned to oblivion—others are of opinion that human nature has not yet sufficiently advanced to lose memory of such deterrent examples. Indeed, it is scarcely 2000 years since a man was convicted of endeavouring to borrow money, and several teachers punished for striking their pupils. I fear it will be long ere our blood be quite safe from reversion; in which case we should have to re-commence all. Such deterioration occurred frequently within human knowledge in the early ages. Several times intelligence struggled as far as it attained in the twentieth century of the Age of Blood—when as often, the dreadful tiger taint threw all back again."
Frederick interrupts her, and there is real astonishment in his voice as he asks: "Were tigers ever so cruel as this? (Pointing to the 'Conquering Heroes.') If so, our kind pet, Leoni, cannot be of the same species."
"Yes, dear, it has been as conclusively proved that the congener of our sweet-tempered, gentle animal was the mean ferocious tiger of that age as that these fierce murder-loving men were the progenitors of our noble-minded Fredericks and Carls of the present day. You must take into your analysis of our history that in those sadly ignorant old times, men, and many other vindictive animals, devoured flesh. It is easy to understand bow such a primeval diet would tend to the conservation of blood-thirsty instincts, more especially if eaten uncooked, as by the tigers then. Indeed, in some countries there existed brutes in somewhat of human form, who ate anything that had lived—cooked or not—even their own species."
Frederick:
"Oh, horrible! (Looking at the cases.) Yet it was not much worse than the amusements of the 'Conquering Heroes.' What could be more contemptibly ferocious than that one who has just divided an infant with his cruel blade."
Very sorrowfully his mother replied:
"Yes, even worse than that was done by those heroes. So much more so that it could not be represented here. could not be told in the present era—all of which was the result of a state of ignorance, impossible for us to fully imagine. In these war records you have seen one great cause of premature death, cruelty, grief and misery, which endured long, very long, after the originators had passed away, and their vanity forgotten. But (rising from her seat) the greatest factor of calamity of every known sort under which poor ignorant humanity has writhed in agony—bodily and mental—I have yet to inform you upon.