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Some years back Richard Nixon warned the American peoplethat Russia was bad because she had not kept any treaty oragreement signed with her. You can trust the Communists, thesaying went, to be Communists.Indian people laugh themselves sick when they hear thesestatements. America has yet to keep one Indian treaty or agreementdespite the fact that the United States government signedover four hundred such treaties and agreements with Indiantribes. It would take Russia another century to make and breakas many treaties as the United States has already violated.

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Historians of technology have asked why no industrial revolution developed in antiquity. The simple answer seems to be that there was no need, that contemporary modes of production and the slave-based economy of the day satisfactorily maintained the status quo. The capitalist idea of profit as a desirable end to pursue was completely foreign to the contemporary mentality. So, too, was the idea that technology on a large scale could or should be harnessed to those ends. An industrial revolution was literally unthinkable in antiquity.

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Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims- the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a large continent.

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A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean. At its cradle (to repeat a thoughtful adage) religion stands, and philosophy accompanies it to the grave. In the beginning of all cultures a strong religious faith conceals and softens the nature of things, and gives men courage to bear pain and hardship patiently; at every step the gods are with them, and will not let them perish, until they do. Even then a firm faith will explain that it was the sins of the people that turned their gods to an avenging wrath; evil does not destroy faith, but strengthens it. If victory comes, if war is forgotten in security and peace, then wealth grows; the life of the body gives way, in the dominant classes, to the life of the senses and the mind; toil and suffering are replaced by pleasure and ease; science weakens faith even while thought and comfort weaken virility and fortitude. At last men begin to doubt the gods; they mourn the tragedy of knowledge, and seek refuge in every passing delight. Achilles is at the beginning, Epicurus at the end. After David comes Job, and after Job, Ecclesiastes.

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Will Durant

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