Indiana State University - Sycamore Yearbook (Terre Haute, IN)

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8 t THE NORMAL ADVANCE wateringamachine in a field, he shall pay Iive Shekels of silver to the owner of the watering- machine? tCIf a physician operate on a man for a severe wound with a bronze lancet and cause the man,s death; or open an abscess tin the eyey of a man with a bronze lancet and de- stroy the mants eye, they shall eut 01f his fin- gers? ttIf a'veterinary physician operate on an ox for a severe wound and save its life, the owner of the ox shall give to the physician, as his fee, one-sixth of a Shekel of silver? ttIf a man hire a boatman and a boat and freight it with grain, wool, oil, dates, or any other kind of freight, and that boatman be careless and he sink the boat or wreck its cargo, the boatman shall replace the boat which he sank and what- . ever portion of the cargo be wrecked? The domestic, legal, and social aifairs were .very complicated. ttIf a man present field, garden, or house to his favorite son and write him a sealed deed; after the father dies, when the brothers divide, he shall take the present which the father gave him, and over and above they shall divide the goods of the fathefs house equally? ttIf a man be in debt and sell his wife, son, or daughter, or bind them.over to service, for three years they shall work in the house of their purchaser or master; in the fourth year they shall be given their freedomfi Marriage licenses were required before mar- riage. The state handled petty family troubles in ancient times. ttIf a man take a wife and do not arrange with her the tpropery contracts, that woman is not a tlegaD wife? ttIf she have not been a careful mistress, have gadded about, have neglected her house and have be- littled her husband, they shall throw that woman into the water? A civilization so ancient and 'yet so rich is the wonder to the modern student. This civi- lization has been buried beneath the ages and mountains of sand, but has been preserved in tablets of stone. It is now the common prop- erty of the world, largely through ctThe Code of Hammurabiy The text from which this source material was taken is, ttThe Code of Hammurabi;7 published by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago. This text, which has the reprint of the original, its transliteration and translation into English, was planned by Robert Francis Harper, pro- fessor of Semitic Languages and Literatures in the University of Chicago. He was director of the Babylonian Section of Oriental Explora- , tion Fund at the time of the discovery of the Code. The External Life J. J. SCHLICHER When we consider the effects that have been produced by modern means of communication and transportation, we are sure to think first, if not exclusively, of material things. So much more freight can be hauled, so many more pas- sengers can be transported at such a speed, so much news can be obtained from so great a dis- tance in such a short time, that great has be- come small and far has become near. What- ever is done can be done with greater dispatch, more certainly, and with surer confidence in the result. Business, in short, has expanded, nations have been drawn together, and by using each others surplus, promote the common wel- fare--in material things. It may occur to us also that the banana may now be eaten at the North Pole, and the sea-loving oyster in the desert and on the mountain top, and we may even be led to make that interesting and novel remark about the necessities of life that were luxuries to our fathers. Such, in brief, are the results that come to our minds. We take it for granted that they are good things, and perhaps they are. And if we go farther, and speak of the results of the same improved methods for the life of the

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THE NORMAL ADVANCE , 7 mission of Hammurabi. ttThe great gods pro- claimed me and I am guardian governor, whose scepter is righteous and whose beneficent pro- tection is spread over my city. In my bosom I carried the people of the land of Sumer and Akkad; under my protection I brought their brethren into security; in my wisdom I re- strained thidi them; that the strong might not oppose the weak, and that they should give jus- tice to the orphan and the widow, in Babylon, the city whose turrets Ann and Bel raised; in Esagila, the temple whose foundations are firm as heaven and earth, for the pronouncing of judgments in the land, for the rendering of de- cisions for the land, and for the righting of wrong, my weighty words I have written upon my monument, and in the presence of my image as king of righteousness have I established? What awe inspires us as we read the writing of a king so ancient; for the Code is more an- cient by ages than the Code of Moses; more stern than the Roman. It is interesting to stu- dents of history because of its antiquity and stern justice. The 4500 years which have suc- ceeded the inscription of the Code are but so many curious lights which cast a strange and bewitching shadow upon those ancient scenes. It is with great delight and interest that we be- come aware of a civilization so old and yet so great. In looking at that ancient people we meditate and marvel at their position in social customs and manners. The records shows that these people had their problems concerning rent, neighbors, etc. itIf a man open his canal for irrigation and neglect it and the water carry away an adjacent iield, he shall measure out grain on the basis of the adjacent fields? itIf a man have not received the rent of his field and he have rented the field for either one-half or one-third tof the cropi, the tenant and the owner of the held shall divide the grain which is in the field ac- cording to the agreement? A iiIf a man give his orchard to a gardener to manage, the gardener shall give to the owner of the orchard two- thirds of the produce of the orchardf, From the Code we learn that the questions of the Liquor TrafIic and Womenls Rights are not of modern origin. We also learn of two common forms of punishment. 4cIf a wine-seller do not receive grain as the price of drink, but if she receive money by the great stone, or make the measure for drink smaller than the measure for corn, they shall call that wine-seller to ac- count, and they shall throw her into the water? ttIf a priestess who is not living in a M A L. G E. A. open a wine-shop or enter a wine-shop for a drink, they shall burn that woman? Although J ustice was stern, all crimes were not punished with death. The punishment was rather ctan eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth? There were classes of people, however, and the degree of punishment was determined by the class and nature of the crime. If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall de- stroy his eye? ttIf one break a mans bone, they shall break his bone? iiIf a man knock out a tooth of a man of his own rank, they shall knock out his toothy ttIf one knock out a tooth of a freeman, he shall pay one-third mana of silver? gtIf a man strike another man of his own rank, he shall pay one mana of silver? gt'If a freeman strike a freeman, he shall pay ten Shekels of silvery ttIf a mans slave strike a mans son, they shall cut 0H his ear.,, ttIf a son strike his father, they shall out 01f his fingers? . If Henry Clay could have read the past, he could have learned of slavery more galling than American slavery; he could have seen that Hammurabi anticipated his Fugitive Slave Law. ttIf a brander, without the consent of the owner of the slave, brand a slave with a sign that he cannot be sold, they shall cut off the fingers of that brander? ttIf a man harbor in his house a slave who has fled from the palace or from a freeman, and do not bring him tthe slavel forth at the call of the commandment, the owner of the house shall be put to deat W The professions and mechanical arts are not modern. Physicians were held responsible for mal-practice. ttIf an artisan take a son for adoption and teach him handicraft, one may not bring claim for him? tiIf a man steal a

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THE NORMAL ADVANCE: 9 mind, for the character of a man or a nation, it is likely to be in the same strain. Do we not know more than we used to? Do not our chil- dren treat as common mental necessities the things which were luxuries to their fathers, and have they not long ago ceased to cry for them? And that also is undeniable and there may be some good in it also, especially if we can agree upon the definition of ttgood? At any rate, the most evident factor in such an estimate is that two such clearly distinct things as the mind and the stomach are spoken of in the same way. The sum and substance of it is that in both cases we can get the things to fill them withal, more quickly and in greater abundance and variety than was formerly the case. And in making our estimates, we simply transfer our knowledge from the sphere where it is full and sure, to that in which it is hazy and fragmentary. We do know the stomach- we are acquainted With its size and habits, and know from experience how much it will stand. And one result of this closer familiarity is that the stomach also, knowing our weaknesses, is not slow about protesting, and, as a matter of fact, he manages to hold his own fairly well, in spite of all the improved methods of com- merce which threaten to overwhelm him. The same can not be said, on the other hand, of the mind. We seem to know much less about its capacities, or its peculiarities either. To judge from our actions, when we undertake to store it With knowledge, for instance, all minds must be about alike and of the same size, and there is no limit to What they will hold. And the mind, having, apparently, a much less . intimate connection with us as individuals, does not take the liberty to protest as the stomach does. And so it comes about that with our im- proved methods of communication and devices for the spread of knowledge, the poor thing is beset, or we might better say, assaulted, cram- med, swamped, every hour and day, by a mass of ideas and facts from which it was happily free in the time of our fathers. Think of the books and newspapers and magazines of today; the libraries and bill-boards; sermons, lectures, political speeches; vaudeville shows, grapho- phones, Sunday supplements; moving pictures, advertisements and street-fakirs, to say nothing of the hundreds of new scenes and faces and noises you hear inside of the ten minutes it takes to come down town on the car, or of the endless movement and change in any kind of business in a modern city. All this seems to me clearly abnormal and the worst of it is that, like all abnormal conditions, it has speedily come to be regarded as perfectly natural, and has even been set up as the stan- dard by which we shape our policies. So it comes, for instance, that we have the variety show instead of the drama, the clatter and con- fusion of amusement park instead of the con- cert or lecture, that we have all the multifarious activity, and sometimes even the noisy sensa- tionalism 0f the modern church, and the over- crowded curriculum and itget-rich-quickii methods of our schools. Everything is buzzing and rattling about us in such a way that we feel as if we must be missing something when we do not buzz and rattle also, and teach our children to buzz and rattle. I hope I may not be misunderstood. I do not mean to disparage the knowledge and experi- ence which modern inventions bring us. It is, most ofit, important. A single issue of a daily paper contains enough to keep our minds busy for a year. What I feel like protesting against is not the character of the knowledge, but the overwhelming mass of it. We are not feeding the mind at all, but starving it; we are not clothing it, but even taking from it that which is by right its own. Our life and experi- ence, instead of being internal and 0f the soul, is more and more becoming an experience mere- - ly of the eyes and ears, a dealing at arms length with a tremendous mass of raw, undi- gested, unassimilated facts, a life, in short, that lies entirely on the outside of us. The capacity of the human mind, like everything on earth, is limited. It is humanly impossible for it to take up all this avalanche of things that pour upon it from day to day, and to transform them into its own substance, and make anything out