Читать книгу Soliloquies in England, and Later Soliloquies - George Santayana - Страница 15

All peoples that dwell by the sea sometimes venture out upon it. The boys are eager to swim and sail, and the men may be turned into habitual navigators by the spirit of enterprise or by necessity. But some races take to the water more kindly than others, either because they love the waves more or the furrow less. We may imagine that sheer distress drove the Norse fishermen and pirates into their open boats. The ocean they explored was rough and desolate; the fish and the pillaged foreigner had to compensate them for their privations. They quitted their fiords and brackish islands dreaming of happier lands. But with the Greeks and the English the case was somewhat different. There are no happier lands than theirs; and they set forth for the most part on summer seas, towards wilder and less populous regions. They went armed, of course, and ready to give battle: they had no scruples about carrying home anything they might purloin or obtain by enormously advantageous barter, but they were not in quest of softer climes or foreign models; their home remained their ideal. They were scarcely willing to settle in foreign parts unless they could live their home life there.