I bet that more "first-quality stuff" was written in Athens, with a citizen population of 10,000, from the period from Sophocles to Aristotle than has been written in the entire world in the past 50 years.
I actually can't think of any first-quality stuff written in the past 50 years other than Heidegger's essays in the 60s.
--- On Sat, 9/5/09, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> This is not necessarily a bad thing. John Quincy Adams at
> the age of 10
> read Smollet's 10 vol. history of England and a few other
> things yet
> apologized to his father for being lazy that summer. (From
> memory --
> something like that.) But there aren't many of us can match
> J.Q. Adams,
> and the body of really first-rate and important material
> continues to
> grow, at an increasing rate, as literacy and population
> increase. It is
> just as with piles of stuff in your basement. After a while
> it is just
> as though much of the stuff doesn't exist because it is
> hidden by the
> rest. Similarly if you keep old magzines. And so forth. The
> very
> increase in "information" (quotes because I want to include
> knowledge
> and even wisdom as well) begins to hide itself. Some
> indiscriminate
> pruning might be a boon. I really can't bring myself to be
> too sad about
> the burning of the library at Alexandria.
>
> Carrol
>
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