HUMAN AND LITERATURE

  The Myth of Hercules.   “Some men are born to a great deal of trouble, yet bear it with so light a heart that they never seem to have a care in the world. This was the case with Hercules. His troubles began early, and they never ceased until the day he died, but he was always cheerful and strong. When he was a mere babe of a few months, he met his first great danger. His mother, Alcmena, had put him to bed one night with his twin brother, Iphicles. Their cradle was the inside of a bronze shield. The babes were healthy, and they had been given a good warm bath and plenty of milk before they were tucked in, so they were asleep in a moment. Toward midnight two huge snakes came crawling into the nursery. Marvelous snakes they were, and their eyes shone with a light which filled the room with its glare. They came gliding swiftly toward the cradle, and there might then have been an end of both of its little occupants, but at that moment the children awoke. Iphicles, ...

  Myth and Adventures of Ulysses     Ulysses was king of Ithaca, and had been, like many other princes of Greece, a suitor of the beautiful Helen. Believing that he had no hope for success among so many competitors, Ulysses asked the hand of Penelope, daughter of Icarus... The Odyssey, the second of the two great poems attributed to Homer, is a history of the wanderings of Ulysses. After some adventures of minor importance, the ships of the hero were overtaken by a storm which drove them southward for nine days, and as many nights, until they reached the country of the Lotus-eaters. When the tempest abated, Ulysses sent some of his companions on shore. They were kindly entertained by the Lotus-eaters, who regaled them with their own favorite food, the lotus plant. This was of such a nature, that all who partook of it forgot home and friends, and were filled with a sort of indolent contentment, so that they had no other desire than to remain always in that cou...

  The Myth of Achilles and the Trojan War Achilles was the son of Peleus, king of Phthiotis in Thessaly; his mother was Thetis, a sea-goddess. Many incredible stories are told concerning the manner in which the hero was nursed in his infancy. According to one account, his mother designed to make him immortal, and for that purpose anointed him with ambrosia during the day, and laid him in the fire at night. The fears of Peleus interrupted this strange treatment, and Achilles remained subject to death. Calchas had declared that Troy could not be taken without his aid, and Thetis, who was aware that her son was destined to perish if he joined the expedition, disguised him in female attire, and concealed him among the daughters of King Lycomedes... The war in the land of Troy continued year after year. The Greeks drew up their ships upon the beach and lived in them there by the sea. Many a battle was fought and many a town was taken and burned, but the Trojans would not gi...

  The History of Palestine: From the Fall of Jerusalem to the Modern Time. Palestine is essentially a land of small divisions, and its configuration does not fit it to form a separate entity; it “has never belonged to one nation and probably never will.” Its position gives the key to its history... (R. Macalister) The destruction of Jerusalem, though it put an end to the polity of the Hebrew nation as an independent people, did not entirely disperse the remains of their miserable tribes, nor denude the Holy Land of its proper inhabitants. The number of the slain was indeed immense, and the multitude of captives carried away by Titus glutted the slave-markets of the Roman empire; but it is true, nevertheless, that many fair portions of Palestine were uninjured by the war, and continued to enjoy an enviable degree of prosperity under the government of their conquerors. The towns on the coast generally submitted to the legions without incurring the chance of a battle or ...

  Jean Jaurès : Socialist and Humanitarian  Just as Europe crossed the threshold of war two men whose influence on the future would have been great and beneficial fell. The one was Jaurès, the other Frank. Frank with his whole future before him, the Revisionist protagonist of Bebel himself, volunteered when the war broke out, and in a miserable little skirmish almost at the very outset gave his life for Germany. Jaurès, happily with much of his life's work done, but on the verge of a new world which sadly required his help, for there was no other with his influence and but very few with his sagacity and incorruptible mind, was shot by a “patriotic” youth in a restaurant. It is a strange doom that these two friends who, had they lived, would have had more to do with the settlement after the war than kings, emperors or foreign ministers, should have been killed at its very outset. Frank will live in the memories of those who knew him as a promise that was unfulfille...

    Speech is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. Yet it needs but a moment’s reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is, in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk… One theory is that primitive words were imitative of sounds: man copied the barking of dogs and thereby obtained a natural word with the meaning of ‘dog’ or ‘bark.’ To this theory, nicknamed the bow-wow theory, Renan objects that it seems rather absurd to set up this chronological sequence: first the lower animals are original enough to cry and roar; and then comes man, making a language for himself by imitating his inferiors. But surely man would imitate not only the cries of inferior animals, but also those of his fellow-men, and the salient point of the theory is this: so...