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LONGINUS 1
59
when the whole life of each one of us is controlled by bribery,
while we lie in wait for other men's death and plan how to get
a place in their wills, when we buy gain, from whatever source,
each one of us, with our very souls in our slavish greed, how,
I say, can we expect, in the midst of such a moral pestilence,
that there is still left even one liberal and impartial critic,
whose verdict will not be biassed by avarice in judging of those
great works which live on through
all time ? Alas ! I fear
that for such men as we are it is better to serve than to be free.
If our appetites were let loose altogether against our neighbors,
they would be like wild beasts uncaged, and bring a deluge of
calamity on the whole civilized world."
I ended by remarking generally that the genius of the
present age is wasted by that indifference which with a few
exceptions runs through the whole of life. If we ever shake
off our * apathy and apply ourselves to work, it is always
with a view to pleasure or applause, not for that solid advantage
which is worthy to be striven for and held in honor.
\Ye had better then leave this generation to its fate, and
turn to what follows, which is the subject of the passions, to
which we promised early in this treatise to devote a separate
work.f They play an important part in literature generally,
and especially in relation to the Sublime.
* Comp. Thuc. vi. 26. 2, for this sense of &vo.\ai^^vfiv. f iii.
1
*
Compare Button, below, p. 175.
Compare Aristotle's Rhetoric, Book I, Chapter IX (Welldon's translation,
p. n).
Compare the fault criticised by Socrates in the Pluedrus, above, p. 31.
is statement by examples in history.
1 Observe a similar comparison in Plato, above, pp. 31-32.