Word: slavish
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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...their own minds and the competency of their own natures, I suppose Montaigne to have been as striking an instance as could readily be found. He more than any other man cut loose the modern from the ancient world, and emancipated the human mind from a pedantic and slavish deference to the past. I do not mean that he did it consciously, but he had the courage to trust in his own instincts and to read the world with his own eyes-not in a Greek or Latin or Hebrew translation...