Description

Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langj�igem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - ��re Abnutzung, innen nur leicht vergilbt, gute Exemplare / External wear, on the inside only slightly yellowed, good copies. - This latest scholarly yet dynamic work by master archaeological detective Elmer G. Suhr, author of Venus de Milo�The Spinner and other books, is an examination and evaluation of the viewpoints of ancient peoples, especially those which have contributed to the development of thought in the West. It probes into the reasons why ancient peoples looked at their world and fellow men as they did, and studies what each one added and in what ways each one retarded the advance toward the democratic view of life. �What do we mean by the democratic view of life?� Professor Suhr asks. �Democracy is far from being an elixir stored up in a written document or in the mind of a politcial theorist; it springs from a view of life and the world, a view that creates as by-products such assets as our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the right of universal suffrage, freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial. �Democracy,� the author continues, �is more than middle-class respectability, more than voting and paying taxes, more than shining up the mirror of self-perfection; it is a program in which each one must contribute effort, in terms of thought and action, for the benefit of the society and government of which the individual and citizen is part�a perennial shareholder instead of a tiny unit looking dimly through a telescope at a monstrous ogre.� In The Ancient Mind and Its Heritage the author explores the habits, beliefs and customs of �primitive man,� of the Egyptians and of the Mesopotamians. In the work, Professor Suhr helps us to understand these peoples of antiquity and, in a sense, to more fully understand ourselves.