A Man Isn’t Even Past

A children’s book I want to write someday is full of comparisons like this one, that such-and-such a thing was ancient to those we think of as ancient. For example, we live closer in time to Thomas Aquinas than Aquinas did to Augustine of Hippo. William Shakespeare lived closer in time to the founding of the United States than he did to Columbus’s discovery of North America. Julius Caesar lived closer to the invention of the internal combustion engine than he did to the construction of the Egyptian pyramids. Much of what we think of as dead and gone is practically knocking at our back door.

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