Реферат: Excerpts From Joseph Freeman

Kurt’s fear. [194]

[. . . .]

You can understand how it was, doctor. My story of man’s struggle toward democracy

had already briefly sketched the rise of man from the amoeba to Amos, and had indicated

the atrocities and advances of four thousand years of recorded history from the days when

the Assyrians flayed their war prisoners alive and nailed their skins to the walls of

their fortresses and Hammurabi issued his enlightened code, to the days when Pontius

Pilate was procurator of Judaea and the multitudes heard the Sermon on the Mount. And now

the amoeba who had grown into a two-legged hunter, a cannibal, a warrior; a slave in the

galleys, the fields, the mines; a priest, a poet, a philosopher, a Caesar; this creature

which for thousands of years had shed blood copiously in triumph and torrents of tears in

despair was now faced with the most tremendous idea that had yet filled the earth with

light; that all men are equal in the sight of God and love is the absolute condition of

the resurrection and the life. Equality and love and the essential unity of mankind the

world over, announced with such felicity and power by St. Paul: "There is neither Jew

nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are

all one in Christ Jesus," and that great luminous phrase which transcends the deadly

barriers of race: "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all

the face of the earth."

The most sublime things in Western literature have been written about that idea and

people have slit each other’s throats and burned each other at the stake to settle the

real meaning of the gospel of love, and it would be stupid and unpardonable presumption on

my part to do art than indicate its most obvious outlines. But how could I make the

readers of my book see the thing in practice? How could I give living shape to the old

problem which in the folly of my youth I used to call "the square and the

circle"? What single episode could I select which would show the effect of the gospel

of mercy and justice upon the amoeba which became first a cannibal, then a warrior

seething with wrath and vengeance? How could I make vivid the power of contrition and

forgiveness which the new faith set up like a mighty, luminous dam against the furious