Thursday, July 25, 2019
Passivity
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter XXXII:
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[T]he princes of Constantinople measured their greatness by the servile obedience of their people. They were ignorant how much this passive disposition enervates and degrades every faculty of the mind. The subjects, who had resigned their will to the absolute commands of a master, were equally incapable of guarding their lives and fortunes against the assaults of the Barbarians, or of defending their reason from the terrors of superstition.
