From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 01:01:46 MDT
Was not the 18th century the most wonderful and
astounding in the history of humankind? For the
first time, the argument between Ancients and
Moderns could definitely be established in favor
of the latter. For the first time, barbarism,
ignorance, cruelty, and repression were themselves
repressed. Even Jenner's 1796 initial inoculation
against small pox sneaked in, while earlier Lady
Mary Wortly Montagu and the Turks were already
on target: http://www.keratin.com/am/am002.shtml
The previous century really ended in 1715, just as
the 18th century itself really ended in 1815, and
the 19th in 1914. Because in 1715 one sun was
replaced by another. The outgoing sun, Sun King
Louis XIV, Le Etat c'est Moi, absolute ruler of
25 million of the most advanced citizens of Earth's
richest country, died that year, and our good old
global-warmer itself, our real sun, came back from
its Maunder Minimum.
Imagine George Washington giving one of his humble
self-conscious speeches and try to find anything
in the previous century to match it. Consider the
sophistication of the French and English writers of
the late century, nothing earlier in the world can
compare to their erudition and expertise. Diderot
wrote an encyclopedia, and Johnson a dictionary.
The 1600s had been mostly still ignorance and super-
stition, but the eighteenth century---it was the age
of Euler and Catharine the Great, Frederick the
Great, and lots and lots of other greats on so
many continents and in so many countries.
It was *itself*, the wonderful and irreplaceably
marvelous 18th century. Put on some Haydn!
Lee
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