Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 170, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1914 — SHOW PAST IN ITS TRUTH [ARTICLE]

SHOW PAST IN ITS TRUTH

Buildings Which Have Survived Are the Most Valuable Historical Reo> ords the World Has. It has been said that history was the written order of things. No doubt what had been written was of enormous value, but it was not all, and even where we had a literature of the past It was iD some cases not the greater part of what conveyed the past to us, said Prof. “Blinders Petrie. in London, the Philadelphia Public Ledger states. Where should we be in the understanding of the ancient Greeks if there were no statuary and no sculpture? How could we understand their magnificent senße of accuracy, precision and refinement if there were no architecture to study?- Many years ago, with regard to the great question of the restoration of the Parthenon, the objection was made that no person could ever get to know precisely how the columns were put together. Professor Petrie thought it was only a question of measurements, and he bought a lathe in Athens and did some careful measurements. To his intense surprise he found he eould not detect the errors. There were none. He thought he was going to deal With tenths of an tech, but he found he had to deal with hundredths. Hew the~ Greeks did .It, he did not understand. He could not comprehend the physical means of doing: ft on that seale. - That was only an instance of bow much a building c6uld teach them. Who could appreciate the accuracy, the sense of perfection and the sense of beauty, if we bad not these material remains? Then, if they looked a little later, let them consider how miserable was the greater part of the histories of the emperors. What did they understand of Rome? They understood the Coliseum the majesty of it and* the eruelty of it —they could understand the magnificent temples, the great architecture, and they could see from tint what Rome was far better than by reading all the imperial historians. And if they looked a little rater what was there in the whole writings of the thirteenth century which gave them suck a perfect picture of the medieval mind as Salisbury cathedral? He ventured to give these a» ffiastrations of the value of the material civilization side "By side with the civilization of the people, because he thought they would enable them to grasp perhaps more clearly how much they could ascertain and feel and know about the civilization of which they had material remains. They enabled them to understand the feelings, sentiments and ideals of those bygone men from their literature. The question of material evidence might seem a dead and dull thing, but he ventured to think jhey were as much a key to the mental designs and powers, as any other form of expression.