"We say that the past is behind us and the future is in front of us. To the Greeks, however, the past was before them, because they could plainly see its finished form standing in front of them: it was territory they had passed through and whose terrain they had charted. It was the future that was behind them, sneaking up like a thief in the night, full of dim imaginings and vast uncertainties. Nothing could penetrate the blackness of this unknown future except the rare flash of foresight that the Greeks called sophos, or wisdom. Yet even these flashes of wisdom depended entirely on the capacity to remember what is eternal and unchanging -- which is precisely what we have almost completely forgotten....The past tells us that the next stage of history will be a tragic conflict between two different ways of life, which both have much that is worthy of admiration in them but which cannot coexist in the same world....But the past does not, and cannot, tell us how it will end this time."
From Civilization and its Enemies: The Next Stage of History by Lee Harris (Free Press, 2004).
Posted by Rick Penner at March 26, 2004 09:26 AM