Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. THE ETHICS OF AMUSEMENT. HISTORY presents some curious contrasts. Some five centuries before the Christian era there appeared in Greece two philosophers, Heraclitus and Democritus. Heraclitus, of a morose temper, despised the pursuits of men, and spoke with contempt alike of the political sentiments of the statesman and the speculations of the philosopher. Because he so often shed tears over the vices and follies of mankind his traditional title is " the Weeping Philosopher." Of Democritus, who seems to have had no more exalted opinion of his fellow-men, Seneca says that he never appeared in public without showing his contempt for human folly by ridicule, and his popular name is " the Laughing Philosopher." At the distance of more than two thousand years myth and mystery mantle characters, somewhat as mist clothes a mountain; yet these two men, however robed in romance, may serve as representatives of two opposite classes of mankind. On one side we meet an unnatural and morbid melancholy, and on 141 the other an equally excessive and distasteful frivolity--disciples of Heraclitus or of Democritus. Some few seem to think there is some virtue in gloom. Their faces are so fixed in marble-like rigidity and frigidity that if they should smile something would crack; if they should laugh something would break. By little children, such people, more than the bugbears of the nursery tales, are remembered with dread: their look is sepulchral, their voice has the tones of the tomb, their eyes are veiled by dark brows and heavy lids, as the sun is half hid by black clouds. After meeting them one feels, as a wag expressed it, like "walking in a cemetery to get enlivened up." Much the larger class belong to the school of the Laughing...
