Description

-8- conditioning of everyone in childhood to strict obedience to authority became the basis of education. In spite of its many short-comings as we see them, the well integrated culture of mediaeval Western Europe was fully satis- fying to those participating in it. There was no doubting its perfection in spite of inaccurate knowledge, tyrannical authority, appalling epidemics, endless discomfort, repeated famine, and ferocious almost universal slavery. Strangely to us, mediaeval Europeans considered themselves individually free. Since they knew no other system, and since theirs had all the answers, they could have only one freedom, -from doubt. It was satisfying for them. Unthinkable to them were the individual freedoms we cherish: freedom of rational opinion, freedom of worship, freedom of study, thought and expression, freedom of opportunity, and freedom to doubt.

From Collection

Commence and Go Forth - University of Arkansas Commencement Speeches

Record Contributed By

University of Arkansas