I put to you what I
posited in an earlier course of lectures, quoting Bagehot, that
while a knowledge of Greek and Latin is not necessary to a writer
of English, he should at least have a firm conviction that those
two languages existed. I refer you to a long passage which, in
one of those lectures, I quoted from Cardinal Newman to the
effect that for the last 3000 years the Western World has
been evolving a human society, having its bond _in a common
civilisation_--a society to which (let me add, by way of
footnote) Prussia today is firmly, though with great difficulty,
being tamed. There are, and have been, other civilisations in the
world --the Chinese, for instance; a huge civilisation,
stationary, morose, to us unattractive; 'but _this_
civilisation,' says Newman, 'together with the society which is
its creation and its home, is so distinctive and luminous in its
character, so imperial in its extent, so imposing in its
duration, and so utterly without rival upon the face of the
earth, that the association may fitly assume for itself the title
of "Human Society," and its civilisation the abstract term
"Civilisation".
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