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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: War (and politics as subsidiary to it) was then the chief pursuit
of life. But as there was no organized industry, so there were no
machines of warfare. All fighting was done hand to hand.
Therefore, the great thing in preparing for war was not to
transform the soldiers into precisely-acting automata, as in a
modern army, but to make each separate soldier as vigorous and
active as possible. The leading object of Greek education was to
make men physically perfect. In this respect, Sparta may be taken
as the typical Greek community, for nowhere else was physical
development so entirely made the great end of social life. In
these matters Sparta was always regarded by the other cities as
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
