Quote#Wisdom
The story was from one point of view as variable as the fancies of…
Quote byJohn Clark Ridpath · 1840–1900
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Ch. 1. Sources of Information, Vol. I, ch. 1, p. 53.
English (original)
The story was from one point of view as variable as the fancies of the race were vague and their creative powers capricious. But from another point of view there were common features in the traditions which now gained currency, and these common features at length constituted a sort of body of philosophy which was accepted with more or less reservation by the great minds of antiquity.
— John Clark Ridpath
More from John Clark Ridpath
Ethnic history...regards the human being as a maker—a maker of houses first, and of all things afterwards.
Man is a speaking animal. No other characteristic of his nature is more universal or prevailing. Speech is the invariable index of the intellectual and moral condition of the human kind.
Ethnic history is especially rich in the suggestions which it offers for illustration. It seems to call loudly for drawings and type-pictures and charts, to the end of a clearer and more vivid apprehension of the subject under …
We are now at the beginning of a vast and varied scholarship devoted to an exposition of the human family, and of the various parts into which our race has differentiated.
The author...does not flatter himself that he has greatly enlarged the boundaries of human knowledge, but claims rather to have cleared somewhat the horizon in this part and in that, to have visited in thought and reflection some …
At length...man...emerges into the domain of the higher arts. Here he becomes truly ideal. Here he adorns as well as constructs. Here by the use of color and form he gives outline and substance to the things perceived in vision and dream.