This is one of my absolute favorites. Nock is the self-educated man who thinks with logic, seeks importance, and acts, within his environment, on that which is important; and he is an elitist. Nock learned Greek and Latin on his own with limited direction from his father. He describes the law of diminishing returns in education: "Socrates chatting with a single protagonist meant one thing, and well did he know it. Socrates lecturing to a class of fifty would mean something woefully different, so he organised no classes and did no lecturing. Jersualem was a university town, and in a university every day is field-day for the law of diminishing returns. Jesus stayed away from Jerusalem, and talked with fishermen here and there, who seem to have pretty well got what he was driving at; some better than others, apparently, but on the whole pretty well. And so we have it that unorganised Christianity was one thing, while organised Christianity has consistently been another."

Regarding the popular classical works (Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Cicero), Nock felt this was the "dullest, dreariest, most unrewarding task I ever set my hand to." Instead the "scraps" used in his learning Greek and Latin taught him affairs of ordinary life and experience which made him see "men and women of antiquity ... not as heroes, but as people exaclty like us, each with twenty-four hours a day to get through somehow or other and for the most part getting throguh them quite as we do," while the "great orator was a good deal of a stuffed shirt."

"Nine-tenths of the value of classical studies lies in their power to establish a clear common-sense, matter-of-fact view of human nature and its activities over a continuous stretch of some twenty centuries." "Too often a routing of elementary Greek and Latin was forced upon ineducable children." "I have seen many a graduate student who had gone to Germany to study under some great classicist, like a colour-blind botanist going to a flower-show with a bad cold in his head; he came back a a doctor of philosophy, knowing a great deal about his subject, I dare say, but not knowing how to appreciate or enjoy it."

In discussing the industrial revolution and ensuing prosperity, he brings out the this-cannot-last fears that seemed to underly the thoughts of many. Economism was the only philosophy; the "whole of human life in terms of the production, acquisition and distribution of wealth." "I sometimes thought of the rich lumbermen whom I had known so well, and on the whole had rather liked. Now I ws looking at the great avatars of their practical philosophy, the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Fricks, Hills, Huntingtons, of the period. I asked myself whether any amount of wealth would be worth having if - as one most efficiently must - if one had to become just like these men in order to get it. To me, at least, it would not; I should be a superfluous man in the scuffle for riches."

Nock continues onward with constantly interesting insight, including 3 simple laws that explain so many human trends. They're beautiful. Want to know? Read the book. ( )

This book puts Nock squarely in the doom and gloom libertarian camp — predicting that the world is going to pot and wishing for the "good old days". Thankfully for us, the world has remained in one piece, and as a sometimes member of that camp, I found that comforting. However, his prophecies are based on something unusual — the shortcomings of ordinary people. Many libertarians place the blame elsewhere and believe that people are freedom loving at heart, but Nock see it differently, and this view was though provoking but also somewhat disconcerting. I think that he gets many things wrong, but the ideas were worth some mulling over.

Also, I found many of the stories interesting because of their mix of observation and insight. He wrote in something of a high falutin style, but I could deal with that. Still, some parts of the book reminded me of Twain's Roughing It.

I liked it a lot — 5 stars. ( )