[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And be overwhelmed by disappointments, yet when he has retired into himself he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Will you smile at the enthusiasm I express concerning this divine wanderer? You would not if you saw him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have been tutored and refined by books and retirement from the world and you are therefore somewhat fastidious.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes I have endeavoured to discover what quality it is which he possesses that elevates him so immeasurably above any other person I ever knew.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I believe it to be an intuitive discernment, a quick but never failing power of judgment, a penetration into the causes of things unequaled for clearness and precision. Add to this a facility of expression.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had determined at one time that the memory of these evils should die with me. But you have won me to alter my determination.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did, and I ardently hope


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yet when I reflect that you are pursuing the same cause...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me what I am.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking and console you in case of failure. Prepare to hear of occurrences which are usually deemed marvelous.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were we among the tamer scenes of nature, I might fear to encounter your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But many things will appear possible in these wild and mysterious regions, which would provoke the laughter of those unacquainted with the ever-varied powers of nature.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nor can I doubt but that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence of the truth of the events of which it is composed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You may easily imagine that I was much gratified by the offered communication, yet I could not endure that he should renew his grief by a recital of his misfortunes. I felt the greatest eagerness to hear the promised narrative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Partly from curiosity and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his fate if it were in my power. I expressed these feelings in my answer. I thank you, he replied, for your sympathy. But it is useless. My fate is nearly fulfilled. I wait but for one event, and then I shall repose in peace. I understand your feeling, continued he, perceiving that I wished to interrupt him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you are mistaken, my friend, if thus you will allow me to name you. Nothing can alter my destiny. Listen to my history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you will perceive how irrevocably it is determined.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He then told me that he would commence his narrative the next day when I should be at leisure. This promise drew from me the warmest thanks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have resolved every night when I am not imperatively occupied by my duties to record as nearly as possible in his own words what he has related during the day. If I should be engaged I will at least make notes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This manuscript will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure, but to me, who know him, and who hear it from his own lips.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With what interest and sympathy shall I read it in some future day?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even now, as I commence my task, his full-toned voice swells in my ears. His lustrous eyes dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness. I see his thin hand raised in animation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Strange and harrowing must be his story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course and wrecked it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My ancestors had been for many years counselors and syndics, and my father had filled several public situations with honor and reputation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] a variety of circumstances had prevented his marrying early


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nor was it until the decline of life that he became a husband and a father of a family.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, I cannot refrain from relating them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of his most intimate friends was a merchant who, from a flourishing state, fell through numerous mischances into poverty. This man whose name was Beaufort


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the most honorable manner he retreated with his daughter to the town of Lucerne, where he lived unknown and in wretchedness. My father loved Beaufort.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With the truest friendship and was deeply grieved by his retreat in these unfortunate circumstances


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He bitterly deplored the false pride which led his friend to a conduct so little worthy of the affection that united them. He lost no time in endeavoring to seek him out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With the hope of persuading him to begin the world again through his credit and assistance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beaufort had taken effectual measures to conceal himself and it was ten months before my father discovered his abode.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Overjoyed at this discovery, he hastened to the house which was situated in a mean street near the Royce.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when he entered, misery and despair alone welcomed him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bovert had saved but a very small sum of money from the wreck of his fortunes, but it was sufficient to provide him with sustenance for some months.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in the meantime he hoped to procure some respectable employment in a merchant's house.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The interval was consequently spent in inaction. His grief only became more deep and rankling when he had leisure for reflection.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She plaited straw and by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life. Several months passed in this manner. Her father grew worse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her time was more entirely occupied in attending him. Her means of subsistence decreased.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in the tenth month her father died in her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar. This last blow overcame her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she knelt by Beaufort's coffin, weeping bitterly, when my father entered the chamber.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl who committed herself to his care.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And after the interment of his friend, he conducted her to Geneva and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event, Caroline became his wife.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents, but this circumstance seemed to unite them only closer in bonds of devoted affection.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a sense of justice in my father's upright mind, which rendered it necessary that he should approve highly to love strongly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps during former years he had suffered from the late discovered unworthiness of one beloved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a show of gratitude and worship in his attachment to my mother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Differing wholly from the doting fondness of age, for it was inspired by reverence for her virtues and a desire to be the means of, in some degree, recompensing her for the sorrows she had endured.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everything was made to yield to her wishes and her convenience. He strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener, from every rougher wind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And even the tranquility of her hitherto constant spirit had been shaken by what she had gone through.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During the two years that had elapsed previous to their marriage my father had gradually relinquished all his public functions. And immediately after their union they sought the pleasant climate of Italy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the change of scene and interest attendant on a tour through that land of wonders as a restorative for her weakened frame.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From Italy, they visited Germany and France.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, their eldest child, was born at Naples and as an infant accompanied them in their rambles. I remained for several years their only child.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Much as they were attached to each other, they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of love to bestow them upon me. My mother's tender caresses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And my father's smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me are my first recollections.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was their plaything and their idol and something better. Their child.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me. For a long time I was their only care.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My mother had much desire to have a daughter, but I continued their single offspring. When I was about five years old,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While making an excursion beyond the frontiers of Italy, they passed a week on the shores of the Lake of Como.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their benevolent disposition often made them enter the cottages of the poor. This, to my mother, was more than a duty. It was a necessity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A passion remembering what she had suffered and how she had been relieved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For her to act in her turn, the guardian angel to the afflicted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While the number of half clothed children gathered about it spoke of penury in its worst shape. One day, when my father had gone by himself to Milan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My mother, accompanied by me, visited this abode.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She found a peasant and his wife, hardworking, bent down by care and labor, distributing a scanty meal to five hungry babes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Among these there was one which attracted my mother far above all the rest. She appeared of a different stock.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And despite the poverty of her clothing seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perceiving that my mother fixed eyes of wonder and admiration on this lovely girl, eagerly communicated her history. She was not her child, but the daughter of a Milanese nobleman. Her mother was a German and had died on giving her birth. The infant had been placed with these good people to nurse. They were better off then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had not been long married and their eldest child was but just born.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The father of their charge was one of those Italians nursed in the memory of the antique glory of Italy, one among the schiavi ognor frimenti, who exerted himself to obtain the liberty


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now for my life she's wandering to the tower on pure heart's love to greet the tender princes. Daughter, well met.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rough cradle for such little pretty ones. Rude raggedness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Love her brothers, and from my heart's love, I do thank thee for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Montag lined their eyes, gritted shut with dust, a fine wet cement of dust in his now shut mouth, gasping and crying, now thought again, I remember, I remember, I remember something else. What is it? Yes, yes, part of Ecclesiastes, part of Ecclesiastes and Revelation, part of that book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Part of it, quick now, quick, before it gets away, before the shock wears off, before the wind dies, Book of Ecclesiastes here, he said it over to himself, silently, lying flat to the trembling earth, he said the words of it many times, and they were perfect without trying, and there was no venomous dentifrice anywhere, it was just a preacher by himself, standing there in his mind, looking at him. There, said a voice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The men lay gasping like fish laid out in the grass.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They held the earth as children hold two familiar things. No matter how cold or dead, no matter what has happened or will happen, their fingers were clawed into the dirt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they were all shouting to keep their eardrums from bursting, to keep their sanity from bursting, mouths open. Montag shouting with them a protest against the wind that ripped their faces and tore at their lips, making their noses bleed. Montag watched the great dust settle and the great silence move down upon their world. And lying there, it seemed that he saw every single grain of dust and every blade of grass


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then he heard every cry and shout and whisper going up in the world now. Silence fell down in the sifting dust and all the leisure they might need to look around to gather the reality of this day into their senses. Montag looked at the river. We'll go on the river. He looked at the old railroad tracks. Or we'll go that way. Or we'll


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Walk on the highways now, and we'll have time to put things into ourselves. And someday, after it sets in us a long time, it'll come out our hands and our mouths. And a lot of it will be wrong, but just enough of it will be right. We'll just start walking today.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And see the world and the way the world walks around and talks. The way it really looks. I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in. After a while, it'll all gather together inside. And it'll be me. Look at the world out there. My god, my god.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face, and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times, ten thousand, a day. I get hold of it, so it'll never run off. I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger at it now. That's the beginning. The wind died.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not yet ready to rise up and begin the day's obligations, its fires and foods, its thousand details of putting foot after foot and hand after hand. They lay blinking their dusty eyelids. You could hear them breathing fast, then slower, then slow. Montag sat up. He did not move any farther, however. The other man did likewise. The sun was touching the black horizon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With a faint red tip, the air was cold and smelled of a coming rain. Silently Granger arose, felt of his arms and legs swearing, swearing incessantly under his breath, tears dripping from his face. He shuffled down to the river to look upstream. It's flat, he said, a long time later. City looks like a heap of baking powder. It's gone. A long time after


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wonder how many knew it was coming. I wonder how many were surprised. And across the world, thought Montag, how many other cities dead. And here in our country, how many? A hundred? A thousand? Someone struck a match and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Touched it to a piece of dry paper taken from his pocket, and shoved this under a bit of grass and leaves, and after a while added tiny twigs, which were wet and sputtered but finally caught, and the fire grew larger in the early morning as the sun came up, and the men slowly turned from looking upriver, and were drawn to the fire awkwardly, with nothing to say, and the sun colored the back of their necks as they bent down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Granger unfolded an oil skin with some bacon in it. We'll have a bite, then we'll turn around and walk upstream. They'll be needing us up that way. Someone produced a small frying pan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the sputter of it filled the morning air with this aroma. The men watched this ritual, silently. Granger looked into the fire. Phoenix. What? There was a silly damn bird called the Phoenix back before Christ. Every few hundred years he built a power and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to man. But every time he burnt himself up


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He sprang out of the ashes. He got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing over and over, but we've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it someday, we'll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember every generation. He took the pan off the fire and let the bacon cool and they ate it slowly, thoughtfully.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now let's get on upstream," said Granger, and hold on to one thought. You're not important. You're not anything. Someday the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on, insulting the dead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week, the next month, the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, we're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday, we'll remember so much


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the trees, the birds that had flown away quickly now came back and settled down. Montag began walking and after a moment found that the others had fallen in behind him going north. He was surprised and moved aside to let Granger pass, but Granger looked at him and nodded him on. Montag went ahead. He looked at the river and the sky and the rusting track going back down to where the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The farms lay where the barn stood full of hay, where a lot of people had walked by in the night on their way from the city. Later, in a month or six months, and certainly not more than a year, he would walk along here again alone and keep right on going until he caught up with the people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But now there was a long morning's walk until noon. And if the men were silent it was because there was everything to think about and much to remember.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps later in the morning, when the sun was up and it warmed them, they would begin to talk or, or just say the things they remembered to, to be sure that they were there, to be absolutely certain that things were safe in them. Montag felt the slow stir of words, the slow simmer. And when it came his turn, what, what could he say, what could he offer on a day like this, to, to make the trip a little easier?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence. And a time to speak. Yes. All that. But what else? What else? Something. Something. And on either side of the river was there a tree of life which bore twelve manor of fruits


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Yes, thought Montag, asked the one I'll say for noon. For noon, when we reached the city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The mechanical hound slept, but did not sleep. Lived, but did not live, in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel, back in a dark corner of the firehouse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The dim light of one in the morning, the moonlight from the open sky, framed through the great window, touched here and there on the brass and the copper and the steel of the faintly trembling beast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gently its eight legs spidered under it on rubber-padded paws.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Montag slid down the brass pole. He went out to look at the city and the clouds had cleared away completely, and he lit a cigarette and came back to bend down and look at the hound.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison, wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-riched nectar, and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hello, whispered Montag, fascinated as always with the dead beast, the living beast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the hound, and let loose rats in the firehouse area way, and sometimes chickens, and sometimes cats that would have to be drowned anyway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there would be betting to see which of the cats or chickens or rats the hound would seize first. The animals were turned loose. Three seconds later the game was done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The rat, cat, or chicken caught halfway across the area way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Grip by gently pause while I four-inch hollow steel needle plunge down from the proboscis of the hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The pawn was then tossed in the incinerator. A new game began.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Montag stayed upstairs most nights when this went on. There had been a time two years ago


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When he had bet with the best of them and lost a week's salary and faced Mildred's insane anger,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which showed itself in veins and blotches. But now nights he lay in his bunk, face turned to the wall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Listen to the whoops of laughter below, and the piano strings scurry of rat feet, the violin squeaking of mice, and the great shadowing motion silence of the hound leaping out like a moth in the raw light, finding, holding its victim, inserting the needle,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And going back to its kennel to die as if a switch had been turned. Montag touched the muzzle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The hound growled. Montag jumped back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The hound half-frozen its kennel, and looks at him with green-blue neon light flickering in its suddenly activated eye-bulbs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It growled again, a strange, rasping combination of electrical sizzle, a frying sound, a scraping of metal, a turning of cogs that seemed rusty and ancient with suspicion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, no, boy," said Montag, his heart pounding. He saw the silver needle extend upon the air an inch, pull back, extend, pull back. The growls simmered in the beast, and it looked at him. Montag backed up. The hound took a step from its kennel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Montag grabbed the brass pole with one hand. The pole, reacting, slid upward and took him through the ceiling quietly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He stepped off in the half-lit deck of the upper level. He was trembling, and his face was green-white. Below, the hound had sunk back down upon its eight incredible insect legs, and was humming to itself again, its multifaceted eyes at peace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Monte stood letting the fear pass by the drop-hole.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Behind him four men at a card table, under a green-lidded light in the corner, glanced briefly, but said nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only the man with the captain's hat and the sign of the phoenix on his hat, at last curious, is playing cards in his thin hand, talked across the long room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doesn't like me, said Montague. What, the hound? The captain studied his cards. Come off it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It doesn't like or dislike, it just functions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like a lesson in ballistics, it has its trajectory, we decide on for it, it follows through, it targets itself, homes itself, it cuts off. It's only copper wire, storage batteries, and electricity. Montag swallowed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Its calculators can be set to any combination. So many amino acids, so much sulfur, so much butter fat and alkaline, right? We all know that. All of those


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chemical balances and percentages on all of us here in the house are recorded in the master file downstairs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It would be easy for someone to set up a partial combination on the hound's memory, a touch of amino acids perhaps, that would account for what the animal did just now, reacted toward me. Hell, said the captain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Irritated but not completely angry, just enough memory set up in it by someone so it growled when I touched it. Who would do a thing like that? asked the captain. You haven't any enemies here, guy? None that I know of. We'll have the hunt checked by our technicians tomorrow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This isn't the first time he's threatened me, said Montag. Last month it happened twice. We'll fix it up. Don't worry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Montag did not move and only stood thinking of the ventilator grill in the hall at home and what lay hidden behind the grill. If someone here in the firehouse knew about the ventilator, then mightn't they tell the hound?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The captain came over to the drop hole and gave Montag a questioning glance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was just figuring, said Montague, what does the hound think about down there nights? Is it coming alive on us, really? It makes me cold. It doesn't think anything we don't want it to think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's sad, said Montague quietly, because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that's all it can ever know. Beaty snorted gently.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a fine bit of craftsmanship, a good rifle that can


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fetch its own target and guarantee the bullseye every time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's why, said Montag, I wouldn't want to be its next victim.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why? You got a guilty conscience about something? Montag glanced up swiftly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bady stood there looking at him steadily with his eyes while his mouth opened and began to laugh very softly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had this machine. They had two machines, really. One of them slid down into your stomach like a black cobra down an echoing well looking for all the old water and the old time gathered there. It drank up the green matter that flowed to the top in a slow boil.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did it drink of the darkness? Did it suck out all the poisons accumulated over the years? It fed in silence with an occasional sound of inner suffocation and blind searching. It had an eye.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The impersonal operator of the machine could by wearing a special optical helmet


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gaze into the soul of the person whom he was pumping out. What did the eye see? He did not say. He saw, but did not see what the eye saw.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench in one's yard. The woman on the bed was no more than a hard stratum of marble they had reached.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Go on anyway. Shove the board down. Slush up the emptiness, if such a thing could be brought out in the throb of the suction snake. The operator stood smoking a cigarette. The other machine was working too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The other machine operated by an equally impersonal fellow in non-stainable reddish-brown coveralls. This machine pumped all the blood from the body and replaced it with fresh blood and serum. Gotta clean them out both ways, said the operator, standing over the silent woman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No use getting in the stomach if you don't clean the blood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His anger did not even touch them. They stood with the cigarette smoke curling around their noses and their eyes without making them blink or squint. That's fifty bucks. First, why don't you tell me if she's all right? Sure, she'll be okay. We got all that mean stuff right in our suitcase here. It can't get at her now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I said, you take out the old and put in the new and you're okay. Neither of you is an M.D.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why didn't you send an M.D. from emergency?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hell, the operator's cigarette moved on his lips. We get these cases of 9 or 10 at night.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Got so many starting a few years ago, we had the special machines built.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With the optical lens, of course, that was new. The rest is ancient.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't need an M.D. case like this. All you need is two handymen cleaning up the problem in half an hour. Look, he starved for the door. We gotta go. Just, just had another call of the old year thimble. Ten blocks from here. Someone else just jumped off the cap of a pill box.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Call a funeralist again. Keep her quiet. We've got a contraceptive in her. She'll wake up hungry. So long. And the men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The men with the eyes of puff adders took up their load of machines and tube, their case of liquid melancholy, and the slow dark sludge of nameless stuff, and strolled out the door.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Montag sank down into a chair and looked at this woman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her eyes were closed now gently, and he put out his hand to feel the warmness of breath on his palm. Mildred, he said it last.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There are too many of us, Hitha. There are billions of us and that's too many.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood. Good God! Who were those men? I never saw them before in my life! Half an hour passed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bloodstream in this woman was new, and it seemed to have done a new thing to her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her cheeks were very pink and her lips were very fresh and full of color, and they looked soft and relaxed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Someone else's blood there. If only someone else's flesh and brain and memory, if only they could have taken her mind along to the dry cleaners and emptied the pockets and steamed and cleansed it and re-blocked it and brought it back in the morning. If only. If only.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He got up and put back the drapes and opened the windows wide to let the night air in. It was two o'clock in the morning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was only an hour ago, Clarice McLellan in the street, and him coming in, in the dark room, and his foot kicking the little crystal bottle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only an hour, but the world had melted down and sprung up in a new and colorless form.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Laughter blew across the moon-colored lawn from the house of Clarisse and her father and mother and the uncle who smiled so quietly and so earnestly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Above all, their laughter was relaxed and hearty, and not forced in any way, coming from the house that was so brightly lit this late at night, while all the other houses were kept to themselves in darkness. Montague heard the voices talking, talking, talking,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Giving, talking, weaving, reweaving their hypnotic web. Montag moved out through the French windows and crossed the lawn without even thinking of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He stood outside the talking house in the shadows, thinking he might even tap on the door and whisper, Let me come in. I won't say anything. I just want to listen. What is it you're saying?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead he stood there, very cold, his face a mask of ice, listening to a man's voice, the uncle moving along at an easy pace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, after all, this is the age of the disposable tissue. Blow your nose on a person, wad them, flush them away, reach for another, blow, wad, flush. Everyone using everyone else's coattails.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How are you supposed to root for the home team when you don't even have a program or know the names?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For that matter, what colored jerseys are they wearing as they trot out on the field?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Montag moved back to his own house, left the window wide, checked Mildred, tucked the covers over her carefully, and then lay down with the moonlight on his cheekbones and on the frowning ridges in his brow, with the moonlight distilled in each eye, to form a silver cataract there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two Clarisse. One, two, three, four, five.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clarice Mildred, uncle, fire, sleeping tablets, men, disposable tissue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cotails, blow, wad, flush. Clarice, Mildred, uncle, fire, tablets, tissues, blow, wad, flush. One, two, three, one, two, three, rain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The storm, the uncle laughing, thunder falling downstairs, the whole world pouring down, the fire gushing up in the volcano, all rushing on down, around in a spouting roar, and river stream toward morning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know anything anymore, he said, and let the sleep-blossom dissolve on his tongue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dead as mutton, returned the other, and can't be too dead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you know, along the way, out of high school in my early twenties, I went to the library or I went to the bookstore and I bought books on the senses. I bought, I bought books on, on seeing. I bought a wonderful book on the sense of smell and another book on the sense of taste because I knew that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't convince people logically, you convince them through the senses. A lot of times you can convince people of something that's completely untrue, if they can touch it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's their own truth, their own smell, their own taste. And so I educated all of my senses. And then I was in the theater and I learned from Shakespeare and all the great playwrights that in the important moments, it's not the drama that gets people. It's the prologue coming to the center of the stage and saying to you, do you know where you are?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your England's here and France is over there and they, the, the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rival armies are clashing here, the flags are flying, the horses are pretty, the earth there, and the battle is on, you know, and the prologue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tells you what's happening, there's nothing on the stage, huh? Nothing on the stage. So, when I met Charles Lawton later, and he became my friend and teacher, wonderful man, I'd seen, uh, Don Juan and Hell, the Shaw play on the stage in 1950.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the greatest evenings in the theater ever, ever created, with four people reading from four books, supposedly on the stage in front of you, Lawton and three others, you know. And uhm, but I remembered that and finally I had a chance to write Fahrenheit 451 as a play from Charles Lawton and Paul Gregory, his producer. Well,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I copied the novel much too closely. You can't do that. If you write something for the stage, you've got to swim over your novel like a fish, repollinating the eggs, huh? Okay. So, but I didn't do that. I copied from the book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Charles Lawton and Mr. Gregory took me out one night and got me very drunk, and told me how bad the play was. Well, wasn't that sweet of them to do that? Get me prepared, lots of martinis, and then zing through the heart.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I walked home crying, you know, tears pouring down my cheeks, cause I wanted to work for Mr. Lawton in the worst way. And, uh, then later, Charlie Lawton came to the house with Elsa, his wife.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we had a little truck pass over near Westwood. And we had two children at the time. And Charlie came over and said,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With James Whale that produced the director of Frankenstein to do the sets for us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I told him an idea I had for a little science fiction operetta.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I began to go over to Mr. Lawton's house and meet his wife and work on his operetta. Well, I became a student because Mr. Lawton


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what I'm talking about? I said yes, because I suddenly remember when I was a kid lying on the porch on summer nights with my father and my grandfather and uncles there and they'd begin to talk. And if the talking died down a little, sometimes I'd say, winter 1910. And my father would then say, oh yeah, I remember I was on my sled going downhill and there was a freight train.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I went right onto the freight train and the wheels missed me. I came out the other side on my sled.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you're on a jet, you don't talk that much to the people who are sitting next to you. But on a train, you got three days crossing the country. You have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with various people. Maybe you wind up with a lumberman from Oregon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You never wanted to travel with a lumberman from Oregon?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's going on with, uh, lumber, with prices, uh, unions or whatever? And then let him talk, huh? And then he begins to do the moment of truth, huh? It's in all of us, we all want to talk about ourselves. What were your childhood like? What was your grandfather like? What, where do you come from? What kind of winners did you have, huh? Uh, what, what, what did you do at Halloween? Et cetera, et cetera.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So all of this, Mr. Lawton opened up in me and he says, when you write your plays, don't forget the moment of truth. So when I did my first plays, uh, seven or eight years later at the Coronet Theater,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you go see them, you'll find the moment of truth is always in there, and there's a moment


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the lead character comes to the center of the stage and looks to the audience and paints a picture on the audience's faces. I've got a wonderful play called The Chicago Abyss, where there's a man who remembers and speaks, but he doesn't do great moments of truth, he does mediocrities.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He remembers what an orange peel was like. He remembers what, what Prince Albert in a tin was like. He remembers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Milky Ways and Clark Bars and Butterfingers. But he's a danger to society, you see. He's not saying literary truths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But nevertheless, he's making people remember the past. So he's a danger to the totalitarians there because those things don't exist.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he's making people dream and want them to exist again. He wants them to think about coffee and chocolate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and old movies and all these things that are gone in a dead city. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did a play about him. The whole thing is a monologue. The whole thing is a moment of truth. And Harold Gould came out and did it on the stage for me. And it's one of the great performances. And he's been part of my life ever since.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Moira Fogarty. The Art of War by Tsang Tzu. Translated by Lionel Giles. PART I. LAYING PLANS.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sun Tzu said, the art of war is of vital importance to the state.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hence, it is a subject of inquiry, which can on no account be neglected.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field. These are, one, the moral law, two, heaven, three, earth, four, the commander, five, method and discipline,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The moral law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Earth comprises distances, great and small, danger and security, open ground and narrow passes, the chances of life and death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and strictness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By method and discipline are to be understood the marshalling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure. These five heads should be familiar to every general.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He who knows them will be victorious. He who knows them not will fail.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Therefore in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military conditions,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let them be made the basis of comparison in this wise. 1. Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the moral law?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two. Which of the two generals has most ability?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Three, with whom lie the advantages derived from heaven and earth?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Four. On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? Five. Which army is stronger? Six. On which side are officers and men more highly trained? Seven.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By means of these seven considerations, I can forecast victory or defeat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it will conquer. Let such a one be retained in command.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The general that harkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it will suffer defeat. Let such a one be dismissed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While heeding the profit of my counsel, avail yourself also of any helpful circumstances over and beyond the ordinary rules.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one's plans.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack we must seem unable. When using our forces, we must seem inactive. When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away. When far away, we must make him believe we are near.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Fain disorder and crush him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If he is secure at all points be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength evade him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared. Appear where you are not expected.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These military devices leading to victory must not be divulged beforehand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat. How much more, no calculation at all?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand male-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand lee, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and some spent on chariots and armor,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Such is the cost of raising an army of a hundred thousand men.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the state will not be equal to the strain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, when your weapons are dulled, your art are damped, your strength exhausted, and your treasure spent. Other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The skillful soldier does not raise a second levy. Neither are his supply wagons loaded more than twice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough for its needs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Poverty of the state exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished. On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes prices to go up, and high prices cause the people's substance to be drained away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When their substance is drained away, the peasantry will be afflicted by heavy exactions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With this loss of substance and exhaustion of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped bare, and three tenths of their income will be dissipated.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While government expenses for broken chariots, worn out horses, breastplates and helmets, bows and arrows, spears and shields, protective mantles, draught oxen and heavy wagons will amount to four tenths of its total revenue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hence, a wise general makes a point of forging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy's provisions is equivalent to twenty of one's own. And likewise, a single pickle of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one's own store.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now in order to kill the enemy, our men must be roused to anger. But there may be advantage from defeating the enemy, they must have their rewards. Therefore in chariot fighting, when ten or more chariots have been taken, those should be rewarded who took the first. Our own flags should be substituted for those of the enemy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And their chariots mingled and used in conjunction with ours. The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is called using the conquered foe to augment one's own strength.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people's fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon. Chapter 13. The Greeks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Meanwhile, the Indo-European tribe of the Hellenes was taking possession of Greece.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The pyramids were a thousand years old, and were beginning to show the first signs of decay, and Hammurabi, the wise king of Babylon, had been dead and buried several centuries ago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When a small tribe of shepherds left their homes along the banks of the River Danube and wandered southward in search of fresh pastures.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They called themselves Hellenes, after Helen, the son of Dorcalion and Pyrrha.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thucydides, the historian of the fall of Athens, describing his earliest ancestors, said that they did not amount to very much, and this was probably true.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were very ill-mannered. They lived like pigs and threw the bodies of their enemies to the wild dogs who guarded their sheep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And stole their farms and took their cattle and made their wives and daughters slaves and wrote endless songs praising the courage of the clan of the Achaeans, who had led the Hellenic advance guard into the mountains of Thessaly and the Peloponnesus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But here and there, on the tops of high rocks, they saw the castles of the Aegeans, and those they did not attack, for they feared the metal swords and the spears of the Aegean soldiers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For many centuries they continued to wander from valley to valley, and from mountain side to mountain side. Then the whole of the land had been occupied, and the migration had come to an end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Greek farmer, living within sight of the Aegean colonies, was finally driven by curiosity to visit his haughty neighbours.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He discovered that he could learn many useful things from the men who dwelt behind the high stone walls of Mycenae and Tyrannes. He was a clever pupil.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Within a short time he mastered the art of handling those strange iron weapons which the Aegeans had brought from Babylon and from Thebes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He came to understand the mysteries of navigation. He began to build little boats for his own use.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when he had learned everything the Aegeans could teach him, he turned upon his teachers and drove them back to their islands.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon afterwards he ventured forth upon the sea, and conquered all the cities of the Aegean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And ten centuries after their first appearance upon the scene, the Hellings were the undisputed rulers of Greece, of the Aegean, and of the coastal regions of Asia Minor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Troy, the last great commercial stronghold of the older civilization, was destroyed in the 11th century B.C.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] European history was to begin in all seriousness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The average intelligent Roman who lived under the empire had taken very little interest in the gods of his fathers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A few times a year he went to the temple, but merely as a matter of custom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He looked on patiently when the people celebrated a religious festival with a solemn procession.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he regarded the worship of Jupiter and Minerva and Neptune as something rather childish, a survival from the crude days of the early Republic, and not a fit subject of study for a man who had mastered the works of the Stoics and the Epicureans and the other great philosophers of Athens. This attitude made the Roman a very tolerant man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The government insisted that all people, Romans, foreigners, Greeks, Babylonians, Jews, should pay a certain outward respect to the image of the Emperor, which was supposed to stand in every temple, just as a picture of the President of the United States is apt to hang in an American post-office. But this was a formality without any deeper meaning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Generally speaking, everybody could honour, revere, and adore whatever gods he pleased, and as a result Rome was filled with all sorts of queer little temples and synagogues dedicated to the worship of Egyptian and African and Asiatic divinities.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the first disciples of Jesus reached Rome and began to preach their new doctrine of a universal brotherhood of man, nobody objected. The man in the street stopped and listened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rome, the capital of the world, had always been full of wandering preachers, each proclaiming his own mystery.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most of the self-appointed priests appealed to the senses, promised golden rewards and endless pleasure to the followers of their own particular god.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon the crowd in the street noticed that the so-called Christians


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The followers of the Christ, or anointed, spoke a very different language.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They did not appear to be impressed by great riches or a noble position.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These were not exactly the virtues which had made Rome the mistress of the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was rather interesting to listen to a mystery which told people in the heyday of their glory that their worldly success could not possibly bring them lasting happiness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Besides, the preachers of the Christian mystery told dreadful stories of the fate that awaited those who refused to listen to the words of the true God. It was never wise to take chances,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of course, the old Roman gods still existed, but were they strong enough to protect their friends against the powers of this new deity, who had been brought to Europe from distant Asia?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People began to have doubts. They returned to listen to further explanations of the new creed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a while they began to meet the men and women who preached the words of Jesus. They found them very different from the average Roman priests. They were all dreadfully poor. They were kind to slaves and to animals.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The example of their unselfish lives forced many Romans to forsake the old religion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They joined the small communities of Christians who met in the back rooms of private houses or somewhere in an open field, and the temples were deserted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This went on year after year, and the number of Christians continued to increase.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Presbyters or priests, the original Greek meant elder, were elected to guard the interests of the small churches.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A bishop was made the head of all the communities within a single province.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The church became a powerful institution within the empire. The Christian doctrines appealed to those who despaired of this world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They also attracted many strong men who found it impossible to make a career under the imperial government, but who could exercise their gifts of leadership among the humble followers of the Nazarene teacher.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At last the State was obliged to take notice. The Roman Empire, I have said this before, was tolerant through indifference.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It allowed everybody to seek salvation after his or her own fashion, but it insisted that the different sects keep the peace among themselves and obey the wise rule of live and let live.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Christian communities, however, refused to practice any sort of tolerance. They publicly declared that their God, and their God alone, was the true ruler of heaven and earth, and that all other gods were imposters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This seemed unfair to the other sects, and the police discouraged such utterances. The Christians persisted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon there were further difficulties. The Christians refused to go through the formalities of paying homage to the Emperor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They refused to appear when they were called upon to join the army. The Roman magistrates threatened to punish them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Christians answered that this miserable world was only the ante-room to a very pleasant heaven, and that they were more than willing to suffer death for their principles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Romans, puzzled by such conduct, sometimes killed the offenders, but more often they did not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a certain amount of lynching during the earliest years of the Church, but this was the work of that part of the mob which accused their meek Christian neighbours of every conceivable crime, such as slaughtering and eating babies, bringing about sickness and pestilence, betraying the country in times of danger,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Meanwhile, Rome continued to be invaded by the barbarians, and when her armies failed, Christian missionaries went forth to preach their gospel of peace to the wild Teutons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were strong men without fear of death. They spoke a language which left no doubt as to the future of unrepentant sinners. The Teutons were deeply impressed


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They still had a deep respect for the wisdom of the ancient city of Rome. Those men were Romans. They probably spoke the truth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In some of the provinces they were given equal rights with those who remained faithful to the old gods. The great change, however, came during the last half of the fourth century.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Constantine, sometimes, heaven knows why, called Constantine the Great, was emperor. He was a terrible ruffian.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During a long and checkered career, Constantine had experienced many ups and downs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once, when almost defeated by his enemies, he thought that he would try the power of this new Asiatic deity, of whom everybody was talking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He promised that he too would become a Christian if he were successful in the coming battle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He won the victory, and thereafter he was convinced of the power of the Christian God, and allowed himself to be baptized.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From that moment on, the Christian church was officially recognized, and this greatly strengthened the position of the new faith.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the Christians still formed a very small minority of all the people, not more than five or six percent, and in order to win they were forced to refuse all compromise. The old gods must be destroyed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For a short spell, the Emperor Julian, a lover of Greek wisdom, managed to save the pagan gods from further destruction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Julian died of his wounds during a campaign in Persia, and his successor Jovian reestablished the church in all its glory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One after the other, the doors of the ancient temples were then closed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then came the Emperor Justinian, who built the Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was the end of the old Greek world, in which man had been allowed to think his own thoughts, and dream his own dreams according to his desires.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The somewhat vague rules of conduct of the philosophers had proved a poor compass by which to steer the ship of life, after a deluge of savagery and ignorance, had swept away the established order of things. There was need of something more positive and more definite. This the Church provided. During an age when nothing was certain,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The church stood like a rock, and never receded from those principles which had held to be true and sacred.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This steadfast courage gained the admiration of the multitudes, and carried the Church of Rome safely through the difficulties, which destroyed the Roman State.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Lombards and Saxons and Slavs who succeeded the Goths were weak and backward tribes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Under those circumstances it was possible for the bishops of Rome to maintain the independence of their city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon the remnants of the empire, scattered throughout the peninsula, recognized the dukes of Rome, or bishops, as their political and spiritual rulers. The stage was set for the appearance of a strong man,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He belonged to the ruling classes of ancient Rome, and he had been prefect or mayor of the city. Then he had become a monk and a bishop, and finally, and much against his will,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had been dragged to the church of St. Peter to be made pope.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He ruled only fourteen years, but when he died the Christian world of Western Europe had officially recognized the bishops of Rome, the popes, as the head of the entire church.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This power, however, did not extend to the east. In Constantinople, the emperors continued the old custom which had recognized the successors of Augustus and Tiberius, both as head of the government and as high priest of the established religion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Constantinople was taken, and Constantine Paleolog, the last Roman emperor, was killed on the steps of the Church of the Holy Sophia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A few years before, Zoe, the daughter of his brother Thomas, had married Ivan III of Russia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In this way did the Grand Dukes of Moscow fall heir to the traditions of Constantinople. The double eagle of old Byzantium


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Reminiscent of the days when Rome had been divided into an eastern and a western part, became the coat of arms of modern Russia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Tsar, who had been merely the first of the Russian nobles, assumed the aloofness and the dignity of a Roman Emperor, before whom all subjects, both high and low, were inconsiderable slaves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The court was refashioned after the Oriental pattern which the Eastern emperors had imported from Asia and from Egypt, and which, so they flattered themselves, resembled the court of Alexander the Great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This strange inheritance which the dying Byzantine emperor bequeathed to an unsuspecting world continued to live with great vigour for six more centuries amidst the vast plains of Russia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The last man to wear the crown with the double eagle of Constantinople, Tsar Nicholas, was murdered only the other day, so to speak.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His body was thrown into a well, his son and his daughters were all killed, and his ancient rites and prerogatives were abolished, and the church was reduced to the position which it had held in Rome before the days of Constantine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Western Church, however, fared very differently, as we shall see in the next chapter, when the whole Christian world is going to be threatened with destruction


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How the newly founded national or dynastic states of Europe tried to make themselves rich and what was meant by the mercantile system.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have seen how during the 16th and the 17th centuries, the states of our modern world began to take shape. Their origins were different in almost every case.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some had been the result of the deliberate effort of a single king. Others had happened by chance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Still others had been the result of favorable natural geographic boundaries. But once they had been founded,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The medieval state, with its lack of centralized power, did not depend upon a rich treasury.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The king got his revenues from the crown domains, and his civil service paid for itself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The modern centralized state was a more complicated affair.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The old knights disappeared and hired government officials or bureaucrats took their place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Army, Navy, and Internal Administration demanded millions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The question then became, where was this money to be found?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gold and silver had been a rare commodity in the Middle Ages. The average man, as I have told you, never saw a gold piece as long as he lived. Only the inhabitants of the large cities were familiar with silver coin. The discovery of America and the exploitation of the Peruvian mines changed all this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The old commercial cities of Italy lost their financial importance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] New commercial nations took their place, and gold and silver were no longer a curiosity. Through Spain and Portugal and Holland and England, precious metals began to find their way to Europe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The 16th century had its own writers on the subject of political economy, and they evolved a theory of national wealth, which seemed to them entirely sound, and of the greatest possible benefit to their respective countries. They reasoned that both gold and silver were actual wealth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Therefore they believed that the country with the largest supply of actual cash in the vaults of its treasury and its banks was at the same time the richest country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And since money meant armies, it followed that the richest country was also the most powerful and could rule the rest of the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here you see a picture of a map that shows the voyage of the pilgrims from England to the New World. We call this system the mercantile system.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was accepted with the same unquestioning faith with which the early Christians believed in miracles, and many of the present-day American businessmen believe in the tariff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In practice, the mercantile system worked out as follows.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To get the largest surplus of precious metals, a country must have a favorable balance of export trade.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you can export more to your neighbor than he exports to your own country, he will owe you money and will be obliged to send you some of his gold.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Encourage those industries which can change raw materials into exportable finished products.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Four, encourage a large population, for you will need workmen for your factories, and an agricultural community does not raise enough workmen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Five. Let the state watch this process and interfere whenever it is necessary to do so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead of regarding international trade as something akin to a force of nature which would always obey certain natural laws regardless of man's interference, the people of the 16th and 17th centuries tried to regulate their commerce by the help of official decrees and royal laws and financial help on the part of the government.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the sixteenth century Charles V adopted this mercantile system, which was then something entirely new, and introduced it into his many possessions. Elizabeth of England flattered him by her imitation. The Bourbons, especially King Louis XIV, were fanatical adherents of this doctrine, and Colbert, his great minister of finance,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] ...became the prophet of mercantilism to whom all Europe looked for guidance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The entire foreign policy of Cromwell was a practical application of the mercantile system. It was invariably directed against the rich, rival Republic of Holland. For the Dutch shippers, as the common carriers of the merchandise of Europe, had certain leanings towards free trade, and therefore had to be destroyed at all costs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here you see a picture of how Europe conquered the world, showing in black all the countries that around the world that were conquered by Europe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It will be easily understood how such a system must affect the colonies. A colony under the mercantile system became merely a reservoir of gold and silver and spices which was to be tapped for the benefit of the home country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Asiatic, American, and African supply of precious metals and the raw materials of those tropical countries became a monopoly of the state which happened to own that particular colony.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No outsider was ever allowed within the precincts, and no native was permitted to trade with a merchant whose ship flew a foreign flag.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Undoubtedly, the mercantile system encouraged the development of young industries in certain countries where there never had been any manufacturing before. It built roads and dug canals, and made for better means of transportation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It demanded greater skill among the workmen and gave the merchant a better social position, while it weakened the power of the landed aristocracy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the other hand, it caused very great misery. It made the natives and the colonies the victims of a most shameless exploitation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It helped in a great measure to turn every land into an armed camp, and divided the world into little bits of territory, each working for its own direct benefit, while striving at all times to destroy the power of its neighbors and get hold of their treasures.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Economic systems come and go, like the fashions in surgery and in the clothes of women.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here you see a picture of a ship on the ocean with the sun setting in the background, and it's called Sea Power.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Follow me all, and we will set about what remains of this war. It will not take us long to crush the human vermin and the traitors now that the great fool, the great cat, lies dead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chapter 18, The Persian Wars. How the Greeks defended Europe against Asiatic invasion and drove the Persians back across the Aegean Sea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Greeks had learned the art of trading from the Aegeans, who had been the pupils of the Phoenicians. They had founded colonies after the Phoenician pattern.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had even improved upon the Phoenician methods by a more general use of money in dealing with foreign customers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the sixth century before our era, they had established themselves firmly along the coast of Asia Minor, and they were taking away trade from the Phoenicians at a fast rate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This the Phoenicians of course did not like, but they were not strong enough to risk a war with their Greek competitors. They sat and waited, nor did they wait in vain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In a former chapter, I have told you how a humble tribe of Persian shepherds had suddenly gone upon the warpath and had conquered the greater part of Western Asia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Persians were too civilized to plunder their new subjects. They contented themselves with a yearly tribute.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When they reached the coast of Asia Minor, they insisted that the Greek colonies of Lydia recognize the Persian kings as their overlords and pay them a stipulated tax. The Greek colonies objected. The Persians insisted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then the Greek colonies appealed to the home country, and the stage was set for a quarrel. For if the truth be told,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Persian kings regarded the Greek city-states as very dangerous political institutions and bad examples for all other people who were supposed to be the patient slaves of the mighty Persian kings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of course, the Greeks enjoyed a certain degree of safety because their country lay hidden beyond the deep waters of the Aegean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But here their old enemies, the Phoenicians, stepped forward with offers of help and advice to the Persians.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the Persian king would provide the soldiers, the Phoenicians would guarantee to deliver the necessary ships to carry them to Europe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was the year 492 before the birth of Christ, and Asia made ready to destroy the rising power of Europe. As a final warning, the King of Persia sent messengers to the Greeks asking for earth and water as a token of their submission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Greeks promptly threw the messengers into the nearest well, where they would find both earth and water in large abundance, and thereafter, of course, peace was impossible. But the gods of High Olympus watched over their children,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when the Phoenician fleet carrying the Persian troops was near Mount Athos, the Storm God blew his cheeks until he almost burst the veins of his brow, and the fleet was destroyed by a terrible hurricane, and the Persians were all drowned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here you see a picture of the Persian fleet as it is destroyed near Mount Athos. Two years later, more Persians came.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This time they sailed straight across the Aegean Sea and landed near the village of Marathon. As soon as the Athenians heard this,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They sent their army of 10,000 men to guard the hills that surrounded the Marathonian plain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the same time they dispatched a fast runner to Sparta to ask for help.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Sparta was envious of the fame of Athens, and refused to come to her assistance. The other Greek cities followed her example with the exception of tiny Plataea, which sent a thousand men. On the 12th of September of the year 490, Miltiades, the Athenian commander,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Through this little army against the hordes of the Persians. The Greeks broke through the Persian barrage of arrows, and their spears caused terrible havoc among the disorganized Asiatic troops who had never been called upon to resist such an enemy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That night the people of Athens watched the sky grow red with the flame of burning ships. Anxiously they waited for news. At last a little cloud of dust appeared upon the road that led to the north. It was Pheidippides the runner. He stumbled and gasped, for his end was near.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only a few days before, had he returned from his errand to Sparta, he had hastened to join Melteides.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That morning, he had taken part in the attack, and later he had volunteered to carry the news of victory to his beloved city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The people saw him fall, and they rushed forward to support him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have won, he whispered, and then he died, a glorious death, which made him envied of all men.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here you see a picture of a map that describes the movements of the Greeks and the Persians in the Battle of Marathon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As for the Persians, they tried after this defeat to land near Athens, but they found the coast guarded and disappeared, and once more the land of Hellas was at peace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Eight years they waited, and during this time the Greeks were not idle. They knew that a final attack was to be expected, but they did not agree upon the best way to avert the danger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Themistocles, the leader of the bigger Navy men, fought each other bitterly and nothing was done until Aristides was exiled. Then Themistocles had his chance and he built all the ships he could and turned the Piraeus into a strong naval base.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the year 481 BC, a tremendous Persian army appeared in Thessaly, a province of northern Greece. In this hour of danger, Sparta, the great military city of Greece, was elected commander-in-chief.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Leonidas obeyed his orders. He fought and held the pass with unequaled bravery. But a trader by the name of Afialtes, who knew the little byways of Malice, guided a regiment of Persians through the hills and made it possible for them to attack Leonidas in the rear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Near the warm wells, the Thermopylae a terrible battle was fought. Here you see a picture of Thermopylae.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When night came, Leonidas and his faithful soldiers lay dead under the corpses of their enemies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here you see another picture of the Battle of Thermopylae, which is a map showing where the main Persian army marched to Athens.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the pass had been lost and the greater part of Greece fell into the hands of the Persians.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They marched upon Athens, threw the garrison from the rocks of the Acropolis, and burned the city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The people fled to the island of Salamis. All seemed lost. But on the 20th of September of the year 480, Themistocles forced the Persian fleet to give battle within the narrow straits, which separated the island of Salamis from the mainland, and within a few hours he destroyed three quarters of the Persian ships.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here you see a picture of the Persians burning Athens and the ships in the harbor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In this way, the victory of Thermopoly came to naught. Xerxes was forced to retire. The next year, so he decreed, would bring a final decision.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He took his troops to Thessaly, and there he waited for spring.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But this time, the Spartans understood the seriousness of the hour. They left the safe shelter of the wall which they had built across the Isthmus of Corinth, and under the leadership of Pausanias, they marched against Mardonius, the Persian general.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The United Greeks, some 100,000 men from a dozen different cities, attacked the 300,000 men of the enemy near Plataea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once more, the heavy Greek infantry broke through the Persian barrage of arrows. The Persians were defeated, as they had been at Marathon, and this time, they left for good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By a strange coincidence, the same day that the Greek armies won their victory near Plataea,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Athenian ships destroyed the enemy's fleet near Cape Michael in Asia Minor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thus did the first encounter between Asia and Europe end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If they had been willing to forget their little jealousies, they might have become the leaders of a strong and united Hellas.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But alas, they allowed the hour of victory and enthusiasm to slip by, and the same opportunity never returned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] End of chapter 18, recorded by Michelle Crandall, Fremont, California, November 2008.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the world had undergone another change which was of greater importance than either the political or the industrial revolutions. After generations of oppression and persecution,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The scientist had at last gained liberty of action, and he was now trying to discover the fundamental laws which govern the universe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks, and the Romans.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Reformation, however, which had overtaken the Renaissance in the early 16th century,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And once more, the men of science were threatened with severe punishment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A top of prancing horses leading their cheering soldiers to glorious victory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A thousand years from now, we shall probably do these things differently, and the children of that happy generation shall know of the splendid courage and the almost inconceivable devotion to duty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of the men who were the pioneers of that abstract knowledge.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which alone has made our modern world a practical possibility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Many of these scientific pioneers suffered poverty and contempt and humiliation. They lived in garrets and died in dungeons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They dared not print their names on the title pages of their books.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they dared not print their conclusions in the land of their birth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But smuggled the manuscripts to some secret printing shop in Amsterdam or Harlem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were exposed to the bitter enmity of the Church, both Protestant and Catholic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The authorities, while regarding these scientific investigations with little favor, yet refuse to interfere with people's freedom of thought.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It became a little asylum for intellectual liberty where French and English and German philosophers and mathematicians and physicians


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] was prevented for years from writing a single word lest he get into new troubles with the authorities of the church. And 500 years later,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The contributors to the Great Philosophic Encyclopedia were under the constant supervision of the French Gendarmerie. Half a century afterwards,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Darwin, who dared to question the story of the creation of man as revealed in the Bible,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even today, the persecution of those who venture into the unknown realm of science has not entirely come to an end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And while I am writing this, Mr. Brian is addressing a vast multitude on the menace of Darwinism.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Warning his hearers against the errors of the great English naturalist. All this however is a mere detail.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who have always decried the man of vision as an unpractical idealist.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The 17th century has still preferred to investigate the far-off heavens and to study the position of our planet in relation to the solar system.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even so, the church had disapproved of this unseemly curiosity, and Copernicus, who first of all had proved that the sun was the center of the universe, did not publish his work until the day of his death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Galileo spent the greater part of his life under the supervision of the clerical authorities.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he continued to use his telescope and provided Isaac Newton with a mass of practical observations, which greatly helps the English mathematician when he discovered the existence of that interesting habit of falling objects, which came to be known as the law of gravitation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here you see a picture of a man standing in the corner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That for the moment at least exhausted the interest in the heavens, and man began to study the earth. The invention of a workable microscope


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A Strange and Clumsy Little Thing by Anthony van Lovenhoek during the last half of the seventeenth century gave man a chance


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It also allowed the geologists to make a more careful study of different rocks, and of the fossils, the petrified prehistoric plants, which they found deep below the surface of the earth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sir Charles Lyell published his Principles of Geology.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which denied the story of creation as related in the Bible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're investigating the chemical composition of the stars and of our good neighbor the sun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This curious spots had first been noticed by Galileo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Meanwhile, after a most bitter and relentless warfare with the clerical authorities of Catholic and Protestant lands, the anatomists and physiologists had at last obtained permission to dissect bodies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And to substitute a positive knowledge of our organs and their habits for the guesswork of the medieval quack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More progress was made in every branch of science than in all the hundreds of thousands of years that had passed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Since man first looked at the stars and wondered why they were there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who could trace the family tree back to the little jellyfishes who were the first inhabitants of our planet?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of all the many practical applications of the great scientific discoveries,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the mere investigator, the man of the scientific theory without whom no progress would be possible,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Today, the rich people who in past ages donated their wealth for the building of a cathedral.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And often sacrifice their lives that coming generations may enjoy greater happiness and health.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Indeed, it has come to pass that many of the ills of this world


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which our ancestors regarded as inevitable acts of God.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have been exposed as manifestations of our own ignorance and neglect.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every child nowadays knows that he can keep from getting typhoid fever by a little care in the choice of his drinking water.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it took years and years of hard work before the doctors could convince people of this fact. Few of us now fear the dentist chair.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A study of the microbes that live in our mouth has made it possible to keep our teeth from decay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the newspapers of the year 1846 brought the story of the painless operation, which had been performed in America with the help of Ether, the good people of Europe shook their heads.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To them it seemed against the will of God that man should escape the pain which was the share of all mortals.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it took a long time before the practice of taking ether and chloroform for operations became general. But the battle of progress had been won.