早稲田文2017 I

I

(A)

When France declared war on Prussia in July 1870, the French leaders evidently believed that they could humiliate their German-speaking neighbors. Mutual distrust between France and Prussia had grown in ( 1 ) the rise of nationalism that had caused the German-speaking states, briefly united at the time of the French Revolution of 1848, gradually to come together politically and economically. France, or at least Napoleon III and his advisers, saw a strengthened German state as a threat to France's Rhineland territories; this sense of distrust was increased by Prussia's ( 2 ) of military authority over Austria and Denmark in the 1860s. Then, in 1870, the possibility arose ( 3 ) a German prince might be elected the new King of Spain, thus (in Napoleon Ill's judgment) presenting a German threat to France's south-west perimeter.

After repeated French protests, the Prince of Hohenzollern seems to have been willing to withdraw from candidacy for the Spanish ( 4 ) before France committed to war. The motivation for war was hence supplied less by this specific incident than by a more general sense of suspicion, each nation maintaining that possession of the Rhineland states was necessary for ( 5 ) against the other. This itself was a form of historical repetition: at least as interpreted by the British press, the two nations would replay the Battle of Jena in 1806, where the first Napoleon destroyed the Prussian army. Obviously, the French were hoping to prove that the relative power of the two countries had not changed, and the Prussians that it ( 6 ). On July 19, France declared war on Prussia, and the French people ( 7 ) shouted their goal of "To Berlin!" For a brief moment, they had accepted the new Napoleon as the replaying of the old.

(B) 
Soon after alphabetic writing had reached Greece from Phoenicia in about 700 BC, the Homeric epics were written down. Homer's example inspired the subsequent ( 8 ) of Greek literature, for even though the pursuit of justice was always the foundation of the city- state, an equally conscious pursuit of fame, truth, and beauty was not far ( 9 ). Those aspirations, in turn, inspired an extraordinary outpouring of poetry, drama, history, and philosophy that defined the good life for later generations of Greek and Roman citizens. Medical and physical science simultaneously took ( 10 ) in new directions when a few bold thinkers supposed that just as citizens of the city-state ordered their lives by obeying laws expressed in words, physical nature too perhaps obeyed laws that might also be set forth in words. This stab in the ( 11 ) generated a multiplicity of ideas, such as the atomic theory of matter, that were destined to a great future. Scientists and philosophers simply disregarded all the confused and conflicting tales about the gods set forth in the poetry of Homer, Hesiod, and others, and trusted instead to their own powers of verbal reasoning.

The ( 12 ) of authoritative religious hierarchies to make sense of the jumble of inherited ideas about the gods made this possible. Without priests, the city magistrates, who became responsible for conducting religious rituals, cared more for splendor and spectacle than for coherent doctrine. The effect was to unleash speculative thought, checked only by acute observation of celestial and earthly phenomena and of human behavior as well. For a few centuries, a handful of philosophers were therefore free to apply verbal and mathematical reasoning to human affairs and natural phenomena, and did so with ( 13 ) success that subsequent philosophers have continued to study their surviving writings, down to the present. Rival schools eventually codified Greek philosophical and scientific ideas into convenient guides for upper-class living. The initial tumult of intellectual ( 14 ) began to subside when heartfelt questions raised by Plato gave way to Aristotle's logical and plausible answers to almost everything his predecessors had discussed.