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The Legacy of GREECE

_Essays by_ GILBERT MURRAY, W. R. INGE,
J. BURNET, SIR T. L. HEATH, D'ARCY W.
THOMPSON, CHARLES SINGER, R. W.
LIVINGSTON, A. TOYNBEE, A. E. ZIMMERN,
PERCY GARDNER, SIR REGINALD BLOMFIELD

_Edited by_

R. W. LIVINGSTONE

[Illustration]

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS


PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE
UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
BY JOHN JOHNSON
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY




In spite of many differences, no age has had closer affinities with
Ancient Greece than our own; none has based its deeper life so largely
on ideals which the Greeks brought into the world. History does not
repeat itself. Yet, if the twentieth century searched through the past
for its nearest spiritual kin, it is in the fifth and following
centuries before Christ that they would be found. Again and again, as we
study Greek thought and literature, behind the veil woven by time and
distance, the face that meets us is our own, younger, with fewer lines
and wrinkles on its features and with more definite and deliberate
purpose in its eyes. For these reasons we are to-day in a position, as
no other age has been, to understand Ancient Greece, to learn the
lessons it teaches, and, in studying the ideals and fortunes of men with
whom we have so much in common, to gain a fuller power of understanding
and estimating our own. This book--the first of its kind in
English--aims at giving some idea of what the world owes to Greece in
various realms of the spirit and the intellect, and of what it can still
learn from her.

THE EDITOR.

_October 1921._




CONTENTS


                                                                  PAGE

THE VALUE OF GREECE TO THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD.
By GILBERT MURRAY, F.B.A., Regius Professor of Greek in
the University of Oxford                                             1

RELIGION. By W. R. INGE, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's                   25

PHILOSOPHY. By J. BURNETT, F.B.A., Professor of Greek in the
University of St. Andrews                                           57

MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY.
By Sir T. L. HEATH, K.C.B., K.C.V.O., F.R.S.                        97

NATURAL SCIENCE. By D'ARCY W. THOMPSON, F.R.S.,
Professor of Natural History in the University of St. Andrews      137

BIOLOGY. By CHARLES SINGER, Lecturer in the History of Medicine
in University College, London                                      163

MEDICINE. By CHARLES SINGER                                        201

LITERATURE. By R. W. LIVINGSTONE, Fellow of Corpus Christi
College, Oxford                                                    249

HISTORY. By ARNOLD TOYNBEE, Koraés Professor of Byzantine and
Modern Greek Language, Literature, and History in the
University of London                                               289

POLITICAL THOUGHT. By A. E. ZIMMERN, late Wilson Professor of
International Politics, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth   321

THE LAMPS OF GREEK ART. By PERCY GARDNER, F.B.A., Merton
Professor of Classical Archaeology in the University of Oxford     353

ARCHITECTURE. By Sir REGINALD BLOMFIELD, F.S.A., R.A.              397




THE VALUE OF GREECE TO THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD


If the value of man's life on earth is to be measured in dollars and
miles and horse-power, ancient Greece must count as a poverty-stricken
and a minute territory; its engines and implements were nearer to the
spear and bow of the savage than to our own telegraph and aeroplane.
Even if we neglect merely material things and take as our standard the
actual achievements of the race in conduct and in knowledge, the average
clerk who goes to town daily, idly glancing at his morning newspaper, is
probably a better behaved and infinitely better informed person than the
average Athenian who sat spellbound at the tragedies of Aeschylus. It is
only by the standard of the spirit, to which the thing achieved is
little and the quality of mind that achieved it much, which cares less
for the sum of knowledge attained than for the love of knowledge, less
for much good policing than for one free act of heroism, that the great
age of Greece can be judged as something extraordinary and unique in
value.

By this standard, if it is a legitimate and reasonable one to apply, we
shall be able to understand why classical Greek literature was the basis
of education throughout all later antiquity; why its re-discovery,
however fragmentary and however imperfectly understood, was able to
intoxicate the keenest minds of Europe and constitute a kind of
spiritual 'Re-birth', and how its further and further exploration may be
still a task worth men's spending their lives upon and capable of giving
mankind guidance as well as inspiration.

But is such a standard legitimate and reasonable? We shall gain nothing
by unanalysed phrases. But I think surely it is merely the natural
standard of any philosophical historian. Suppose it is argued that an
average optician at the present day knows more optics than Roger Bacon,
the inventor of spectacles; suppose it is argued that therefore he is,
as far as optics go, a greater man, and that Roger Bacon has nothing to
teach us; what is the answer? It is, I suppose, that Roger Bacon,
receiving a certain amount of knowledge from his teachers, had that in
him which turned it to unsuspected directions and made it immensely
greater and more fruitful. The average optician has probably added a
little to what he was taught, but not much, and has doubtless forgotten
or confused a good deal. So that, if by studying Roger Bacon's life or
his books we could get into touch with his mind and acquire some of that
special moving and inspiring quality of his, it would help us far more
than would the mere knowledge of the optician.

This truth is no doubt hard to see in the case of purely technical
science; in books of wider range, such as Darwin's for instance, it is
easy for any reader to feel the presence of a really great mind,
producing inspiration of a different sort from that of the most
excellent up-to-date examination text-book. In philosophy, religion,
poetry, and the highest kinds of art, the greatness of the author's mind
seems as a rule to be all that matters; one almost ignores the date at
which he worked. This is because in technical sciences the element of
mere fact, or mere knowledge, is so enormous, the elements of
imagination, character, and the like so very small. Hence, books on
science, in a progressive age, very quickly become 'out of date', and
each new edition usually supersedes the last. It is the rarest thing for
a work of science to survive as a text-book more than ten years or so.
Newton's _Principia_ is almost an isolated instance among modern
writings.

Yet there are some few such books. Up till about the year 1900 the
elements of geometry were regularly taught, throughout Europe, in a
text-book written by a Greek called Eucleides in the fourth or third
century B. C.[1] That text-book lasted over two thousand years. Now, of
course, people have discovered a number of faults in Euclid, but it has
taken them all that time to do it.

    [1] Since this paper was first written _Euclid_, Book I, in the
    Greek, has been edited with a commentary by Sir Thomas Heath
    (Cambridge Press, 1920). It is full of interest and instruction.

Again, I knew an old gentleman who told me that, at a good English
school in the early nineteenth century, he had been taught the
principles of grammar out of a writer called Dionysius Thrax, or Denis
of Thrace. Denis was a Greek of the first century B. C., who made or
carried out the remarkable discovery that there was such a thing as a
science of grammar, i. e. that men in their daily speech were
unconsciously obeying an extraordinarily subtle and intricate body of
laws, which were capable of being studied and reduced to order. Denis
did not make the whole discovery himself; he was led to it by his master
Aristarchus and others. And his book had been re-edited several times in
the nineteen-hundred odd years before this old gentleman was taught it.

To take a third case: all through later antiquity and the middle ages
the science of medicine was based on the writings of two ancient
doctors, Hippocrates and Galen. Galen was a Greek who lived at Rome in
the early Empire, Hippocrates a Greek who lived at the island of Cos in
the fifth century B. C. A great part of the history of modern medicine
is a story of emancipation from the dead hand of these great ancients.
But one little treatise attributed to Hippocrates was in active use in
the training of medical students in my own day in Scotland and is still
in use in some American Universities. It was the Oath taken by medical
students in the classic age of Greece when they solemnly faced the
duties of their profession. The disciple swore to honour and obey his
teacher and care for his children if ever they were in need; always to
help his patients to the best of his power; never to use or profess to
use magic or charms or any supernatural means; never to supply poison or
perform illegal operations; never to abuse the special position of
intimacy which a doctor naturally obtains in a sick house, but always on
entering to remember that he goes as a friend and helper to every
individual in it.

We have given up that oath now: I suppose we do not believe so much in
the value of oaths. But the man who first drew up that oath did a great
deed. He realized and defined the meaning of his high calling in words
which doctors of unknown tongues and undiscovered countries accepted
from him and felt to express their aims for well over two thousand
years.

Now what do I want to illustrate by these three instances? The rapidity
with which we are now at last throwing off the last vestiges of the yoke
of Greece? No, not that. I want to point out that even in the realm of
science, where progress is so swift and books so short-lived, the Greeks
of the great age had such genius and vitality that their books lived in
a way that no others have lived. Let us get away from the thought of
Euclid as an inky and imperfect English school-book, to that ancient
Eucleides who, with exceedingly few books but a large table of sand let
into the floor, planned and discovered and put together and re-shaped
the first laws of geometry, till at last he had written one of the great
simple books of the world, a book which should stand a pillar and beacon
to mankind long after all the political world that Eucleides knew had
been swept away and the kings he served were conquered by the Romans,
and the Romans in course of time conquered by the barbarians, and the
barbarians themselves, with much labour and reluctance, partly by means
of Eucleides' book, eventually educated; so that at last, in our own
day, they can manage to learn their geometry without it. The time has
come for Euclid to be superseded; let him go. He has surely held the
torch for mankind long enough; and books of science are born to be
superseded. What I want to suggest is that the same extraordinary
vitality of mind which made Hippocrates and Euclid and even Denis of
Thrace last their two thousand years, was also put by the Greeks of the
great age into those activities which are, for the most part at any
rate, not perishable or progressive but eternal.

This is a simple point, but it is so important that we must dwell on it
for a moment. If we read an old treatise on medicine or mechanics, we
may admire it and feel it a work of genius, but we also feel that it is
obsolete: its work is over; we have got beyond it. But when we read
Homer or Aeschylus, if once we have the power to admire and understand
their writing, we do not for the most part have any feeling of having
got beyond them. We have done so no doubt in all kinds of minor things,
in general knowledge, in details of technique, in civilization and the
like; but hardly any sensible person ever imagines that he has got
beyond their essential quality, the quality that has made them great.

Doubtless there is in every art an element of mere knowledge or science,
and that element is progressive. But there is another element, too,
which does not depend on knowledge and which does not progress but has a
kind of stationary and eternal value, like the beauty of the dawn, or
the love of a mother for her child, or the joy of a young animal in
being alive, or the courage of a martyr facing torment. We cannot for
all our progress get beyond these things; there they stand, like light
upon the mountains. The only question is whether we can rise to them.
And it is the same with all the greatest births of human imagination. As
far as we can speculate, there is not the faintest probability of any
poet ever setting to work on, let us say, the essential effect aimed at
by Aeschylus in the Cassandra-scene of the _Agamemnon_, and doing it
better than Aeschylus. The only thing which the human race has to do
with that scene is to understand it and get out of it all the joy and
emotion and wonder that it contains.

This eternal quality is perhaps clearest in poetry: in poetry the
mixture of knowledge matters less. In art there is a constant
development of tools and media and technical processes. The modern
artist can feel that, though he cannot, perhaps, make as good a statue
as Pheidias, he could here and there have taught Pheidias something: and
at any rate he can try his art on subjects far more varied and more
stimulating to his imagination. In philosophy the mixture is more subtle
and more profound. Philosophy always depends in some sense upon science,
yet the best philosophy seems generally to have in it some eternal
quality of creative imagination. Plato wrote a dialogue about the
constitution of the world, the _Timaeus_, which was highly influential
in later Greece, but seems to us, with our vastly superior scientific
knowledge, almost nonsensical. Yet when Plato writes about the theory of
knowledge or the ultimate meaning of Justice or of Love, no good
philosopher can afford to leave him aside: the chief question is whether
we can rise to the height and subtlety of his thought.

And here another point emerges, equally simple and equally important if
we are to understand our relation to the past. Suppose a man says: 'I
quite understand that Plato or Aeschylus may have had fine ideas, but
surely anything of value which they said must long before this have
become common property. There is no need to go back to the Greeks for
it. We do not go back and read Copernicus to learn that the earth goes
round the sun.' What is the answer? It is that such a view ignores
exactly this difference between the progressive and the eternal, between
knowledge and imagination. If Harvey discovers that the blood is not
stationary but circulates, if Copernicus discovers that the earth goes
round the sun and not the sun round the earth, those discoveries can
easily be communicated in the most abbreviated form. If a mechanic
invents an improvement on the telephone, or a social reformer puts some
good usage in the place of a bad one, in a few years we shall probably
all be using the improvement without even knowing what it is or saying
Thank you. We may be as stupid as we like, we have in a sense got the
good of it.

But can one apply the same process to _Macbeth_ or _Romeo and Juliet_?
Can any one tell us in a few words what they come to? Or can a person
get the good of them in any way except one--the way of vivid and loving
study, following and feeling the author's meaning all through? To
suppose, as I believe some people do, that you can get the value of a
great poem by studying an abstract of it in an encyclopaedia or by
reading cursorily an average translation of it, argues really a kind of
mental deficiency, like deafness or colour-blindness. The things that we
have called eternal, the things of the spirit and the imagination,
always seem to lie more in a process than in a result, and can only be
reached and enjoyed by somehow going through the process again. If the
value of a particular walk lies in the scenery, you do not get that
value by taking a short cut or using a fast motor-car.

In looking back, then, upon any vital and significant age of the past we
shall find objects of two kinds. First, there will be things like the
Venus of Milo or the Book of Job or Plato's _Republic_, which are
interesting or precious in themselves, because of their own inherent
qualities; secondly, there will be things like the Roman code of the
Twelve Tables or the invention of the printing-press or the record of
certain great battles, which are interesting chiefly because they are
causes of other and greater things or form knots in the great web of
history--the first having artistic interest, the second only historical
interest, though, of course, it is obvious that in any concrete case
there is generally a mixture of both.

Now Ancient Greece is important in both ways. For the artist or poet it
has in a quite extraordinary degree the quality of beauty. For instance,
to take a contrast with Rome: if you dig about the Roman Wall in
Cumberland you will find quantities of objects, altars, inscriptions,
figurines, weapons, boots and shoes, which are full of historic interest
but are not much more beautiful than the contents of a modern rubbish
heap. And the same is true of most excavations all over the world. But
if you dig at any classical or sub-classical site in the Greek world,
however unimportant historically, practically every object you find will
be beautiful. The wall itself will be beautiful; the inscriptions will
be beautifully cut; the figurines, however cheap and simple, may have
some intentional grotesques among them, but the rest will have a special
truthfulness and grace; the vases will be of good shapes and the
patterns will be beautiful patterns. If you happen to dig in a
burying-place and come across some epitaphs on the dead, they will
practically all--even when the verses do not quite scan and the words
are wrongly spelt--have about them this inexplicable touch of beauty.

I am anxious not to write nonsense about this. One could prove the point
in detail by taking any collection of Greek epitaphs, and that is the
only way in which it can be proved. The beauty is a fact, and if we try
to analyse the sources of it we shall perhaps in part understand how it
has come to pass.

In the first place, it is not a beauty of ornament; it is a beauty of
structure, a beauty of rightness and simplicity. Compare an athlete in
flannels playing tennis and a stout dignitary smothered in gold robes.
Or compare a good modern yacht, swift, lithe, and plain, with a
lumbering heavily gilded sixteenth-century galleon, or even with a
Chinese state junk: the yacht is far the more beautiful though she has
not a hundredth part of the ornament. It is she herself that is
beautiful, because her lines and structure are right. The others are
essentially clumsy and, therefore, ugly things, dabbed over with gold
and paint. Now ancient Greek things for the most part have the beauty of
the yacht. The Greeks used paint a good deal, but apart from that a
Greek temple is almost as plain as a shed: people accustomed to
arabesques and stained glass and gargoyles can very often see nothing in
it. A Greek statue has as a rule no ornament at all: a young man racing
or praying, an old man thinking, there it stands expressed in a stately
and simple convention, true or false, the anatomy and the surfaces right
or wrong, aiming at no beauty except the truest. It would probably seem
quite dull to the maker of a mediaeval wooden figure of a king which I
remember seeing in a town in the east of Europe: a crown blazing with
many- glass, a long crimson robe covered with ornaments and
beneath them an idiot face, no bones, no muscles, no attitude. That is
not what a Greek meant by beauty. The same quality holds to a great
extent of Greek poetry. Not, of course, that the artistic convention was
the same, or at all similar, for treating stone and for treating
language. Greek poetry is statuesque in the sense that it depends
greatly on its organic structure; it is not in the least so in the sense
of being cold or colourless or stiff. But Greek poetry on the whole has
a bareness and severity which disappoints a modern reader, accustomed as
he is to lavish ornament and exaggeration at every turn. It has the
same simplicity and straightforwardness as Greek sculpture. The poet has
something to say and he says it as well and truly as he can in the
suitable style, and if you are not interested you are not. With some
exceptions which explain themselves he does not play a thousand pretty
tricks and antics on the way, so that you may forget the dullness of
what he says in amusement at the draperies in which he wraps it.

But here comes an apparent difficulty. Greek poetry, we say, is very
direct, very simple, very free from irrelevant ornament. And yet when we
translate it into English and look at our translation, our main feeling,
I think, is that somehow the glory has gone: a thing that was high and
lordly has become poor and mean. Any decent Greek scholar when he opens
one of his ancient poets feels at once the presence of something lofty
and rare--something like the atmosphere of _Paradise Lost_. But the
language of _Paradise Lost_ is elaborately twisted and embellished into
loftiness and rarity; the language of the Greek poem is simple and
direct. What does this mean?

I can only suppose that the normal language of Greek poetry is in itself
in some sense sublime. Most critics accept this as an obvious fact, yet,
if true, it is a very strange fact and worth thinking about. It depends
partly on mere euphony: _Khaireis horôn fôs_ is probably more beautiful
in sound than 'You rejoice to see the light', but euphony cannot be
everything. The sound of a great deal of Greek poetry, either as we
pronounce it, or as the ancients pronounced it, is to modern ears almost
ugly. It depends partly, perhaps, on the actual structure of the Greek
language: philologists tell us that, viewed as a specimen, it is in
structure and growth and in power of expressing things, the most perfect
language they know. And certainly one often finds that a thought can be
expressed with ease and grace in Greek which becomes clumsy and involved
in Latin, English, French or German. But neither of these causes goes,
I think, to the root of the matter.

What is it that gives words their character and makes a style high or
low? Obviously, their associations; the company they habitually keep in
the minds of those who use them. A word which belongs to the language of
bars and billiard saloons will become permeated by the normal standard
of mind prevalent in such places; a word which suggests Milton or
Carlyle will have the flavour of those men's minds about it. I therefore
cannot resist the conclusion that, if the language of Greek poetry has,
to those who know it intimately, this special quality of keen austere
beauty, it is because the minds of the poets who used that language were
habitually toned to a higher level both of intensity and of nobility
than ours. It is a finer language because it expresses the minds of
finer men. By 'finer men' I do not necessarily mean men who behaved
better, either by our standards or by their own; I mean men to whom the
fine things of the world, sunrise and sea and stars and the love of man
for man, and strife and the facing of evil for the sake of good, and
even common things like meat and drink, and evil things like hate and
terror, had, as it were, a keener edge than they have for us and roused
a swifter and a nobler reaction.

Let us resume this argument before going further. We start from the
indisputable fact that the Greeks of about the fifth century B. C. did
for some reason or other produce various works of art, buildings and
statues and books, especially books, which instead of decently dying or
falling out of fashion in the lifetime of the men who made them, lasted
on and can still cause high thoughts and intense emotions. In trying to
explain this strange fact we notice that the Greeks had a great and
pervading instinct for beauty, and for beauty of a particular kind. It
is a beauty which never lies in irrelevant ornament, but always in the
very essence and structure of the object made. In literature we found
that the special beauty which we call Greek depends partly on the
directness, truthfulness, and simplicity with which the Greeks say what
they want to say, and partly on a special keenness and nobility in the
language, which seems to be the natural expression of keen and noble
minds. Can we in any way put all these things together so as to explain
them--or at any rate to hold them together more clearly?

An extremely old and often misleading metaphor will help us. People have
said: 'The world was young then.' Of course, strictly speaking, it was
not. In the total age of the world or of man the two thousand odd years
between us and Pericles do not count for much. Nor can we imagine that a
man of sixty felt any more juvenile in the fifth century B. C. than he
does now. It was just the other way, because at that time there were no
spectacles or false teeth. Yet in a sense the world _was_ young then, at
any rate our western world, the world of progress and humanity. For the
beginnings of nearly all the great things that progressive minds now
care for were then being laid in Greece.

Youth, perhaps, is not exactly the right word. There are certain
plants--some kinds of aloe, for instance--which continue for an
indefinite number of years in a slow routine of ordinary life close to
the ground, and then suddenly, when they have stored enough vital force,
grow ten feet high and burst into flower, after which, no doubt, they
die or show signs of exhaustion. Apart from the dying, it seems as if
something like that happened from time to time to the human race, or to
such parts of it as really bear flowers at all. For most races and
nations during the most of their life are not progressive but simply
stagnant, sometimes just managing to preserve their standard customs,
sometimes slipping back to the slough. That is why history has nothing
to say about them. The history of the world consists mostly in the
memory of those ages, quite few in number, in which some part of the
world has risen above itself and burst into flower or fruit.

We ourselves happen to live in the midst or possibly in the close of one
such period. More change has probably taken place in daily life, in
ideas, and in the general aspect of the earth during the last century
than during any four other centuries since the Christian era: and this
fact has tended to make us look on rapid progress as a normal condition
of the human race, which it never has been. And another such period of
bloom, a bloom comparatively short in time and narrow in area, but
amazingly swift and intense, occurred in the lower parts of the Balkan
peninsula from about the sixth to the fourth centuries before Christ.

Now it is this kind of bloom which fills the world with hope and
therefore makes it young. Take a man who has just made a discovery or an
invention, a man happily in love, a man who is starting some great and
successful social movement, a man who is writing a book or painting a
picture which he knows to be good; take men who have been fighting in
some great cause which before they fought seemed to be hopeless and now
is triumphant; think of England when the Armada was just defeated,
France at the first dawn of the Revolution, America after Yorktown: such
men and nations will be above themselves. Their powers will be stronger
and keener; there will be exhilaration in the air, a sense of walking in
new paths, of dawning hopes and untried possibilities, a confidence that
all things can be won if only we try hard enough. In that sense the
world will be young. In that sense I think it was young in the time of
Themistocles and Aeschylus. And it is that youth which is half the
secret of the Greek spirit.

And here I may meet an objection that has perhaps been lurking in the
minds of many readers. 'All this,' they may say, 'professes to be a
simple analysis of known facts, but in reality is sheer idealization.
These Greeks whom you call so "noble" have been long since exposed.
Anthropology has turned its searchlights upon them. It is not only their
ploughs, their weapons, their musical instruments, and their painted
idols that resemble those of the savages; it is everything else about
them. Many of them were sunk in the most degrading superstitions: many
practised unnatural vices: in times of great fear some were apt to think
that the best "medicine" was a human sacrifice. After that, it is hardly
worth mentioning that their social structure was largely based on
slavery; that they lived in petty little towns, like so many wasps'
nests, each at war with its next-door neighbour, and half of them at war
with themselves!'

If our anti-Greek went further he would probably cease to speak the
truth. We will stop him while we can still agree with him. These charges
are on the whole true, and, if we are to understand what Greece means,
we must realize and digest them. We must keep hold of two facts: first,
that the Greeks of the fifth century produced some of the noblest poetry
and art, the finest political thinking, the most vital philosophy, known
to the world; second, that the people who heard and saw, nay perhaps,
even the people who produced these wonders, were separated by a thin and
precarious interval from the savage. Scratch a civilized Russian, they
say, and you find a wild Tartar. Scratch an ancient Greek, and you hit,
no doubt, on a very primitive and formidable being, somewhere between a
Viking and a Polynesian.

That is just the magic and the wonder of it. The spiritual effort
implied is so tremendous. We have read stories of savage chiefs
converted by Christian or Buddhist missionaries, who within a year or so
have turned from drunken corroborees and bloody witch-smellings to a
life that is not only godly but even philanthropic and statesmanlike. We
have seen the Japanese lately go through some centuries of normal growth
in the space of a generation. But in all such examples men have only
been following the teaching of a superior civilization, and after all,
they have not ended by producing works of extraordinary and original
genius. It seems quite clear that the Greeks owed exceedingly little to
foreign influence. Even in their decay they were a race, as Professor
Bury observes, accustomed 'to take little and to give much'. They built
up their civilization for themselves. We must listen with due attention
to the critics who have pointed out all the remnants of savagery and
superstition that they find in Greece: the slave-driver, the
fetish-worshipper and the medicine-man, the trampler on women, the
bloodthirsty hater of all outside his own town and party. But it is not
those people that constitute Greece; those people can be found all over
the historical world, commoner than blackberries. It is not anything
fixed and stationary that constitutes Greece: what constitutes Greece is
the movement which leads from all these to the Stoic or fifth-century
'sophist' who condemns and denies slavery, who has abolished all cruel
superstitions and preaches some religion based on philosophy and
humanity, who claims for women the same spiritual rights as for man, who
looks on all human creatures as his brethren, and the world as 'one
great City of gods and men'. It is that movement which you will not find
elsewhere, any more than the statues of Pheidias or the dialogues of
Plato or the poems of Aeschylus and Euripides.

From all this two or three results follow. For one thing, being built up
so swiftly, by such keen effort, and from so low a starting-point, Greek
civilization was, amid all its glory, curiously unstable and full of
flaws. Such flaws made it, of course, much worse for those who lived in
it, but they hardly make it less interesting or instructive to those who
study it. Rather the contrary. Again, the near neighbourhood of the
savage gives to the Greek mind certain qualities which we of the safer
and solider civilizations would give a great deal to possess. It springs
swift and straight. It is never jaded. Its wonder and interest about the
world are fresh. And lastly there is one curious and very important
quality which, unless I am mistaken, belongs to Greek civilization more
than to any other. To an extraordinary degree it starts clean from
nature, with almost no entanglements of elaborate creeds and customs and
traditions.

I am not, of course, forgetting the prehistoric Minoan civilization, nor
yet the peculiar forms--mostly simple enough--into which the traditional
Greek religion fell. It is possible that I may be a little misled by my
own habit of living much among Greek things and so forgetting through
long familiarity how odd some of them once seemed. But when all
allowances are made, I think that this clean start from nature is, on
the whole, a true claim. If a thoughtful European or American wants to
study Chinese or Indian things, he has not only to learn certain data of
history and mythology, he has to work his mind into a particular
attitude; to put on, as it were, spectacles of a particular sort. If he
wants to study mediaeval things, if he takes even so universal a poet as
Dante, it is something the same. Curious views about the Pope and the
emperor, a crabbed scholastic philosophy, a strange and to the modern
mind rather horrible theology, floating upon the flames of Hell: all
these have somehow to be taken into his imagination before he can
understand his Dante. With Greek things this is very much less so. The
historical and imaginative background of the various great poets and
philosophers is, no doubt, highly important. A great part of the work of
modern scholarship is now devoted to getting it clearer. But on the
whole, putting aside for the moment the possible inadequacies of
translation, Greek philosophy speaks straight to any human being who is
willing to think simply, Greek art and poetry to any one who can use his
imagination and enjoy beauty. He has not to put on the fetters or the
blinkers of any new system in order to understand them; he has only to
get rid of his own--a much more profitable and less troublesome task.

This particular conclusion will scarcely, I think, be disputed, but the
point presents difficulties and must be dwelt upon.

In the first place, it does not mean that Greek art is what we call
'naturalist' or 'realist'. It is markedly the reverse. Art to the Greek
is always a form of _Sophia_, or Wisdom, a _Technê_ with rules that have
to be learnt. Its air of utter simplicity is deceptive. The pillar that
looks merely straight is really a thing of subtle curves. The funeral
bas-relief that seems to represent in the simplest possible manner a
woman saying good-bye to her child is arranged, plane behind plane, with
the most delicate skill and sometimes with deliberate falsification of
perspective. There is always some convention, some idealization, some
touch of the light that never was on sea or land. Yet all the time, I
think, Greek art remains in a remarkable degree close to nature. The
artist's eye is always on the object, and, though he represents it in
his own style, that style is always normal and temperate, free from
affectation, free from exaggeration or morbidity and, in the earlier
periods, free from conventionality. It is art without doubt; but it is
natural and normal art, such as grew spontaneously when mankind first
tried in freedom to express beauty. For example, the language of Greek
poetry is markedly different from that of prose, and there are even
clear differences of language between different styles of poetry. And
further, the poetry is very seldom about the present. It is about the
past, and that an ideal past. What we have to notice there is that this
kind of rule, which has been usual in all great ages of poetry, is
apparently not an artificial or arbitrary thing but a tendency that grew
up naturally with the first great expressions of poetical feeling.

Furthermore, this closeness to nature, this absence of a unifying or
hide-bound system of thought, acting together with other causes, has led
to the extraordinary variety and many-sidedness which is one of the most
puzzling charms of Ancient Greece as contrasted, say, with Israel or
Assyria or early Rome. Geographically it is a small country with a
highly indented coast-line and an interior cut into a great number of
almost isolated valleys. Politically it was a confused unity made up of
numerous independent states, one walled city of a few thousand
inhabitants being quite enough to form a state. And the citizens of
these states were, each of them, rather excessively capable of forming
opinions of their own and fighting for them. Hence came in practice much
isolation and faction and general weakness, to the detriment of the
Greeks themselves; but the same cause led in thought and literature to
immense variety and vitality, to the great gain of us who study the
Greeks afterwards. There is hardly any type of thought or style of
writing which cannot be paralleled in ancient Greece, only they will
there be seen, as it were, in their earlier and simpler forms. Traces of
all the things that seem most un-Greek can be found somewhere in Greek
literature: voluptuousness, asceticism, the worship of knowledge, the
contempt for knowledge, atheism, pietism, the religion of serving the
world and the religion of turning away from the world: all these and
almost all other points of view one can think of are represented
somewhere in the records of that one small people. And there is hardly
any single generalization in this chapter which the author himself could
not controvert by examples to the contrary. You feel in general a great
absence of all fetters: the human mind free, rather inexperienced,
intensely interested in life and full of hope, trying in every direction
for that excellence which the Greeks called _aretê_, and guided by some
peculiar instinct toward Temperance and Beauty.

The variety is there and must not be forgotten; yet amid the variety
there are certain general or central characteristics, mostly due to this
same quality of freshness and closeness to nature.

If you look at a Greek statue or bas-relief, or if you read an average
piece of Aristotle, you will very likely at first feel bored. Why?
Because it is all so normal and truthful; so singularly free from
exaggeration, paradox, violent emphasis; so destitute of those
fascinating by-forms of insanity which appeal to some similar faint
element of insanity in ourselves. 'We are sick', we may exclaim, 'of the
sight of these handsome, perfectly healthy men with grave faces and
normal bones and muscles! We are sick of being told that Virtue is a
mean between two extremes and tends to make men happy! We shall not be
interested unless some one tells us that Virtue is the utter abnegation
of self, or, it may be, the extreme and ruthless assertion of self; or
again, that Virtue is all an infamous mistake! And for statues, give us
a haggard man with starved body and cavernous eyes, cursing God--or give
us something rolling in fat and colour....'

What is at the back of this sort of feeling? which I admit often takes
more reasonable forms than these I have suggested. It is the same
psychological cause that brings about the changes of fashion in art or
dress: which loves 'stunts' and makes the fortunes of yellow newspapers.
It is boredom or _ennui_. We have had too much of A; we are sick of it,
we know how it is done and despise it; give us some B, or better still
some Z. And after a strong dose of Z we shall crave for the beginning
of the alphabet again. But now think of a person who is not bored at
all; who is, on the contrary, immensely interested in the world, keen to
choose good things and reject bad ones; full of the desire for knowledge
and the excitement of discovery. The joy to him is to see things as they
are and to judge them normally. He is not bored by the sight of normal,
healthy muscles in a healthy, well-shaped body; he is delighted. If you
distort the muscles for emotional effect, he would say with
disappointment: 'But that is ugly!' or 'But a man's muscles do _not_ go
like that!' He will have noted that tears are salt and rather warm; but
if you say like a modern poet that your heroine's tears are 'more hot
than fire, more salt than the salt sea', he will probably think your
statement απιθανον {apithanon} 'unpersuasive', and therefore ψυχρον
{psychron} 'chilling'.

It is perhaps especially in the religious and moral sphere that we are
accustomed to the habitual use of ecstatic language: expressions that
are only true of exalted moments are used by us as the commonplaces of
ordinary life. 'It is a thousand times worse to see another suffer than
to suffer oneself.' 'True love only desires the happiness of the beloved
object.' This kind of 'high falutin'' has become part of our regular
mental habit, just as dead metaphors by the bushel are a part of our
daily language. Consequently we are a little chilled and disappointed by
a language in which people hardly ever use a metaphor except when they
vividly realize it, and never utter heroic sentiments except when they
are wrought up to the pitch of feeling them true. Does this mean that
the Greek always remains, so to speak, at a normal temperature, that he
never has intense or blinding emotions? Not in the least. It shows a
lack of faith in the value of life to imagine such a conclusion. It
implies that you can only reach great emotion by pretence, or by
habitually exaggerating small emotions, whereas probably the exact
reverse is the case. When the great thing comes, then the Greek will
have the great word and the great thought ready. It is the habitual
exaggerator who will perhaps be bankrupt. And after all--the great
things are sure to come!

The power of seeing things straight and knowing what is beautiful or
noble, quite undisturbed by momentary boredoms or changes of taste, is a
very rare gift and never perhaps possessed in full by any one. But there
is a profound rule of art, bidding a man in the midst of all his study
of various styles or his pursuit of his own peculiar imaginations, from
time to time _se retremper dans la nature_--'to steep himself again in
nature'. And in something the same way it seems as if the world ought
from time to time to steep itself again in Hellenism: that is, it ought,
amid all the varying affectations and extravagances and changes of
convention in art and letters, to have some careful regard for those
which arose when man first awoke to the meaning of truth and beauty and
saw the world freely as a new thing.

Is this exaggeration? I think not. But no full defence of it can be
attempted here. In this essay we have been concerned almost entirely
with the artistic interest of Greece. It would be equally possible to
dwell on the historical interest. Then we should find that, for that
branch of mankind which is responsible for western civilization, the
seeds of almost all that we count best in human progress were sown in
Greece. The conception of beauty as a joy in itself and as a guide in
life was first and most vividly expressed in Greece, and the very laws
by which things are beautiful or ugly were to a great extent discovered
there and laid down. The conception of Freedom and Justice, freedom in
body, in speech and in mind, justice between the strong and the weak,
the rich and the poor, penetrates the whole of Greek political thought,
and was, amid obvious flaws, actually realized to a remarkable degree
in the best Greek communities. The conception of Truth as an end to
pursue for its own sake, a thing to discover and puzzle out by
experiment and imagination and especially by Reason, a conception
essentially allied with that of Freedom and opposed both to anarchy and
to blind obedience, has perhaps never in the world been more clearly
grasped than by the early Greek writers on science and philosophy. One
stands amazed sometimes at the perfect freedom of their thought. Another
conception came rather later, when the small City States with exclusive
rights of citizenship had been merged in a larger whole: the conception
of the universal fellowship between man and man. Greece realized soon
after the Persian war that she had a mission to the world, that
Hellenism stood for the higher life of man as against barbarism, for
Aretê, or Excellence, as against the mere effortless average. First came
the crude patriotism which regarded every Greek as superior to every
barbarian; then came reflection, showing that not all Greeks were true
bearers of the light, nor all barbarians its enemies; that Hellenism was
a thing of the spirit and not dependent on the race to which a man
belonged or the place where he was born: then came the new word and
conception ανθρωποτης {anthrôpotês}, _humanitas_, which to the Stoics
made the world as one brotherhood. No people known to history clearly
formulated these ideals before the Greeks, and those who have spoken the
words afterwards seem for the most part to be merely echoing the
thoughts of old Greek men.

These ideas, the pursuit of Truth, Freedom, Beauty, Excellence are not
everything. They have been a leaven of unrest in the world; they have
held up a light which was not always comforting to the eyes to see.
There is another ideal which is generally stronger and may, for all we
know, in the end stamp them out as evil things. There is Submission
instead of Freedom, the deadening or brutalizing of the senses instead
of Beauty, the acceptance of tradition instead of the pursuit of Truth,
the belief in hallucination or passion instead of Reason and Temperate
Thought, the obscuring of distinctions between good and bad and the
acceptance of all human beings and all states of mind as equal in value.
If something of this kind should prove in the end to be right for man,
then Greece will have played the part of the great wrecker in human
history. She will have held up false lights which have lured our ship to
dangerous places. But at any rate, through calm and storm, she does hold
her lights; she lit them first of the nations and held them during her
short reign the clearest; and whether we believe in an individual life
founded on Freedom, Reason, Beauty, Excellence and the pursuit of Truth,
and an international life aiming at the fellowship between man and man,
or whether we think these ideals the great snares of human politics,
there is good cause for some of us in each generation at the cost of
some time and trouble to study such important forces where they first
appear consciously in the minds of our spiritual ancestors. In the
thought and art of ancient Greece, more than any other, we shall find
these forces, and also to some extent their great opposites, fresh,
clean and comparatively uncomplicated, with every vast issue wrought out
on a small material scale and every problem stated in its lowest terms.

GILBERT MURRAY.




RELIGION


Those who write about the Greeks must beware of a heresy which is very
rife just now--the theory of _racialism_. Political ethnology, which is
no genuine science, excused the ambition of the Germans to themselves,
and helped them to wage war; it has suggested to the Allies a method of
waging peace. The false and mischievous doctrine of superior and
inferior races is used to justify oppression in Europe, and murder by
torture in America. It will not help us to understand the Greeks. The
Greeks were a nation of splendid mongrels, made up of the same elements,
differently mixed, as ourselves. Their famous beauty, which had almost
disappeared when Cicero visited Athens, was mainly the result of a
healthy outdoor life and physical training, combined with a very
becoming costume. They were probably not handsomer than Oxford rowing
crews or Eton boys. Their flowering time of genius was due to the same
causes which produced similar results in the Italian Renaissance. The
city-state is a forcing-house of brilliant achievement, though it
quickly uses up its human material. We cannot even regard the Greeks as
a homogeneous mixed race. The Spartiates were almost pure Nordics; the
Athenians almost pure Mediterraneans. The early colonists, from whom
sprang so many of the greatest names in the Hellenic roll of honour, are
not likely to have kept their blood pure. Nor was there ever a Greek
culture shared by all the Greeks. The Spartan system, that of a small
fighting tribe encamped in a subject country, recalls that of Chaka's
Zulus; Arcadia was bucolic, Aetolia barbarous, Boeotia stolid, Macedonia
half outside the pale. The consciousness of race among the Greeks
counted practically for about as much as the consciousness of being
white men, or Christians, does in modern civilization.

Greece for our purposes means not a race, but a culture, a language and
literature, and still more an attitude towards life, which for us begins
with Homer, and persists, with many changes but no breaks, till the
closing of the Athenian lecture-rooms by Justinian. The changes no doubt
were great, when politically Greece was living Greece no more, and when
the bearers of the tradition were no longer the lineal descendants of
those who established it. But the tradition, enshrined in literature, in
monuments, and in social customs, survived. The civilization of the
Roman Empire was not Italian but Greek. After the sixth century,
Hellenism--the language, the literature, and the attitude towards
life--was practically lost to the West for nearly a thousand years. It
was recovered at the Renaissance, and from that time to this has been a
potent element in western civilization. The Dark Ages, and the early
Middle Ages, are the period during which the West was cut off from
Hellenism. Yet even then the severance was not complete. For these were
the ages of the Catholic theocracy; and if we had to choose one man as
the founder of Catholicism as a theocratic system, we should have to
name neither Augustine nor St. Paul, still less Jesus Christ, but Plato,
who in the _Laws_ sketches out with wonderful prescience the conditions
for such a polity, and the form which it would be compelled to take.
Even in speculative thought we know that Augustine owed much to the
Platonists, the Schoolmen to Aristotle, the mystics to the pupil of
Proclus whom they called Dionysius. Only Greek science, and the
scientific spirit, were almost completely lost, and a beginning _de
novo_ had to be made when the West shook off its fetters.

Hellenism then is not the mind of a particular ethnic type, nor of a
particular period. It was not destroyed, though it was emasculated, by
the loss of political freedom; it was neither killed nor died a natural
death. Its philosophy was continuous from Thales to Proclus, and again
from Ficino and Pico to Lotze and Bradley, after a long sleep which was
not death. Its religion passes into Christian theology and cultus
without any real break. The early Church spoke in Greek and thought in
Greek. In the days of Greek freedom to be a Greek had meant to be a
citizen of a Greek canton; after Alexander it meant to have Greek
culture. None of the great Stoics were natives of Greece proper; Zeno
himself was a Semite. Of the later Greek writers, Marcus Aurelius was a
Romanized Spaniard, Plotinus possibly a Copt, Porphyry and Lucian
Syrians, Philo, St. Paul, and probably the Fourth Evangelist were Jews.
These men all belong to the history of Greek culture. And if these were
Greeks how shall we deny the name to Raphael and Michael Angelo, to
Spenser and Sidney, to Keats and Shelley? When Blake wrote--

    The sun's light when he unfolds it,
    Depends on the organ that beholds it,

he was summing up, not only the philosophy of the Lake Poets but the
fundamental dogma of the maturest Greek thought. Would not Plato have
rejoiced in Michael Angelo's confession of faith, which Wordsworth has
translated for us?

    Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold;
    Beyond the visible world she soars to seek
    (For what delights the sense is false and weak)
    Ideal Form, the universal mould.
    The wise man, I affirm, can find no rest
    In that which perishes; nor will he lend
    His heart to aught that doth on time depend.

Has the highest aspect of Greek religion ever been better expressed than
by Wordsworth himself, to whom, as to Blake, it came by inspiration and
not from books?

    While yet a child, and long before his time
    Had he perceived the presence and the power
    Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed
    So vividly great objects that _they lay_
    _Upon his mind like substances_, whose presence
    Perplexed the bodily sense.

The spirit of man does not live only on tradition; it can draw direct
from the fountain-head. We are dealing with a permanent type of human
culture, which is rightly named after the Greeks, since it attained its
chief glory in the literature and art of the Hellenic cities, but which
cannot be separated from western civilization as an alien importation.
Without what we call our debt to Greece we should have neither our
religion nor our philosophy nor our science nor our literature nor our
education nor our politics. We should be mere barbarians. We need not
speculate how much we might ultimately have discovered for ourselves.
Our civilization is a tree which has its roots in Greece, or, to borrow
a more appropriate metaphor from Clement of Alexandria, it is a river
which has received affluents from every side; but its head waters are
Greek. The continuity of Greek thought and practice in religion and
religious philosophy is especially important, and it is necessary to
emphasize it because the accident of our educational curriculum leaves
in the minds of most students a broad chasm between the Stoics and the
Christians, ignores the later Greek philosophy of religion altogether,
and traces Christian dogma back to Palestine, with which it has very
little connexion.

Our sense of continuity is dulled in another way. There is a tendency to
isolate certain aspects of Hellenic life and thought as characteristic,
and to stamp others, which are equally found among the ancient Greeks,
as untypical and exceptional. In the sphere of religion, with which we
are concerned in this essay, we are bidden to regard Plato and Euripides
as rebels against the national tradition, and not as normal products of
their age and country. I do not feel at liberty to pick and choose in
this fashion. A national character may be best exemplified in its
rebels, a religion in its heretics. If Nietzsche was right in calling
Plato a Christian before Christ, I do not therefore regard him as an
unhellenic Greek. Rather, I trace back to him, and so to Greece, the
religion and the political philosophy of the Christian Church, and the
Christian type of mysticism. If Euripides anticipated to an
extraordinary degree the devout agnosticism, the vague pantheism, the
humanitarian sentiment of the nineteenth (rather than of the twentieth)
century, I do not consider that he was a freak in fifth-century Athens,
but that Greece showed us the way even in paths where we have not been
used to look to her for guidance. I am equally reluctant to assume,
without evidence, that the later Platonism, whether we call it religion
or philosophy, is unhellenic. It is quite unnecessary to look for
Asiatic influences in a school which clung close to the Attic tradition.
It is more to the purpose to show how a religious philosophy of mystical
revelation and introspection grew naturally out of the older
nature-philosophies, just as in our own day metaphysics and science have
both been driven back upon the theory of knowledge and psychology. It
should not be necessary to remind Hellenists that 'Know thyself' passed
for the supreme word of wisdom in the classical period, or that
Heracleitus revealed his method in the words 'I searched myself'.

We shall come presently to certain parts of our modern heritage which
are not Greek either by origin or by affinity. These will not be found
in Euripides or Plato any more than in Herodotus or Sophocles. But some
developments of religion which our Hellenists particularly dislike, and
are therefore anxious to disclaim as alien to Greek thought and
practice, such as asceticism, sacramental magic, religious persecution,
and timid reliance on authority, are maladies of the Greek spirit, and
came into the Church from Hellenistic and not from Jewish sources. It
was Cleanthes who wished to treat Aristarchus as the Church treated
Galileo, for anticipating Galileo's discovery. It was Plutarch, or
rather his revered father, who said, 'You seem to me to be handling a
very great and dangerous subject, or rather to be raising questions
which ought not to be raised at all, when you question the opinion we
hold about the gods, and ask reasons and proofs for everything. The
ancient and ancestral faith is enough; and if on one point its fixed and
traditional character be disturbed, it will be undermined and no one
will trust it'. It is true that Celsus accused the Christians of saying,
'Do not inquire; only believe.' But this was not the attitude of Clement
and Origen, still less of that most courageous pioneer St. Paul; it was
rather the attitude of the average devout pagan. At this time the
defence of popular superstition was no longer a matter of mere policy
but of heartfelt need. Marcus Aurelius was a great immolator of white
cows. The Christians were disliked, not as superstitious, but as
impious. Alexander of Abunoteichos expelled 'Christians and Epicureans'
by name from his _séances_. Lucian is the Voltaire of a credulous age.
As for sacerdotal magic, Ovid explicitly ascribed the _ex opere operato_
doctrine to the Greeks.

    Graecia principium moris fuit; illa nocentes
      impia lustratos ponere facta putat,
    a nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina caedis
      fluminea tolli posse putatis aqua.

The Christian Church was the last great creative achievement of the
classical culture. It is neither Asiatic nor mediaeval in its essential
character. It is not Asiatic; Christianity is the least Oriental of all
the great religions. The Semites either shook it off and reverted to a
Judaism purged of its Hellenic elements, or enrolled themselves with
fervour under the banner of Islam, which Westcott called 'a petrified
Judaism'. Christian missions have had no success in any Asiatic
country. Nor is there anything specifically mediaeval about Catholicism.
It preserved the idea of Roman imperialism, after the secular empire of
the West had disappeared, and even kept the tradition of the secular
empire alive. It modelled all its machinery on the Roman Empire, and
consecrated the Roman claim to universal dominion, with the Roman law of
_maiestas_ against all who disputed its authority. Even its favourite
penalty of the 'avenging flames' is borrowed from the later Roman codes.
It maintained the official language of antiquity, and the imperial title
of the autocrat who reigned on the Seven Hills. Nor were the early
Christians so anxious as is often supposed to disclaim this continuity.
At first, it is true, their apologetic was directed to proving their
continuity with Judaism; but Judaism ceased to count for much after the
destruction of the Holy City in A. D. 70, and the second-century
apologists appeal for toleration on the ground that the best Greek
philosophers taught very much the same as what Christians believe. 'We
teach the same as the Greeks', says Justin Martyr, 'though we alone are
hated for what we teach.' 'Some among us', says Tertullian, 'who are
versed in ancient literature, have written books to prove that we have
embraced no tenets for which we have not the support of common and
public literature.' 'The teachings of Plato', says Justin again, 'are
not alien to those of Christ; and the same is true of the Stoics.'
'Heracleitus and Socrates lived in accordance with the divine Logos',
and should be reckoned as Christians. Clement says that Plato wrote 'by
inspiration of God'. Augustine, much later, finds that 'only a few words
and phrases' need be changed to bring Platonism into complete accord
with Christianity. The ethics of contemporary paganism, as Harnack
shows, with special reference to Porphyry, are almost identical with
those of the Christians of his day. They differ in many points from the
standards of 500 years earlier and from those of 1,500 years later, but
the divergences are neither racial nor credal. Catholic Christianity is
historically continuous with the old civilization, which indeed
continued to live in this region after its other traditions and customs
had been shattered. There are few other examples in history of so great
a difference between appearance and reality. Outwardly, the continuity
with Judaism seems to be unbroken, that with paganism to be broken. In
reality, the opposite is the fact.

This most important truth has been obscured from many causes. The gap in
history made by our educational tradition has been already mentioned.
And our histories of the early Church are too often warped by an
unfortunate bias. Christianity has been judged at its best, paganism at
its worst. The rhetorical denunciations of writers like Seneca, Juvenal,
and Tacitus are taken at their face value, and few have remembered the
convention which obliged a satirist to be scathing, or the political
prejudice of the Stoics against the monarchy, or the non-representative
character of fashionable life in the capital. The modern Church
historian, as Mr. Benn says, has gathered his experience in a college
quadrangle or a cathedral close, and knows little enough about his own
country, next to nothing about what morality was in the Middle Ages, and
nothing at all about what it still is in many parts of Europe. In the
most recent books, however, there is a real desire to hold the scales
fairly, and Christianity has nothing to fear from an impartial
judgement.

There is also an assumption, which we find even in such learned writers
as Harnack and Hatch, that the Hellenic element in Christianity is an
accretion which transformed the new religion from its original purity
and half-paganized Europe again. They would like to prove that
underneath Catholicism was a primitive Protestantism, which owed nothing
to Greece. The truth is that the Church was half Greek from the first,
though, as I shall say presently, the original Gospel was not. St. Paul
was a Jew of the Dispersion, not of Palestine, and the Christianity to
which he was converted was the Christianity of Stephen, not of James the
Lord's brother. His later epistles are steeped in the phraseology of the
Greek mysteries. The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Fourth Gospel are
unintelligible without some knowledge of Philo, whose theology is more
Greek than Jewish. In the conflict about the nature of the future life,
it was the Greek eschatology which prevailed over the Jewish. St. Paul's
famous declaration, 'We look not at the things which are seen, but at
the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are
temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal', is pure
Platonism and quite alien to Jewish thought. Judaic Christianity was a
local affair, and had a very short life.

Further, too much is made of the conflict between the official cults of
paganism and Christian public worship. It is forgotten how completely,
in Hellenistic times, religion and philosophy were fused. Without
under-estimating the simple piety which, especially in country
districts, still attached itself to the temples and their ritual, we may
say confidently that the vital religion of the empire was associated
with the mystery-religions and with the discipline of the 'philosophic
life'. It is in this region that the continuity of Catholicism with
Hellenism is mainly to be found. The philosophers at this time were
preachers, confessors, chaplains, and missionaries. The clerical
profession, in nearly all its activities, is directly descended from the
Hellenistic philosophers.

This claim of continuity may seem paradoxical when we remember the
savage persecutions of the Christians by the imperial government. Of
these persecutions there were several causes. The empire, like all
empires of the same type, rested partly on religious support. Augustus
encouraged his court poets to advocate a revival of piety and sound
morals. A government cannot inquire into religious conviction, but it
can enforce conformity and outward respect for the forms of worship as
'by law established'. The Christians and Epicureans were held guilty of
the same political offence--'atheism'. The State had no quarrel with the
mystery-religions, which were a private matter, but open disrespect to
the national deities was flat disloyalty. The pagans could not
understand why the Church would make no terms with the fusion of
religions (θεοκρασια {theokrasia}) which seemed to them the natural
result of the fusion of nationalities. Apuleius makes Isis say, when she
reveals herself to Lucius, 'cuius numen unicum multiformi specie, ritu
vario, nomine multiiugo totus veneratur orbis'; and she then recounts
her various names. This more than tolerant hospitality of the spirit
seemed to the mixed population of the empire the logical recognition of
the actual political situation, and those who deliberately stood outside
it were at least potentially enemies of society. This was the real
quarrel between the Church and the empire. It is the old State religion
which Augustine attacks, ridiculing the innumerable Roman godlings whose
names he perhaps found in Varro. It is true that Plato, Euripides, and
Xenophanes had attacked the official mythology with hardly less
asperity; but they did not escape censure, and the Christian alienation
from the Olympians was far more fundamental.

The pagan revival under the empire was rather like Neo-Catholicism in
France. It was patriotic, nationalistic, and conservative, rather than
strictly religious. Celsus, in his lost book against the Christians,
seems to have appealed to their patriotism, urging them to support their
country and its government in dangerous times. As the Church grew in
numbers and power, and the old traditions crumbled away, largely from
the fall in the birth-rate among the upper and middle classes, the
conservatives became more anxiously attached to their own culture, and
saw in Christianity a 'shapeless darkness' which threatened to
extinguish 'all the beautiful things in the world'. We can partly
sympathize with this alarm, though not with the foolish policy which it
inspired. The early persecutions were like Russian 'pogroms', instigated
or connived at by the government as a safety valve for popular
discontent. For at this time the common people hated the Christians, and
half believed the monstrous stories about them. The attacks were not
continuous, and were half-hearted, very unlike the systematic
extermination of Jews and Protestants in Spain. At Alexandria Hadrian
found a money-loving population worshipping Christ and Sarapis almost
indifferently. A wrong impression is formed if we picture to ourselves
two sections of society engaged in constant war. The first real war was
the last, under Diocletian; it was to decide whether paganism or
Christianity was to be the state religion. However, there is no doubt
that the persecutions helped to seal the fate of the old culture.

Harnack traces three stages in the Hellenization of Christianity. 'In
the earliest Christian writings, apart from Paul, Luke, and John', he
cannot find any considerable traces of Greek influence. 'The real influx
of Greek thought and life' began about 130. The exception is so
important as to make this statement of little or no value. After 130, he
says, 'the philosophy of Greece went straight to the core of the new
religion'. A century or so later, 'Greek mysteries and Greek
civilization in the whole range of its development exercise their
influence on the Church, but as yet not its mythology and polytheism;
these were still to come'. 'Another century had to elapse before
Hellenism as a whole and in every phase of its development was
established in the Church.' The process which he describes began, in
fact, as soon as Christian preachers used the Greek language, and was
never so complete as he says. The Logos-Christology, to which he justly
attributes the greatest importance, is already present in St. Paul's
epistles; the name only is wanting; and the sharp contradiction which
he finds between the Christian idea of a revelation made through a
person at a certain date, and the Greek idea of an apprehension of
timeless and changeless truth, always open to individuals after the
appropriate discipline, was faced and in part overcome by the Greek
Fathers. Harnack also regards Gnosticism as an embodiment of the
genuinely Greek view of revelation, forgetting that orthodox Platonism
was as hostile to Gnosticism as the Church itself. In rejecting
Gnosticism, the Church in fact decided for genuine Hellenism against a
corrupted and barbarized development of it. On the other hand, there is
no period at which we can speak of a complete conquest of Christianity
by Greek ideas. There was a large part of the old tradition which
perished with its defenders, who, obeying the melancholy law which
directs human survival, died out to make way for immigrants and for the
formerly submerged classes, the people with few wants, who were
indifferent to a culture which they had never been allowed to share.

One more cause of misunderstanding may be illustrated from the writings
of Matthew Arnold. He divides the human race into Hebraizers and
Hellenizers, and classifies the modern English and Americans as
Hebraizers. The fundamental maxim of Hebrew ethics, according to him, is
'Walk by the light you have'; of Greek ethics, 'Take heed that the light
which is in thee is not darkness'. The Hebraizer is conscientious but
unenlightened; the Hellenizer is clear-headed but unscrupulous.
Professor Santayana has lately noted the same difference between the
type of character developed by the Latin nations and by the
Anglo-Saxons. The Mediterranean civilization, older and more
sophisticated, is careful to get its values right; the northern man is
bent on doing something big, no matter what, and follows Clough's
advice:

    Go! say not in thine heart, And what then, were it accomplished,
      Were the wild impulse allayed, what is the use and the good?

But Santayana does not make the mistake of regarding the Reformation as
a return to Palestinian Christianity. This was, indeed, the opinion of
the Reformers themselves; but all religious innovation seeks to base
itself on some old tradition. Christianity at first sought for its
credentials in Judaism, though the Jews saw very quickly that it
'destroyed the Law'. The belief of the Reformers was plausible; for they
rejected just those parts of Catholicism which had nothing to do with
Palestine, but were taken over from the old Hellenic or Hellenistic
culture. But the residuum was less Jewish than Teutonic. On one side,
indeed, the Reformation was a return to Hellenism from Romanism. Early
Christian philosophy was mainly Platonic; early Christian ethics (as
exemplified especially in writers like Ambrose) were mainly Stoical.
There had been a considerable fusion of Plato and the Stoa among the
Neoplatonists, so that it was easy for the two to flourish together.
Augustine banished Stoical ethics from the Church, and they were revived
only at the Reformation. Calvinism is simply baptized Stoicism; it is
logically pantheistic, since it acknowledges only one effective will in
the universe. The creed of nineteenth-century science is very similar.
Puritanism was not at all like Judaism, in spite of its fondness for the
Old Testament; it was very like Stoicism. The Reformation was a revolt
against Latin theocracy and the hereditary paganism of the Mediterranean
peoples; it was not really a return to pre-Hellenic Christianity. It
sheltered the humanism of Erasmus and the late-flowering English
Renaissance, and Christian Platonism has nowhere had a more flourishing
record than in Protestant Britain.

At the present time a more drastic revolt is in progress among the
_plebs urbana_, which does in truth threaten with destruction 'what we
owe to Greece'. The industrial revolution has generated a new type of
barbarism, with no roots in the past. For the second time in the history
of Western Europe, continuity is in danger of being lost. A generation
is growing up, not uneducated, but educated in a system which has little
connexion with European culture in its historical development. The
Classics are not taught; the Bible is not taught; history is not taught
to any effect. What is even more serious, there are no social
traditions. The modern townsman is _déraciné_: he has forgotten the
habits and sentiments of the village from which his forefathers came. An
unnatural and unhealthy mode of life, cut off from the sweet and
humanizing influences of nature, has produced an unnatural and unhealthy
mentality, to which we shall find no parallels in the past. Its chief
characteristic is profound secularity or materialism. The typical town
artisan has no religion and no superstitions; he has no ideals beyond
the visible and tangible world of the senses. This of course opens an
impassable gulf between him and Greek religion, and a still wider gulf
between him and Christianity. The attempts which are occasionally made,
especially in this country, to dress up the Labour movement as a return
to the Palestinian Gospel, are little short of grotesque. The contrast
is well summed up by Belfort Bax, in a passage quoted by Professor
Gardner. 'According to Christianity, regeneration must come from within.
The ethics and religion of modern socialism on the contrary look for
regeneration from without, from material conditions and a higher social
life.' Here the gauntlet is thrown down to Christ and Plato alike.

Quite logically the new spirit is in revolt against what it calls
intellectualism, which means the application of the dry light of reason
to the problems of human life. It wishes to substitute for reason what
some of its philosophers call instinct, but which should rather be
called sentiment and emotion. There is no reconciliation between this
view of life and Hellenism. For science is the eldest and dearest child
of the Greek spirit. One of the great battles of the future will be
between science and its enemies. The misologists have numbers on their
side; but 'Nature', whom all the Greeks honoured and trusted, will be
justified in her children.

The new spirit is especially bitter against the Stoical ethics, which as
we have seen were taken over, with the Platonic metaphysics, by
Christianity. Stoicism teaches men to venerate and obey natural law; to
accept with proud equanimity the misfortunes of life; to be beneficent,
but to inhibit the emotion of pity; to be self-reliant and
self-contained; to practise self-denial for the sake of self-conquest;
and to regard this life as a stern school of moral discipline. All this
is simply detestable to the new spirit, which is sentimental,
undisciplined, and hedonistic. It remembers the hardness of Puritanism,
and has no admiration for its virtues.

It is often said that the modern man has entirely lost the Greek love of
beauty. This is, I think, untrue, and unjust to our present
civilization, unlovely as it undoubtedly is in many ways. It is curious
that modern critics of the Greeks have not called attention to the
_aesthetic_ obtuseness which showed itself in the defective reaction of
the ancients against cruelty. It was not that they excluded beautiful
actions from the sphere of aesthetics; they never thought of separating
the beautiful from the good in this way. But they were not disgusted at
the torture of slaves, the exposure of new-born children, or the
massacre of the population of a revolted city. The same callousness
appears in the Italian cities at the Renaissance; Ezzelino was a
contemporary of the great architects and painters. I cannot avoid the
conclusion that it is connected in some obscure way with the artistic
creativeness of these two closely similar epochs. The extreme
sensibility to physical suffering which characterizes modern
civilization arose together with industrialism, and is most marked in
the most highly industrialized countries. It has synchronized with the
complete eclipse of spontaneous and unconscious artistic production,
which we deplore in our time. Evelyn, in the seventeenth century, was
still able to visit a prison in Paris to gratify his curiosity by seeing
a prisoner tortured, and though he did not stay to the end of the
exhibition he shows that his stomach was not easily turned. It is
certain that our repugnance to such sights is aesthetic rather than
moral, and probable that it is strongest in the lower social strata.
Several years ago I went to the first night of a rather foolish play
about ancient Rome, in which an early Christian is brought in to be very
mildly tortured on the stage. At the first crack of the whip my
neighbours sprang from their seats, crying, 'Shame! Stop that!'; and the
scene had to be removed in subsequent performances. The operatives in a
certain factory stopped the engines for an hour because they heard a cat
mewing among the machinery. Having with difficulty rescued the animal
from being crushed they strangled it. The explanation of this extreme
susceptibleness must be left to psychologists; but I am convinced that
we have here a case of transferred aesthetic sensibility. We can walk
unmoved down the streets of Plaistow, but we cannot bear to see a horse
beaten. The Athenians set up no Albert Memorials, but they tortured
slave-girls in their law-courts and sent their prisoners to work in the
horrible galleries of the Laureion silver-mines.

This emergence of a new spirit, which seems to be almost independent of
all traditions, makes it difficult to estimate our present indebtedness
to Greece in matters of religion. It would be difficult even if the
industrial revolution had not taken place. The northern Europeans have
hardly yet attained to self-expression. Their religion is a mixture of
Greek, Latin, and Hebrew elements which refuse to be harmonized, and
which in this country sometimes clash with the ideal of a gentleman,
that lay religion of the English-speaking peoples, which has no longer
any connexion with heraldry or property in land. The English gentleman
is not a Greek any more than he is a Jew. His code makes Odysseus an
amusing rascal; Achilles a violent and sulky savage; and Aristotle's
μεγαλοψυχος {megalopsychos} (as has been said) is rather like a nobleman
in a novel by Disraeli, but not like any other sort of gentleman. The
Englishman is by nature religious; but Christianity in its developed
form is a Mediterranean religion; in all external features it might have
been very different if it had been first planted north of the Alps.
There is, therefore, a chronic confusion in Protestantism which makes
its conflicts with the Latin Church like the battles of undisciplined
barbarians against well-drilled troops.

Nevertheless, though it is so difficult to separate out the various
threads which make up the tangled skein of our modern religion, it may
be worth while to make the attempt to distinguish, first, those parts of
current Christianity which are not Greek, in the wide sense which I have
chosen for the word, and then those which, in the same sense, are Greek
by origin or affinity.

Among those elements which are not Greek, the first place must be given
to the original Gospel, of which I have said nothing yet. Our records of
the Galilean ministry, contained in the three synoptic Gospels, were not
compiled till long after the events which they describe, and must not be
used uncritically. But in my opinion, at any rate, the substance of the
teaching of Christ comes out very clearly in these books. No Hellenic
influence can be traced in it; there is not even any sign of the
Hellenized Judaism which for us is represented by his contemporary
Philo. But neither is it possible to call the Gospel Jewish, except with
many qualifications. Christ came before his countrymen as a prophet; he
deliberately placed himself in the line of the prophetic tradition.
Like other prophets of his nation, he did not altogether eschew the
framework of apocalyptic which was at that time the natural mould for
prophecy. But he preached neither the popular nationalism, nor the
popular ecclesiasticism, nor the popular ethics. His countrymen rejected
him as soon as they understood him. The Gospel was, as St. Paul said, a
new creation. It is most significant that it at once introduced a new
ethical terminology. The Greek words which we translate love (or
charity), joy, peace, hope, humility, are no part of the stock-in-trade
of Greek moralists before Christ. Men do not coin new words for old
ideas. Taken as a whole the Gospel is profoundly original; and a
Christian can find strong evidence for his belief that in Christ a
revelation was made to humanity at large, in which the religion of the
Spirit, in its purest and most universal form, was for the first time
presented to mankind. This revelation has to a considerable extent
passed into the common consciousness of the civilized world; but its
implications in matters of conduct, individual, social, and
international, are still imperfectly understood and have never been
acted upon, except feebly and sporadically. It is a reproach to us that
the teaching of Christ must be regarded as only one of many elements
which make up what we call Christianity. The Quakers, as a body, seem to
me to come nearest to what a genuinely Christian society would be.

Secondly, the Greeks escaped the evils of priestly government. The
Oriental type of theocracy, with which they were familiar in the Egypt
of the Pharaohs, was alien to their civilization. Their sacrifices were
for the most part of the genial type, a communion-meal with the god. But
even in Greece we must remember the gloomy chthonian rites, and the
degradations of Orphism mentioned by Plato in the _Republic_. 'They
persuade not only individuals but whole cities that expiations and
atonements for sin may be made by sacrifices and amusements which fill
a vacant hour, and are equally at the service of the living and of the
dead; the latter sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us from the
pains of hell, but if we neglect them no one knows what awaits us.' This
exploitation of sacramentalism was common enough in Greece; but the
characteristic Caesaro-Papism of Byzantium and modern imperialism was
wholly foreign to Hellenism. It was introduced by Constantine as part of
the Orientalizing of the empire begun by Diocletian. As Seeley says,
'Constantine purchased an indefeasible title by a charter. He gave
certain liberties and received in return passive obedience. He gained a
sanction for the Oriental theory of government; in return he accepted
the law of the Church. He became irresponsible to his subjects on
condition of becoming responsible to Christ.'

The Greeks never had a book-religion, in the sense in which Judaism
became, and Islam always was, a book-religion. But they were in some
danger of treating Homer and Hesiod as inspired scriptures. To us it is
plain that a long religious history lies behind Homer, and that the
treatment of the gods in Epic poetry proves that they had almost ceased
to be the objects of religious feeling. Some of them are even comic
characters, like the devil in Scottish folklore. To turn these poems
into sacred literature was to court the ridicule of the Christians. But
Homer was never supposed to contain 'the faith once delivered to the
saints'; no religion of authority could be built upon him, and Greek
speculation remained far more unfettered than the thought of Christendom
has been until our own day.

Those who have observed the actual state of Christianity in
Mediterranean countries cannot lay much stress on the difference between
Christian monotheism and pagan polytheism. The early Church fought
against the tendency to interpose objects of worship between God and
man; but Mariolatry came in through a loophole, and the worship of the
masses in Roman Catholic countries is far more pagan than the
service-books. In the imagination of many simple Catholics, Jesus, Mary,
and Joseph are the chief potentates in their Olympus.

The doctrine of the creation of the world in time, which was denied by
most pagan thinkers and affirmed by most Christian divines, belongs to
philosophy rather than to religion. The disbelief in the pre-existence
of the soul, a doctrine which for Greek thought stands or falls with the
belief in survival after death, is more important, and may be partly
attributable to Jewish influence. But pre-existence does not seem to
have been believed by the majority of Greeks, and in fact almost
disappears from Greek thought between Plato and the Neoplatonists. It is
possible that the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine may still have a
future.

There are some who will insist that these differences are insignificant
by the side of the fact that Christianity was the idealistic side of a
revolt of the proletariat against the whole social order of the time.
This notion, which made Christ 'le bon sans-culotte', has again become
popular lately; some have even compared the early Christians with
Bolsheviks. It is a fair question to ask at what period this was even
approximately true. Christ and his apostles belonged to the prosperous
peasantry of Galilee, a well-educated and comfortable middle class. The
domestic slaves of wealthy Romans, who embraced the new faith in large
numbers, were legally defenceless, but by no means miserable or
degraded. After the second century the comparison of the Christians to
modern revolutionists becomes too absurd for discussion. There is a good
deal of rhetorical declamation about riches and poverty in the Christian
Fathers; but unfortunately the Church seems to have done very little to
protest against the crying economic injustices of the fourth and fifth
centuries. From first to last there was nothing of the 'Spartacus'
movement about the Catholic Church. As soon as the persecutions ceased,
the bishops took their place naturally among the nobility.

When we turn to the obligations of modern religion to Greece, it is
difficult to know where to begin.

The conception of philosophy as an _ars vivendi_ is characteristically
Greek. Nothing can be further from the truth than to call the Greeks
'intellectualists' in the disparaging sense in which the word is now
often used. The object of philosophy was to teach a man to live well,
and with that object to think rightly about God, the world, and himself.
This close union between metaphysics, morals, and religion has remained
as a permanent possession of the modern world. Every philosopher is now
expected to show the bearing of his system on morality and religion, and
the criticism is often justified that however bold the speculations of
the thinker, he is careful, when he comes to conduct, to be conventional
enough. The Hellenistic combination of Platonic metaphysics with Stoic
ethics is still the dominant type of Christian religious philosophy. It
is curious to observe how competing tendencies in these systems--the
praise of isolated detachment and of active social sympathy--have
continued to struggle against each other within the Christian Church.

The place of asceticism in religion is so important, and so much has
been written rather unintelligently about the contrast between Hellenism
and Christianity in this matter, that I propose to deal with it, briefly
indeed, but with a little more detail than a strict attention to
proportion would justify. It has often been assumed that a nation of
athletes, who made heroes of Heracles and Theseus, Achilles and Hector,
could have had nothing but contempt for the ascetic ideal. But in truth
asceticism has a continuous history within Hellenism. Even Homer knows
of the priests of chilly Dodona, the Selli, whose bare feet are
unwashed, and who sleep on the ground. This is probably not, as
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff thinks, a description of savage life, but of an
ascetic school of prophets. For the fastdays which introduced the
Thesmophoria were observed by the Athenian matrons in the same way; they
went unshod and sat on the bare earth; and we may compare the
Nudipedalia, ordered by the Romans in time of dearth and mentioned by
Petronius and Tertullian. Prophets and prophetesses fasted at Miletus,
Colophon, and other places. National fasts were ordered in times of
calamity or danger, and Tarentum kept a yearly fast of thankfulness for
deliverance from a siege. The flagellation of boys at Sparta hardly
comes into account, being probably a substitute for human sacrifice; but
the continuance of the cruel rite till nearly the end of antiquity
causes surprise. The worship of Dionysus Zagreus in Thrace was
accompanied by ascetic practices before Pythagoras. Vegetarianism, which
has always played an important part in the ascetic life, was obligatory
on all Pythagoreans; but in this school there was another motive besides
the desire to mortify the flesh. Those who believe in the transmigration
of souls into the bodies of animals must regard flesh-eating as little
better than cannibalism. The Pythagorean and the Orphic rules of life
were well known throughout antiquity, and were probably obeyed by large
numbers. The rule of continence was far less strict than in the Catholic
'religious' life; but Empedocles, according to Hippolytus, advised
abstinence from marriage and procreation, and the tendency to regard
celibacy as part of the 'philosophic life' increased steadily. The Cynic
Antisthenes is quoted by Clement of Alexandria as having expressed a
wish to 'shoot Aphrodite, who has ruined so many virtuous women'. But
the asceticism of the early Cynics and of some Stoics was based not on
self-devotion and spirituality but on the desire for independence, and
often took repulsive forms. Of some among them it may be said that they
did not object to sensual pleasure, they only objected to having to pay
for it. Desire for self-sufficiency is always part of asceticism, but
in the Christian saints it has been a small part. The Greeks who
practised it were from first to last too anxious to be invulnerable;
this was the main attraction of the philosophic life from the time of
Antisthenes, and it remained the main attraction to the end. But
Cynicism and Stoicism (which tend to run together) became gentler, more
humane, and more spiritual under the Roman empire. Seneca, Epictetus,
and Marcus Aurelius often seem to be half Christian. Direct influence of
Christian ethics at this early period is perhaps unlikely; it is enough
to suppose that the spirit of the age affected in a similar way all
creeds and denominations. Self-mortification tended to assume more and
more violent forms, till it culminated in the strange aberrations of
Egyptian eremitism. It is impossible to regard these as either Greek or
Christian; they indicate a pathological state of society, which can be
partly but not entirely accounted for by the conditions of the time.
After a few centuries a far more wholesome type of monachism supplanted
the hermits; the anchorites of the Middle Ages retained the solitary
life, but were very unlike the crazy savages of the Thebaid. In modern
times, those who have been most under the Greek spirit have generally
lived with austere simplicity, but without any of the violent
self-discipline which is said to be still practised by some devout
Catholics. The assiduous practice of self-mastery and the most sparing
indulgence in the pleasures of sense are the 'philosophic life' which
the Greek spirit recommends as the highest. The best Greeks would blame
the life of an English clergyman, professor, or philosopher as too
self-indulgent; we often forget how frugally and hardily the Greeks
lived at all times. But here we have to consider the differences of
climate, and the apparent necessity of a rather generous diet for the
Nordic race.

The influence of the Greek mysteries upon Christianity is a keenly
debated question, in which passion and prejudice play too large a part.
The information necessary for forming a judgement has been much enlarged
by recent discoveries in Egypt and elsewhere, and, as usually happens,
the importance of the new facts has been sometimes exaggerated.
Protestant theology has on the whole minimized the influence of the
mysteries, and has post-dated it, from an unwillingness to allow that
there was already a strong Catholic element in the Christianity of the
first century. Orthodox Catholicism has ignored it from different but
equally obvious motives. Modernist Catholicism has in my opinion
antedated the irruption of crude sacramentalism into the Church, and has
greatly overstated its importance in the religion of the first-century
Christians. This school practically denies anything more than a
half-accidental continuity between the preaching of the historical
Christ, whom they strangely suppose to have been a mere apocalyptist,
one of the many Messiahs or Mahdis who arose at this period in
Palestine, and the Catholic Church, which according to them belonged to
the same type of religion as the worship of Isis and Mithra. Another
bone of contention is the value of the mystery-religions of Greece. The
very able German scholars who have written on the subject, such as
Reitzenstein and still more Rohde, seem to me much too unsympathetic in
their treatment of the mystery-cults. Lastly, some competent critics
have lately urged that this side of Christianity owed more to
Judaism--Hellenized Judaism, of course--than has been hitherto supposed.

Plato in the _Phaedo_ says that 'those who established our mysteries
declare that all who come to Hades uninitiated will lie in the mud;
while he who has been purified and initiated will dwell with the gods'.
For, as they say in the mysteries, 'Many are the thyrsus-bearers, but
few are the inspired'. This sacramentalism was not unchallenged, as we
have already seen from Plato himself. Diogenes is said to have asked
whether the robber Pataecion was better off in the other world than the
hero Epaminondas, because the former had been initiated, and the latter
had not. But Orphism, though liable to degradation, purified and
elevated the old Bacchic rites. As Miss Harrison says, the Bacchanals
hoped to attain unity with God by intoxication, the Orphics by
abstinence. The way to salvation was now through 'holiness' (ὁσιοτης
{hosiotês}). To the initiated the assurance was given, 'Happy and
blessed one! Thou shalt be a god instead of a mortal.' To be a god meant
for a Greek simply to be immortal; the Orphic saint was delivered from
the painful cycle of recurring births and deaths. And Orphic purity was
mainly, though not entirely, the result of moral discipline. Cumont says
that the mystery-cults brought with them two new things--mysterious
means of purification by which they proposed to cleanse away the
defilements of the soul, and the assurance that an immortality of bliss
would be the reward of piety. The truth, says Mr. H. A. Kennedy, was
presented to them in the guise of divine revelations, esoteric doctrines
to be carefully concealed from the gaze of the profane, doctrines which
placed in their hands a powerful apparatus for gaining deliverance from
the assaults of malicious demonic influences, and above all for
overcoming the relentless tyranny of fate. This demonology was believed
everywhere under the Roman empire, the period of which Mr. Kennedy is
thinking in this sentence, and it has unfortunately left more traces in
St. Paul's epistles than we like to allow. The formation of brotherhoods
for mystic worship was also an important step in the development of
Greek religion. These brotherhoods were cosmopolitan, and seem to have
flourished especially at great seaports. They were thoroughly popular,
drawing most of their support from the lower classes, and within them
national and social distinctions were ignored. Their ultimate aim cannot
be summed up better than in Mr. Kennedy's words--'to raise the soul
above the transiency of perishable matter through actual union with the
Divine'. It has been usual to distinguish between the dignified and
officially recognized mysteries, like those of Eleusis, and the
independent voluntary associations, some of which became important. But
there was probably no essential difference between them. In neither case
was there much definite teaching; the aim, as Aristotle says, was to
produce a certain emotional state (ου μαθειν τι δειν αλλα παθειν {ou
mathein ti dein alla pathein}). A passion-play was enacted amid the most
impressive surroundings, and we need not doubt that the moral effect was
beneficial and sometimes profound. When the Egyptian mysteries of Isis
and Osiris were fused with the Hellenic, a type of worship was evolved
which was startlingly like Christianity. A famous Egyptian text contains
the promise: 'As truly as Osiris lives, shall he [the worshipper] live;
as truly as Osiris is not dead, shall he not die.' The thanksgiving to
Isis at the end of the _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius is very beautiful in
itself, though it is an odd termination of a licentious novel. The
Hermetic literature also contains doctrine of a markedly Johannine type,
as notably in a prayer to Isis: 'Glorify me, as I have glorified the
name of thy son Horus.' I agree with those critics (Cumont, Zielinski,
and others) who attach the 'higher' Hermetic teaching to genuinely
Hellenic sources. But it is not necessary to ascribe all the higher
teaching to Greece and the lower to Egypt.

Much of St. Paul's theology belongs to the same circle of ideas as these
mysteries. Especially important is the psychology which divides human
nature into spirit, soul, and body, spirit being the divine element into
which those who are saved are transformed by the 'knowledge of God'.
This knowledge is a supernatural gift, which (in the _Poimandres_)
confers 'deification'. St. Paul usually prefers 'Pneuma' as the name of
this highest part of human nature; in the Hermetic literature it is not
easy to distinguish between Pneuma and Nous, which holds exactly the
same place in Neoplatonism. The notion of salvation as consisting in the
knowledge of God is not infrequent in St. Paul; compare, for example, 1
Cor. xiii. 12 and a still more important passage, Phil. ii. 8-10. This
knowledge was partly communicated by visions and revelations, to which
St. Paul attributed some importance; but on the whole he is consistent
in treating knowledge as the crown and consummation of faith. The
pneumatic transformation of the personality is the centre of St. Paul's
eschatology. 'Though our outward man perish, our inward man is renewed
day by day.' The 'spiritual body' is the vehicle of the transformed
personality; for 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God'.
The expression 'to be born again' is common in the mystery literature.

It would be easy to find many other parallels in St. Paul's epistles, in
the Johannine books which are the best commentary upon them, and in the
theology of the Greek Fathers, which prove the close connexion of early
Christianity with the mystery-religions of the empire. Twenty years ago
it might have been worth while to draw out these resemblances in greater
detail, even in so summary a survey as this. But at present the tendency
is, if not to over-estimate the debt of the Christian religion to
Hellenistic thought and worship, at any rate to ignore the great
difference between the higher elements in the mystery-religions, which
the new faith could gladly and readily assimilate, and the lower type,
the theosophy, magic, and theurgy, which was not in the line of Hellenic
development, and is not to be found in the New Testament. Wendland,
always a judicious critic, has said very truly that St. Paul stands to
the mystery-religions as Plato to Orphism; they are not the centre of
his religious life, but they gave him effective forms of expression for
his religious experience. Or, as Weinel says, 'St. Paul's doctrine of
the Spirit and of Christ is not an imitation of mystery-doctrine, but
inmost personal experience metaphysically interpreted after the manner
of his time.' Writers like Loisy, who say that for St. Paul Jesus was
'a Saviour God, after the manner of Osiris, Attis, or Mithra', and who
proceed to draw out obvious parallels between the sufferings, death, and
resurrection of these mythological personages and the gospels of the
Christian Church, surely forget that St. Paul was a Jew, and that there
are some transformations of which the religious mind is incapable. He
never speaks of Christ as a 'Saviour God'. Even more perverse are the
arguments which are used to prove that the centre of St. Paul's religion
was a gross and materialistic sacramental magic. The apostle, whose
antipathy to ritual in every shape is stamped upon all his writings, who
thanks God that he baptized very few of the Corinthians, who declares
that 'Christ sent him not to baptize but to preach the Gospel', is
accused of regarding baptism as 'an _opus operatum_ which secures a
man's admission into the kingdom apart from the character of his future
conduct'. And yet in the Epistle to the Romans, as Weinel says, 'baptism
only once enters his mind, and the Lord's Supper not even once'. Baptism
for him is no _opus operatum_, but a ceremony of social significance, a
symbol conditioning a deeper experience of divine grace, already
embraced by faith. These same critics proceed to illustrate St. Paul's
doctrine of the Lord's Supper by references to the religion of the
Aztecs and other barbarians. But it is hardly worth while to argue with
those who suppose that a man with St. Paul's upbringing and culture
could have dallied with the notion of 'eating a god'. The 'table of the
Lord' is the table at which the Lord is the spiritual host, not the
table on which his flesh is placed. Does any one suppose that 'the table
of demons' which is contrasted with the 'table of the Lord' is the table
at which demons are eaten? Demons had no bodies, as we learn from the
ουκ ειμι δαιμονιον ασωματον {ouk eimi daimonion asômaton} of a
well-known passage in a New Testament manuscript.

Crude sacramentalism certainly came in later. Its parentage may be
traced, if we will, to those mystery-mongers whom Plato mentions with
disapproval. If Hellenism is the name of a way of thinking, this form of
religion is not healthy Hellenism; that it was held by many Hellenes
cannot be denied.

The biblical doctrine of the Fall of Man, which the Hebrews would never
have evolved for themselves, remained an otiose dogma in Jewish
religion. It was revivified in Christianity under Greek influence. Man,
as Empedocles and others had taught, was 'an exile and vagabond from
God'; his body was his tomb; he is clothed in 'an alien garment of
flesh'. He is in a fallen state and needs redemption. Hellenism had
become a religion of redemption; the empire was quite ready to accept
this part of Christian doctrine. The sin of Adam became the first scene
in the great drama of humanity, which led up to the Atonement. At the
same time the whole process was never mere history; its deepest meaning
was enacted in the life-story of each individual. Greek thought gave
this turn to dogmas which for a Jew would have been a flat historical
recital. In modern times the earlier scenes in the story, at any rate,
are looked upon as little more than the dramatization of the normal
experience of a human soul. But Greek thought, while it remained true to
type, never took sin so tragically as Christianity has done. The
struggle against evil has become sterner than it ever was for the
Greeks. It must, however, be remembered that the large majority of
professing Christians do not trouble themselves much about their sins,
and that the best of the Greeks were thoroughly in earnest in seeking to
amend their lives.

Redemption was brought to earth by a Redeemer who was both God and Man.
This again was in accordance with Greek ideas. The Mediator between God
and Man must be fully divine, since an intermediate Being would be in
touch with neither side. The victory of Athanasius was in no sense a
defeat for Hellenism. The only difficulty for a Greek thinker was that
an Incarnate God ought to be impassible. This was a puzzle only for
philosophers; popular religion saw no difficulty in a _Christus
patiens_. The doctrine of the Logos brought Christianity into direct
affinity with both Platonism and Stoicism, and the Second Person of the
Trinity was invested with the same attributes as the Nous of the
Neoplatonists. But the attempts to equate the Trinity with the three
divine hypostases of Plotinus was no more successful than the later
attempt of Hegel to set the Trinity in the framework of his philosophy.

The subject of eschatology is so vast that it is hopeless to deal with
it, even in the most summary fashion, in one paragraph. It is usually
said that the resurrection of the body is a Jewish doctrine, the
immortality of the soul a Greek doctrine. But the Jews were very slow to
bring the idea of a future life into their living faith; to this day it
does not seem to be of much importance in Judaism. Some form of
Millenarianism--a reign of the saints on earth--would seem to be the
natural form for Jewish hopes to take. This belief, which was the
earliest mould into which the treasure of the new revelation was poured,
has never quite disappeared from the Church, and in times of excitement
and upheaval it tends to reassert itself. The maturest Greek philosophy
regards eternity as the divine mode of existence, while mortals are
born, live, and die in time. Man is a microcosm, in touch with every
rung of the ladder of existence; and he is potentially a 'participator'
in the divine mode of existence, which he can make his own by living, so
far as may be, in detachment from the vain shadows and perishable goods
of earth. That this conception of immortality has had a great influence
upon Christian thought and practice needs no demonstration. It is and
always has been the religion of the mystic. But the Orphic tradition,
with its pictures of purgatory and of eternal bliss and torment, has on
the whole dominated the other two in popular Christian belief. It has
been stripped of its accessories--the belief in reincarnation and the
transmigration of souls, doctrines which maintain a somewhat uneasy
existence within the scheme of the Neoplatonists. The picture of future
retribution is even more terrifying without them. Both the philosophical
and the popular beliefs about the other world are far more Greek than
Jewish; but the attempt to hold these very discrepant beliefs together
has reduced Christian eschatology to extreme confusion, and many
Christians have given up the attempt to formulate any theories about
what are called the four last things. On such a mysterious subject,
definiteness is neither to be expected nor desired. The original Gospel
does not encourage the natural curiosity of man to know his future fate;
and the three types of eschatology which we have described have all
their value as representing different aspects of religious faith and
hope. We must after all confess the truth of St. Paul's words, that 'eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of
man to conceive, the things that God hath prepared for them that love
him'. The same apostle reminds us that 'now we see through a mirror, in
riddles, and know only in part'; the face to face vision, and the
knowledge which unites the knower and the known, may be ours when we
have finished our course. In these words, which recall Plato's famous
myth of the Cave, St. Paul is fundamentally at one with the Platonists;
and it may well be that it is by this path that our contemporaries may
recover that belief in eternal life which is at present burning very
dimly among us.

In conclusion, what has the religion of the Greeks to teach us that we
are most in danger of forgetting? In a word, it is the faith that Truth
is our friend, and that the knowledge of Truth is not beyond our reach.
Faith in honest seeking (ζητησις {zêtêsis}) is at the heart of the Greek
view of life. 'Those who would rightly judge of truth', says Aristotle,
'must be arbitrators, not litigants'. 'Happy is he who has learnt the
value of research' (ἱστορια {historia}), says Euripides in a fragment.
Curiosity, as the Greeks knew and the Middle Ages knew not, is a
virtue, not a vice. Nature, for Plato, is God's vicegerent and revealer,
the Soul of the universe. Human nature is the same nature as the divine;
no one has proclaimed this more strongly. Nature is for us; chaos and
'necessity' are the enemy. The divorce between religion and humanism
began, it must be admitted, under Plato's successors, who unhappily were
indifferent to natural science, and did not even follow the best light
that was to be had in physical knowledge. In the Dark Ages, when the
link with Greece was broken, the separation became absolute. The
luxuriant mythology of the early Greeks was not unscientific. In the
absence of knowledge gaps were filled up by the imagination, and the
'method of trial and error'. The dramatic fancy which creates myths is
the raw material of both poetry and science. Of course religious myths
may come to be a bar to progress in science; they do so when, in a
rationalizing age, the question comes to be one of fact or fiction. It
is a mistake to suppose that the faith of a 'post-rational' age, to use
a phrase of Santayana, can be the same as that of an unscientific age,
even when it uses the same formulas. The Greek spirit itself is now
calling us away from some of the vestments of Greek tradition. The
choice before us is between a 'post-rational' traditionalism,
fundamentally sceptical, pragmatistic, and intellectually dishonest, and
a trust in reason which rests really on faith in the divine Logos, the
self-revealing soul of the universe. It is the belief of the present
writer that the unflinching eye and the open mind will bring us again to
the feet of Christ, to whom Greece, with her long tradition of free and
fearless inquiry, became a speedy and willing captive, bringing her
manifold treasures to Him, in the well-grounded confidence that He was
not come to destroy but to fulfil.

W. R. INGE.




PHILOSOPHY


If we consider the philosophical tendencies of the day, we shall
probably observe first of all that the artificial wall of partition
between philosophy and science--and especially mathematical science--is
beginning to wear very thin. On the other hand, we cannot fail to notice
a reaction against what is called intellectualism. This reaction takes
many forms, the most characteristic perhaps of which is a renewed
interest in Mysticism. It leads also to a strong insistence on the
practical aspect of philosophic thought, and to a view of its bearing on
what had been regarded as primarily theoretical issues, which is known
by the rather unfortunate name of Pragmatism. Now it is just on these
points that we have most to learn from the Greeks, and Greek philosophy
is therefore of special importance for us at the present time. At its
best, it was never divorced from science, while it found a way of
reconciling itself both with the interests of the practical life and
with mysticism without in any way abating the claims of the intellect.
It is solely from these points of view that it is proposed to regard
Greek philosophy here. It would be futile to attempt a summary of the
whole subject in the space available, and such a summary would have no
value. Many things will therefore be passed over in silence which are
important in themselves and would have to be fully treated in a complete
account. All that can be done now is to indicate the points at which
Greek philosophy seems to touch our actual problems. It will be seen
that here, as elsewhere, 'all history is contemporary history', and that
the present can only be understood in the light of the past.

The word 'philosophy' is Greek and so is the thing it denotes. Unless we
are to use the term in so wide a sense as to empty it of all special
meaning, there is no evidence that philosophy has ever come into
existence anywhere except under Greek influences. In particular,
mystical speculation based on religious experience is not itself
philosophy, though it has often influenced philosophy profoundly, and
for this reason the pantheism of the _Upanishads_ cannot be called
philosophical. It is true that there is an Indian philosophy, and indeed
the Hindus are the only ancient people besides the Greeks who ever had
one, but Indian science was demonstrably borrowed from Greece after the
conquest of Alexander, and there is every reason to believe that those
Indian systems which can be regarded as genuinely philosophical are a
good deal more recent still. On the other hand, the earliest
authenticated instance of a Greek thinker coming under Indian influence
is that of Pyrrho (326 B. C.), and what he brought back from the East
was rather the ideal of quietism than any definite philosophical
doctrine. The barrier of language was sufficient to prevent any
intercourse on important subjects, for neither the Greeks nor the
Indians cared to learn any language but their own. Of course philosophy
may culminate in theology, and the best Greek philosophy certainly does
so, but it begins with science and not with religion.

By philosophy the Greeks meant a serious endeavour to understand the
world and man, having for its chief aim the discovery of the right way
of life and the conversion of people to it. It would not, however, be
true to say that the word had always borne this special sense. At any
rate the corresponding verb (φιλοσοφειν {philosophein}) had at first a
far wider range. For instance, Herodotus (i. 30) makes Croesus say that
Solon had travelled far and wide 'as a philosopher' (φιλοσοφεων
{philosopheôn}), and it is clear from the context that this refers to
that love of travel for the sake of the 'wonders' to be seen in strange
lands which was so characteristic of the Ionian Greeks in the fifth
century B. C. That is made quite plain by the phrase 'for the sake of
sightseeing' (θεωριης ἑινεκεν {theôriês heineken}) with which the word
is coupled. Again, when Thucydides (ii. 40) makes Pericles say of his
fellow citizens 'we follow philosophy without loss of manliness'
(φιλοσοφουμεν ανευ μαλακιας {philosophoumen aneu malakias}), it is
certainly not of philosophy in the special sense he is thinking. He is
only contrasting the culture of Athens with the somewhat effeminate
civilization of the Ionians in Asia Minor. Even in the next century,
Isocrates tried to revert to this wider sense of the word, and he
regularly uses it of the art of political journalism which he imparted
to his pupils.

Tradition ascribes the first use of the term 'philosophy' in the more
restricted sense indicated above to Pythagoras of Samos, an Ionian who
founded a society for its cultivation in southern Italy in the latter
half of the sixth century B. C. It is notoriously difficult to make any
positive statements about Pythagoras, seeing that he wrote nothing; but
it is safer on general grounds to ascribe the leading ideas of the
system to the master rather than to his followers. Moreover, this
particular tradition is confirmed by the fact, for which there is
sufficient evidence, that the name 'philosophers' originally designated
the Pythagoreans in a special way. For instance, we know that Zeno of
Elea (_c._ 450 B. C.) wrote a book 'Against the Philosophers', and in
his mouth that can only mean 'Against the Pythagoreans'. Now the
Pythagorean use of the term depends on a certain way of regarding man,
which there is good reason for ascribing to Pythagoras himself. It has
become more or less of a commonplace now, but we must try to seize it in
its original freshness if we wish to understand the associations the
word 'philosophy' came to have for the Greeks. To state it briefly, it
is the view that man is something intermediate between God and 'the
other animals' (ταλλα ζωα {talla zôa}). As compared with God, he is
'mere man', liable to error and death (both of which are spoken of as
specially _human_, ανθρωπινα {anthrôpina}); as compared with 'the other
animals', he is kindly and capable of civilization. The Latin word
_humanus_ took over this double meaning, which is somewhat arbitrarily
marked in English by the spellings _human_ and _humane_. Now it is clear
that, for a being subject to error and death, wisdom (σοφια {sophia}) in
the full sense is impossible; that is for God alone. On the other hand,
man cannot be content, like 'the other animals' to remain in ignorance.
If he cannot be wise, he can at least be 'a lover of wisdom', and it
follows that his chief end will be 'assimilation to God so far as
possible' (ὁμοιωσις τω θεω κατα το δυνατον {homoiôsis tô theô kata to
dynaton}), as Plato put it in the _Theaetetus_. The mathematical studies
of the Pythagoreans soon brought them face to face with the idea of a
constant approximation which never reaches its goal. There is, then,
sufficient ground for accepting the tradition which makes Pythagoras the
author of this special sense of the word 'philosophy' and for connecting
it with the division of living creatures into God, men and 'the other
animals'. If the later Pythagoreans went a step further and classified
rational animals into gods, men and 'such as Pythagoras', that was due
to the enthusiasm of discipleship, and is really a further indication of
the genuinely Pythagorean character of this whole range of ideas. We may
take it, then, that the word 'philosophy' had acquired its special sense
in southern Italy before the beginning of the fifth century B. C.

It is even more certain that this sense was well known at Athens, at
least in certain circles, not long after the middle of the fifth
century. To all appearance, this was the work of Socrates (470-399
B.C.). Whatever view may be taken of the philosophy of Socrates or of
its relation to that expounded in Plato's earlier dialogues (a point
which need not be discussed here), it is at least not open to question
that he was personally intimate with the leading Pythagoreans who had
taken refuge at Thebes and at Phlius in the Peloponnesus when their
society came to be regarded as a danger to the state at Croton and
elsewhere in southern Italy. That happened about the middle of the fifth
century, and Socrates must have made the acquaintance of these men not
long after. At that time it would be quite natural for them to visit
Athens; but, after the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 B. C.),
all intercourse with them must have ceased. They were resident in enemy
states, and Socrates was fighting for his country. With the exception of
the brief interval of the Peace of Nicias (421 B. C.), he can have seen
nothing of them for years. Nevertheless it is clear that they did not
forget him; for we must accept Plato's statement in the _Phaedo_ that
many of the most distinguished philosophers of the time came to Athens
to be with Socrates when he was put to death, and that those of them who
could not come were eager to hear a full account of what happened. It is
highly significant that, even before this, two young disciples of the
Pythagorean Philolaus, Simmias and Cebes, had come from Thebes and
attached themselves to Socrates. For that we have the evidence of
Xenophon as well as of Plato, and Xenophon's statement is of real value
here; for it was just during these few years that he himself associated
with Socrates, though he saw him for the last time a year or two before
his trial and death. Whatever other inferences may be drawn from these
facts, they are sufficient to prove that Socrates had become acquainted
with some of the leading philosophers of the Greek world before he was
forty, and to make it highly probable that it was he who introduced the
word 'philosophy' in its Pythagorean sense to the Athenians.

So much for the word; we have next to ask how there came to be such a
thing as philosophy at all. It has been mentioned that Pythagoras was an
Ionian, and we should naturally expect to find that he brought at least
the beginnings of what he called philosophy from eastern Hellas. Now it
has been pointed out that Greek philosophy was based on science, and
science originated at Miletus on the mainland of Asia Minor nearly
opposite the island of Samos, which was the original home of Pythagoras.
The early Milesians were, in fact, men of science rather than
philosophers in the strict sense. The two things were not differentiated
yet, however, and the traditional account of the matter, according to
which Greek philosophy begins with Thales (_c._ 585 B. C.), is after all
quite justified. The rudimentary mathematical science of which, as
explained elsewhere in this volume, he was the originator in fact led
him and his successors to ask certain questions about the ultimate
nature of reality, and these questions were the beginning of philosophy
on its theoretical side. It is true that the Milesians were unable to
give any but the crudest answers to these questions, and very likely
they did not realise their full importance. These early inquirers only
wanted to know what the world was made of and how it worked, but the
complete break with mythology and traditional views which they effected
cleared the way for everything that followed. It was no small thing that
they were able to discard the old doctrine of what were afterwards known
as the 'elements'--Fire, Air, Earth, and Water--and to regard all these
as states of a single substance, which presented different appearances
according as it was more or less rarefied or condensed. Moreover,
Anaximander at least (_c._ 546 B. C.), the successor of Thales, shook
himself free of the idea that the earth required support of some kind to
keep in its place. He held that it swung free in space and that it
remained where it was because there was no reason for it to fall in one
direction rather than another. In general these early cosmologists saw
that weight was not an inherent quality of bodies and that it could not
be used to explain anything. On the contrary, weight was itself the
thing to be explained. Anaximander also noted the importance of rotary
or vortex motion in the cosmical scheme, and he inferred that there
might be an indefinite number of rotating systems in addition to that
with which we are immediately acquainted. He also made some very
important observations of a biological character, and he announced that
man must be descended from an animal of a different species. The young
of most animals, he said, can find their food at once, while that of the
human species requires a prolonged period of nursing. If, then, man had
been originally such as he is now, he could never have survived. All
this, no doubt, is rudimentary science rather than philosophy, but it
was the beginning of philosophy in this sense, that it completely
transformed the traditional view of the world, and made the raising of
more ultimate problems inevitable.

This transformation was effected in complete independence of religion.
What we may call secularism was, in fact, characteristic of all eastern
Ionian science to the end. We must not be misled by the fact that
Anaximander called his innumerable worlds 'gods' and that his successor
Anaximenes spoke of Air as a 'god'. These were never the gods of any
city and were never worshipped by any one, and they did not therefore
answer at all to what the ordinary Greek meant by a god. The use of the
term by the Milesians means rather that the place once occupied by the
gods of religion was now being taken by the great fundamental phenomena
of nature, and the later Greeks were quite right, from their own point
of view, in calling that atheism. Aristophanes characterizes this way of
speaking very accurately indeed in the _Clouds_ when he makes
Strepsiades sum up the teaching he has received in the words 'Vortex has
driven out Zeus and reigns in his stead', and when he makes Socrates
swear by 'Chaos, Respiration and Air'. So too the Milesians spoke of the
primary substance as 'ageless and deathless', which is a Homeric phrase
used to mark the difference between gods and men, but this only means
that the emotion formerly attached to the divine was now being
transferred to the natural.

The Milesians, then, had formed the conception of an eternal matter out
of which all things are produced and into which all things return, and
the conception of Matter belongs to philosophy rather than to science.
But besides this they had laid the foundations of geometry, and that led
in other hands to the formulation of the correlative conception of Limit
or Form. It is needless to enumerate here the Milesian and Pythagorean
contributions to plane geometry; it will be sufficient to remind the
reader that they covered most of the ground of _Euclid_, Books I, II,
IV, and VI, and probably also of Book III. In addition, Pythagoras
founded Arithmetic, that is, the scientific theory of numbers
(αριθμητικη {arithmêtikê}), as opposed to the practical art of
calculation (λογιστικη {logistikê}). We also know that he discovered the
sphericity of the earth, and the numerical ratios of the intervals
between the concordant notes of the octave. It is obvious that he was a
scientific genius of the first order, and it is also clear that his
methods included those of observation and experiment. The discovery of
the earth's spherical shape was due to observation of eclipses, and that
of the intervals of the octave can only have been based on experiments
with a stretched string, though the actual experiments attributed by
tradition to Pythagoras are absurd. It was no doubt this last discovery
that led him to formulate his doctrine in the striking saying 'Things
are numbers', thus definitely giving the priority to the element of form
or limit instead of to the indeterminate matter of his predecessors.

Pythagoras further differed from his predecessors in one respect which
proved of vital moment. So far was he from ignoring religion, that he
founded a society in southern Italy which was primarily a religious
community. It is quite possible that he was influenced by the growth of
the Orphic societies which had begun to spread everywhere in the course
of the sixth century, but his religion differed from the Orphic in many
ways. In particular, Apollo and not Dionysus was the chief god of the
Pythagoreans, and all our evidence points to the conclusion that
Pythagoras brought his religion, as he had brought his science, from
eastern Hellas, though rather from the islands of the Aegean than from
mainland Ionia. He was much influenced, we can still see, by certain
traditions of the temple of Delos, which had become the religious centre
of the Ionic world. There had, of course, been plenty of religious
speculation among the Greeks before Pythagoras, and it was of a type not
unlike that we find in India, though there are insuperable difficulties
in the way of assuming any Aegean influence on India or any Indian
influence on the Aegean at this date. It may be that the beginnings of
such ideas go back to the time when the Greeks and the Hindus were
living together, though it is still more likely that both the Greeks and
the Indians were affected by a movement originating in the north, which
brought to both of them a new view of the soul. The Delian legend of the
Hyperboreans may be thought to point in this direction. However that may
be, the main purpose of the religious observances practised by the
Orphics and Pythagoreans alike was to secure by means of 'purifications'
(καθαρμοι {katharmoi}) the ransom (λυσις {lysis}) of the soul, which was
regarded as a fallen god, from the punishment of imprisonment in
successive bodies. There is no reason to suppose that Pythagoras
displayed any particular originality in this part of his teaching. It
all depends on the doctrine of transmigration or rebirth (παλιγγενεσια
{palingenesia}), which is often incorrectly designated by the late and
inaccurate term 'metempsychosis'. There is no doubt that Pythagoras
taught this, and also the rule of abstinence from animal flesh which is
its natural corollary, but such ideas had been well known in many parts
of Greece before his time. The real difficulty is to see the connexion
between all this and his scientific work. Here we are of course confined
to inferences from what we are told by later writers; but, if the
doctrine which Plato makes Socrates expound in the early part of the
_Phaedo_ is Pythagorean, as it is generally supposed to be, we may say
that what Pythagoras did was to teach that, while the ordinary methods
of purification were well enough in their way, the best and truest
purification for the soul was just scientific study. It is only in some
such way as this that we can explain the religious note which is
characteristic of all the best Greek science. It involves the doctrine
that the Theoretic Life is the highest way of life for man, a belief
still held by Plato and Aristotle, and to which we shall have to return.
We may note at once, however, that it is not an 'intellectualist' ideal.
There is no question of idle contemplation; it is a strenuous way of
life, the aim of which is the soul's salvation, and it gives rise to an
eager desire to convert other men. Just for that reason, the Pythagorean
philosopher will take part in practical life when the opportunity
offers, and he will even rule the state if called upon to do so. The
Pythagorean society was a proselytizing body from the first, and it
tried to bring in all it could reach, without distinction of
nationality, social position, or sex (for women played a great part in
it from the first). It was precisely its zeal for the reform of human
life, and its attempt to set up a Rule of the Saints in the cities of
southern Italy that led to its unpopularity. If the Pythagoreans had
contented themselves with idle speculation, they would not have been
massacred or forced to take refuge in flight, a fate which overtook them
before the middle of the fifth century.

It soon proved, however, that the Pythagorean doctrine in its entirety
was too high a one for its adherents, and a rift between Pythagorean
religion and Pythagorean science was inevitable. Those who were capable
of appreciating the scientific side of the movement would tend more and
more to neglect the religious rule which it prescribed, and we find
accordingly that before the end of the fifth century the leading
Pythagoreans, the men whose names we know, are first of all men of
science, and more and more inclined to drop what they doubtless regarded
as the superstitious side of the doctrine. In the end they were absorbed
in the new philosophical schools which arose at Athens. The mass of the
faithful, on the other hand, took no interest in arithmetic, geometry,
music, and astronomy, and with them to follow Pythagoras meant to go
barefoot and to abstain from animal flesh and beans. These continued the
tradition even after scientific Pythagoreanism had become extinct as
such, and they were a favourite subject of ridicule with the comic poets
of the fourth century B. C.

It is easy for us to see now that all this indicates a real weakness in
Pythagoreanism. Science and religion are not to be brought into union by
a simple process of juxtaposition. We do not know how far Pythagoras
himself was conscious of the ambiguity of his position; it would not be
surprising if he came to feel it towards the end of his life, and we
know for certain that he lived long enough to witness the beginnings of
the revolt against his society in Croton and elsewhere. It is for this
reason that he removed to Metapontum where he died, and where Cicero was
able to visit his tomb long afterwards. We shall see later what the weak
point in his system was, and we shall have to consider how the discord
he had left unresolved was ultimately overcome. For the present, it is
more important to note that he was the real founder both of science, and
of philosophy as we understand them now. It is specially true of science
that it is the first steps which are the most difficult, and Pythagoras
left a sufficient achievement in mathematics behind him for others to
elaborate. The Greeks took less than three centuries to complete the
edifice, and that was chiefly due to Pythagoras, who had laid the
foundations truly and well.

We have now seen how the two great conceptions of Matter and Form were
reached; the next problem Greek philosophy had to face was that of
Motion. At first the fact of movement had simply been taken for granted.
The Ionian tendency was to see motion everywhere; it was rest that had
to be explained, or rather the appearance of it. However, when the new
conception of an eternal matter began to be taken seriously,
difficulties made themselves felt at once. If reality was regarded as
continuous, it appeared that there was no room for anything else, not
even for empty space, which could only be identified with the unreal,
and it was easy to show that the unreal could not exist. But, if there
is no empty space, it seems impossible that there should be any motion,
and the world of which we suppose ourselves to be aware must be an
illusion. Such, briefly stated, was the position taken up by another
Ionian of southern Italy, Parmenides of Elea (_c._ 475 B. C.), who had
begun as a Pythagorean, but had been led to apply the rigorous method of
reasoning introduced into geometry with such success by the Pythagoreans
to the old question of the nature of the world which had occupied the
Milesians. The remarkable thing about the earliest geometers is, in
fact, that they did not formulate the conception of Space, which seems
to us at the present day fundamental. They were able to avoid it because
they possessed the conception of Matter, and regarded Air as the normal
state of the material substratum. The confusion of air with empty space
is, of course, a natural one, though it may be considered surprising
that it should not have been detected by the founders of geometrical
science. Such failures to draw all the consequences from a new discovery
are common enough, however, in the history of scientific thought.

Parmenides cleared up this ambiguity, not by affirming the existence of
empty space, but by denying the possibility of such a thing, even before
it had been asserted by any one. He saw that the Pythagoreans really
implied it, though they were quite unconscious of the fact. He is
interesting to us as the first philosopher who thought of expounding his
system in verse. It was not a very happy thought, as the arguments in
which he deals do not readily lend themselves to this mode of
expression, and we may be thankful that none of his successors except
Empedocles followed his example. It has the very great inconvenience of
making it necessary to use different words for the same thing to suit
the exigencies of metre. And if there ever was an argument that demanded
precise statement, it was that of Parmenides. As it is, his poem has the
faults we should look for in a metrical version of Euclid. On the other
hand, Parmenides is the first philosopher of whom we have sufficient
remains to enable us to follow a continuous argument; for we have
nothing of Pythagoras at all, and only detached fragments of the rest.
We can see that he was ready to follow the argument wherever it might
lead. He took the conception of matter which had been elaborated by his
predecessors and he showed that, if it is to be taken seriously, it must
lead to the conclusion that reality is continuous, finite, and
spherical, with nothing outside it and no empty space within it. For
such a reality motion is impossible, and the world of the senses is
therefore an illusion. Of course that was not a result in which it was
possible for men to acquiesce for long, and historically speaking, the
Eleatic doctrine must be regarded as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of earlier
speculation. There is no reason to believe, however, that Parmenides
himself meant it to be understood in this way. He believed firmly that
he had found the truth.

Several attempts were made to escape the conclusions of Parmenides, and
they all start by abandoning the assumption of the homogeneity and
continuity of matter which had been implicit in the earlier systems,
though it was first brought to the light of day by Parmenides. Here
again the influence of contemporary science on philosophic thought is
clearly marked. Empedocles of Agrigentum (_c._ 460 B. C.), the only
citizen of a Dorian state who finds a place in the early history of
science and philosophy, was the founder of the Sicilian school of
medicine, and it was probably his pre-occupation with that science that
led him to revive the old doctrine of Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, which
the Milesians had cast aside, but which lent itself readily to the
physiological theories of the day. He did not use the word afterwards
translated 'elements' (στοιχεια {stoicheia}) for these. It means
literally 'letters of the alphabet', and appears to have been first
employed in this connexion by the Pythagoreans at a later date, when
they found it necessary to take account of the new theory. Empedocles
spoke of the 'four roots' of things, and by this he meant to imply that
these four forms of matter were equally original and altogether
disparate. That furnished at least a partial answer to the arguments of
Parmenides, which depended on the assumption that matter was
homogeneous. He also found it necessary to assume two sources of motion
or forces, as we might call them, though Empedocles thought of them as
substances, one of which tended to separate the 'four roots' and the
other to combine them. These he called Love and Strife, and he supposed
the life of the world to take the form of alternate cycles, in which one
or the other prevailed in turn. In all this he was plainly influenced by
his physiological studies. He thinks of the world as an animal organism
subject to what are now called anabolism and catabolism. The details of
the theory make this quite clear. A similar doctrine was taught by
Anaxagoras (_c._ 460 B. C.), who came from Clazomenae in Asia Minor to
Athens after the Persian Wars, and was one of the teachers of Pericles.
His doctrine of 'seeds', in which the traditional 'opposites'--wet and
dry, cold and hot--were combined in different proportions, is rather
more subtle than that of Empedocles, and it is possible to see in it a
curious anticipation of certain features in modern chemistry.
Anaxagoras too felt it necessary to assume a force or source of motion,
but he thought that one would suffice to account for the rotation
(περιχωρησις {perichôrêsis}) to which he attributed the formation of the
world. He called that force Mind (νους {nous}), but his own
description of it shows that he regarded it as corporeal, though he
thought it was something more tenuous and unmixed than other bodies.
There is little doubt that he selected the term in order to mark the
identity of the source of motion in the world with that in the animal
organism. That again is in accordance with the scientific interests of
the time. In his astronomical theories, however, Anaxagoras showed
himself a true eastern Ionian, and lagged far behind the Pythagoreans.
For him, as for the Ionians of the Aegean down to and including
Democritus, the earth was flat, and the eddy or vortex which gave rise
to the world was still rotation in a plane. A more satisfying answer to
Parmenides was the doctrine of Atomism, which frankly accepted the
existence of space, and asserted that it was just as real as body. The
first hint of such a solution was given by Melissus (_c._ 444 B. C.),
who was a Samian but a member of the Eleatic school. He said, 'If things
are a many, then each of them must be such as I have shown the One to
be.' That was meant as a _reductio ad absurdum_; but, when Leucippus of
Miletus (_c._ 440 B. C.), who had also studied in the school of Elea,
ventured to assert the existence of the Void, there was no longer any
reason for shirking the conclusion which Melissus had stated only to
show its impossibility. The atoms are, in fact, just the continuous
indivisible One of Parmenides multiplied _ad infinitum_ in an infinite
empty space. On that side at least, the theory of body was now complete,
and the question asked by Thales was answered, and it is of great
interest to observe that this was brought about by the renewal of
intercourse between the Ionians of Italy and those of the Aegean, a
renewal which was made possible by the establishment of the Athenian
Empire. Nothing makes us feel the historical connexion more vividly than
the re-emergence of the names of Miletus and Samos after all these
years. There were, however, certain more fundamental problems which
Atomism could not solve, and which were first attacked at Athens itself.
So far, it will be noted, Athens has played no part at all in our story,
and in fact no more than two Athenians ever became philosophers of the
first rank. It is true that they were called Socrates and Plato, so the
exception is a considerable one. It was the foundation of the Athenian
Empire that made Athens the natural meeting-place of the most diverse
philosophical and scientific views. It was here that the east and west
of Hellas came together, and that the two streams of tradition became
one, with the result that a new tradition was started which, though
often interrupted for a time, continues to the present day.

If we wish to understand the development of Greek philosophy, it is of
the first importance that we should realize the intellectual ferment
which existed at Athens in the great days of the Periclean age. It has
been mentioned already that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae had settled there,
and it was not long before his example was followed by others. In
particular, Zeno of Elea (_c._ 450 B. C.), the favourite disciple of
Parmenides, had a considerable following at Athens. He made it his
business to champion the doctrine of his master by showing that those
who refused to accept it were obliged to give their assent to views
which were at least as repugnant to common sense, and in this way he
incidentally did much for mathematics and philosophy by raising the
difficulties of infinite divisibility and continuity in an acute form.
All that is something quite apart from the influence of the 'sophists'
at a rather later date, though they too came both from the east and from
the west, and though they had been influenced by the more strictly
philosophical schools of these regions. It was into this Athens that
Socrates was born (470 B. C.) about ten years after the battle of
Salamis, and he was naturally exposed to all these conflicting
influences, of which Plato has given us a vivid description in the
_Phaedo_, from his earliest youth. He cannot, in fact, be understood at
all unless this historical background is kept constantly in view. There
can be no reasonable doubt that at a very early age he attached himself
to Archelaus, an Athenian who had succeeded Anaxagoras, when that
philosopher had to leave Athens for Lampsacus. Ion of Chios, a
contemporary witness, said that Socrates had visited Asia Minor with
Archelaus, and that appears to refer to the siege of Samos, when
Socrates was under thirty. There is no reason whatever to doubt the
statement, which Plato makes more than once, that he had met Parmenides
and Zeno at a still earlier date. At any rate, the influence of Zeno on
the dialectic of Socrates is unmistakable. We may also take it that he
was familiar with all sorts of Orphic and Pythagorean sectaries.
Aeschines of Sphettos wrote a dialogue entitled _Telauges_, in which he
represented Socrates as rallying the extreme asceticism of the strict
followers of Pythagoras. So far, however, as we can form a picture of
him for ourselves, he was not the sort of man to become the disciple of
any one. He was a genuine Athenian in respect of what is called his
'irony', which implies a certain humorous reserve which kept him from
all extravagances, however interested he might be in the extravagances
of others. Nevertheless, while still quite a young man, he had somehow
acquired a reputation for 'wisdom', though he himself disclaimed
anything of the sort. He had also, it appears, gathered round him a
circle of 'associates' (ἑταιροι {hetairoi}). The only direct evidence we
have for these early days is the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes (423 B. C.),
which is of course a comedy and must not be taken too literally. On the
other hand, a comic poet who knew his business (and surely Aristophanes
did) could hardly present a well-known man to the Athenian public in a
manner which had no relation to fact at all. It is fortunate that there
is a passage in Xenophon's _Memorabilia_ (i. 6) which seems to supply us
with the very background we need to make the _Clouds_ intelligible. It
represents Socrates in an entirely different light from that in which he
appears in the rest of the work, and it can hardly be Xenophon's own
invention. It seems to refer to a time when Plato and Xenophon were
babies, if not to a time before they were born, and it is probable that
it comes from some literary source which we can no longer trace. We are
told, then, that Antiphon the sophist was trying to detach his
companions (συνουσιασται {synousiastai}) from Socrates, and a
conversation followed in which he charged him with teaching his
followers to be miserable rather than happy, and added that he was right
not to charge a fee for his teaching, since in fact it was of no value.
It will be seen that this implies a regular relation between Socrates
and his followers which was sufficiently well known to arouse
professional jealousy. Socrates does not attempt to deny the fact. He
says that what he and his companions do is to spend their time together
in studying the wisdom of the men of old which they have left behind
them in books, and that, if they come upon anything which they think is
good, they extract it for their own use, and count it great gain if, in
doing this, they become friends to one another. It is obvious that this
suggests something quite different from the current view of Socrates as
a talker at street corners, something much more like a regular school,
and that, so far as it goes, it explains the burlesque of Aristophanes.

The Socrates of whom we know most is, however, quite differently
engaged. He has devoted his life to a mission to his fellow men, and
especially to his fellow citizens. If we may so far trust Plato's
_Apology_, the occasion of that was the answer received from the Delphic
oracle by Chaerephon, whom we know from Aristophanes as one of the
leading disciples of Socrates in the earlier part of his life.
Chaerephon asked the god of Delphi whether there was any one wiser than
Socrates, and this of course implies that Socrates had a reputation for
'wisdom' before his mission began. The oracle declared that there was no
one wiser, and Plato makes Socrates say in the _Apology_ that this was
the real beginning of that mission. He set out at first to prove that
the oracle was wrong, and for that purpose he tried to discover some one
wiser than himself, a search in which he was disappointed, since he
could only find people who thought they were wise, and no one who really
was so. He therefore concluded that what the oracle really meant was
that Socrates was wiser than other people in one respect only. Neither
he nor any one else was really 'wise', but Socrates was wiser than the
rest because he knew he was not wise and they thought they were. It
ought to be clear that this is mostly 'irony', and it is not to be
supposed that Socrates attached undue importance to the oracle, which he
speaks of quite lightly, but he could hardly have told the story at all
unless it was generally known that his mission did in fact date roughly
from that period of his life. Historically it would probably be truer to
say that the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, in which Socrates served
with great distinction as a hoplite, marked the decisive turning-point.
It was in the camp at Potidaea that he once stood in a trance for
twenty-four hours (431 B. C.), and that seems to point to some great
psychological change, which may very well have been occasioned or
accelerated by his experiences in the war. At any rate we now find him
entirely devoted to the conversion of his fellow citizens, and we must
try to understand what the message he had for them was.

In the _Apology_ Socrates declares that his mission was divinely imposed
upon him, so that he dare not neglect it, even if it should lead to his
death, as in fact it did. The tone here is quite different from the
half-humorous style in which he deals with the Delphic oracle, and even
the 'divine sign'. That only warned him not to do things, mostly quite
trivial things, which he was about to do, and never told him to do
anything; this, on the contrary, was a positive command, laid upon him
by God, and there can be no doubt that Plato means us to understand this
to have been the innermost conviction of Socrates. It is hard to believe
that Plato could have misrepresented his master's attitude on such a
point. He was present at the trial, and the _Apology_ must have been
written not very long afterwards, when the memory of it was still fresh
in people's minds. Now Plato tells us quite clearly that what Socrates
tried to get the Athenians to understand was the duty of 'caring for
their souls' (ψυχης επιμελειο {psychês epimeleio}). That is confirmed
from other sources, and indeed it is generally admitted. The phrase has,
however, become so familiar that it does not at once strike us as
anything very new or important. To an Athenian of the fifth century B.
C., on the other hand, it must have seemed very strange indeed. The word
translated 'soul' (ψυχη {psychê}) occurs often enough, no doubt, in the
literature of the period, but it is never used of anything for which we
could be called upon to 'care' in the sense evidently intended by
Socrates. Its normal use is to denote the breath of life, the 'ghost' a
man 'gives up' at the moment of death. It can therefore be rendered by
'life' in all cases where there is a question of risking or losing life
or of clinging to it when we ought to be prepared to sacrifice it, but
it is not used for the seat of conscious life at all. It is sometimes
employed to signify the seat of the dream-consciousness or of what is
now called the subconscious or subliminal self, but never of the
ordinary waking consciousness which is the seat of knowledge and
ignorance, goodness and badness.[2] On the other hand, that use of the
word is quite common in the fourth century, and it may be inferred that
this change was due to Socrates. More than once Aristophanes ridicules
him for holding some strange view of the 'soul', and these jests were
made at a time when Plato was only a child. We cannot, of course, expect
to get any very definite idea from them as to the real teaching of
Socrates on this subject, but it is not impossible to see what it was,
if we take into account the views of the soul which had been held by the
philosophical schools of eastern and western Ionia.

    [2] See my paper on 'The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul'.
    _Proceedings of the British Academy_, 1915-16, pp. 235 sqq.

The Ionians of Asia Minor had certainly identified the soul with that in
us which is conscious, and which is the seat of goodness and badness,
wisdom and folly; but they did not regard it as what we call the self or
treat it as an individual. Anaximenes and his school held that the soul
was what they called Air, but that was just because they regarded Air as
the primary substance of which all things are made. The soul was
something, in fact, that comes to us from outside (θυραθεν {thyrathen})
by means of respiration. As Diogenes of Apollonia expresses it, it is 'a
small portion of the god', that is, of the primary substance, enclosed
in a human body for a time, and returning at death to the larger mass of
the same substance outside. The formula 'Earth to earth and air to air'
was accepted as an adequate description of what takes place at death.
The western Ionians, and especially the Pythagoreans, held a very
different view. For them, the soul was something divine. It was, in
fact, a fallen god, imprisoned in the body as a punishment for antenatal
sin, and it deserved our care in this sense, that it was our chief
business in life to purify it so as to secure its release from the
necessity of reincarnation in another body. But, during this present
life, they held that this divine element slumbers, except in prophetic
dreams. As Pindar puts it, 'It sleeps when the limbs are active.'
Neither of these views was familiar to the ordinary Athenian, but
Socrates of course knew both well, and felt satisfied with neither. When
he spoke of the soul he did not mean any mysterious fallen god which
was the temporary tenant of the body, but the conscious self which it
lies with us to try to make wise and good. On the other hand, his
insistence on our duty to 'care for' it is quite inconsistent with the
view that it is merely something extrinsic, as all the eastern Ionians
down to Anaxagoras had taught. It is, on the contrary, our very self,
the thing in us which is of more importance to us than anything else
whatever. It was to this doctrine of the soul and our duty to it that
Socrates felt he must convert mankind and especially his
fellow-citizens. It was a strange and novel doctrine then; and, if it
has become a commonplace since, that only shows that he was successful,
if not in persuading his fellowmen to act on this knowledge, at least in
making them aware of it. It was in this way that Socrates healed the
rift between science and religion which had proved fatal to the
Pythagorean society, and it may be suggested that the significance of
his teaching is not exhausted yet. As has been indicated above it is to
be found clearly stated in Plato's _Apology of Socrates_, and it
furnishes the only clue to a right understanding of the great series of
Platonic dialogues down to and including the _Republic_ in which
Socrates is represented as the chief speaker. Whether Plato added much
or little of his own to the doctrine of his master in these dialogues is
an interesting historical problem, but it need not concern the ordinary
reader, at least in the first instance. We know from the allusions of
Aristophanes that Socrates himself taught a new doctrine of the soul
when Plato was a child, and no sympathetic reader can fail to see that
the passage of the _Apology_ to which we have referred is intended to be
a faithful account of that doctrine. All the rest is simply its
legitimate development, and it is not of very great importance for us to
determine whether that development is due to Socrates or to Plato. The
inspiration which has been derived from these writings by many
generations will not be lessened by any decision we may come to on this
point, so long as we keep clearly in mind that the new doctrine of soul
is their principal theme, and that this must be understood in the light
of the doctrines which had prepared the way for it. What Socrates did
was really this. He deepened the meaning of the Eastern Ionian doctrine
by informing it with some of the feeling and emotion which had
characterized the Pythagorean teaching on the subject, while on the
other hand he rationalized the Pythagorean theory by identifying the
soul with our conscious personality.

Now if this is a correct account of what Socrates taught, he must be
regarded as inaugurating an entirely new period in the history of
philosophy. That is implied in the common term 'Presocratics' generally
applied to his predecessors, though the ordinary textbooks are by no
means clear as to the grounds for assigning this pre-eminent position to
Socrates. We can also see how natural it was for him to lay such
emphasis on the conversion of souls as he certainly did. That purpose
continued to dominate Greek philosophy to the very end. No doubt
successive schools varied in their conception of what conversion meant,
but that is the link which binds them all together. In fact, it gave
rise to a new literary form, the 'hortatory discourse' (προτρεπτικος
λογος {protreptikos logos}), which was more and more cultivated as time
went on, and was at last taken over by the fathers of the Christian
church along with much else of a more fundamental character.

It has been noted already that Socrates had followers among all the
leading philosophical schools of the time, and the possibility is not to
be excluded that we may still learn more of him from the discovery of
new sources. For the present, the recovery of some new and fairly
extensive fragments of the _Alcibiades_ of Aeschines of Sphettos is the
chief addition to our sources of information. We know that Aeschines was
a disciple of Socrates, and the tradition of antiquity was that his
dialogues gave the most faithful picture of the man as he really was. If
so, that was probably because Aeschines had no philosophy of his own.
For us the chief importance of the new fragments is that, if we read
them along with those already known (and it is unfortunate that the old
and the new have not yet been printed together), they strongly confirm
the impression we get from Plato of the manner of Socrates and his
method of argument, and that helps to reassure us as to the essentially
historical character of the Platonic Socrates. The fragments of
Aeschines also corroborate Plato by showing that the conversion of
Alcibiades (whose life he had saved when a young man) was one of the
things that lay nearest his heart.

But the real successor of Socrates was, of course, Plato himself
(427-347 B. C.). It is not possible to give even an outline of Plato's
philosophy here. Indeed the time has hardly come for that yet, though
much admirable work is now being done, especially by a French professor,
M. Robin, which promises more certain conclusions than have yet been
possible. All that can be attempted here is to indicate the attitude of
Plato to some of the problems we have been discussing. His very great
contributions to the theory of knowledge will be passed over, as they
are beginning to be well understood, and the _Theaetetus_ in particular,
with its sequel the _Sophist_, is more and more coming to occupy its
rightful place as the best introduction to philosophy in general. It is
necessary, however, just to notice in passing a fundamental question of
method which the Platonic dialogues themselves suggest. It is this.
While Socrates is present in every one of them except the _Laws_, he
takes practically no part in some of them, and the dialogues in which
this is the case are known on other grounds to belong to the later years
of Plato's life. There must be some reason for this, and it is obviously
prudent to treat these later dialogues in the first instance as our
primary evidence for Plato's own views. Indeed, it is only after his
philosophy has been reconstructed from these sources and from the
sometimes obscure references to it in Aristotle, that it will be safe
to attempt an answer to the question of how much there may be in the
dialogues of his early life which is properly to be assigned to Plato
himself rather than to Socrates. That is a historical question of great
interest; but, as has been said, the solution of it, if that should ever
prove possible, would not greatly affect the impression that Athenian
philosophy leaves upon us as a whole.

Now, if we consider Plato's later, and presumably therefore most
independent writings, we find, just as we should expect from a disciple
of Socrates, that the doctrine of soul holds the first place, but that
it has certain features of its own which there is no sufficient ground
for attributing to Socrates. We are too apt to think of Plato as mainly
occupied with what is called the 'theory of Ideas', a theory which is
discussed once or twice in his earlier dialogues, and which is there
ascribed to Socrates, but which plays no part at all in his mature
works. There the chief place is undoubtedly taken by the doctrine of the
soul, and we can see that it is of the first importance for Plato. Soul
is regarded as the source of all motion in the world, because it is the
only thing in the world that moves without being itself moved by
anything else. It is this and this alone that enables Plato to account
for the existence of the world and of mankind, and to avoid the theory
of 'two worlds' into which, as he points out in the _Sophist_, 'the
friends of the Ideas', whoever they may have been, were only too apt to
fall. In Plato this view of the soul culminates in theology of a kind
which he nowhere attributes to Socrates. He represents him, indeed, as a
man of a deeply religious nature, but we do not gather that he had felt
the need of a formal doctrine of God. Plato, on the other hand, has left
us the first systematic defence of Theism we know of, and it is based
entirely on his doctrine of soul as the self-moved mover. But the
highest soul, or God, is not only the ultimate source of motion, but
also supremely good. Now, since there are many things in the world which
are not good, and since it would be blasphemy to attribute these to
God, there must be other souls in the world which are relatively at
least independent. God is not, directly at least, the cause of all
things, but it is not easy to discover the relation in which these other
souls are thought of as standing to God. In the _Timaeus_, the matter is
put in this way. The soul of the world, and all other souls human and
divine, are the work of the Creator, who is identified with God, and
they are not inherently indestructible, since anything that has been
made can be unmade. They are, however, practically indestructible, since
God made all things because He was good and wished them also to be as
good as possible. His goodness, therefore, will not suffer Him to
destroy what He has once made. That of course is mythically expressed,
and Plato is not committed to it as a statement of his own belief, since
it is only the account which _Timaeus_ puts into the mouth of the
Creator. We can see, however, what was the problem with which he was
occupied, and it is not perhaps illegitimate to infer that he approached
the question which still baffles speculation from the point of view that
God's omnipotence, as we should call it, is limited by his goodness.
This is a much more important limitation than that imposed by the
existence of matter, to which Timaeus also refers. In that, he is simply
following the tradition of the Pythagorean society to which he belonged,
as is shown by his identification of matter with space, or rather with
'room'. So far as can be seen at present, we are not entitled to ascribe
this view to Plato without more ado, but that is a point on which the
last word has not yet been said.

The description of the creation given by Timaeus is of course to be
regarded as mythical in its details, but it has features from which we
may learn a good deal as to the direction taken by Plato's thoughts
about the world. In particular, while the important part played by
geometry is quite intelligible in the mouth of a Pythagorean, he makes
use of certain theories which we know to belong to the most recent
mathematics of the day, in particular the complete doctrine of the five
regular solids, which was due to Theaetetus, who was one of the earliest
members of the Academy, and whom Plato represents as having made the
acquaintance of Socrates just before the master's death. Theaetetus died
young, but we know enough of him to feel sure that he was one of the few
great original mathematicians who have appeared in history. In the
_Timaeus_ the theory of the regular solids is used to get rid once more
of the doctrine of four ultimate 'elements'. These, Timaeus says, are so
far from being elements or letters of the alphabet, that they are not
even syllables. The way in which the so-called elements are built up out
of molecules corresponding in their configuration to the regular solids,
and the explanations of their transmutation into one another based on
the geometrical construction of these figures, is apt to strike the
average reader as fantastic, but one of the most distinguished living
mathematicians and physicists has stated that he is struck most of all
by their resemblance to the scientific theories of the twentieth
century. It will be well, therefore, to avoid hasty judgements on this
point. It is at any rate easy to understand how the study of mathematics
came to hold the preponderating place it did in the Platonic Academy.

In accordance with the plan of this paper, something must now be said of
Plato's attitude to the practical life, a point on which it is very easy
to make mistakes. No one has insisted more strongly than he has on the
primacy of the Theoretic Life. The philosopher is the man who is in love
with the spectacle of all time and all existence and that is what
delivers him from petty ambitions and low desires. He has made the
toilsome ascent out of the Cave in which the mass of men dwell, and in
which they only behold the shadows of reality. But, even in this
enthusiastic description of the philosophic life, an equal stress is
laid on the duty of philosopher to descend into the Cave in turn and to
rescue as many of their former fellow-prisoners as may be, even against
their will, by turning them to the light and dragging them up into the
world of truth and reality. It is quite easy to understand, in view of
this, that Plato devoted some of the best years of his life to practical
affairs and that he relinquished the studies of the Academy for a time
in order to direct the education of Dionysius II. The thing appeared
well worth doing; for Greek civilization in Sicily, and consequently, as
we can now see, the civilization of western Europe, was seriously
threatened by the Carthaginians. They had been held at bay by Dionysius
I, but after his death everything depended on his successor. Now the
education of Dionysius II had been completely neglected, but he had good
natural abilities, and his uncle Dion, who was Plato's friend, was ready
to answer for his good intentions. Plato could not turn a deaf ear to
such a call. Unfortunately Dionysius was vain and obstinate, and he soon
became impatient of the serious studies which Plato rightly regarded as
necessary to prepare him for his task. The result was a growing
estrangement between Plato and his pupil, which made it impossible to
hope for a successful issue to the plans of Dion. It is unnecessary to
tell the whole story here, but it is right to say that there was nothing
at all impracticable in what Plato undertook, and that he was certainly
justified in holding that the education of Dionysius must be completed
before it would be safe to entrust him with the championship of the
cause of Hellenism in the west.

His failure to make anything of Dionysius did not lead Plato to abandon
his efforts to heal the wounds of Hellenism. One of the studies most
ardently pursued in the Academy was Jurisprudence, of which he is the
real founder. It was not uncommon for Greek states to apply to the
Academy for legislators to codify existing law or to frame a new code
for colonies which had just been founded. That is the real explanation
of the remarkable work entitled the _Laws_, which must have occupied
Plato for many years, and which was probably begun while he was still
directing the studies of Dionysius. It appears to have been left
unfinished; for, while some parts of it are highly elaborated, there are
others which make upon us the impression of being a first draft. Even
so, it is a great work if we regard it from the proper point of view. It
is, in the first place, a codification of Greek, and especially Athenian
law, of course with those reforms and improvements which suggest
themselves when the subject is systematically treated, and it formed the
basis of Hellenistic, and through that of Roman law, to which the world
owes so much. There is no more useful corrective of the popular notion
of Plato as an unpractical visionary than the careful study of the
dullest and most technical parts of the _Laws_ in the light of the
_Institutes_.

No attempt has been made here to describe the system of Plato as a
whole, and indeed the time has not yet come when such an attempt can
profitably be made. We have no direct knowledge of his teaching in the
Academy; for we only possess the works which he wrote with a wider
public in view. In the case of Aristotle (384-322 B. C.), a similar
reservation must be made, though for just the opposite reason. We have
only fragments of his published works and what we possess is mainly the
groundwork of his lectures in the Lyceum. It will be seen that there is
still very much to be done here too. From the nature of the case, notes
for lectures take a great deal for granted that would be more fully
explained when the lectures were delivered, and some of the most
important points are hardly developed at all. Nevertheless there are
certain things which come out clearly enough, and it so happens that
they are points of great importance from which we can learn something
with regard to the philosophical problems of the present day.

In the first place, it is desirable to point out that Aristotle was not
an Athenian, but an Ionian from the northern Aegean, and that he was
strongly influenced by eastern Ionian science, especially by the system
of Democritus (which Plato does not appear to have known) and by the
medical theories of the time. That is why he is so unsympathetic to the
western schools of philosophy, and especially to the Pythagoreans and
the Eleatics. Empedocles alone, who was a biologist like himself, and
the founder of a medical school, finds favour in his eyes. He is not,
therefore, at home in mathematical matters and his system of Physics can
only be regarded as retrograde when we compare it with that of the
Academy. He did indeed accept the doctrine of the earth's sphericity,
but with that exception his cosmological views must be called
reactionary. Where he is really great is in biology, a field of research
which was not entirely neglected by the Academy, but which had been
treated as secondary in comparison with mathematics and astronomy. The
contrast between Plato and Aristotle in this respect seems to repeat on
a higher plane that between Pythagoras and Empedocles, and this suggests
something like a law of philosophical development which may perhaps
throw light on the present situation. It seems as if this alternation of
the mathematical and the biological interest was fundamental in the
development of scientific thought and that the philosophy of different
periods takes its colour from it. The philosophy of the nineteenth
century was dominated in the main by biological conceptions, while it
seems as if that of the twentieth was to be chiefly mathematical in its
outlook on the world. We must not, of course, make too much of such
formulas, but it is instructive to study such alternations in the
philosophy of the Greeks, where everything is simpler and more easily
apprehended.

On the other hand, Aristotle had been a member of the Academy for twenty
years, and that could not fail to leave its mark upon him. This no doubt
explains the fact, which has often been noted, that there are two
opposite and inconsistent strains in all Aristotle's thinking. On the
one hand, he is determined to avoid everything 'transcendental', and his
dislike of Pythagorean and Platonist mathematics is mainly due to that.
On the other hand, despite his captious and sometimes unfair criticisms
of Plato, he evidently admired him greatly and had been much influenced
by him. It may be suggested that the tone of his criticisms is partly
due to his annoyance at finding that he could not shake off his
Platonism, do what he would. This is borne out by the fact that, when he
has come to the furthest point to which his own system will take him, he
is apt to take refuge in metaphors of a mythical or 'transcendental'
character, for which we are not prepared in any way and of which no
explanation is vouchsafed us. That is particularly the case when he is
dealing with the soul and the first mover. On the whole his account of
the soul is simply a development of eastern Ionian theories, and we feel
that we are far removed indeed from the Platonist conception of the
soul's priority to everything else. But, when he has told us that the
highest and most developed form of soul is Mind, we are suddenly
surprised by the statement that Mind in this sense is merely passive,
while there is another form of it which is separable from matter, and
that alone is immortal and everlasting. This has given rise to endless
controversy which does not concern us here, but it seems best to
interpret it as an involuntary outburst of the Platonism Aristotle could
not wholly renounce. Very similar is the passage where he tries to
explain how the first mover, though itself unmoved, communicates motion
to the world. 'It moves it like a thing beloved,' he tells us, and
leaves us to make what we can of that. And yet we cannot help feeling
that, in passages like this, we come far nearer to the beliefs Aristotle
really cared about than we do anywhere else. At heart he is a Platonist
in spite of himself.

Aristotle's attitude to the practical life is also dependent on
Plato's. In the Tenth Book of the _Ethics_ he puts the claims of the
Contemplative Life even higher than Plato ever did, so that the
practical life appears to be only ancillary to it. He does not feel in
the same degree as Plato the call for the philosopher to descend once
more into the Cave for the sake of the prisoners there, and altogether
he seems far more indifferent to the practical interests of life.
Nevertheless he followed Plato's lead in giving much of his time to the
study of Politics and that too with the distinctly practical aim of
training legislators. He has often been criticized for his failure to
see that the days of the city-state were numbered, and for the way in
which he ignores the rise of an imperial monarchy in the person of his
own pupil Alexander the Great. That, however, is not quite fair.
Aristotle had a healthy dislike of princes and courts, and the
city-state still appealed to him as the normal form of political
organization. He could not believe that it would ever be superseded, and
he wished to contribute to its better administration. He had, in fact, a
much more conservative outlook than Plato, who was inclined to think
with Isocrates, that the revival of monarchy was the only thing that
could preserve Hellenism as things were then. We must remember that
Aristotle was not himself a citizen of any free state, and that he could
hardly be expected to have the same political instincts as Plato, who
belonged by birth to the governing classes of Athens and had inherited
the liberal traditions of the Periclean Age. This comes out best of all
perhaps, in the attitude of the two philosophers to the question of
slavery. In the _Laws_, which deals with existing conditions, Plato of
course recognizes the _de facto_ existence of slavery, though he is very
sensible of its dangers and makes many legislative proposals with a view
to their mitigation. In the _Republic_, on the other hand, where there
is no need to trouble about existing conditions, he makes Socrates
picture for us a community in which there are apparently no slaves at
all. Aristotle is also anxious to mitigate the worst abuses of slavery,
but he justifies the institution as a permanent one by the consideration
that barbarians are 'slaves by nature' and that it is for their own
interest to be 'living tools'. This insistence upon the fundamental
distinction between Greeks and barbarians must have seemed an
anachronism to many of Aristotle's contemporaries and it had been
expressly denounced by Plato as unscientific.

The immediate effect of Aristotle's rejection of Platonist mathematics
was one he certainly neither foresaw nor intended. It was to make a
breach between philosophy and science. Mathematical science, whether
Aristotle realized it or not, was still in the vigour of its first
youth, and mathematicians were stirred by the achievements of the last
generation to attempt the solution of still higher problems. If the
Lyceum turned away from them, they were quite prepared to carry on the
Academic tradition by themselves, and they succeeded for a time beyond
all expectation. The third century B. C. was, in fact, the Golden Age of
Greek mathematics, and it has been suggested that this was due to the
emancipation of mathematics from philosophy. If that were true, it would
be very important for us to know it; but it can, I think, be shown that
it is not true. The great mathematicians of the third century were
certainly carrying on the tradition of their predecessors who had been
philosophers as well as mathematicians, and it is not to be wondered at
that they were able to do so for a time. But the really striking fact is
surely that Greek mathematics became sterile in a comparatively short
time, and that no further advance was made till the days of Descartes
and Leibniz, with whom philosophy and mathematics once more went hand in
hand.

Nor was the effect of this divorce on philosophy itself less
disastrous. Theophrastus continued Aristotle's work on Aristotle's
lines, and founded the science of Botany as his predecessor had founded
that of Zoology, but the Peripatetic School practically died out with
him and had very little influence till the study of Aristotle was
revived long afterwards by the Neoplatonists.

For the present, the divorce of science and philosophy was complete. The
Stoics and the Epicureans had both, indeed, a scientific system, but
their philosophy was in no sense based upon it. The attitude of Epicurus
to science is particularly well marked. He took no interest in it
whatever as such, but he used it as an instrument to free men from the
religious fear to which he attributed human unhappiness. For that
purpose, the science of the Academy, which had led up to a theology, was
obviously unsuitable, and, like a true eastern Ionian as he was,
Epicurus harked back to the atomic theory of Democritus, adding to it,
however, certain things which really made nonsense of it, such, for
instance, as the theory of absolute weight and lightness, which
Aristotle had unfortunately taught. The Stoics too were corporealists,
and found such science as they required in the system of Heraclitus,
though they also adopted for polemical purposes much of Aristotle's
Logic, taking pains, however, to alter his terminology. Both these
schools, in fact, while remaining faithful to the idea of philosophy as
conversion, forgot that it had always been based on science in its best
days. It was this, no doubt, which chiefly commended Stoicism and
Epicureanism to the Romans, who were never really interested in science.
Both Stoicism and Epicureanism made a practical appeal, though of a
different kind, and that served to gain credit for them at Rome.

The Academy which Plato had founded still continued to exist, though it
was diverted from its original purpose not more than a generation after
Plato's death. Mathematics, we have seen, had made itself independent,
and the most pressing necessity of the time was certainly the criticism
of the new dogmatism which the Stoics had introduced. That was really
carrying on one side of Platonism and not the least important. It is
true indeed that the Academy appears to us at this distance of time
mainly as a school of scepticism, but we must remember that its
scepticism was directed entirely to the sensible world, as to which the
attitude of Plato himself was not fundamentally different. The real
sceptics always refused to admit that the Academics were sceptics in the
proper sense of the word, and it is possible that the tradition of
Platonism proper was never wholly broken. At any rate, by the first
century B. C., we begin to notice that Stoicism tends to become more and
more Platonic. The study of Plato's _Timaeus_ came into favour again,
and the commentary which Posidonius (_c._ 100 B. C.) wrote upon it had
great influence on the development of philosophy down to the end of the
Middle Ages. It is this period of eclecticism which is reflected for us
in the philosophical writings of Cicero. It had great importance for the
history of civilization, but it is far removed from the spirit of
genuine Greek philosophy. That was dead for the present, and it did not
come to life again till the third century of our era, when Platonism was
revived at Rome by Plotinus.

It is only quite recently that historians of Greek philosophy have begun
to do justice to 'Neoplatonism'. That is partly due to the contemporary
philosophical tendencies noted at the beginning of this paper, and
partly to historical investigations into the philosophy of the Middle
Ages, which is more and more seen to be dependent mainly on Neoplatonism
down to and including the system of St. Thomas Aquinas. It was in fact
the most decisive fact in the history of Western European civilization
that Plotinus founded his school at Rome rather than at Athens or
Alexandria; for that is how Western Europe became the real heir to the
philosophy of Greece. Every one knows, of course, that Plotinus was a
'mystic', but the term is apt to suggest quite wrong ideas about him. He
is often spoken of still as a man who introduced oriental ideas into
Greek philosophy, and he is popularly supposed to have been an Egyptian.
That is most improbable; and, if it were true, it would only make it the
more remarkable that, though he certainly studied at Alexandria for
eleven years, he never even mentions the religion of Isis, which was so
fashionable at Rome in his day, and which had fascinated so genuine a
Greek as Plutarch some generations before. There is no doubt that what
Plotinus believed himself to be teaching was genuine Platonism, and that
he had prepared himself for the task by a careful study of Aristotle and
even of Stoicism, so far as that served his purpose. No doubt he was too
great a man to make himself the mere mouthpiece of another's thought;
but, for all that, he was the legitimate successor of Plato, and it may
be added that M. Robin, who has taken upon himself the arduous task of
extracting Plato's real philosophy from the writings of Aristotle, has
come to the conclusion that there is a great deal more 'Neoplatonism' in
Plato than is sometimes supposed.

Plotinus is a mystic, then, though not at all in the sense in which the
term is often misused. He sets before his disciples a 'way of life'
which leads by stages to the highest life of all, but that is just what
Pythagoras and Plato had done, and it is only the continuation of a
tradition which goes back among the Greeks to the sixth century B. C.,
nearly a thousand years before the time of Plotinus. His aim, like that
of his predecessors, is the conversion of souls to this way of life, and
he differs from such thinkers as the Stoics and the Epicureans in
holding that the 'way of life' to which he calls them must be based once
more on a systematic doctrine of God, the World and Man. The result was
that the divorce which had existed for centuries between science and
philosophy was once more annulled. We cannot say, indeed, that Plotinus
himself made any special study of Mathematics, but there is no doubt at
all that his followers did, and it is due to them, and especially to
Proclus, that we know as much of Greek Mathematics as we do. Proclus was
indeed the systematizer of the doctrine of Plotinus, though he differs
from him on certain points, and his influence on later philosophy cannot
be overestimated. It can be distinctly traced even in Descartes, whom it
reached through a number of channels, the study of which has recently
been undertaken by a French scholar, Professor Gilson, of the University
of Strasbourg. When his researches are complete, the continuity of Greek
and modern philosophy will be plainly seen, and the part played by
Platonism in the making of the modern European mind will be made
manifest. We shall then understand better than ever why Greek philosophy
is a subject of perennial interest.

The history of Greek philosophy is, in fact, the history of our own
spiritual past, and it is impossible to understand the present without
taking it into account. In particular, the Platonist tradition underlies
the whole of western civilization. It was at Rome, as has been pointed
out, that Plotinus taught, and it was in certain Latin translations of
the writings of his school that St. Augustine found the basis for a
Christian philosophy he was seeking. It was Augustine's great authority
in the Latin Church that made Platonism its official philosophy for
centuries. It is a complete mistake to suppose that the thinking of the
Middle Ages was dominated by the authority of Aristotle. It was not till
the thirteenth century that Aristotle was known at all, and even then he
was studied in the light of Platonism, just as he had been by Plotinus
and his followers. It was only at the very close of the Middle Ages that
he acquired the predominance which has made so strong an impression on
the centuries that followed. It was from the Platonist tradition, too,
that the science of the earlier Middle Ages came. A considerable portion
of Plato's _Timaeus_ had been translated into Latin in the fourth
century by Chalcidius with a very elaborate commentary based on ancient
sources, while the _Consolation of Philosophy_, written in prison by the
Roman Platonist Boethius in A. D. 525, was easily the most popular book
of the Middle Ages. It was translated into English by Alfred the Great
and by Chaucer, and into many other European languages. It was on these
foundations that the French Platonism of the twelfth century, and
especially that of the School of Chartres, was built up, and the
influence of that school in England was very great indeed. The names of
Grosseteste and Roger Bacon may just be mentioned in this connexion, and
it would not be hard to show that the special character of the
contribution which English writers have been able to make to science and
philosophy is in large measure attributable to this influence.

But the interest of Greek philosophy is not only historical; it is full
of instruction for the future too. Since the time of Locke, philosophy
has been apt to limit itself to discussions about the nature of
knowledge, and to leave questions about the nature of the world to
specialists. The history of Greek philosophy shows the danger of this
unnatural division of the province of thought, and the more we study it,
the more we shall feel the need of a more comprehensive view. The
'philosophy of things human', as the Greeks called it, is only one
department among others, and the theory of knowledge is only one
department of that. If studied in isolation from the whole, it must
inevitably become one-sided. From Greek philosophy we can also learn
that it is fatal to divorce speculation from the service of mankind. The
notion that philosophy could be so isolated would have been wholly
unintelligible to any of the great Greek thinkers, and most of all
perhaps to the Platonists who are often charged with this very heresy.
Above all, we can learn from Greek philosophy the paramount importance
of what we call the personality and they called the soul. It was just
because the Greeks realized this that the genuinely Hellenic idea of
conversion played so great a part in their thinking and in their lives.
That, above all, is the lesson they have to teach, and that is why the
writings of their great philosophers have still the power to convert the
souls of all that will receive their teaching with humility.

J. BURNET.




MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY


It has been well said that, if we would study any subject properly, we
must study it as something that is alive and growing and consider it
with reference to its growth in the past. As most of the vital forces
and movements in modern civilization had their origin in Greece, this
means that, to study them properly, we must get back to Greece. So it is
with the literature of modern countries, or their philosophy, or their
art; we cannot study them with the determination to get to the bottom
and understand them without the way pointing eventually back to Greece.

When we think of the debt which mankind owes to the Greeks, we are apt
to think too exclusively of the masterpieces in literature and art which
they have left us. But the Greek genius was many-sided; the Greek, with
his insatiable love of knowledge, his determination to see things as
they are and to see them whole, his burning desire to be able to give a
rational explanation of everything in heaven and earth, was just as
irresistibly driven to natural science, mathematics, and exact reasoning
in general, or logic.

To quote from a brilliant review of a well-known work: 'To be a Greek
was to seek to know, to know the primordial substance of matter, to know
the meaning of number, to know the world as a rational whole. In no
spirit of paradox one may say that Euclid is the most typical Greek: he
would know to the bottom, and know as a rational system, the laws of the
measurement of the earth. Plato, too, loved geometry and the wonders of
numbers; he was essentially Greek because he was essentially
mathematical.... And if one thus finds the Greek genius in Euclid and
the _Posterior Analytics_, one will understand the motto written over
the Academy, μηδεις αγεωμετρητος εισιτω {mêdeis ageômetrêtos eisitô}. To
know what the Greek genius meant you must (if one may speak εν αινιγματι
{en ainigmati}) begin with geometry.'

Mathematics, indeed, plays an important part in Greek philosophy: there
are, for example, many passages in Plato and Aristotle for the
interpretation of which some knowledge of the technique of Greek
mathematics is the first essential. Hence it should be part of the
equipment of every classical student that he should have read
substantial portions of the works of the Greek mathematicians in the
original, say, some of the early books of Euclid in full and the
definitions (at least) of the other books, as well as selections from
other writers. Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff has included in his
_Griechisches Lesebuch_ extracts from Euclid, Archimedes and Heron of
Alexandria; and the example should be followed in this country.

Acquaintance with the original works of the Greek mathematicians is no
less necessary for any mathematician worthy of the name. Mathematics is
a Greek science. So far as pure geometry is concerned, the
mathematician's technical equipment is almost wholly Greek. The Greeks
laid down the principles, fixed the terminology and invented the methods
_ab initio_; moreover, they did this with such certainty that in the
centuries which have since elapsed there has been no need to
reconstruct, still less to reject as unsound, any essential part of
their doctrine.

Consider first the terminology of mathematics. Almost all the standard
terms are Greek or Latin translations from the Greek, and, although the
mathematician may be taught their meaning without knowing Greek, he will
certainly grasp their significance better if he knows them as they arise
and as part of the living language of the men who invented them. Take
the word _isosceles_; a schoolboy can be shown what an isosceles
triangle is, but, if he knows nothing of the derivation, he will wonder
why such an apparently outlandish term should be necessary to express so
simple an idea. But if the mere appearance of the word shows him that it
means a thing _with equal legs_, being compounded of ισος {isos}, equal,
and σκελος {skelos}, a leg, he will understand its appropriateness and
will have no difficulty in remembering it. _Equilateral_, on the other
hand, is borrowed from the Latin, but it is merely the Latin translation
of the Greek ισοπλευρος {isopleuros}, _equal-sided_. _Parallelogram_
again can be explained to a Greekless person, but it will be far better
understood by one who sees in it the two words παραλληλος {parallêlos}
and γραμμη {grammê} and realizes that it is a short way of expressing
that the figure in question is contained by parallel lines; and we shall
best understand the word _parallel_ itself if we see in it the statement
of the fact that the two straight lines so described go _alongside one
another_, παρ' αλληλας {par' allêlas}, all the way. Similarly a
mathematician should know that a _rhombus_ is so called from its
resemblance to a form of spinning-top (ῥομβος {rhombos} from ῥεμβω
{rhembô}, to spin) and that, just as a parallelogram is a figure formed
by two pairs of parallel straight lines, so a _parallelepiped_ is a
solid figure bounded by three pairs of parallel planes (παραλληλος
{parallêlos}, parallel, and επιπεδος {epipedos}, plane); incidentally,
in the latter case, he will be saved from writing 'parallel_o_piped', a
monstrosity which has disfigured not a few textbooks of geometry.
Another good example is the word _hypotenuse_; it comes from the verb
ὑποτεινειν {hypoteinein} (c. ὑπο {hypo} and acc. or simple acc.), to
_stretch under_, or, in its Latin form, to _subtend_, which term is used
quite generally for 'to be opposite to'; in our phraseology the word
_hypotenuse_ is restricted to that side of a right-angled triangle which
is opposite to the right angle, being short for the expression used in
Eucl. i. 47, ἡ την ορθην γωνιαν ὑποτεινουσα πλευρα {hê tên orthên gônian
hypoteinousa pleura}, 'the side subtending the right angle', which
accounts for the feminine participial form ὑποτεινουσα {hypoteinousa},
_hypotenuse_. If mathematicians had had more Greek, perhaps the
misspelt form 'hypot_h_enuse' would not have survived so long.

To take an example outside the Elements, how can a mathematician
properly understand the term _latus rectum_ used in conic sections
unless he has seen it in Apollonius as the _erect side_ (ορθια πλευρα
{orthia pleura}) of a certain rectangle in the case of each of the three
conics?[3] The word _ordinate_ can hardly convey anything to one who
does not know that it is what Apollonius describes as 'the straight line
drawn down (from a point on the curve) in the _prescribed_ or _ordained_
manner (τεταγμενως κατηγμενη {tetagmenôs katêgmenê})'. _Asymptote_ again
comes from ασυμπτωτος {asymptôtos}, _non-meeting_, _non-secant_, and had
with the Greeks a more general signification as well as the narrower one
which it has for us: it was sometimes used of parallel lines, which also
'do not meet'.

    [3] In the case of the parabola, the base (as distinct from the
    'erect side') of the rectangle is what is called the _abscissa_ (Gk.
    αποτεμνομενη {apotemnomenê}, 'cut off') of the ordinate, and the
    rectangle itself is equal to the square on the ordinate. In the case
    of the central conics, the base of the rectangle is 'the transverse
    side of the figure' or the transverse diameter (the diameter of
    reference), and the rectangle is equal to the square on the diameter
    conjugate to the diameter of reference.

Again, if we take up a textbook of geometry written in accordance with
the most modern Education Board circular or University syllabus, we
shall find that the phraseology used (except where made more colloquial
and less scientific) is almost all pure Greek. The Greek tongue was
extraordinarily well adapted as a vehicle of scientific thought. One of
the characteristics of Euclid's language which his commentator Proclus
is most fond of emphasizing is its marvellous _exactness_ (ακριβεια
{akribeia}). The language of the Greek geometers is also wonderfully
concise, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary. One of the
complaints often made against Euclid is that he is 'diffuse'. Yet
(apart from abbreviations in writing) it will be found that the
exposition of corresponding matters in modern elementary textbooks
generally takes up, not less, but more space. And, to say nothing of
the perfect finish of Archimedes's treatises, we shall find in Heron,
Ptolemy and Pappus veritable models of concise statement. The purely
geometrical proof by Heron of the formula for the area of a triangle,
Δ{D}=√_{s(s-a)(s-b)(s-c)}_, and the geometrical propositions in Book I
of Ptolemy's _Syntaxis_ (including 'Ptolemy's Theorem') are cases in
point.

The principles of geometry and arithmetic (in the sense of the theory of
numbers) are stated in the preliminary matter of Books I and VII of
Euclid. But Euclid was not their discoverer; they were gradually evolved
from the time of Pythagoras onwards. Aristotle is clear about the nature
of the principles and their classification. Every demonstrative science,
he says, has to do with three things, the subject-matter, the things
proved, and the things from which the proof starts (εξ ὡν {ex hôn}). It
is not everything that can be proved, otherwise the chain of proof would
be endless; you must begin somewhere, and you must start with things
admitted but indemonstrable. These are, first, principles common to all
sciences which are called _axioms_ or _common opinions_, as that 'of two
contradictories one must be true', or 'if equals be subtracted from
equals, the remainders are equal'; secondly, principles peculiar to the
subject-matter of the particular science, say geometry. First among the
latter principles are definitions; there must be agreement as to what we
mean by certain terms. But a definition asserts nothing about the
existence or non-existence of the thing defined. The existence of the
various things defined has to be _proved_ except in the case of a few
primary things in each science the existence of which is indemonstrable
and must be _assumed_ among the first principles of the science; thus in
geometry we must assume the existence of points and lines, and in
arithmetic of the unit. Lastly, we must assume certain other things
which are less obvious and cannot be proved but yet have to be
accepted; these are called _postulates_, because they make a demand on
the faith of the learner. Euclid's Postulates are of this kind,
especially that known as the parallel-postulate.

The methods of solution of problems were no doubt first applied in
particular cases and then gradually systematized; the technical terms
for them were probably invented later, after the methods themselves had
become established.

One method of solution was the _reduction_ of one problem to another.
This was called απαγωγη {apagôgê}, a term which seems to occur first in
Aristotle. But instances of such reduction occurred long before.
Hippocrates of Chios reduced the problem of duplicating the cube to that
of finding two mean proportionals in continued proportion between two
straight lines, that is, he showed that, if the latter problem could be
solved, the former was thereby solved also; and it is probable that
there were still earlier cases in the Pythagorean geometry.

Next there is the method of mathematical _analysis_. This method is said
to have been 'communicated' or 'explained' by Plato to Leodamas of
Thasos; but, like reduction (to which it is closely akin), analysis in
the mathematical sense must have been in use much earlier. _Analysis_
and its correlative _synthesis_ are defined by Pappus: 'in analysis we
assume that which is sought as if it were already done, and we inquire
what it is from which this results, and again what is the antecedent
cause of the latter, and so on, until by so retracing our steps we come
upon something already known or belonging to the class of principles.
But in synthesis, reversing the process, we take as already done that
which was last arrived at in the analysis, and, by arranging in their
natural order as consequences what were before antecedents and
successively connecting them one with another, we arrive finally at the
construction of that which was sought.'

The method of _reductio ad absurdum_ is a variety of analysis. Starting
from a hypothesis, namely the contradictory of what we desire to prove,
we use the same process of analysis, carrying it back until we arrive at
something admittedly false or absurd. Aristotle describes this method in
various ways as _reductio ad absurdum_, proof _per impossibile_, or
proof leading to the impossible. But here again, though the term was
new, the method was not. The paradoxes of Zeno are classical instances.

Lastly, the Greeks established the form of exposition which still
governs geometrical work, simply because it is dictated by strict logic.
It is seen in Euclid's propositions, with their separate formal
divisions, to which specific names were afterwards assigned, (1) the
_enunciation_ (προτασις {protasis}), (2) the _setting-out_ (εκθεσις
{ekthesis}), (3) the διορισμος {diorismos}, being a re-statement of what
we are required to do or prove, not in general terms (as in the
_enunciation_), but with reference to the particular data contained in
the _setting-out_, (4) the _construction_ (κατασκευη {kataskeuê}), (5)
the _proof_ (αποδειξις {apodeixis}), (6) the _conclusion_ (συμπερασμα
{symperasma}). In the case of a problem it often happens that a solution
is not possible unless the particular data are such as to satisfy
certain conditions; in this case there is yet another constituent part
in the proposition, namely the statement of the conditions or limits of
possibility, which was called by the same name διορισμος {diorismos},
definition or delimitation, as that applied to the third constituent
part of a theorem.

We have so far endeavoured to indicate generally the finality and the
abiding value of the work done by the creators of mathematical science.
It remains to summarize, as briefly as possible, the history of Greek
mathematics according to periods and subjects.

The Greeks of course took what they could in the shape of elementary
facts in geometry and astronomy from the Egyptians and Babylonians. But
some of the essential characteristics of the Greek genius assert
themselves even in their borrowings from these or other sources. Here,
as everywhere else, we see their directness and concentration; they
always knew what they wanted, and they had an unerring instinct for
taking only what was worth having and rejecting the rest. This is
illustrated by the story of Pythagoras's travels. He consorted with
priests and prophets and was initiated into the religious rites
practised in different places, not out of religious enthusiasm 'as you
might think' (says our informant), but in order that he might not
overlook any fragment of knowledge worth acquiring that might lie hidden
in the mysteries of divine worship.

This story also illustrates an important advantage which the Greeks had
over the Egyptians and Babylonians. In those countries science, such as
it was, was the monopoly of the priests; and, where this is the case,
the first steps in science are apt to prove the last also, because the
scientific results attained tend to become involved in religious
prescriptions and routine observances, and so to end in a collection of
lifeless formulae. Fortunately for the Greeks, they had no organized
priesthood; untrammelled by prescription, traditional dogmas or
superstition, they could give their reasoning faculties free play. Thus
they were able to create science as a living thing susceptible of
development without limit.

Greek geometry, as also Greek astronomy, begins with Thales (about
624-547 B. C.), who travelled in Egypt and is said to have brought
geometry from thence. Such geometry as there was in Egypt arose out of
practical needs. Revenue was raised by the taxation of landed property,
and its assessment depended on the accurate fixing of the boundaries of
the various holdings. When these were removed by the periodical flooding
due to the rising of the Nile, it was necessary to replace them, or to
determine the taxable area independently of them, by an art of
land-surveying. We conclude from the Papyrus Rhind (say 1700 B. C.) and
other documents that Egyptian geometry consisted mainly of practical
rules for measuring, with more or less accuracy, (1) such areas as
squares, triangles, trapezia, and circles, (2) the solid content of
measures of corn, &c., of different shapes. The Egyptians also
constructed pyramids of a certain <DW72> by means of arithmetical
calculations based on a certain ratio, _se-qeṭ_, namely the ratio of
half the side of the base to the height, which is in fact equivalent to
the co-tangent of the angle of <DW72>. The use of this ratio implies the
notion of similarity of figures, especially triangles. The Egyptians
knew, too, that a triangle with its sides in the ratio of the numbers 3,
4, 5 is right-angled, and used the fact as a means of drawing right
angles. But there is no sign that they knew the general property of a
right-angled triangle (= Eucl. I. 47), of which this is a particular
case, or that they proved any general theorem in geometry.

No doubt Thales, when he was in Egypt, would see diagrams drawn to
illustrate the rules for the measurement of circles and other plane
figures, and these diagrams would suggest to him certain similarities
and congruences which would set him thinking whether there were not some
elementary general principles underlying the construction and relations
of different figures and parts of figures. This would be in accord with
the Greek instinct for generalization and their wish to be able to
account for everything on rational principles.

The following theorems are attributed to Thales: (1) that a circle is
bisected by any diameter (Eucl. I, Def. 17), (2) that the angles at the
base of an isosceles triangle are equal (Eucl. I. 5), (3) that, if two
straight lines cut one another, the vertically opposite angles are equal
(Eucl. I. 15), (4) that, if two triangles have two angles and one side
respectively equal, the triangles are equal in all respects (Eucl. I.
26). He is said (5) to have been the first to inscribe a right-angled
triangle in a circle, which must mean that he was the first to discover
that the angle in a semicircle is a right angle (cf. Eucl. III. 31).

Elementary as these things are, they represent a new departure of a
momentous kind, being the first steps towards a _theory_ of geometry. On
this point we cannot do better than quote some remarks from Kant's
preface to the second edition of his _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_.

'Mathematics has, from the earliest times to which the history of human
reason goes back, (that is to say) with that wonderful people the
Greeks, travelled the safe road of a _science_. But it must not be
supposed that it was as easy for mathematics as it was for logic, where
reason is concerned with itself alone, to find, or rather to build for
itself, that royal road. I believe on the contrary that with mathematics
it remained for long a case of groping about--the Egyptians in
particular were still at that stage--and that this transformation must
be ascribed to a _revolution_ brought about by the happy inspiration of
one man in trying an experiment, from which point onward the road that
must be taken could no longer be missed, and the safe way of a science
was struck and traced out for all time and to distances illimitable....
A light broke on the first man who demonstrated the property of the
isosceles triangle (whether his name was Thales or what you will)....'

Thales also solved two problems of a practical kind: (1) he showed how
to measure the distance of a ship at sea, and (2) he found the heights
of pyramids by means of the shadows thrown on the ground by the pyramid
and by a stick of known length at the same moment; one account says that
he chose the time when the lengths of the stick and of its shadow were
equal, but in either case he argued by similarity of triangles.

In astronomy Thales predicted a solar eclipse which was probably that of
the 28th May 585 B. C. Now the Babylonians, as the result of
observations continued through centuries, had discovered the period of
223 lunations after which eclipses recur. It is most likely therefore
that Thales had heard of this period, and that his prediction was based
upon it. He is further said to have used the Little Bear for finding the
pole, to have discovered the inequality of the four astronomical
seasons, and to have written works _On the Equinox_ and _On the
Solstice_.

After Thales come the Pythagoreans. Of the Pythagoreans Aristotle says
that they applied themselves to the study of mathematics and were the
first to advance that science, going so far as to find in the principles
of mathematics the principles of all existing things. Of Pythagoras
himself we are told that he attached supreme importance to the study of
arithmetic, advancing it and taking it out of the region of practical
utility, and again that he transformed the study of geometry into a
liberal education, examining the principles of the science from the
beginning.

The very word μαθηματα {mathêmata}, which originally meant 'subjects of
instruction' generally, is said to have been first appropriated to
mathematics by the Pythagoreans.

In saying that arithmetic began with Pythagoras we have to distinguish
between the uses of that word then and now. Αριθμητικη {Arithmêtikê}
with the Greeks was distinguished from λογιστικη {logistikê}, the
science of calculation. It is the latter word which would cover
arithmetic in our sense, or practical calculation; the term αριθμητικη
{arithmêtikê} was restricted to the science of numbers considered in
themselves, or, as we should say, the Theory of Numbers. Another way of
putting the distinction was to say that αριθμητικη {arithmêtikê} dealt
with absolute numbers or numbers in the abstract, and λογιστικη
{logistikê} with numbered _things_ or concrete numbers; thus λογιστικη
{logistikê} included simple problems about numbers of apples, bowls, or
objects generally, such as are found in the Greek Anthology and
sometimes involve simple algebraical equations.

The Theory of Numbers then began with Pythagoras (about 572-497 B. C.).
It included definitions of the unit and of number, and the
classification and definitions of the various classes of numbers, odd,
even, prime, composite, and sub-divisions of these such as odd-even,
even-times-even, &c. Again there were figured numbers, namely,
triangular numbers, squares, oblong numbers, polygonal numbers
(pentagons, hexagons, &c.) corresponding respectively to plane figures,
and pyramidal numbers, cubes, parallelepipeds, &c., corresponding to
solid figures in geometry. The treatment was mostly geometrical, the
numbers being represented by dots filling up geometrical figures of the
various kinds. The laws of formation of the various figured numbers were
established. In this investigation the _gnomon_ played an important
part. Originally meaning the upright needle of a sun-dial, the term was
next used for a figure like a carpenter's square, and then was applied
to a figure of that shape put round two sides of a square and making up
a larger square. The arithmetical application of the term was similar.
If we represent a unit by one dot and put round it three dots in such a
way that the four form the corners of a square, _three_ is the first
gnomon. _Five_ dots put at equal distances round two sides of the square
containing four dots make up the next square (3²), and _five_ is the
second gnomon. Generally, if we have _n²_ dots so arranged as to fill up
a square with _n_ for its side, the gnomon to be put round it to make up
the next square, _(n+1)²_, has _2n+1_ dots. In the formation of squares,
therefore, the successive gnomons are the series of odd numbers
following 1 (the first square), namely 3, 5, 7, ... In the formation of
_oblong_ numbers (numbers of the form _n(n+1)_), the first of which is
1. 2, the successive gnomons are the terms after 2 in the series of
_even_ numbers 2, 4, 6.... Triangular numbers are formed by adding to 1
(the first triangle) the terms after 1 in the series of natural numbers
1, 2, 3 ...; these are therefore the gnomons (by analogy) for triangles.
The gnomons for pentagonal numbers are the terms after 1 in the
arithmetical progression 1, 4, 7, 10 ... (with 3, or 5-2, as the common
difference) and so on; the common difference of the successive gnomons
for an _a_-gonal number is _a-2_.

From the series of gnomons for squares we easily deduce a formula for
finding square numbers which are the sum of two squares. For, the gnomon
_2n+1_ being the difference between the successive squares _n²_ and
_(n+1)²_, we have only to make _2n+1_ a square. Suppose that _2n+1=m²_;
therefore _n=½(m²-1)_, and _{½(m²-1)}²+m²={½(m²+1)}²_, where _m_ is any
odd number. This is the formula actually attributed to Pythagoras.

Pythagoras is said to have discovered the theory of proportionals or
proportion. This was a numerical theory and therefore was applicable to
commensurable magnitudes only; it was no doubt somewhat on the lines of
Euclid, Book VII. Connected with the theory of proportion was that of
_means_, and Pythagoras was acquainted with three of these, the
arithmetic, geometric, and sub-contrary (afterwards called harmonic). In
particular Pythagoras is said to have introduced from Babylon into
Greece the 'most perfect' proportion, namely:

_a:(a+b)/2=2ab/(a+b):b_,

where the second and third terms are respectively the arithmetic and
harmonic mean between _a_ and _b_. A particular case is 12:9=8:6.

This bears upon what was probably Pythagoras's greatest discovery,
namely that the musical intervals correspond to certain arithmetical
ratios between lengths of string at the same tension, the octave
corresponding to the ratio 2:1, the fifth to 3:2 and the fourth to 4:3.
These ratios being the same as those of 12 to 6, 8, 9 respectively, we
can understand how the third term, 8, in the above proportion came to
be called the 'harmonic' mean between 12 and 6.

The Pythagorean arithmetic as a whole, with the developments made after
the time of Pythagoras himself, is mainly known to us through
Nicomachus's _Introductio arithmetica_, Iamblichus's commentary on the
same, and Theon of Smyrna's work _Expositio rerum mathematicarum ad
legendum Platonem utilium_. The things in these books most deserving of
notice are the following.

First, there is the description of a 'perfect' number (a number which is
equal to the sum of all its parts, i.e. all its integral divisors
including 1 but excluding the number itself), with a statement of the
property that all such numbers end in 6 or 8. Four such numbers, namely
6, 28, 496, 8128, were known to Nicomachus. The law of formation for
such numbers is first found in Eucl. IX. 36 proving that, if the sum
(S_{n}) of _n_ terms of the series 1, 2, 2², 2³ ... is prime, then
S_{n}.2^{n-1} is a perfect number.

Secondly, Theon of Smyrna gives the law of formation of the series of
'side-' and 'diameter-' numbers which satisfy the equations _2x²-y²=±1_.
The law depends on the proposition proved in Eucl. II. 10 to the effect
that _(2x+y)²-2(x+y)²=2x²-y²_, whence it follows that, if _x_, _y_
satisfy either of the above equations, then _2x+y_, _x+y_ is a solution
in higher numbers of the other equation. The successive solutions give
values for _y/x_, namely 1/1, 3/2, 7/5, 17/12, 41/29, ..., which are
successive approximations to the value of √2 (the ratio of the diagonal
of a square to its side). The occasion for this method of approximation
to √2 (which can be carried as far as we please) was the discovery by
the Pythagoreans of the incommensurable or irrational in this particular
case.

Thirdly, Iamblichus mentions a discovery by Thymaridas, a Pythagorean
not later than Plato's time, called the επανθημα {epanthêma} ('bloom')
of Thymaridas, and amounting to the solution of any number of
simultaneous equations of the following form:

_x+x₁+x₂+ ... +x_{n-1} = s_,
    _x+x₁ = a₁_,
    _x+x₂ = a₂_,
         ...
_x+x_{n-1} = a_{n-1}_,

the solution being _x=((a₁+a₂+ ... +a_{n-1})-s)/(n-2)_.

The rule is stated in general terms, but the above representation of its
effect shows that it is a piece of pure algebra.

The Pythagorean contributions to geometry were even more remarkable. The
most famous proposition attributed to Pythagoras himself is of course
the theorem of Eucl. I. 47 that the square on the hypotenuse of any
right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other
two sides. But Proclus also attributes to him, besides the theory of
proportionals, the construction of the 'cosmic figures', the five
regular solids.

One of the said solids, the dodecahedron, has twelve regular pentagons
for faces, and the construction of a regular pentagon involves the
cutting of a straight line 'in extreme and mean ratio' (Eucl. II. 11 and
VI. 30), which is a particular case of the method known as the
_application of areas_. This method was fully worked out by the
Pythagoreans and proved one of the most powerful in all Greek geometry.
The most elementary case appears in Eucl. I. 44, 45, where it is shown
how to apply to a given straight line as base a parallelogram with one
angle equal to a given angle and equal in area to any given rectilineal
figure; this construction is the geometrical equivalent of arithmetical
_division_. The general case is that in which the parallelogram, though
applied to the straight line, overlaps it or falls short of it in such a
way that the part of the parallelogram which extends beyond or falls
short of the parallelogram of the same angle and breadth on the given
straight line itself (exactly) as base is similar to any given
parallelogram (Eucl. VI. 28, 29). This is the geometrical equivalent of
the solution of the most general form of quadratic equation _ax±mx²=C_,
so far as it has real roots; the condition that the roots may be real
was also worked out (=Eucl. VI. 27). It is in the form of 'application
of areas' that Apollonius obtains the fundamental property of each of
the conic sections, and, as we shall see, it is from the terminology of
application of areas that Apollonius took the three names _parabola_,
_hyperbola_, and _ellipse_ which he was the first to give to the three
curves.

Another problem solved by the Pythagoreans was that of drawing a
rectilineal figure which shall be equal in area to one given rectilineal
figure and similar to another. Plutarch mentions a doubt whether it was
this problem or the theorem of Eucl. I. 47 on the strength of which
Pythagoras was said to have sacrificed an ox.

The main particular applications of the theorem of the square on the
hypotenuse, e. g. those in Euclid, Book II, were also Pythagorean; the
construction of a square equal to a given rectangle (Eucl. II. 14) is
one of them, and corresponds to the solution of the pure quadratic
equation _x²=ab_.

The Pythagoreans knew the properties of parallels and proved the theorem
that the sum of the three angles of any triangle is equal to two right
angles.

As we have seen, the Pythagorean theory of proportion, being numerical,
was inadequate in that it did not apply to incommensurable magnitudes;
but, with this qualification, we may say that the Pythagorean geometry
covered the bulk of the subject-matter of Books I, II, IV and VI of
Euclid's _Elements_. The case is less clear with regard to Book III of
the _Elements_; but, as the main propositions of that Book were known to
Hippocrates of Chios in the second half of the fifth century B. C., we
conclude that they, too, were part of the Pythagorean geometry.

Lastly, the Pythagoreans discovered the existence of the incommensurable
or irrational in the particular case of the diagonal of a square in
relation to its side. Aristotle mentions an ancient proof of the
incommensurability of the diagonal with the side by a _reductio ad
absurdum_ showing that, if the diagonal were commensurable with the
side, it would follow that one and the same number is both odd and even.
This proof was doubtless Pythagorean.

A word should be added about the Pythagorean astronomy. Pythagoras was
the first to hold that the earth (and no doubt each of the other
heavenly bodies also) is spherical in shape, and he was aware that the
sun, moon and planets have independent movements of their own in a sense
opposite to that of the daily rotation; but he seems to have kept the
earth in the centre. His successors in the school (one Hicetas of
Syracuse and Philolaus are alternatively credited with this innovation)
actually abandoned the geocentric idea and made the earth, like the sun,
the moon, and the other planets, revolve in a circle round the 'central
fire', in which resided the governing principle ordering and directing
the movement of the universe.

The geometry of which we have so far spoken belongs to the Elements.
But, before the body of the Elements was complete, the Greeks had
advanced beyond the Elements. By the second half of the fifth century B.
C. they had investigated three famous problems in higher geometry, (1)
the squaring of the circle, (2) the trisection of any angle, (3) the
duplication of the cube. The great names belonging to this period are
Hippias of Elis, Hippocrates of Chios, and Democritus.

Hippias of Elis invented a certain curve described by combining two
uniform movements (one angular and the other rectilinear) taking the
same time to complete. Hippias himself used his curve for the
trisection of any angle or the division of it in any ratio; but it was
afterwards employed by Dinostratus, a brother of Eudoxus's pupil
Menaechmus, and by Nicomedes for squaring the circle, whence it got the
name τετραγωνιζουσα {tetragônizousa}, _quadratrix_.

Hippocrates of Chios is mentioned by Aristotle as an instance to prove
that a man may be a distinguished geometer and, at the same time, a fool
in the ordinary affairs of life. He occupies an important place both in
elementary geometry and in relation to two of the higher problems above
mentioned. He was, so far as is known, the first compiler of a book of
Elements; and he was the first to prove the important theorem of Eucl.
XII. 2 that circles are to one another as the squares on their
diameters, from which he further deduced that similar segments of
circles are to one another as the squares on their bases. These
propositions were used by him in his tract on the squaring of _lunes_,
which was intended to lead up to the squaring of the circle. The
essential portions of the tract are preserved in a passage of
Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's _Physics_, which contains
substantial extracts from Eudemus's lost _History of Geometry_.
Hippocrates showed how to square three particular lunes of different
kinds and then, lastly, he squared the sum of a circle and a certain
lune. Unfortunately the last-mentioned lune was not one of those which
can be squared, so that the attempt to square the circle in this way
failed after all.

Hippocrates also attacked the problem of doubling the cube. There are
two versions of the origin of this famous problem. According to one
story an old tragic poet had represented Minos as having been
dissatisfied with the size of a cubical tomb erected for his son Glaucus
and having told the architect to make it double the size while retaining
the cubical form. The other story says that the Delians, suffering from
a pestilence, consulted the oracle and were told to double a certain
altar as a means of staying the plague. Hippocrates did not indeed solve
the problem of duplication, but reduced it to another, namely that of
finding two mean proportionals in continued proportion between two given
straight lines; and the problem was ever afterwards attacked in this
form. If _x_, _y_ be the two required mean proportionals between two
straight lines _a_, _b_, then _a:x=x:y=y:b_, whence _b/a=(x/a)³_, and,
as a particular case, if _b=2a_, _x³=2a³_, so that, when _x_ is found,
the cube is doubled.

Democritus wrote a large number of mathematical treatises, the titles
only of which are preserved. We gather from one of these titles, 'On
irrational lines and solids', that he wrote on irrationals. Democritus
realized as fully as Zeno, and expressed with no less piquancy, the
difficulty connected with the continuous and the infinitesimal. This
appears from his dilemma about the circular base of a cone and a
parallel section; the section which he means is a section 'indefinitely
near' (as the phrase is) to the base, i. e. the _very next_ section, as
we might say (if there were one). Is it, said Democritus, equal or not
equal to the base? If it is equal, so will the very next section to it
be, and so on, so that the cone will really be, not a cone, but a
cylinder. If it is unequal to the base and in fact less, the surface of
the cone will be jagged, like steps, which is very absurd. We may be
sure that Democritus's work on 'The contact of a circle or a sphere'
discussed a like difficulty.

Lastly, Archimedes tells us that Democritus was the first to state,
though he could not give a rigorous proof, that the volume of a cone or
a pyramid is one-third of that of the cylinder or prism respectively on
the same base and having equal height, theorems first proved by Eudoxus.

We come now to the time of Plato, and here the great names are Archytas,
Theodoras of Cyrene, Theaetetus, and Eudoxus.

Archytas (about 430-360 B. C.) wrote on music and the numerical ratios
corresponding to the intervals of the tetrachord. He is said to have
been the first to write a treatise on mechanics based on mathematical
principles; on the practical side he invented a mechanical dove which
would fly. In geometry he gave the first solution of the problem of the
two mean proportionals, using a wonderful construction in three
dimensions which determined a certain point as the intersection of three
surfaces, (1) a certain cone, (2) a half-cylinder, (3) an anchor-ring or
_tore_ with inner diameter _nil_.

Theodorus, Plato's teacher in mathematics, extended the theory of the
irrational by proving incommensurability in certain particular cases
other than that of the diagonal of a square in relation to its side,
which was already known. He proved that the side of a square containing
3 square feet, or 5 square feet, or any non-square number of square feet
up to 17 is incommensurable with one foot, in other words that √3, √5
... √17 are all incommensurable with 1. Theodorus's proof was evidently
not general; and it was reserved for Theaetetus to comprehend all these
irrationals in one definition, and to prove the property generally as it
is proved in Eucl. X. 9. Much of the content of the rest of Euclid's
Book X (dealing with compound irrationals), as also of Book XIII on the
five regular solids, was due to Theaetetus, who is even said to have
discovered two of those solids (the octahedron and icosahedron).

Plato (427-347 B. C.) was probably not an original mathematician, but he
'caused mathematics in general and geometry in particular to make a
great advance by reason of his enthusiasm for them'. He encouraged the
members of his school to specialize in mathematics and astronomy; e. g.
we are told that in astronomy he set it as a problem to all earnest
students to find 'what are the uniform and ordered movements by the
assumption of which the apparent motions of the planets may be
accounted for'. In Plato's own writings are found certain definitions,
e. g. that of a straight line as 'that of which the middle covers the
ends', and some interesting mathematical illustrations, especially that
in the second geometrical passage in the _Meno_ (86E-87C). To Plato
himself are attributed (1) a formula _(n²-1)²+(2n)²=(n²+1)²_ for finding
two square numbers the sum of which is a square number, (2) the
invention of the method of analysis, which he is said to have explained
to Leodamas of Thasos (_mathematical_ analysis was, however, certainly,
in practice, employed long before). The solution, attributed to Plato,
of the problem of the two mean proportionals by means of a frame
resembling that which a shoemaker uses to measure a foot, can hardly be
his.

Eudoxus (408-355 B. C.), an original genius second to none (unless it be
Archimedes) in the history of our subject, made two discoveries of
supreme importance for the further development of Greek geometry.

(1) As we have seen, the discovery of the incommensurable rendered
inadequate the Pythagorean theory of proportion, which applied to
commensurable magnitudes only. It would no doubt be possible, in most
cases, to replace proofs depending on proportions by others; but this
involved great inconvenience, and a slur was cast on geometry generally.
The trouble was remedied once for all by Eudoxus's discovery of the
great theory of proportion, applicable to commensurable and
incommensurable magnitudes alike, which is expounded in Euclid's Book V.
Well might Barrow say of this theory that 'there is nothing in the whole
body of the elements of a more subtile invention, nothing more solidly
established'. The keystone of the structure is the definition of equal
ratios (Eucl. V, Def. 5); and twenty-three centuries have not abated a
jot from its value, as is plain from the facts that Weierstrass repeats
it word for word as his definition of equal numbers, and it corresponds
almost to the point of coincidence with the modern treatment of
irrationals due to Dedekind.

(2) Eudoxus discovered the method of exhaustion for measuring
curvilinear areas and solids, to which, with the extensions given to it
by Archimedes, Greek geometry owes its greatest triumphs. Antiphon the
Sophist, in connexion with attempts to square the circle, had asserted
that, if we inscribe successive regular polygons in a circle,
continually doubling the number of sides, we shall sometime arrive at a
polygon the sides of which will coincide with the circumference of the
circle. Warned by the unanswerable arguments of Zeno against
infinitesimals, mathematicians substituted for this the statement that,
by continuing the construction, we can inscribe a polygon approaching
equality with the circle _as nearly as we please_. The method of
exhaustion used, for the purpose of proof by _reductio ad absurdum_, the
lemma proved in Eucl. X. 1 (to the effect that, if from any magnitude we
subtract not less than half, and then from the remainder not less than
half, and so on continually, there will sometime be left a magnitude
less than any assigned magnitude of the same kind, however small): and
this again depends on an assumption which is practically contained in
Eucl. V, Def. 4, but is generally known as the Axiom of Archimedes,
stating that, if we have two unequal magnitudes, their difference
(however small) can, if continually added to itself, be made to exceed
any magnitude of the same kind (however great).

The method of exhaustion is seen in operation in Eucl. XII. 1-2, 3-7
Cor., 10, 16-18. Props. 3-7 Cor. and Prop. 10 prove that the volumes of
a pyramid and a cone are one-third of the prism and cylinder
respectively on the same base and of equal height; and Archimedes
expressly says that these facts were first proved by Eudoxus.

In astronomy Eudoxus is famous for the beautiful theory of concentric
spheres which he invented to explain the apparent motions of the
planets and, particularly, their apparent stationary points and
retrogradations. The theory applied also to the sun and moon, for each
of which Eudoxus employed three spheres. He represented the motion of
each planet as produced by the rotations of four spheres concentric with
the earth, one within the other, and connected in the following way.
Each of the inner spheres revolves about a diameter the ends of which
(poles) are fixed on the next sphere enclosing it. The outermost sphere
represents the daily rotation, the second a motion along the zodiac
circle; the poles of the third sphere are fixed on the latter circle;
the poles of the fourth sphere (carrying the planet fixed on its
equator) are so fixed on the third sphere, and the speeds and directions
of rotation so arranged, that the planet describes on the second sphere
a curve called the _hippopede_ (horse-fetter), or a figure of eight,
lying along and longitudinally bisected by the zodiac circle. The whole
arrangement is a marvel of geometrical ingenuity.

Heraclides of Pontus (about 388-315 B. C.), a pupil of Plato, made a
great step forward in astronomy by his declaration that the earth
rotates on its own axis once in 24 hours, and by his discovery that
Mercury and Venus revolve about the sun like satellites.

Menaechmus, a pupil of Eudoxus, was the discoverer of the conic
sections, two of which, the parabola and the hyperbola, he used for
solving the problem of the two mean proportionals. If _a:x=x:y=y:b_,
then _x²=ay_, _y²=bx_ and _xy=ab_. These equations represent, in
Cartesian co-ordinates, and with rectangular axes, the conics by the
intersection of which two and two Menaechmus solved the problem; in the
case of the rectangular hyperbola it was the asymptote-property which he
used.

We pass to Euclid's times. A little older than Euclid, Autolycus of
Pitane wrote two books, _On the Moving Sphere_, a work on Sphaeric for
use in astronomy, and _On Risings and Settings_. The former work is the
earliest Greek textbook which has reached us intact. It was before
Euclid when he wrote his _Phaenomena_, and there are many points of
contact between the two books.

Euclid flourished about 300 B. C. or a little earlier. His great work,
the _Elements_ in thirteen Books, is too well known to need description.
No work presumably, except the Bible, has had such a reign; and future
generations will come back to it again and again as they tire of the
variegated substitutes for it and the confusion resulting from their
bewildering multiplicity. After what has been said above of the growth
of the Elements, we can appreciate the remark of Proclus about Euclid,
'who put together the Elements, collecting many of Eudoxus's theorems,
perfecting many of Theaetetus's and also bringing to irrefragable
demonstration the things which were only somewhat loosely proved by his
predecessors'. Though a large portion of the subject-matter had been
investigated by those predecessors, everything goes to show that the
whole arrangement was Euclid's own; it is certain that he made great
changes in the order of propositions and in the proofs, and that his
innovations began at the very beginning of Book I.

Euclid wrote other books on both elementary and higher geometry, and on
the other mathematical subjects known in his day. The elementary
geometrical works include the _Data_ and _On Divisions_ (_of figures_),
the first of which survives in Greek and the second in Arabic only; also
the _Pseudaria_, now lost, which was a sort of guide to fallacies in
geometrical reasoning. The treatises on higher geometry are all lost;
they include (1) the _Conics_ in four Books, which covered almost the
same ground as the first three Books of Apollonius's _Conics_, although
no doubt, for Euclid, the conics were still, as with his predecessors,
sections of a right-angled, an obtuse-angled, and an acute-angled cone
respectively made by a plane perpendiular to a generator in each case;
(2) the _Porisms_ in three Books, the importance and difficulty of which
can be inferred from Pappus's account of it and the lemmas which he
gives for use with it; (3) the _Surface-Loci_, to which again Pappus
furnishes lemmas; one of these implies that Euclid assumed as known the
focus-directrix property of the three conics, which is absent from
Apollonius's _Conics_.

In applied mathematics Euclid wrote (1) the _Phaenomena_, a work on
spherical astronomy in which ὁ ὁριζων {ho horizôn} (without κυκλος
{kyklos} or any qualifying words) appears for the first time in the
sense of _horizon_; (2) the _Optics_, a kind of elementary treatise on
perspective: these two treatises are extant in Greek; (3) a work on the
Elements of Music. The _Sectio Canonis_, which has come down under the
name of Euclid, can, however, hardly be his in its present form.

In the period between Euclid and Archimedes comes Aristarchus of Samos
(about 310-230 B. C.), famous for having anticipated Copernicus.
Accepting Heraclides's view that the earth rotates about its own axis,
Aristarchus went further and put forward the hypothesis that the sun
itself is at rest, and that the earth, as well as Mercury, Venus, and
the other planets, revolve in circles about the sun. We have this on the
unquestionable authority of Archimedes, who was only some twenty-five
years later, and who must have seen the book containing the hypothesis
in question. We are told too that Cleanthes the Stoic thought that
Aristarchus ought to be indicted on the charge of impiety for setting
the Hearth of the Universe in motion.

One work of Aristarchus, _On the sizes and distances of the Sun and
Moon_, which is extant in Greek, is highly interesting in itself, though
it contains no word of the heliocentric hypothesis. Thoroughly classical
in form and style, it lays down certain hypotheses and then deduces
therefrom, by rigorous geometry, the sizes and distances of the sun and
moon. If the hypotheses had been exact, the results would have been
correct too; but Aristarchus in fact assumed a certain angle to be 87°
which is really 89° 50', and the angle subtended at the centre of the
earth by the diameter of either the sun or the moon to be 2°, whereas we
know from Archimedes that Aristarchus himself discovered that the latter
angle is only 1/2°. The effect of Aristarchus's geometry is to find
arithmetical limits to the values of what are really trigonometrical
ratios of certain small angles, namely

1/18 > sin 3° > 1/20, 1/45 > sin 1° > 1/60, 1 > cos 1° > 89/90.

The main results obtained are (1) that the diameter of the sun is
between 18 and 20 times the diameter of the moon, (2) that the diameter
of the moon is between 2/45ths and 1/30th of the distance of the centre
of the moon from our eye, and (3) that the diameter of the sun is
between 19/3rds and 43/6ths of the diameter of the earth. The book
contains a good deal of arithmetical calculation.

Archimedes was born about 287 B. C. and was killed at the sack of
Syracuse by Marcellus's army in 212 B. C. The stories about him are well
known, how he said 'Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the
earth' (πα βω και κινω ταν γαν {pa bô kai kinô tan gan}); how, having
thought of the solution of the problem of the crown when in the bath, he
ran home naked shouting ἑυρηκα, ἑυρηκα {heurêka, heurêka}; and how, the
capture of Syracuse having found him intent on a figure drawn on the
ground, he said to a Roman soldier who came up, 'Stand away, fellow,
from my diagram.' Of his work few people know more than that he invented
a tubular screw which is still used for pumping water, and that for a
long time he foiled the attacks of the Romans on Syracuse by the
mechanical devices and engines which he used against them. But he
thought meanly of these things, and his real interest was in pure
mathematical speculation; he caused to be engraved on his tomb a
representation of a cylinder circumscribing a sphere, with the ratio
3/2 which the cylinder bears to the sphere: from which we infer that he
regarded this as his greatest discovery.

Archimedes's works are all original, and are perfect models of
mathematical exposition; their wide range will be seen from the list of
those which survive: _On the Sphere and Cylinder_ I, II, _Measurement of
a Circle_, _On Conoids and Spheroids_, _On Spirals_, _On Plane
Equilibriums_ I, II, the _Sandreckoner_, _Quadrature of the Parabola_,
_On Floating Bodies_ I, II, and lastly the _Method_ (only discovered in
1906). The difficult Cattle-Problem is also attributed to him, and a
_Liber Assumptorum_ which has reached us through the Arabic, but which
cannot be his in its present form, although some of the propositions in
it (notably that about the 'Salinon', salt-cellar, and others about
circles inscribed in the αρβηλος {arbêlos}, shoemaker's knife) are quite
likely to be of Archimedean origin. Among lost works were the
_Catoptrica_, _On Sphere-making_, and investigations into polyhedra,
including thirteen semi-regular solids, the discovery of which is
attributed by Pappus to Archimedes.

Speaking generally, the geometrical works are directed to the
measurement of curvilinear areas and volumes; and Archimedes employs a
method which is a development of Eudoxus's method of exhaustion. Eudoxus
apparently approached the figure to be measured from below only, i. e.
by means of figures successively inscribed to it. Archimedes approaches
it from both sides by successively inscribing figures and circumscribing
others also, thereby compressing them, as it were, until they coincide
as nearly as we please with the figure to be measured. In many cases his
procedure is, when the analytical equivalents are set down, seen to
amount to real _integration_; this is so with his investigation of the
areas of a parabolic segment and a spiral, the surface and volume of a
sphere, and the volume of any segments of the conoids and spheroids.

The newly-discovered _Method_ is especially interesting as showing how
Archimedes originally obtained his results; this was by a clever
mechanical method of (theoretically) _weighing_ infinitesimal elements
of the figure to be measured against elements of another figure the area
or content of which (as the case may be) is known; it amounts to an
_avoidance_ of integration. Archimedes, however, would only admit that
the mechanical method is useful for finding results; he did not consider
them proved until they were established geometrically.

In the _Measurement of a Circle_, after proving by exhaustion that the
area of a circle is equal to a right-angled triangle with the
perpendicular sides equal respectively to the radius and the
circumference of the circle, Archimedes finds, by sheer calculation,
upper and lower limits to the ratio of the circumference of a circle to
its diameter (what we call π {p}). This he does by inscribing and
circumscribing regular polygons of 96 sides and calculating
approximately their respective perimeters. He begins by assuming as
known certain approximate values for √3, namely 1351/780 > √3 > 265/153,
and his calculations involve approximating to the square roots of
several large numbers (up to seven digits). The text only gives the
results, but it is evident that the extraction of square roots presented
no difficulty, notwithstanding the comparative inconvenience of the
alphabetic system of numerals. The result obtained is well known, namely
3-1/7 > π {p} > 3-10/71.

The _Plane Equilibriums_ is the first scientific treatise on the first
principles of mechanics, which are established by pure geometry. The
most important result established in Book I is the principle of the
lever. This was known to Plato and Aristotle, but they had no real
proof. The Aristotelian _Mechanics_ merely 'refers' the lever 'to the
circle', asserting that the force which acts at the greater distance
from the fulcrum moves the system more easily because it describes a
greater circle. Archimedes also finds the centre of gravity of a
parallelogram, a triangle, a trapezium and finally (in Book II) of a
parabolic segment and of a portion of it cut off by a straight line
parallel to the base.

The _Sandreckoner_ is remarkable for the development in it of a system
for expressing very large numbers by _orders_ and _periods_ based on
powers of myriad-myriads (10,000²). It also contains the important
reference to the heliocentric theory of the universe put forward by
Aristarchus of Samos in a book of 'hypotheses', as well as historical
details of previous attempts to measure the size of the earth and to
give the sizes and distances of the sun and moon.

Lastly, Archimedes invented the whole science of hydrostatics. Beginning
the treatise _On Floating Bodies_ with an assumption about uniform
pressure in a fluid, he first proves that the surface of a fluid at rest
is a sphere with its centre at the centre of the earth. Other
propositions show that, if a solid floats in a fluid, the weight of the
solid is equal to that of the fluid displaced, and, if a solid heavier
than a fluid is weighed in it, it will be lighter than its true weight
by the weight of the fluid displaced. Then, after a second assumption
that bodies which are forced upwards in a fluid are forced upwards along
the perpendiculars to the surface which pass through their centres of
gravity, Archimedes deals with the position of rest and stability of a
segment of a sphere floating in a fluid with its base entirely above or
entirely below the surface. Book II is an extraordinary _tour de force_,
investigating fully all the positions of rest and stability of a right
segment of a paraboloid floating in a fluid according (1) to the
relation between the axis of the solid and the parameter of the
generating parabola, and (2) to the specific gravity of the solid in
relation to the fluid; the term 'specific gravity' is not used, but the
idea is fully expressed in other words.

Almost contemporary with Archimedes was Eratosthenes of Cyrene, to whom
Archimedes dedicated the _Method_; the preface to this work shows that
Archimedes thought highly of his mathematical ability. He was indeed
recognized by his contemporaries as a man of great distinction in all
branches, though the names Beta and Pentathlos[4] applied to him
indicate that he just fell below the first rank in each subject. Ptolemy
Euergetes appointed him to be tutor to his son (Philopator), and he
became librarian at Alexandria; he recognized his obligation to Ptolemy
by erecting a column with a graceful epigram. In this epigram he
referred to the earlier solutions of the problem of duplicating the cube
or finding the two mean proportionals, and advocated his own in
preference, because it would give any number of means; on the column was
fixed a bronze representation of his appliance, a frame with
right-angled triangles (or rectangles) movable along two parallel
grooves and over one another, together with a condensed proof. The
_Platonicus_ of Eratosthenes evidently dealt with the fundamental
notions of mathematics in connexion with Plato's philosophy, and seems
to have begun with the story of the origin of the duplication problem.

    [4] This word primarily means an all-round athlete, a winner in all
    five of the sports constituting the πενταθλον {pentathlon}, namely
    jumping, discus-throwing, running, wrestling, and boxing (or
    javelin-throwing).

The most famous achievement of Eratosthenes was his measurement of the
earth. Archimedes quotes an earlier measurement which made the
circumference of the earth 300,000 stades. Eratosthenes improved upon
this. He observed that at the summer solstice at Syene, at noon, the sun
cast no shadow, while at the same moment the upright gnomon at
Alexandria cast a shadow corresponding to an angle between the gnomon
and the sun's rays of 1/50th of four right angles. The distance between
Syene and Alexandria being known to be 5,000 stades, this gave for the
circumference of the earth 250,000 stades, which Eratosthenes seems
later, for some reason, to have changed to 252,000 stades. On the most
probable assumption as to the length of the stade used, the 252,000
stades give about 7,850 miles, only 50 miles less than the true polar
diameter.

In the work _On the Measurement of the Earth_ Eratosthenes is said to
have discussed other astronomical matters, the distance of the tropic
and polar circles, the sizes and distances of the sun and moon, total
and partial eclipses, &c. Besides other works on astronomy and
chronology, Eratosthenes wrote a _Geographica_ in three books, in which
he first gave a history of geography up to date and then passed on to
mathematical geography, the spherical shape of the earth, &c., &c.

Apollonius of Perga was with justice called by his contemporaries the
'Great Geometer', on the strength of his great treatise, the _Conics_.
He is mentioned as a famous astronomer of the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes
(247-222 B. C.); and he dedicated the fourth and later Books of the
_Conics_ to King Attalus I of Pergamum (241-197 B. C.).

The _Conics_, a colossal work, originally in eight Books, survives as to
the first four Books in Greek and as to three more in Arabic, the eighth
being lost. From Apollonius's prefaces we can judge of the relation of
his work to Euclid's _Conics_, the content of which answered to the
first three Books of Apollonius. Although Euclid knew that an ellipse
could be otherwise produced, e. g. as an oblique section of a right
cylinder, there is no doubt that he produced all three conics from right
cones like his predecessors. Apollonius, however, obtains them in the
most general way by cutting any oblique cone, and his original axes of
reference, a diameter and the tangent at its extremity, are in general
oblique; the fundamental properties are found with reference to these
axes by 'application of areas', the three varieties of which,
_application_ (παραβολη {parabolê}), application with an _excess_
(ὑπερβολη {hyperbolê}) and application with a _deficiency_ (ελλειψις
{elleipsis}), give the properties of the three curves respectively and
account for the names _parabola_, _hyperbola_, and _ellipse_, by which
Apollonius called them for the first time. The principal axes only
appear, as a particular case, after it has been shown that the curves
have a like property when referred to any other diameter and the tangent
at its extremity, instead of those arising out of the original
construction. The first four Books constitute what Apollonius calls an
elementary introduction; the remaining Books are specialized
investigations, the most important being Book V (on normals) and Book
VII (mainly on conjugate diameters). Normals are treated, not in
connexion with tangents, but as _minimum_ or _maximum_ straight lines
drawn to the curves from different points or classes of points.
Apollonius discusses such questions as the number of normals that can be
drawn from one point (according to its position) and the construction of
all such normals. Certain propositions of great difficulty enable us to
deduce quite easily the Cartesian equations to the _evolutes_ of the
three conics.

Several other works of Apollonius are described by Pappus as forming
part of the 'Treasury of Analysis'. All are lost except the _Sectio
Rationis_ in two Books, which survives in Arabic and was published in a
Latin translation by Halley in 1706. It deals with all possible cases of
the general problem 'given two straight lines either parallel or
intersecting, and a fixed point on each, to draw through any given point
a straight line which shall cut off intercepts from the two lines
(measured from the fixed points) bearing a given ratio to one another'.
The lost treatise _Sectio Spatii_ dealt similarly with the like problem
in which the intercepts cut off have to contain a given rectangle.

The other treatises included in Pappus's account are (1) On _Determinate
Section_; (2) _Contacts_ or _Tangencies_, Book II of which is entirely
devoted to the problem of drawing a circle to touch three given circles
(Apollonius's solution can, with the aid of Pappus's auxiliary
propositions, be satisfactorily restored); (3) _Plane Loci_, i. e. loci
which are straight lines or circles; (4) Νευσεις {Neuseis},
_Inclinationes_ (the general problem called a νευσις {neusis} being to
insert between two lines, straight or curved, a straight line of given
length _verging_ to a given point, i. e. so that, if produced, it passes
through the point, Apollonius restricted himself to cases which could be
solved by 'plane' methods, i. e. by the straight line and circle only).

Apollonius is also said to have written (5) a _Comparison of the
dodecahedron with the icosahedron_ (inscribed in the same sphere), in
which he proved that their surfaces are in the same ratio as their
volumes; (6) _On the cochlias_ or cylindrical helix; (7) a 'General
Treatise', which apparently dealt with the fundamental assumptions, &c.,
of elementary geometry; (8) a work on _unordered irrationals_, i. e.
irrationals of more complicated form than those of Eucl. Book X; (9) _On
the burning-mirror_, dealing with spherical mirrors and probably with
mirrors of parabolic section also; (10) ωκυτοκιον {ôkytokion} ('quick
delivery'). In the last-named work Apollonius found an approximation to
π {p} closer than that in Archimedes's _Measurement of a Circle_; and
possibly the book also contained Apollonius's exposition of his notation
for large numbers according to 'tetrads' (successive powers of the
myriad).

In astronomy Apollonius is said to have made special researches
regarding the moon, and to have been called ε {e} (Epsilon) because the
form of that letter is associated with the moon. He was also a master of
the theory of epicycles and eccentrics.

With Archimedes and Apollonius Greek geometry reached its culminating
point; indeed, without some more elastic notation and machinery such as
algebra provides, geometry was practically at the end of its resources.
For some time, however, there were capable geometers who kept up the
tradition, filling in details, devising alternative solutions of
problems, or discovering new curves for use or investigation.

Nicomedes, probably intermediate in date between Eratosthenes and
Apollonius, was the inventor of the _conchoid_ or _cochloid_, of which,
according to Pappus, there were three varieties. Diocles (about the end
of the second century B. C.) is known as the discoverer of the _cissoid_
which was used for duplicating the cube. He also wrote a book περι
πυρειων {peri pyreiôn}, _On burning-mirrors_, which probably discussed,
among other forms of mirror, surfaces of parabolic or elliptic section,
and used the focal properties of the two conics; it was in this work
that Diocles gave an independent and clever solution (by means of an
ellipse and a rectangular hyperbola) of Archimedes's problem of cutting
a sphere into two segments in a given ratio. Dionysodorus gave a
solution by means of conics of the auxiliary cubic equation to which
Archimedes reduced this problem; he also found the solid content of a
_tore_ or anchor-ring.

Perseus is known as the discoverer and investigator of the _spiric
sections_, i. e. certain sections of the σπειρα {speira}, one variety of
which is the _tore_. The _spire_ is generated by the revolution of a
circle about a straight line in its plane, which straight line may
either be external to the circle (in which case the figure produced is
the tore), or may cut or touch the circle.

Zenodorus was the author of a treatise on _Isometric figures_, the
problem in which was to compare the content of different figures, plane
or solid, having equal contours or surfaces respectively.

Hypsicles (second half of second century B. C.) wrote what became known
as 'Book XIV' of the _Elements_ containing supplementary propositions on
the regular solids (partly drawn from Aristaeus and Apollonius); he
seems also to have written on polygonal numbers. A mediocre astronomical
work (Αναφορικος {Anaphorikos}) attributed to him is the first Greek
book in which we find the division of the zodiac circle into 360 parts
or degrees.

Posidonius the Stoic (about 135-51 B. C.) wrote on geography and
astronomy under the titles _On the Ocean_ and περι μετεωρων {peri
meteôrôn}. He made a new but faulty calculation of the circumference of
the earth (240,000 stades). _Per contra_, in a separate tract on the
size of the sun (in refutation of the Epicurean view that it is as big
as it _looks_), he made assumptions (partly guesswork) which give for
the diameter of the sun a figure of 3,000,000 stades (39-1/4 times the
diameter of the earth), a result much nearer the truth than those
obtained by Aristarchus, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy. In elementary geometry
Posidonius gave certain definitions (notably of parallels, based on the
idea of equidistance).

Geminus of Rhodes, a pupil of Posidonius, wrote (about 70 B. C.) an
encyclopaedic work on the classification and content of mathematics,
including the history of each subject, from which Proclus and others
have preserved notable extracts. An-Nairīzī (an Arabian commentator on
Euclid) reproduces an attempt by one 'Aganis', who appears to be
Geminus, to prove the parallel-postulate.

But from this time onwards the study of higher geometry (except
sphaeric) seems to have languished, until that admirable mathematician,
Pappus, arose (towards the end of the third century A. D.) to revive
interest in the subject. From the way in which, in his great
_Collection_, Pappus thinks it necessary to describe in detail the
contents of the classical works belonging to the 'Treasury of Analysis'
we gather that by his time many of them had been lost or forgotten, and
that he aimed at nothing less than re-establishing geometry at its
former level. No one could have been better qualified for the task.
Presumably such interest as Pappus was able to arouse soon flickered
out; but his _Collection_ remains, after the original works of the great
mathematicians, the most comprehensive and valuable of all our sources,
being a handbook or guide to Greek geometry and covering practically the
whole field. Among the original things in Pappus's _Collection_ is an
enunciation which amounts to an anticipation of what is known as
Guldin's Theorem.

It remains to speak of three subjects, trigonometry (represented by
Hipparchus, Menelaus, and Ptolemy), mensuration (in Heron of
Alexandria), and algebra (Diophantus).

Although, in a sense, the beginnings of trigonometry go back to
Archimedes (_Measurement of a Circle_), Hipparchus was the first person
who can be proved to have used trigonometry systematically. Hipparchus,
the greatest astronomer of antiquity, whose observations were made
between 161 and 126 B. C., discovered the precession of the equinoxes,
calculated the mean lunar month at 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2-1/2
seconds (which differs by less than a second from the present accepted
figure!), made more correct estimates of the sizes and distances of the
sun and moon, introduced great improvements in the instruments used for
observations, and compiled a catalogue of some 850 stars; he seems to
have been the first to state the position of these stars in terms of
latitude and longitude (in relation to the ecliptic). He wrote a
treatise in twelve Books on Chords in a Circle, equivalent to a table of
trigonometrical sines. For calculating arcs in astronomy from other arcs
given by means of tables he used propositions in spherical trigonometry.

The _Sphaerica_ of Theodosius of Bithynia (written, say, 20 B. C.)
contains no trigonometry. It is otherwise with the _Sphaerica_ of
Menelaus (fl. A. D. 100) extant in Arabic; Book I of this work contains
propositions about spherical triangles corresponding to the main
propositions of Euclid about plane triangles (e.g. congruence theorems
and the proposition that in a spherical triangle the three angles are
together greater than two right angles), while Book III contains genuine
spherical trigonometry, consisting of 'Menelaus's Theorem' with
reference to the sphere and deductions therefrom.

Ptolemy's great work, the _Syntaxis_, written about A. D. 150 and
originally called Μαθηματικη συνταξις {Mathêmatikê syntaxis}, came to be
known as Μεγαλη συνταξις {Megalê syntaxis}; the Arabs made up from the
superlative μεγιστος {megistos} the word al-Majisti which became
_Almagest_.

Book I, containing the necessary preliminaries to the study of the
Ptolemaic system, gives a Table of Chords in a circle subtended by
angles at the centre of ½° increasing by half-degrees to 180°. The
circle is divided into 360 μοιραι {moirai}, parts or degrees, and the
diameter into 120 parts (τμηματα {tmêmata}); the chords are given in
terms of the latter with sexagesimal fractions (e. g. the chord
subtended by an angle of 120° is 103^{p} 53′ 23″). The Table of Chords
is equivalent to a table of the _sines_ of the halves of the angles in
the table, for, if (crd. 2 α {a}) represents the chord subtended by an
angle of 2 α {a} (crd. 2 α {a})/120 = sin α {a}. Ptolemy first gives the
minimum number of geometrical propositions required for the calculation
of the chords. The first of these finds (crd. 36°) and (crd. 72°) from
the geometry of the inscribed pentagon and decagon; the second
('Ptolemy's Theorem' about a quadrilateral in a circle) is equivalent to
the formula for sin (θ-φ) {th-ph}, the third to that for sin ½ θ {th}.
From (crd. 72°) and (crd. 60°) Ptolemy, by using these propositions
successively, deduces (crd. 1½°) and (crd. ¾°), from which he obtains
(crd. 1°) by a clever interpolation. To complete the table he only needs
his fourth proposition, which is equivalent to the formula for cos (θ+φ)
{th+ph}.

Ptolemy wrote other minor astronomical works, most of which survive in
Greek or Arabic, an _Optics_ in five Books (four Books almost complete
were translated into Latin in the twelfth century), and an attempted
proof of the parallel-postulate which is reproduced by Proclus.

Heron of Alexandria (date uncertain; he may have lived as late as the
third century A. D.) was an almost encyclopaedic writer on mathematical
and physical subjects. He aimed at practical utility rather than
theoretical completeness; hence, apart from the interesting collection
of _Definitions_ which has come down under his name, and his commentary
on Euclid which is represented only by extracts in Proclus and
an-Nairīzī, his geometry is mostly mensuration in the shape of numerical
examples worked out. As these could be indefinitely multiplied, there
was a temptation to add to them and to use Heron's name. However much of
the separate works edited by Hultsch (the _Geometrica_, _Geodaesia_,
_Stereometrica_, _Mensurae_, _Liber geëponicus_) is genuine, we must now
regard as more authoritative the genuine _Metrica_ discovered at
Constantinople in 1896 and edited by H. Schöne in 1903 (Teubner). Book I
on the measurement of areas is specially interesting for (1) its
statement of the formula used by Heron for finding approximations to
surds, (2) the elegant geometrical proof of the formula for the area of
a triangle Δ {D} = √{_s (s-a) (s-b) (s-c)}, a formula now known to be
due to Archimedes, (3) an allusion to limits to the value of π {p} found
by Archimedes and more exact than the 3-1/7 and 3-10/71 obtained in the
_Measurement of a Circle_.

Book I of the _Metrica_ calculates the areas of triangles,
quadrilaterals, the regular polygons up to the dodecagon (the areas even
of the heptagon, enneagon, and hendecagon are approximately evaluated),
the circle and a segment of it, the ellipse, a parabolic segment, and
the surfaces of a cylinder, a right cone, a sphere and a segment
thereof. Book II deals with the measurement of solids, the cylinder,
prisms, pyramids and cones and frusta thereof, the sphere and a segment
of it, the anchor-ring or tore, the five regular solids, and finally the
two special solids of Archimedes's _Method_; full use is made of all
Archimedes's results. Book III is on the division of figures. The plane
portion is much on the lines of Euclid's _Divisions_ (of figures). The
solids divided in given ratios are the sphere, the pyramid, the cone and
a frustum thereof. Incidentally Heron shows how he obtained an
approximation to the cube root of a non-cube number (100). Quadratic
equations are solved by Heron by a regular rule not unlike our method,
and the _Geometrica_ contains two interesting indeterminate problems.

Heron also wrote _Pneumatica_ (where the reader will find such things as
siphons, Heron's Fountain, penny-in-the-slot machines, a fire-engine, a
water-organ, and many arrangements employing the force of steam),
_Automaton-making_, _Belopoeïca_ (on engines of war), _Catoptrica_, and
_Mechanics_. The _Mechanics_ has been edited from the Arabic; it is
(except for considerable fragments) lost in Greek. It deals with the
puzzle of 'Aristotle's Wheel', the parallelogram of velocities,
definitions of, and problems on, the centre of gravity, the distribution
of weights between several supports, the five mechanical powers,
mechanics in daily life (queries and answers). Pappus covers much the
same ground in Book VIII of his _Collection_.

We come, lastly, to Algebra. Problems involving simple equations are
found in the Papyrus Rhind, in the _Epanthema_ of Thymaridas already
referred to, and in the arithmetical epigrams in the Greek Anthology
(Plato alludes to this class of problem in the _Laws_, 819 B, C); the
Anthology even includes two cases of indeterminate equations of the
first degree. The Pythagoreans gave general solutions in rational
numbers of the equations _x²+y²=z²_ and _2x²-y²=±1_, which are
indeterminate equations of the second degree.

The first to make systematic use of symbols in algebraical work was
Diophantus of Alexandria (fl. about A. D. 250). He used (1) a sign for
the unknown quantity, which he calls αριθμος {arithmos}, and compendia
for its powers up to the sixth; (2) a sign ([Transcriber's Note:
Symbol]) with the effect of our _minus_. The latter sign probably
represents ΛΙ {LI}, an abbreviation for the root of the word λειπειν
{leipein} (to be wanting); the sign for αριθμος {arithmos}
([Transcriber's Note: Symbol]) is most likely an abbreviation for the
letters αρ {ar}; the compendia for the powers of the unknown are Δ^Υ
{D^Y} for δυναμις {dynamis}, the square, Κ^Υ {K^Y} for κυβος {kybos},
the cube, and so on. Diophantus shows that he solved quadratic equations
by rule, like Heron. His _Arithmetica_, of which six books only (out of
thirteen) survive, contains a certain number of problems leading to
simple equations, but is mostly devoted to indeterminate or
semi-determinate analysis, mainly of the second degree. The collection
is extraordinarily varied, and the devices resorted to are highly
ingenious. The problems solved are such as the following (fractional as
well as integral solutions being admitted): 'Given a number, to find
three others such that the sum of the three, or of any pair of them,
together with the given number is a square', 'To find four numbers such
that the square of the sum _plus_ or _minus_ any one of the numbers is a
square', 'To find three numbers such that the product of any two _plus_
or _minus_ the sum of the three is a square'. Diophantus assumes as
known certain theorems about numbers which are the sums of two and three
squares respectively, and other propositions in the Theory of Numbers.
He also wrote a book _On Polygonal Numbers_ of which only a fragment
survives.

With Pappus and Diophantus the list of original writers on mathematics
comes to an end. After them came the commentators whose names only can
be mentioned here. Theon of Alexandria, the editor of Euclid, lived
towards the end of the fourth century A. D. To the fifth and sixth
centuries belong Proclus, Simplicius, and Eutocius, to whom we can never
be grateful enough for the precious fragments which they have preserved
from works now lost, and particularly the _History of Geometry_ and the
_History of Astronomy_ by Aristotle's pupil Eudemus.

Such is the story of Greek mathematical science. If anything could
enhance the marvel of it, it would be the consideration of the shortness
of the time (about 350 years) within which the Greeks, starting from the
very beginning, brought geometry to the point of performing operations
equivalent to the integral calculus and, in the realm of astronomy,
actually anticipated Copernicus.

T. L. HEATH.




NATURAL SCIENCE

_Aristotle_


There is a little essay of Goethe's called, simply, _Die Natur_. It
comes among those tracts on Natural Science in which the poet and
philosopher turned his restless mind to problems of light and colour, of
leaf and flower, of bony skull and kindred vertebra; and it sounds like
a prose-poem, a noble paean, eulogizing the love and glorifying the
study of Nature. Some twenty-five hundred years before, Anaximander had
written a book with the same title, _Concerning Nature_, περι φυσεως
{peri physeôs}: but its subject was not the same. It was a variant of
the old traditional cosmogonies. It told of how in the beginning the
earth was without form and void. It sought to trace all things back to
the Infinite, το απειρον {to apeiron}--to That which knows no bounds of
space or time but is before all worlds, and to whose bosom again all
things, all worlds, return. For Goethe Nature meant the beauty, the all
but sensuous beauty of the world; for the older philosopher it was the
mystery of the Creative Spirit.

Than Nature, in Goethe's sense, no theme is more familiar to us, for
whom many a poet tells the story and many a lesser poet echoes the
conceit; but if there be anywhere in Greek such overt praise and worship
of Nature's beauty, I cannot call it to mind. Yet in Latin the _divini
gloria ruris_ is praised and _Natura daedala rerum_ worshipped, as we
are wont to praise and worship them, for their own sweet sakes. It is
one of the ways, one of the simpler ways, in which the Roman world seems
nearer to us than the Greek: and not only seems, but is so. For compared
with the great early civilizations, Rome is modern and of the West;
while, draw her close as we may to our hearts, Greece brings along with
her a breath of the East and a whisper of remote antiquity. A Tuscan
gentleman of to-day, like a Roman gentleman of yesterday, is at heart a
husbandman, like Cato; he is _ruris amator_, like Horace; he gets him to
his little farm or vineyard (_O rus, quando te aspiciam!_), like Atticus
or the younger Pliny. As Bacon praised his garden, so does Pliny praise
his farm, with its cornfields and meadowland, vineyard and woodland,
orchard and pasture, bee-hives and flowers. That God made the country
and man made the town was (long before Cowper) a saying of Varro's; but
in Greek I can think of no such apophthegm.

As Schiller puts it, the Greeks looked on Nature with their minds more
than with their hearts, nor ever clung to her with outspoken admiration
and affection. And Humboldt, asserting (as I would do) that the
portrayal of nature, for her own sake and in all her manifold diversity,
was foreign to the Greek idea, declares that the landscape is always the
mere background of their picture, while their foreground is filled with
the affairs and actions and thoughts of men. But all the while, as in
some old Italian picture--of Domenichino or Albani or Leonardo
himself--the subordinated background is delicately traced and
exquisitely beautiful; and sometimes we come to value it in the end more
than all the rest of the composition.

Deep down in the love of Nature, whether it be of the sensual or
intellectual kind, and in the art of observation which is its outcome
and first expression, lie the roots of all our Natural Science. All the
world over these are the heritage of all men, though the inheritance be
richer or poorer here and there: they are shown forth in the lore and
wisdom of hunter and fisherman, of shepherd and husbandman, of artist
and poet. The natural history of the ancients is not enshrined in
Aristotle and Pliny. It pervades the vast literature of classical
antiquity. For all we may say of the reticence with which, the Greeks
proclaim it, it greets us nobly in Homer, it sings to us in Anacreon,
Sicilian shepherds tune their pipes to it in Theocritus: and anon in
Virgil we dream of it to the coo of doves and the sound of bees'
industrious murmur.

Not only from such great names as these do we reach the letter and the
spirit of ancient Natural History. We must go a-wandering into the
by-ways of literature. We must eke out the scientific treatises of
Aristotle and Pliny by help of the fragments which remain of the works
of such naturalists as Speusippus or Alexander the Myndian; add to the
familiar stories of Herodotus the Indian tales of Ctesias and
Megasthenes; sit with Athenaeus and his friends at the supper table,
gleaning from cook and epicure, listening to the merry idle troop of
convivial gentlemen capping verses and spinning yarns; read Xenophon's
treatise on Hunting, study the didactic poems, the Cynegetica and
Halieutica, of Oppian and of Ovid. And then again we may hark back to
the greater world of letters, wherein poet and scholar, from petty
fabulist to the great dramatists, from Homer's majesty to Lucian's wit,
share in the love of Nature and enliven the delicate background of their
story with allusions to beast and bird.

Such allusions, refined at first by art and hallowed at last by familiar
memory, lie treasured in men's hearts and enshrine themselves in our
noblest literature. Take, of a thousand crowding instances, that great
passage in the _Iliad_ where the Greek host, disembarking on the plains
of the Scamander, is likened to a migrating flock of cranes or geese or
long-necked swans, as they fly proudly over the Asian meadows and alight
screaming by Cayster's stream--and Virgil echoes more than once the
familiar lines. The crane was a well-known bird. Its lofty flight brings
it, again in Homer, to the very gates of heaven. Hesiod and Pindar speak
of its far-off cry, heard from above the clouds: and that it 'observed
the time of its coming', 'intelligent of seasons', was a proverb old in
Hesiod's day--when the crane signalled the approach of winter, and when
it bade the husbandman make ready to plough. It follows the plough, in
Theocritus, as persistently as the wolf the kid and the peasant-lad his
sweetheart. The discipline of the migrating cranes, the serried wedge of
their ranks in flight, the good order of the resting flock, are often,
and often fancifully, described. Aristotle records how they have an
appointed leader, who keeps watch by night and in flight keeps calling
to the laggards; and all this old story Euripides, the most naturalistic
of the great tragedians, puts into verse:

    The ordered host of Libyan birds avoids
    The wintry storm, obedient to the call
    Of their old leader, piping to his flock.

Lastly, Milton gathers up the spirit and the letter of these and many
another ancient allusion to the migrating cranes:

    Part loosely wing the region; part more wise,
    In common ranged in figure, wedge their way
    Intelligent of seasons, and set forth
    Their aery caravan, high over seas
    Flying, and over lands; with mutual wing
    Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane.

But the natural history of the poets is a story without an end, and in
our estimation, however brief it be, of ancient knowledge, there are
other matters to be considered, and other points of view where we must
take our stand.

When we consider the science of the Greeks, and come quickly to love it
and slowly to see how great it was, we likewise see that it was
restricted as compared with our own, curiously partial or particular in
its limitations. The practical and 'useful' sciences of chemistry,
mechanics, and engineering, which in our modern world crowd the others
to the wall, are absent altogether, or so concealed that we forget and
pass them by. Mathematics is enthroned high over all, as it is meet she
should be; and of uncontested right she occupies her throne century
after century, from Pythagoras to Proclus, from the scattered schools of
early Hellenic civilization to the rise and fall of the great
Alexandrine University. Near beside her sits, from of old, the
daughter-science of Astronomy; and these twain were worshipped by the
greatest scientific intellects of the Greeks. But though we do not hear
of them nor read of them, we must not suppose for a moment that the
practical or technical sciences were lacking in so rich and complex a
civilization. China, that most glorious of all living monuments of
Antiquity, tells us nothing of her own chemistry, but we know that it is
there. Peep into a Chinese town, walk through its narrow streets,
thronged but quiet, wherein there is neither rumbling of coaches nor
rattling of wheels, and you shall see the nearest thing on earth to what
we hear of Sybaris. To the production of those glowing silks and
delicate porcelains and fine metal-work has gone a vast store of
chemical knowledge, traditional and empirical. So was it, precisely, in
ancient Greece; and Plato knew that it was so--that the dyer, the
perfumer, and the apothecary had subtle arts, a subtle science of their
own, a science not to be belittled nor despised. We may pass here and
there by diligent search from conjecture to assurance; analyse a
pigment, an alloy or a slag; discover from an older record than the
Greeks', the chemical prescription wherewith an Egyptian princess
darkened her eyes, or study the pictured hearth, bellows, oven,
crucibles with which the followers of Tubal-Cain smelted their ore. Once
in a way, but seldom, do we meet with ancient chemistry even in Greek
literature. There is a curious passage (its text is faulty and the
translation hard) in the story of the Argonauts, where Medea concocts a
magic brew. She put divers herbs in it, herbs yielding  juices
such as safflower and alkanet, and soapwort and fleawort to give
consistency or 'body' to the lye; she put in alum and blue vitriol (or
sulphate of copper), and she put in blood. The magic brew was no more
and no less than a dye, a red or purple dye, and a prodigious deal of
chemistry had gone to the making of it. For the copper was there to
produce a 'lake' or copper-salt of the vegetable alkaloids, which
copper-lakes are among the most brilliant and most permanent of
colouring matters; the alum was there as a 'mordant'; and even the blood
was doubtless there incorporated for better reasons than superstitious
ones, in all probability for the purpose of clarifying (by means of its
coagulating albumen) the seething and turbid brew.

The 'Orphic' version of the story, in which this passage occurs, is
probably an Alexandrine compilation, and whether the ingredients of the
brew had been part of the ancient legend or were merely suggested to the
poet by the knowledge of his own day we cannot tell; in either case the
prescription is old enough, and is at least pre-Byzantine by a few
centuries. Such as it is, it does not stand alone. Other fragments of
ancient chemistry, more or less akin to it, have been gathered together;
in Galen's book on _The making of Simples_, in Pliny, in Paulus
Aegineta, and for that matter in certain Egyptian papyri (especially a
certain very famous one, still extant, of which Clement of Alexandria
speaks as a secret or 'hermetic' book), we can trace the broken and
scattered stones of a great edifice of ancient chemistry.

Nevertheless, all this weight of chemical learning figures scantily in
literature, and is conspicuously absent from our conception of the
natural genius of the Greeks. We have no reason to suppose that ancient
chemistry, or any part of it, was ever peculiarly Greek, or that this
science was the especial property of any nation whatsoever; moreover it
was a trade, or a bundle of trades, whose trade-secrets were too
precious to be revealed, and so constituted not a science but a
mystery. So has it always been with chemistry, the most cosmopolitan of
sciences, the most secret of arts. Quietly and stealthily it crept
through the world; the tinker brought it with his solder and his flux;
the African tribes who were the first workers in iron passed it on to
the great metallurgists who forged Damascan and Toledan steel.

This 'trade' of Chemistry was never a science for a Gentleman, as
philosophy and mathematics were; and Plato, greatest of philosophers,
was one of the greatest of gentlemen. Long, long afterwards, Oxford said
the same thing to Robert Boyle--that Chemistry was no proper avocation
for a gentleman; but he thought otherwise, and the 'brother of the Earl
of Cork' became the Father of scientific Chemistry.

Now I take it that in regard to biology Aristotle did much the same
thing as Boyle, breaking through a similar tradition; and herein one of
the greatest of his great services is to be found. There was a wealth of
natural history before his time; but it belonged to the farmer, the
huntsman, and the fisherman--with something over (doubtless) for the
schoolboy, the idler, and the poet. But Aristotle made it a science, and
won a place for it in Philosophy. He did for it just what Pythagoras had
done (as Proclus tells us) for mathematics in an earlier age, when he
discerned the philosophy underlying the old empirical art of 'geometry',
and made it the basis of 'a liberal education'.[5]

    [5] επι δε τουτοις Πυθαγορας την περι αυτην φιλοσοφιαν εις σχημα
    παιδειας ελευθερου μετεστησεν. {epi de toutois Pythagoras tên peri
    autên philosophian eis schêma paideias eleutherou metestêsen.}
    _Procli Comment. Euclidis lib. I, Prolegom. II_ (p. 65, ed.
    Friedlein).

The Mediterranean fisherman, like the Chinese fisherman or the Japanese,
has still, and always has had, a wide knowledge of all that pertains to
and accompanies his craft. Our Scottish fishermen have a limited
vocabulary, which scarce extends beyond the names of the few common
fishes with which the market is supplied. But at Marseilles or Genoa or
in the Levant they have names for many hundreds of species, of fish and
shell-fish and cuttle-fish and worms and corallines, and all manner of
swimming and creeping things; they know a vast deal about the habits of
their lives, far more, sometimes, than do we 'scientific men'; they are
naturalists by tradition and by trade. Neither, by the way, must we
forget the ancient medical and anatomical learning of the great
Aesculapian guild, nor the still more recondite knowledge possessed by
various priesthoods (again like their brethren of to-day in China and
Japan) of the several creatures, sacred fish, pigeons, guinea-fowl,
snakes, cuttlefish, and what not, which time out of mind they had
reared, tended, and venerated.

Of what new facts Aristotle actually discovered it is impossible to be
sure. Could it ever be proved that he discovered many, or could it even
be shown that of his own hand he discovered nothing at all, it would
affect but little our estimate of his greatness and our admiration of
his learning. He was the first of Greek philosophers and gentlemen to
see that all these things were good to know and worthy to be told. This
was his great discovery.

I have sought elsewhere to show that Aristotle spent two years, the
happiest years perhaps of all his life--a long honeymoon--by the
sea-side in the island of Mytilene, after he had married the little
Princess, and before he began the hard work of his life: before he
taught Alexander in Macedon, and long before he spoke _urbi et orbi_ in
the Lyceum. Here it was that he learned the great bulk of his natural
history, in which, wide and general as it is, the things of the sea have
from first to last a notable predominance.

I have tried to illustrate elsewhere (as many another writer has done)
something of the variety and the depth of Aristotle's knowledge of
animals--choosing an example here and there, but only drawing a little
water from an inexhaustible well.

A famous case is that of the 'molluscs', where either Aristotle's
knowledge was exceptionally minute, or where it has come down to us with
unusual completeness.

These are the cuttle fish, which have now surrendered their Aristotelian
name of 'molluscs' to that greater group which is seen to include them,
together with the shell-fish or 'ostracoderma' of Aristotle. These
cuttle-fishes are creatures that we seldom see, but in the Mediterranean
they are an article of food and many kinds are known to the fishermen.
All or wellnigh all of these many kinds were known to Aristotle. He
described their form and their anatomy, their habits, their development,
all with such faithful accuracy that what we can add to-day seems of
secondary importance. He begins with a methodical description of the
general form, tells us of the body and fins, of the eight arms with
their rows of suckers, of the abnormal position of the head. He points
out the two long arms of Sepia and of the calamaries, and their absence
in the octopus; and he tells us, what was only confirmed of late, that
with these two long arms the creature clings to the rock and sways about
like a ship at anchor. He describes the great eyes, the two big teeth
forming the beak; and he dissects the whole structure of the gut, with
its long gullet, its round crop, its stomach and the little coiled
coecal diverticulum: dissecting not only one but several species, and
noting differences that were not observed again till Cuvier re-dissected
them. He describes the funnel and its relation to the mantle-sac, and
the ink-bag, which he shows to be largest in Sepia of all others. And
here, by the way, he seems to make one of those apparent errors that, as
it happens, turn out to be justified: for he tells us that in Octopus,
unlike the rest, the funnel is on the upper side; the fact being that
when the creature lies prone upon the ground, with all its arms
outspread, the funnel-tube (instead of being flattened out beneath the
creature's prostrate body) is long enough to protrude upwards between
arms and head, and to appear on one side or other thereof, in a
position apparently the reverse of its natural one. He describes the
character of the cuttle-bone in Sepia, and of the horny pen which takes
its place in the various calamaries, and notes the lack of any similar
structure in Octopus. He dissects in both sexes the reproductive organs,
noting without exception all their essential and complicated parts; and
he had figured these in his lost volume of anatomical diagrams. He
describes the various kinds of eggs, and, with still more surprising
knowledge, shows us the little embryo cuttle-fish, with its great
yolk-sac attached, in apparent contrast to the chick's, to the little
creature's developing head.

But there is one other remarkable feature that he knew ages before it
was rediscovered, almost in our own time. In certain male cuttle-fishes,
in the breeding season, one of the arms develops in a curious fashion
into a long coiled whip-lash, and in the act of breeding may then be
transferred to the mantle-cavity of the female. Cuvier himself knew
nothing of the nature or the function of this separated arm, and indeed,
if I am not mistaken, it was he who mistook it for a parasitic worm. But
Aristotle tells us of its use and its temporary development, and of its
structure in detail, and his description tallies closely with the
accounts of the most recent writers.

A scarcely less minute account follows of the 'Malacostraca' or
crustaceans, the lobsters and the crabs, the shrimps and the prawns, and
others of their kind, a chapter to which Cuvier devoted a celebrated
essay. There be many kinds of crabs--the common kind, the big 'granny'
crabs, the little horsemen-crabs, that scamper over the sand and which
are for the most part empty, that is to say, whose respiratory cavities
are exceptionally large; and there are the freshwater crabs. There are
the little shrimps and the big hump-backed fellows, or prawns; there are
the 'crangons' or squillae; and the big lobsters and the crawfish or
'langoustes', their spiny cousins. We read about their beady eyes, which
turn every way; about their big rough antennae and the smaller,
smoother pair between; the great teeth, or mandibles; the carapace with
its projecting rostrum, the jointed abdomen with the tail-fins at the
end, and the little flaps below on which the female drops her spawn. In
more or less detail these things are severally described, and the many
limbs severally enumerated, in one kind after another. The descriptions
of the lobster and the langouste are particularly minute, and the
comparison or contrast between the two is drawn with elaborate
precision. In the former, besides other differences between male and
female, the female is said to have the 'first foot' (or leg) bifurcate,
while in the male it is undivided. It seems a trifling matter, but it is
true; it is so small a point that I searched long before at last I found
mention made of it in a German monograph. The puzzling thing is that it
is (as we should say) the last and not the first leg which is so
distinguished; but after all, it is only a convention of our own to
count the limbs from before backwards. To inspect a lobster's limbs, we
lay it on its back (as Aristotle did), and see the legs overlapping,
each hinder one above the one before; the hindmost is the first we see,
and the one we must first lift up to inspect the others.

Aristotle's account of fishes is a prodigious history of habits, food,
migrations, modes of capture, times and ways of spawning, and anatomical
details; but it is not here that we can elucidate or even illustrate
this astonishing Ichthyology. It is not always easy to understand--but
the obstacle lies often, I take it, in our own ignorance. The
identification of species is not always plain, for here as elsewhere
Aristotle did not reckon with a time or place where the familiar words
of Greek should be unknown or their homely significance forgotten. Among
the great host of fish-names there are several referring, somehow or
other, to the Grey Mullet, which puzzle both naturalist and
lexicographer. A young officer told me the other day how he had watched
an Arab fisherman emptying out his creel of Grey Mullet on some Syrian
beach, and the Arab gave four if not five names to as many different
kinds, betwixt which my friend could see no difference whatsoever. Had
my friend been an ichthyologist he would doubtless have noticed that one
had eyelids and the others none; that one had little brushes on its
lips, another a small but wide-open slit under the jaw, another a yellow
spot on its gill-covers, and so on. The Mullets are a difficult group,
but Aristotle, like the Arab fisherman, evidently recognized their fine
distinctions and employed the appropriate names. Again, Aristotle speaks
of a certain nest-building fish, the 'phycis', and regarding this Cuvier
fell into error (where once upon a time I followed him). In Cuvier's
time there was but one nest-building fish known such as to suit,
apparently, the passage, namely the little black goby; but after
Cuvier's day the nest-building habits of the 'wrasses' became known to
naturalists, as they had doubtless been known ages before to the
fishermen--and to Aristotle.

Like almost every other little point on which we happen to touch, we
might make this one the starting-point (here comes in the delight and
fascination of the interpreter's task!) for other stories.

Speusippus, Plato's successor in the Academy, was both philosopher and
naturalist, and we may take it, if we please, that his leaning towards
biology, and the biological trend which at this time became more and
more marked in Athenian philosophy, were not unconnected with the great
impulse which Aristotle had given. However this may be, Speusippus wrote
a book περι Ὁμοιων {peri Homoiôn} 'Concerning Resemblances'; and this,
of which we only possess a few fragmentary sentences, must have been a
very curious and an interesting book. He mentions, among other similar
cases, that our little fish _phycis_ has a close outward semblance to
the sea-perch; and this is enough to clinch the proof that Aristotle's
nest-building fish was not a goby but a wrasse. The whole purport of
Speusippus's book seems to have been to discuss how, or why, with all
Nature's apparently infinite variety, certain animals have a singularly
close resemblance to certain others, though they be quite distinct in
kind. It is a problem which perplexes us still, when we are astonished
and even deluded by the likeness between a wasp and a hover-fly, a
merlin and a cuckoo. In certain extreme cases we call it 'mimicry', and
invoke hypotheses to account for this 'mimetic' resemblance; and those
of us who reject these hypotheses must fain take refuge in others, as
far-reaching in their way. This at least we know, that Speusippus seized
upon a real problem of biology, of lasting interest and even of
fundamental importance.

To come back to Aristotle and his fishes, let us glance at one little
point more. The reproduction of the eel is an ancient puzzle, which has
found its full solution only in our own day. While the salmon, for
instance, comes up the river to breed and goes down again to the sea,
the eel goes down to the ocean to spawn, and the old eels come back no
more but perish in the great waters. The eel's egg develops into a
little flattened, transparent fish, altogether different in outward
appearance from an eel, which turns afterwards into a young eel or
'elver'; and Professor Grassi, who had a big share in elucidating the
whole matter, tells us the curious fact that he found the Sicilian
fishermen well acquainted with the little transparent larva (the
_Leptocephalus_ of modern naturalists), that they knew well what it was,
and that they had a name for it--_Casentula_. Now Aristotle, in a
passage which I think has been much misunderstood (and which we must
admit to be in part erroneous), tells us that the eel develops from what
he calls γης εντερα {gês entera}, a word which we translate, literally,
the 'guts of the earth', and which commentators interpret as
'earthworms'! But in Sicilian Doric, γης εντερα {gês entera} would at
once become γας εντερα {gas entera}; and between 'Gasentera' and the
modern Sicilian 'Casentula' there is scarce a hairbreadth's difference.
So we may be permitted to suppose that here again Aristotle was
singularly and accurately informed; and that he knew by sight and name
the little larva of the eel, whose discovery and identification is one
of the modest triumphs of recent investigation.

Aristotle's many pages on fishes are delightful reading. The anatomist
may read of such recondite matters as the _placenta vitellina_ of the
smooth dog-fish, whereby the viviparous embryo is nourished within the
womb, after a fashion analogous to that of mammalian embryology--a
phenomenon brought to light anew by Johannes Müller, and which excited
him to enthusiastic admiration of Aristotle's minute and faithful
anatomy. Again we may read of the periodic migration of the tunnies, of
the great net or 'madrague' in which they are captured, and of the
watchmen, the θυννοσκοποι {thynnoskopoi}, the 'hooers' of our ancient
Cornish fishery, who give warning from tower or headland of the
approaching shoal. The student may learn what manner of fish it was (the
great Eagle-ray) with whose barbed fin-spine--most primitive of
spear-heads--Ulysses was slain; and again, he may learn not a little
about that ναρκη {narkê}, or torpedo, to which Meno compared his master
Socrates, in a somewhat ambiguous compliment.

In rambling fashion Aristotle has a deal to tell us about insects, and
he has left us a sort of treatise on the whole natural history of the
bee. He knew the several inmates of the hive, though like others of his
day (save, perhaps, only Xenophon), and like Shakespeare too, he took
the queen-bee for a king. He describes the building of the comb, the
laying of the eggs, the provision of the larvae with food. He discusses
the various qualities of honey and the flowers from which these are
drawn. He is learned in the diseases and the enemies of bees. He tells
us many curious things about the economy of the hive and the arts of the
bee-keeper, some of which things have a very modern and familiar look
about them: for instance, the use of a net or screen to keep out the
drones, a net so nicely contrived that these sturdy fellows are just
kept out, while the leaner, slenderer workers are just let in. But it
would be a long, long story to tell of Aristotle's knowledge of the bee,
and to compare it with what is, haply, the still deeper skill and
learning of that master of bee-craft, Virgil.

Then, having perfect freedom to go whithersoever we chose and to follow
the bees across the boundless fields of ancient literature, we might
read of the wild bees and of their honey out of a rock, and of the
hive-bees too, in Homer; follow them to their first legendary home in
Crete, where the infant Jupiter was fed on honey--as a baby's lips are
touched with it even unto this day; trace their association with
Proserpine and her mother, or their subtler connexion with Ephesian
Diana; find in the poets, from Hesiod to the later Anthology, a hundred
sweet references--to the bee-tree in the oak-wood, to the flowery hill
Hymettus. Perhaps, at last, we might even happen on the place where
Origen seems so strangely to foreshadow Shakespeare--speaking of the
king of the bees with his retinue of courtiers (his officers of sorts),
the relays of workmen (the poor mechanic porters crowding in), the
punishment of the idle (where some, like magistrates, correct at home),
the wars, the vanquished, and the plunder (which pillage they with merry
march bring home To the tent-royal of their Emperor).

Go back to Aristotle, and we may listen to him again while he talks of
many other kindred insects: of the humble-bee and its kind, of the
mason-bee with its hard round nest of clay, of the robber-bees, and of
the various wasps and hornets; or (still more curiously and
unexpectedly) of the hunter-wasp or 'ichneumon', and how it kills the
spider, carries it home to its nest, and lays its eggs in its poor body,
that the little wasp-grubs may afterwards be fed. Or again of the great
wasps which he calls Anthrenae, and how they chase the big flies, and
cut off their heads, and fly away with the rest of the carcass--all
agreeing to the very letter with what Henri Fabre tells us of a certain
large wasp of Southern Europe, and how it captures the big 'taons' or
horse-flies: 'Pour donner le coup de grâce à leurs Taons mal sacrifiés,
et se débattants encore entre les pattes du ravisseur, j'ai vu des
Bembex mâchonner la tête et le thorax des victimes.' Verily, there is
nothing new under the sun.

With the metamorphoses of various insects Aristotle was well acquainted.
He knew how the house-fly passes its early stages in a dung-hill, and
how the grubs of the big horse-flies and Tabanids live in decayed wood;
how certain little flies or gnats are engendered (as he calls it) in the
slime of vinegar. He relates with great care and accuracy the
life-history of the common gnat, from its aquatic larva, the little red
'blood-worm' of our pools; he describes them wriggling about like tiny
bits of red weed, in the water of some half-empty well; and he explains,
finally, the change by which they become stiff and motionless and hard,
until a husk breaks away and the little gnat is seen sitting upon it;
and by and by the sun's heat or a puff of wind starts it off, and away
it flies.

Some of these stories are indeed remarkable, for the events related are
more or less hidden and obscure; and so, with all this knowledge at
hand, it is not a little strange that Aristotle has very little indeed
to tell us about the far more obvious phenomena of the life-history of
the butterfly, and of the several kinds of butterflies and moths. He
does tell us briefly that the butterfly comes from a caterpillar, which
lives on cabbage-leaves and feeds voraciously, then turns into a
chrysalis and eats no more, nor has it a mouth to eat withal; it is hard
and, as it were, dead, but yet it moves and wriggles when you touch it,
and after a while the husk bursts and out comes the butterfly. The
account is good enough, so far as it goes, but nevertheless Aristotle
shows no affection for the butterfly, does not linger and dally over it,
tells no stories about it. This is all of a piece with the rest of
Greek literature, and poetry in particular, where allusions to the
butterfly are scanty and rare. I think the Greeks found something
ominous or uncanny, something not to be lightly spoken of, in that all
but disembodied spirit which we call a butterfly, and they called by the
name of ψυχη {psychê}, the Soul. They had a curious name (νεκυδαλλος
{nekydallos}) for the pupa. It sounds like a 'little corpse' (νεκυς
{nekys}); and like a little corpse within its shroud or coffin the pupa
sleeps in its cocoon. A late poet describes the butterfly 'coming back
from the grave to the light of day'; and certain of the Fathers of the
Church, St. Basil in particular, point the moral accordingly, and draw a
doubtless time-honoured allegory of the Resurrection and the Life from
the grub which is not dead but sleepeth, and the butterfly which (as it
were) is raised in glory.

Of one large moth, Aristotle gives us an account which has been a puzzle
to many. This begins as a great grub or caterpillar, with (as it were)
horns; and, growing by easy stages, it spins at length a cocoon. There
is a class of women who unwind and reel off the cocoons, and afterwards
weave a fabric with the thread; and a certain woman of Cos is credited
with the invention of this fabric. This is, at first sight, a plain and
straightforward description of the silkworm; but we know that it was not
till long afterwards, nearly a thousand years after, in Justinian's
reign, that the silkworm and the mulberry-tree which is its food were
brought out of the East into Byzantine Greece. We learn something of
this Coan silkworm from Pliny, who tells us that it lived on the ash and
oak and cypress tree; and from Clement of Alexandria and other of the
Fathers we glean a little more--for instance, that the larva was covered
with thick-set hairs, and that the cocoon was of a loose material
something like a spider's web. All this agrees in every particular with
a certain large moth (_Lasiocampa otus_), which spins a rough cocoon not
unlike that of our Emperor moth, and lives in south-eastern Europe,
feeding on the cypress and the oak. Many other silkworms besides the
true or common one are still employed, worms which yield the Tussore
silks of India and other kindred silks in Japan; and so likewise was
this rough silky fabric spun and woven in Hellas, until in course of
time it was surpassed and superseded by the finer produce of the 'Seric
worm', and the older industry died out and was utterly forgotten.

Ere we leave the subject of insects let us linger a moment over one
which the Greeks loved, and loved most of all. When as schoolboys we
first began to read our Thucydides, we met in the very beginning with
the story of how rich Athenians wore Golden Grasshoppers (as the
schoolmaster calls them) in their hair. These golden ornaments were, of
course, no common grasshoppers, but the little Cicadas, whose sharp
chirrup seemed delightful music to the Greeks. It is unpleasant to our
ears, as Browning found it; but in a multitude of Greek poets, in
Alcaeus and Anacreon and all through the whole Anthology, we hear its
praise. We have it, for instance, in the _Birds_:

    Though the hot sun be shining in the sky
    In the deep flowery meadow-grass I lie:
    To listen to the shrill melodious tune
    Of crickets, thrilled to ecstasy at noon.

Of this familiar and beloved insect Aristotle gives a copious account.
He describes two separate species, which we still recognize easily; a
larger one and the better singer, the other smaller and the first to
come and last to go with the summer season. He recognized the curious
vocal organ, or vibratory drum, at the cicada's waist, and saw that some
cicadas possessed it and others not; and he knew, as the poets also
knew, that it was the males who sang, while their wives listened and
were silent. He tells how the cicada is absent from treeless countries,
as, for instance, from Cyrene (and why, I wonder, does he go all the way
to Cyrene for his illustration?), neither is it heard in deep and
sunless woods; but in the olive-groves you hear it at its best, for an
olive-grove is sparse and the sun comes through. Then he tells us
briefly, but with remarkable accuracy, the story of the creature's life:
how the female, with her long ovipositor, lays her eggs deep down in
dead, hollow twigs, such as the canes on which the vines are propped;
how the brood, when they escape from the egg, burrow underground; how
later on they emerge, especially in rainy weather, when the rains have
softened the soil; how then the larva changes into another form, the
so-called 'nymph'; and how at last, when summer comes, the skin of the
nymph breaks and the perfect insect issues forth, changes colour, and
begins to sing. In Aristophanes, in Theocritus, in Lucretius, Virgil,
Martial, and in the Anthology, we may gather up a host of poetical
allusions to the natural history thus simply epitomized.

The Book about Animals, the _Historia Animalium_ as we say, from which I
have quoted these few examples of Aristotle's store of information, may
be taken to represent the first necessary stage of scientific inquiry.
There is a kind of _manual_ philosophy (as old Lord Monboddo called it)
which investigates facts which escape the vulgar, and may be called the
_anecdotes_ or _secret history_ of nature. In this fascinating pursuit
Gilbert White excelled, and John Ray and many another--the whole
brotherhood of simple naturalists. But such accumulated knowledge of
facts is but the foundation of a philosophy; and 'nothing deserves the
name of philosophy, except what explains the causes and principles of
things'. Aristotle would have done much had he merely shown (as Gilbert
White showed to the country gentlemen of his day) that the minute
observation of nature was something worth the scholar and the
gentleman's while; but, far more than this, he made a Science of natural
knowledge, and set it once for all within the realm of Philosophy. He
set it side by side with the more ancient science of Astronomy, which
for many hundred years in Egypt and the East, and for some few centuries
in Hellas, had occupied the mind of philosophers and the attention of
educated men. I have quoted before a great sentence in which he explains
his purpose, and makes excuse for his temerity. 'The glory, doubtless,
of the heavenly bodies fills us with more delight than the contemplation
of these lowly things; for the sun and stars are born not, neither do
they decay, but are eternal and divine. But the heavens are high and
afar off, and of celestial things the knowledge that our senses give us
is scanty and dim. The living creatures, on the other hand, are at our
door, and if we so desire it we may gain ample and certain knowledge of
each and all. We take pleasure in the beauty of a statue, shall not then
the living fill us with delight; and all the more if in the spirit of
philosophy we search for causes and recognize the evidences of design.
Then will nature's purpose and her deep-seated laws be everywhere
revealed, all tending in her multitudinous work to one form or another
of the Beautiful.'

Aristotle's voluminous writings have come down to us through many grave
vicissitudes. The greatest of them all are happily intact, or very
nearly so; but some are lost and others have suffered disorder and
corruption. The work known as the 'Parts of Animals' opens (as our text
has it) with a chapter which seems meant for a general exordium to the
whole series of biological treatises; and I know no chapter in all
Aristotle's books which better shows (in plainer English or easier
Greek) the master-hand of the great Teacher and Philosopher. He begins
by telling us (it has ever since been a common saying) that every
science, every branch of knowledge, admits of two sorts of
proficiency--that which may properly be termed scientific knowledge, and
that which is within the reach of ordinary educated men. He proceeds to
discuss the 'method' of scientific inquiry, whether we should begin with
the specific and proceed to the general, or whether we are to deal first
with common or generical characters and thereafterward with special
peculiarities. Are we entitled to treat of animals, as is done in
mathematical astronomy, by dealing first with facts or phenomena and
then proceeding to discover and relate their several causes? At once
this leads to a brief discussion (elaborated elsewhere) of the two great
Causes, or aspects of cause--the final cause and the 'moving' or
efficient cause--the _reason why_ or the purpose for which, and the
antecedent cause which, _of necessity_, brings a thing to be such as it
is. Here is one of the great crucial questions of philosophy, and
Aristotle's leaning to the side of the Final Cause has been a dominant
influence upon the minds of men throughout the whole history of
learning. Empedocles had taken another view: he held that the rain comes
when it listeth, or 'of necessity'; that we have no right to suppose it
comes to make the corn grow in spring, any more than to spoil the autumn
sheaves: that the teeth grow by the operation of some natural (or
physical) law, and that their apparent and undoubted fitness for cutting
and grinding is not purposeful but coincident; that the backbone is
divided into vertebrae because of the antecedent forces, or flexions,
which act upon it in the womb. And Empedocles proceeds to the great
evolutionary deduction, the clear prevision of Darwin's philosophy, that
fit and unfit arise alike, but that what is fit to survive does survive
and what is unfit perishes.

The story is far too long and the theme involved too grave and difficult
for treatment here. But I would venture to suggest that Aristotle
inclined to slur over the physical and lean the more to the final cause,
for this simple reason (whatever other reasons there may be), that he
was a better biologist than a physicist: that he lacked somewhat the
mathematical turn of mind which was intrinsic to the older schools of
philosophy. For better for worse the course he took, the choice he made,
was of incalculable import, and had power for centuries to guide (dare
we say, to bias) the teaching of the schools, the progress of learning,
and the innermost beliefs of men.

In this one short but pregnant chapter of Aristotle's there is far more
than we can hope even to epitomize. He has much to say in it of
'classification', an important matter indeed, and he discusses it as a
great logician should, in all its rigour. Many commentators have sought
for Aristotle's 'classification of animals'; for my part I have never
found it, and, in our sense of the word, I am certain it is not there.
An unbending, unchanging classification of animals would have been
something foreign to all his logic; it is all very well, it becomes
practically necessary, when we have to arrange our animals on the
shelves of a museum or in the arid pages of a 'systematic' catalogue;
and it takes a new complexion when, or if, we can attain to a real or
historical classification, following lines of actual descent and based
on proven facts of historical evolution. But Aristotle (as it seems to
me) neither was bound to a museum catalogue nor indulged in visions
either of a complete _scala naturae_ or of an hypothetical phylogeny. He
classified animals as he found them; and, as a logician, he had a
dichotomy for every difference which presented itself to his mind. At
one time he divided animals into those with blood and those without, at
another into the air-breathers and the water-breathers; into the wild
and the tame, the social and the solitary, and so on in endless ways
besides. At the same time he had a quick eye for the great natural
groups, such 'genera' (as he called them) as Fish or Bird, Insect or
Mollusc. So it comes to pass that, while he fashioned no hard and fast
scheme of classification, and would undoubtedly (I hold) have thought it
vain to do so, the threads of his several partial or temporary
classifications come together after all, though in a somewhat hazy
pattern, yet in a very beautiful and coherent parti- web. And
though his order is not always our order, yet a certain exquisite
orderliness is of the very essence of his thought and style. It is the
characteristic which Molière hits upon in _Les Femmes savantes_,--'Je
m'attache _pour l'ordre_ au péripatétisme'.

Before he finishes the great chapter of which we have begun to speak he
indicates that there are more ways than one of relating, or
classifying, our facts; that, for instance, it may be equally proper and
necessary to deal now with the animals and their several parts or
properties, and at another time with the parts or properties as such,
explaining and illustrating them in turn by the several animals which
display or possess them. The 'Parts of Animals' is, then, a corollary, a
necessary corollary, to the more anecdotal _Historia Animalium_. And yet
again, there is a third alternative--to discuss the great functions or
actions or potentialities of the organism, as it were first of all in
the abstract, and then to correlate them with the parts which in this or
that creature are provided and are 'designed' to effect them. This
involves the conception and the writing of separate physiological
treatises on such themes as Respiration, Locomotion, on Sleeping and
Waking, and lastly (and in some respects the most ambitious, most
erudite, and most astonishing of them all) the great account of the
Generation of Animals.

So the whole range, we might say the whole conceivable range, of
biological science is sketched out, and the greater part of the great
canvas is painted in. But to bring it into touch with human life, and to
make good its claim to the high places of philosophy, we must go yet
farther and study Life itself, and what men call the Soul. So grows the
great conception. We begin with trivial anecdote, with the things that
fisherman, huntsman, peasant know; the sciences of zoology, anatomy,
physiology take shape before our very eyes; and by evening we sit humbly
at the feet of the great teacher of Life itself, the historian of the
Soul. It is not for us to attempt to show that even here the story does
not end, but the highest chapters of philosophy begin. Then, when we
remember that this short narrative of ours is but the faintest
adumbration of one side only of the philosopher's many-sided task and
enterprise, we begin to rise towards a comprehension of Roger Bacon's
saying, that 'although Aristotle did not arrive at the end of knowledge,
he set in order all parts of philosophy'. In the same spirit a modern
critic declares: 'Il n'a seulement défini et constitué chacune des
parties de la science; il en a de plus montré le lien et l'unité'.

Aristotle, like Shakespeare, is full of old saws, tags of wisdom, jewels
five words long. Here is such a one, good for teacher and pupil
alike--Δει πιστευειν τον μανθανοντα {Dei pisteuein ton manthanonta}. It
tells us that the road to Learning lies through Faith; and it means that
to be a scholar one should have a heart as well as brains.

By reason partly of extraneous interpolation, but doubtless also through
a lingering credulity from which even philosophers are not immune, we
find in Aristotle many a strange story. The goats that breathe through
their ears, the vulture impregnated by the wind, the eagle that dies of
hunger, the stag caught by music, the salamander which walks through
fire, the unicorn, the mantichore, are but a few of the 'Vulgar Errors'
or 'Received Tenents' (as Sir Thomas Browne has it) which are
perpetuated, not originated, in the _Historia Animalium_. Some of them
come, through Persia, from the farther East: and others (we meet with
them once more in Horapollo the Egyptian priest) are but the exoteric or
allegorical expression of the arcana of ancient Egyptian religion.

So it comes to pass that for two thousand years and throughout all lands
men have come to Aristotle, and found in him information and
instruction--that which they desired. Arab and Moor and Syrian and Jew
treasured his books while the western world sat in darkness; the great
centuries of Scholasticism hung upon his words; the oldest of our
Universities, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, were based upon his teaching, yea,
all but established for his study. Where he has been, there, seen or
unseen, his influence remains; even the Moor and the Arab find in him,
to this day, a teacher after their own hearts: a teacher of eternal
verities, telling of sleep and dreams, of youth and age, of life and
death, of generation and corruption, of growth and of decay: a guide to
the book of Nature, a revealer of the Spirit, a prophet of the works of
God.

The purpose of these little essays, I have been told (though I had half
forgotten it), is to help though ever so little to defend and justify
the study of the language and the vast literature of Greece. It is a
task for which I am unfitted and unprepared. When Oliver Goldsmith
proposed to teach Greek at Leyden, where he 'had been told it was a
desideratum', the Principal of that celebrated University met him (as we
all know) with weighty objections. 'I never learned Greek', said the
Principal, 'and I don't find that I have ever missed it. I have had a
Doctor's cap and gown without Greek. I have ten thousand florins a year
without Greek; and, in short', continued he, 'as I don't know Greek, I
do not believe there is any good in it.'--I have heard or read the story
again and again, for is it not written in the _Vicar of Wakefield_? But
I never heard that any man, not Goldsmith himself, attempted to confute
the argument. I agree for the most part with the Principal, and can see
clearly that all the Greek that Goldsmith knew, and all the Greek in all
the world, would have meant nothing and done nothing for him. But there
is and will be many another who finds in Greek wisdom and sweet Hellenic
speech something which he needs must have, and lacking which he would be
poor indeed: something which is as a staff in his hand, a light upon his
path, a lantern to his feet.

In this workaday world we may still easily possess ourselves, as Gibbon
says the subjects of the Byzantine Throne, even in their lowest
servitude and depression, were still possessed, 'of a golden key that
could unlock the treasures of antiquity, of a musical and prolific
language that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the
abstractions of philosophy'.

Our very lives seem prolonged by the recollection of antiquity; for, as
Cicero says, not to know what has been transacted in former times is to
continue always a child. I borrow the citation from Dr. Johnson, who
reminds us also of a saying of Aristotle himself, that as students we
ought first to examine and understand what has been written by the
ancients, and then cast our eyes round upon the world. And Johnson
prefaces both quotations by another:

        Tibi res antiquae laudis et artis
    ingredior, sanctos ausus recludere fontes.

But now I, who have dared to draw my tiny draft from Aristotle's great
well, seem after all to be seeking an excuse, seeking it in example and
precept. Precept, at least, I know to be of no avail. My father spent
all the many days of his life in the study of Greek; you might suppose
it was for Wisdom's sake,--but my father was a modest man. The fact is,
he did it for a simpler reason still, a very curious reason, to be
whispered rather than told: he did it _for love_.

Nigh forty years ago, I first stepped out on the east-windy streets of a
certain lean and hungry town (lean, I mean, as regards scholarship)
where it was to be my lot to spend thereafter many and many a year. And
the very first thing I saw there was an inscription over a very humble
doorway, '_Hic mecum habitant Dante, Cervantes, Molière_'. It was the
home of a poor schoolmaster, who as a teacher of languages eked out the
scanty profits of his school. I was not a little comforted by the
announcement. So the poor scholar, looking on the ragged regiment of his
few books, is helped, consoled, exalted by the reflection: _Hic mecum
habitant ... Homerus, Plato, Aristoteles_. And were one in a moment of
inadvertence to inquire of him why he occupied himself with Greek, he
might perchance stammer (like Dominie Sampson) an almost inarticulate
reply; but more probably he would be stricken speechless by the enormous
outrage of the request, and the reason of his devotion would be hidden
from the questioner for ever.

D'ARCY WENTWORTH THOMPSON.




BIOLOGY


_Before Aristotle_

What is science? It is a question that cannot be answered easily, nor
perhaps answered at all. None of the definitions seem to cover the field
exactly; they are either too wide or too narrow. But we can see science
in its growth and we can say that being a process it can exist only as
growth. Where does the science of biology begin? Again we cannot say,
but we can watch its evolution and its progress. Among the Greeks the
accurate observation of living forms, which is at least one of the
essentials of biological science, goes back very far. The word
_Biology_, used in our sense, would, it is true, have been an
impossibility among them, for _bios_ refers to the life of man and could
not be applied, except in a strained or metaphorical sense, to that of
other living things.[6] But the _ideas_ we associate with the word are
clearly developed in Greek philosophy and the foundations of biology are
of great antiquity.

    [6] The word _Biology_ was introduced by Gottfried Reinhold
    Treviranus (1776-1837) in his _Biologie oder die Philosophie der
    lebenden Natur_, 6 vols., Göttingen, 1802-22, and was adopted by
    J.-B. de Lamarck (1744-1829) in his _Hydrogéologie_, Paris, 1802. It
    is probable that the first English use of the word in its modern
    sense is by Sir William Lawrence (1783-1867) in his work _On the
    Physiology, Zoology, and Natural History of Man_, London, 1819;
    there are earlier English uses of the word, however, contrasted with
    _biography_.

The Greek people had many roots, racial, cultural, and spiritual, and
from them all they inherited various powers and qualities and derived
various ideas and traditions. The most suggestive source for our purpose
is that of the Minoan race whom they dispossessed and whose lands they
occupied. That highly gifted people exhibited in all stages of its
development a marvellous power of graphically representing animal forms,
of which the famous Cretan friezes, Vaphio cups (Fig. 5), and Mycenean
lions provide well-known examples. It is difficult not to believe that
the Minoan element, entering into the mosaic of peoples that we call the
Greeks, was in part at least responsible for the like graphic power
developed in the Hellenic world, though little contact has yet been
demonstrated between Minoan and archaic Greek Art.

For the earliest biological achievements of Greek peoples we have to
rely largely on information gleaned from artistic remains. It is true
that we have a few fragments of the works of both Ionian and
Italo-Sicilian philosophers, and in them we read of theoretical
speculation as to the nature of life and of the soul, and we can thus
form some idea of the first attempts of such workers as Alcmaeon of
Croton (_c._ 500 B. C.) to lay bare the structure of animals by
dissection.[7] The pharmacopœia also of some of the earliest works of
the Hippocratic collection betrays considerable knowledge of both native
and foreign plants.[8] Moreover, scattered through the pages of
Herodotus and other early writers is a good deal of casual information
concerning animals and plants, though such material is second-hand and
gives us little information concerning the habit of exact observation
that is the necessary basis of science.

    [7] The remains of Alcmaeon are given in H. Diel's _Die Fragmente
    der Vorsokratiker_, Berlin, 1903, p. 103. Alcmaeon is considered in
    the companion chapter on _Greek Medicine_.

    [8] Especially the περι γυναικειης φυσιος {peri gynaikeiês physios},
    _On the nature of woman_, and the περι γυναικειων {peri gynaikeiôn},
    _On the diseases of women_.

Something more is, however, revealed by early Greek Art. We are in
possession of a series of vases of the seventh and sixth centuries
before the Christian era showing a closeness of observation of animal
forms that tells of a people awake to the study of nature. We have thus
portrayed for us a number of animals--plants seldom or never appear--and
among the best rendered are wild creatures: we see antelopes quietly
feeding or startled at a sound, birds flying or picking worms from the
ground, fallow deer forcing their way through thickets, browsing
peacefully, or galloping away, boars facing the hounds and dogs chasing
hares, wild cattle forming their defensive circle, hawks seizing their
prey. Many of these exhibit minutely accurate observation. The very
direction of the hairs on the animals' coats has sometimes been closely
studied, and often the muscles are well rendered. In some cases even the
dentition has been found accurately portrayed, as in a sixth-century
representation on an Ionian vase of a lioness--an animal then very rare
on the Eastern Mediterranean littoral, but still known in Babylonia,
Syria, and Asia Minor. The details of the work show that the artist must
have examined the animal in captivity (Figs. 1 and 2).

[Illustration: FIG. 1. Lioness and young from an Ionian vase of the
sixth century B. C. found at Caere in Southern Etruria (Louvre, Salle E,
No. 298), from _Le Dessin des Animaux en Grèce d'après les vases
peints_, by J. Morin, Paris (Renouard), 1911. The animal is drawing
itself up to attack its hunters. The scanty mane, the form of the paws,
the udders, and the dentition are all heavily though accurately
represented.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2. A, Jaw bones of lion; B, head of lioness from
Caere vase (Fig. 1), after Morin. Note the careful way in which the
artist has distinguished the molar from the cutting teeth.]

Animal paintings of this order are found scattered over the Greek world
with special centres or schools in such places as Cyprus, Boeotia, or
Chalcis. The very name for a painter in Greek, _zoographos_, recalls the
attention paid to living forms. By the fifth century, in painting them
as in other departments of Art, the supremacy of Attica had asserted
itself, and there are many beautiful Attic vase-paintings of animals to
place by the side of the magnificent horses' heads of the Parthenon
(Fig. 6). In Attica, too, was early developed a characteristic and
closely accurate type of representation of marine forms, and this
attained a wider vogue in Southern Italy in the fourth century. From the
latter period a number of dishes and vases have come down to us bearing
a large variety of fish forms, portrayed with an exactness that is
interesting in view of the attention to marine creatures in the
surviving literature of Aristotelian origin (Fig. 3).

[Illustration: FIG. 3. Paintings of fish on plates. Italo-Greek work of
the fourth century B. C. From Morin.

  A. Sargus vulgaris.
  B. Crenilabrus mediterraneus.
  C. Uranoscopus scaber?]

These artistic products are more than a mere reflex of the daily life
of the people. The habits and positions of animals are observed by the
hunter, as are the forms and colours of fish by the fisherman; but the
methods of huntsman and fisher do not account for the accurate portrayal
of a lion's dentition, the correct numbering of a fish's scales or the
close study of the lie of the feathers on the head, and the pads on the
feet, of a bird of prey (Fig. 4). With observations such as these we are
in the presence of something worthy of the name _Biology_. Though but
little literature on that topic earlier than the writings of Aristotle
has come down to us, yet both the character of his writings and such
paintings and pictures as these, suggest the existence of a strong
interest and a wide literature, biological in the modern sense,
antecedent to the fourth century.

[Illustration: FIG. 4. Head and talons of the Sea-eagle, _Haliaëtus
albicilla_:

  A, From an Ionic vase of the sixth century B. C.
  B, Drawn from the object.

From Morin.]

Greek science, however, exhibits throughout its history a peculiar
characteristic differentiating it from the modern scientific standpoint.
Most of the work of the Greek scientist was done in relation to man.
Nature interested him mainly in relation to himself. The Greek
scientific and philosophic world was an anthropocentric world, and this
comes out in the overwhelming mass of medical as distinct from
biological writings that have come down to us. Such, too, is the
sentiment expressed by the poets in their descriptions of the animal
creation:

    Many wonders there be, but naught more wondrous than man:

       *       *       *       *       *

    The light-witted birds of the air, the beasts of the weald and the wood
    He traps with his woven snare, and the brood of the briny flood.
    Master of cunning he: the savage bull, and the hart
    Who roams the mountain free, are tamed by his infinite art.
    And the shaggy rough-maned steed is broken to bear the bit.

    Sophocles, _Antigone_, verses 342 ff.

    (Translation of F. Storr.)

It is thus not surprising that our first systematic treatment of animals
is in a practical medical work, the περι διαιτης {peri diaitês}, _On
diet_, of the Hippocratic Collection. This very peculiar treatise dates
from the later part of the fifth century. It is strongly under the
influence of Heracleitus (_c._ 540-475) and contains many points of view
which reappear in later philosophy. All animals, according to it, are
formed of fire and water, nothing is born and nothing dies, but there is
a perpetual and eternal revolution of things, so that change itself is
the only reality. Man's nature is but a parallel to that of the
universal nature, and the arts of man are but an imitation or reflex of
the natural arts or, again, of the bodily functions. The soul, a mixture
of water and fire, consumes itself in infancy and old age, and increases
during adult life. Here, too, we meet with that singular doctrine, not
without bearing on the course of later biological thought, that in the
foetus all parts are formed simultaneously. On the proportion of fire
and water in the body all depends, sex, temper, temperament, intellect.
Such speculative ideas separate this book from the sober method of the
more typical Hippocratic medical works with which indeed it has little
in common.

After having discussed these theoretical matters the work turns to its
own practical concerns, and in the course of setting out the natures of
foods gives in effect a rough classification of animals. These are set
forth in groups, and from among the larger groups only the reptiles and
insects are missing. The list has been described, perhaps hardly with
justification, as the _Coan classificatory system_. We have here,
indeed, no _system_ in the sense in which that word is now applied to
the animal kingdom, but we have yet some sort of definite arrangement of
animals according to their supposed natures. The passage opens with
mammals, which are divided into domesticated and wild, the latter being
mentioned in order according to size, next follow the land-birds, then
the water-fowl, and then the fishes. These fish are divided into (1) the
haunters of the shore, (2) the free-swimming forms, (3) the
cartilaginous fishes or Selachii, which are not so named but are placed
together, (4) the mud-loving forms, and (5) the fresh-water fish.
Finally come invertebrates arranged in some sort of order according to
their structure. The characteristic feature of the 'classification' is
the separation of the fish from the remaining vertebrates and of the
invertebrates from both. Of the fifty animals named no less than twenty
are fish, about a fifth of the number studied by Aristotle, but we must
remember that here only edible species are mentioned. The existence of
the work shows at least that in the fifth century there was already a
close and accurate study of animal forms, a study that may justly be
called scientific. The predominance of fish and their classification in
greater detail than the other groups is not an unexpected feature. The
Mediterranean is especially rich in these forms, the Greeks were a
maritime people, and Greek literature is full of imagery drawn from the
fisher's craft. From Minoan to Byzantine times the variety, beauty, and
colour of fish made a deep impression on Greek minds as reflected in
their art.

Much more important, however, for subsequent biological development
than such observations on the nature and habits of animals, is the
service that the Hippocratic physicians rendered to Anatomy and to
Physiology, departments in which the structure of man and of the
domesticated animals stands apart from that of the rest of the animal
kingdom. It is with the nature and constitution of man that most of the
surviving early biological writings are concerned, and in these
departments are unmistakable tendencies towards systematic arrangement
of the material. Thus we have division and description of the body in
sevens from the periphery to the centre and from the vertex to the sole
of the foot,[9] or a division into four regions or zones.[10] The
teaching concerning the four elements and four humours too became of
great importance and some of it was later adopted by Aristotle. We also
meet numerous mechanical explanations of bodily structures, comparisons
between anatomical conditions encountered in related animals,
experiments on living creatures,[11] systematic incubation of hen's eggs
for the study of their development, parallels drawn between the
development of plants and of human and animal embryos, theories of
generation, among which is that which was afterwards called
'pangenesis'--discussion of the survival of the stronger over the
weaker--almost our survival of the fittest--and a theory of inheritance
of acquired characters.[12] All these things show not only extensive
knowledge but also an attempt to apply such knowledge to human needs.
When we consider how even in later centuries biology was linked with
medicine, and how powerful and fundamental was the influence of the
Hippocratic writings, not only on their immediate successors in
antiquity, but also on the Middle Ages and right into the nineteenth
century, we shall recognize the significance of these developments.

    [9] περι ἑβδομαδων {peri hebdomadôn}. The Greek text is lost. We
    have, however, an early and barbarous Latin translation, and there
    has recently been printed an Arabic commentary. G. Bergstrasser,
    _Pseudogaleni in Hippocratis de septimanis commentarium ab Hunnino
    Q. F. arabice versum_, Leipzig, 1914.

    [10] περι νουσων δ {peri nousôn d}.

    [11] περι καρδιης {peri kardiês}.

    [12] Especially in the περι γονης {peri gonês}.

[Illustration: Fig. 5. MINOAN GOLD CUP. SIXTEENTH CENTURY B. C.]

[Illustration: Fig. 6. HORSE'S HEAD. FROM PARTHENON. 440 B. C.]

Such was the character of biological thought within the fifth century,
and a generation inspired by this movement produced some noteworthy
works in the period which immediately followed. In the treatise περι
τροφης {peri trophês}, _On nourishment_, which may perhaps be dated
about 400 B. C., we learn of the pulse for the first time in Greek
medical literature, and read of a physiological system which lasted
until the time of Harvey, with the arteries arising from the heart and
the veins from the liver. Of about the same date is a work περι καρδιης
{peri kardiês}, _On the heart_, which describes the ventricles as well
as the great vessels and their valves, and compares the heart of animals
with that of man.

A little later, perhaps 390 B. C., is the treatise περι σαρκων {peri
sarkôn}, _On muscles_, which contains much more than its title suggests.
It has the old system of sevens and, inspired perhaps by the philosophy
of Heracleitus (_c._ 540-475), describes the heart as sending air, fire,
and movement to the different parts of the body through the vessels
which are themselves constantly in movement. The infant in its mother's
womb is believed to draw in air and fire through its mouth and to eat
_in utero_. The action of the air on the blood is compared to its action
on fire. In contrast to some of the other Hippocratic treatises the
central nervous system is in the background; much attention, however, is
given to the special senses. The brain resounds during audition. The
olfactory nerves are hollow, lead to the brain, and, convey volatile
substances to it which cause it to secrete mucus. The eyes also have
been examined, and their coats and humours roughly described; an
allusion, the first in literature, is perhaps made to the crystalline
lens, and the eyes of animals are compared with those of man. There is
evidence not only of dissection but of experiment, and in efforts to
compare the resistance of various tissues to such processes as boiling,
we may see the small beginning of chemical physiology.

An abler work than any of these, but exhibiting less power of
observation is a treatise, περι γονης {peri gonês}, _On generation_,
that may perhaps be dated about 380 B. C.[13] It exhibits a writer of
much philosophic power, very anxious for physiological explanations, but
hampered by ignorance of physics. He has, in fact, the weaknesses and in
a minor degree the strength of his successor Aristotle, of whose great
work on generation he gives us a fore-taste. He sets forth in
considerable detail a doctrine of pangenesis, not wholly unlike that of
Darwin. In order to explain the phenomena of inheritance he supposes
that vessels reach the seed, carrying with them samples from all parts
of the body. He believes that channels pass from all the organs to the
brain and then to the spinal marrow (or to the marrow direct), thence to
the kidneys and on to the genital organs; he believes, too, that he
knows the actual location of one such channel, for he observes, wrongly,
that incision behind the ears, by interrupting the passage, leads to
impotence. As an outcome of this theory he is prepared to accept
inheritance of acquired characters. The embryo develops and breathes by
material transmitted from the mother through the umbilical cord. We
encounter here also a very detailed description of a specimen of
exfoliated _membrana mucosa uteri_ which our author mistakes for an
embryo, but his remarks at least exhibit the most eager curiosity.[14]

    [13] The three works περι γονης {peri gonês}, περι φυσιος παιδιου
    {peri physios paidiou}, περι νουσων δ {peri nousôn d}, _On
    generation_, _on the nature of the embryo_, _on diseases, book IV_,
    form really one treatise on generation.

    [14] περι φυσιος παιδιου {peri physios paidiou}, _On the nature of
    the embryo_, § 13. The same experience is described in the περι
    σαρκων {peri sarkôn}, _On the muscles_.

The author of this work on generation is thus a 'biologist' in the
modern sense, and among the passages exhibiting him in this light is his
comparison of the human embryo with the chick. 'The embryo is in a
membrane in the centre of which is the navel through which it draws and
gives its breath, and the membranes arise from the umbilical cord....
The structure of the child you will find from first to last as I have
already described.... If you wish, try this experiment: take twenty or
more eggs and let them be incubated by two or more hens. Then each day
from the second to that of hatching remove an egg, break it, and examine
it. You will find exactly as I say, for the nature of the bird can be
likened to that of man. The membranes [you will see] proceed from the
umbilical cord, and all that I have said on the subject of the infant
you will find in a bird's egg, and one who has made these observations
will be surprised to find an umbilical cord in a bird's egg.'[15]

    [15] περι φυσιος παιδιου {peri physios paidiou}, _On the nature of
    the embryo_, § 29.

The same interest that he exhibits for the development of man and
animals he shows also for plants.

     'A seed laid in the ground fills itself with the juices there
     contained, for the soil contains in itself juices of every nature
     for the nourishment of plants. Thus filled with juice the seed is
     distended and swells, and thereby the power (= faculty ἡ δυναμις
     {hê dynamis}) diffused in the seed is compressed by pneuma and
     juice, and bursting the seed becomes the first leaves. But a time
     comes when these leaves can no longer get nourished from the juices
     in the seed. Then the seed and the leaves erupt below, for urged by
     the leaves the seed sends down that part of its power which is yet
     concentrated within it and so the roots are produced as an
     extension of the leaves. When at last the plant is well rooted
     below and is drawing its nutriment from the earth, then the whole
     grain disappears, being absorbed, save for the husk, which is the
     most solid part; and even that, decomposing in the earth,
     ultimately becomes invisible. In time some of the leaves put forth
     branches. The plant being thus produced by humidity from the seed
     is still soft and moist. Growing actively both above and below, it
     cannot as yet bear fruit, for it has not the quality of force and
     reserve (δυναμις ισχυρη και πιαρα {dynamis ischyrê kai piara}) from
     which a seed can be precipitated. But when, with time, the plant
     becomes firmer and better rooted, it develops veins as passages
     both upwards and downwards, and it draws from the soil not only
     water but more abundantly also substances that are denser and
     fatter. Warmed, too, by the sun, these act as a ferment to the
     extremities and give rise to fruit after its kind. The fruit thus
     develops much from little, for every plant draws from the earth a
     power more abundant than that with which it started, and the
     fermentation takes place not at one place but at many.'[16]

    [16] περι φυσιος παιδιου {peri physios paidiou}, _On the nature of
    the embryo_, § 22.

Nor does our author hesitate to draw an analogy between the plant and
the mammalian embryo. 'In the same way the infant lives within its
mother's womb and in a state corresponding to the health of the mother
... and you will find a complete similitude between the products of the
soil and the products of the womb.'

The early Greek literature is so scantily provided with illustrations
drawn from botanical study, that it is worth considering the remarkable
comparison of generation of plants from cuttings and from seeds in the
same work.

     'As regards plants generated from cuttings ... that part of a
     branch where it was cut from a tree is placed in the earth and
     there rootlets are sent out. This is how it happens: The part of
     the plant within the soil draws up juices, swells, and develops a
     pneuma (πνευμα ισχει {pneuma ischei}), but not so the part without.
     The pneuma and the juice concentrate the power of the plant below
     so that it becomes denser. Then the lower end erupts and gives
     forth tender roots. Then the plant, taking from below, draws juices
     from the roots and transmits them to the part above the soil which
     thus also swells and develops pneuma; thus the power from being
     diffused in the plant becomes concentrated and budding, gives forth
     leaves.... Cuttings, then, differ from seeds. With a seed the
     leaves are borne first, then the roots are sent down; with a
     cutting the roots form first and then the leaves.'[17]

    [17] Ibid. § 23.

But with these works of the early part of the fourth century the first
stage of Greek biology reaches its finest development. Later
Hippocratic treatises which deal with physiological topics are on a
lower plane, and we must seek some external cause for the failure. Nor
have we far to seek. This period saw the rise of a movement that had the
most profound influence on every department of thought. We see the
advent into the Greek world of a great intellectual movement as a result
of which the department of philosophy that dealt with nature receded
before Ethics. Of that intellectual revolution--perhaps the greatest the
world has seen--Athens was the site and Socrates (470-399) the
protagonist. With the movement itself and its characteristic fruit we
are not concerned. But the great successor and pupil of its founder
gives us in the _Timaeus_ a picture of the depth to which natural
science can be degraded in the effort to give a specific teleological
meaning to all parts of the visible Universe. The book and the picture
which it draws, dark and repulsive to the mind trained in modern
scientific method, enthralled the imagination of a large part of mankind
for wellnigh two thousand years. Organic nature appears in this work of
Plato (427-347) as the degeneration of man whom the Creator has made
most perfect. The school that held this view ultimately decayed as a
result of its failure to advance positive knowledge. As the centuries
went by its views became further and further divorced from phenomena,
and the bizarre developments of later Neoplatonism stand to this day as
a warning against any system which shall neglect the investigation of
nature. But in its decay Platonism dragged science down and destroyed by
neglect nearly all earlier biological material. Mathematics, not being a
phenomenal study, suited better the Neoplatonic mood and continued to
advance, carrying astronomy with it for a while--astronomy that affected
the life of man and that soon became the handmaid of astrology;
medicine, too, that determined the conditions of man's life was also
cherished, though often mistakenly, but pure science was doomed.

But though the ethical view of nature overwhelmed science in the end,
the advent of the mighty figure of Aristotle (384-322) stayed the tide
for a time. Yet the writer on Greek Biology remains at a disadvantage in
contrast with the Historian of Greek Mathematics, of Greek Astronomy, or
of Greek Medicine, in the scantiness of the materials for presenting an
account of the development of his studies before Aristotle. The huge
form of that magnificent naturalist completely overshadows Greek as it
does much of later Biology.

CHARLES SINGER.


_After Aristotle_

All Aristotle's surviving biological works refer primarily to the animal
creation. His work on plants is lost or rather has survived as the
merest corrupted fragment. We are fortunate, however, in the possession
of a couple of complete works by his pupil and successor Theophrastus
(372-287), which may not only be taken to represent the Aristotelian
attitude towards the plant world, but also give us an inkling of the
general state of biological science in the generation which succeeded
the master.

[Illustration: Fig. 7. ARISTOTLE
From HERCULANEUM
Probably work of fourth century B. C.]

These treatises of Theophrastus are in many respects the most complete
and orderly of all ancient biological works that have reached our time.
They give an idea of the kind of interest that the working scientist of
that day could develop when inspired rather by the genius of a great
teacher than by the power of his own thoughts. Theophrastus is a
pedestrian where Aristotle is a creature of wings, he is in a relation
to the master of the same order that the morphologists of the second
half of the nineteenth century were to Darwin. For a couple of
generations after the appearance of the _Origin of Species_ in 1859 the
industry and ability of naturalists all over the world were occupied in
working out in detail the structure and mode of life of living things
on the basis of the Evolutionary philosophy. Nearly all the work on
morphology and much of that on physiology since his time might be
treated as a commentary on the works of Darwin. These volumes of
Theophrastus give the same impression. They represent the remains--alas,
almost the only biological remains--of a school working under the
impulse of a great idea and spurred by the memory of a great teacher. As
such they afford a parallel to much scientific work of our own day,
produced by men without genius save that provided by a vision and a hope
and an ideal. Of such men it is impossible to write as of Aristotle.
Their lives are summed up by their actual achievement, and since
Theophrastus is an orderly writer whose works have descended to us in
good state, he is a very suitable instance of the actual standard of
achievement of ancient biology. 'Without vision the people perish' and
the very breath of life of science is drawn, and can only be drawn, from
that very small band of prophets who from time to time, during the ages,
have provided the great generalizations and the great ideals. In this
light let us examine the work of Theophrastus.

In the absence of any adequate system of classification, almost all
botany until the seventeenth century consisted mainly of descriptions of
species. To describe accurately a leaf or a root in the language in
ordinary use would often take pages. Modern botanists have invented an
elaborate terminology which, however hideous to eye and ear, has the
crowning merit of helping to abbreviate scientific literature. Botanical
writers previous to the seventeenth century were substantially without
this special mode of expression. It is partly to this lack that we owe
the persistent attempts throughout the centuries to represent plants
pictorially in herbals, manuscript and printed, and thus the possibility
of an adequate history of plant illustration.

Theophrastus seems to have felt acutely the need of botanical terms,
and there are cases in which he seeks to give a special technical
meaning to words in more or less current use. Among such words are
_carpos_ = fruit, _pericarpion_ = seed vessel = pericarp, and _metra_,
the word used by him for the central core of any stem whether formed of
wood, pith, or other substance. It is from the usage of Theophrastus
that the exact definition of fruit and pericarp has come down to us.[18]
We may easily discern also the purpose for which he introduces into
botany the term _metra_, a word meaning primarily the _womb_, and the
vacancy in the Greek language which it was made to fill. '_Metra_,' he
says, 'is that which is in the middle of the wood, being third in order
from the bark and [thus] like to the marrow in bones. Some call it the
_heart_ (καρδιαν {kardian}), others the _inside_ (εντεριωνην
{enteriônên}), yet others call only the innermost part of the metra
itself the heart, while others again call this _marrow_.'[19] He is thus
inventing a word to cover all the different kinds of core and importing
it from another study. This is the method of modern scientific
nomenclature which hardly existed for botanists even as late as the
sixteenth century of our era. The real foundations of our modern
nomenclature were laid in the later sixteenth and in the seventeenth
century by Cesalpino and Joachim Jung.

    [18] It is possible that Theophrastus derived the word pericarp from
    Aristotle. Cp. _De anima_, ii. 1, 412 b 2. In the passage το φυλλον
    περικαρπιου σκεπασμα, το δε περικαρπιον καρπου {to phyllon
    perikarpiou skepasma, to de perikarpion karpou}, in the _De anima_
    the word does not, however, seem to have the full technical force
    that Theophrastus gives to it.

    [19] _Historia plantarum_, i. 2, vi.

Theophrastus understood the value of developmental study, a conception
derived from his master. 'A plant', he says, 'has power of germination
in all its parts, for it has life in them all, wherefore we should
regard them not for what they are but for what they are becoming.'[20]
The various modes of plant reproduction are correctly distinguished in a
way that passes beyond the only surviving earlier treatise that deals
in detail with the subject, the Hippocratic work _On generation_. 'The
manner of generation of trees and plants are these: spontaneous, from a
seed, from a root, from a piece torn off, from a branch or twig, from
the trunk itself, or from pieces of the wood cut up small.'[21] The
marvel of germination must have awakened admiration from a very early
date. We have already seen it occupying a more ancient author, and it
had also been one of the chief preoccupations of Aristotle. It is thus
not remarkable that the process should impress Theophrastus, who has
left on record his views on the formation of the plant from the seed.

    [20] _Ibid._ i. 1, iv.

    [21] _Historia plantarum_, ii. 1, i.

     'Some germinate, root and leaves, from the same point, some
     separately from either end of the seed. Thus wheat, barley, spelt,
     and all such cereals [germinate] from either end, corresponding to
     the position [of the seed] in the ear, the root from the stout
     lower part, the shoot from the upper; but the two, root and stem,
     form a single continuous whole. The bean and other leguminous
     plants are not so, but in them root and stem are from the same
     point, namely, their place of attachment to the pod, where, it is
     plain, they have their origin. In some cases there is a process, as
     in beans, chick peas, and especially lupines, from which the root
     grows downward, the leaf and stem upward.... In certain trees the
     bud first germinates within the seed, and, as it increases in size,
     the seeds split--all such seeds are, as it were, in two halves;
     again, all those of leguminous plants have plainly two lobes and
     are double--and then the root is immediately thrust out. But in
     cereals, the seeds being in one piece, this does not happen, but
     the root grows a little before [the shoot].

     'Barley and wheat come up monophyllous, but peas, beans, and chick
     peas polyphyllous. All leguminous plants have a single woody root,
     from which grow slender side roots ... but wheat, barley, and the
     other cereals have numerous slender roots by which they are matted
     together.... There is a contrast between these two kinds; the
     leguminous plants have a single root and have many side-growths
     above from the [single] stem ... while the cereals have many roots
     and send up many shoots, but these have no side-shoots.'[22]

    [22] _Historia plantarum_, viii. 1, i.

There can be no doubt that here is a piece of minute observation on the
behaviour of germinating seeds. The distinction between dicotyledons and
monocotyledons is accurately set forth, though the stress is laid not so
much on the cotyledonous character of the seed as on the relation of
root and shoot. In the dicotyledons root and shoot are represented as
springing from the same point, and in monocotyledons from opposite poles
in the seed.

No further effective work was done on the germinating seed until the
invention of the microscope, and the appearance of the work of Highmore
(1613-85),[23] and the much more searching investigations of Malpighi
(1628-94)[24] and Grew (1641-1712)[25] after the middle of the
seventeenth century. The observations of Theophrastus are, however, so
accurate, so lucid, and so complete that they might well be used as
legends for the plates of these writers two thousand years after him.

    [23] Nathaniel Highmore, _A History of Generation_, London, 1651.

    [24] Marcello Malpighi, _Anatome plantarum_, London, 1675.

    [25] Nehemiah Grew, _Anatomy of Vegetables begun_, London, 1672.

Much has been written as to the knowledge of the sex of plants among the
ancients. It may be stated that of the sexual elements of the flower no
ancient writer had any clear idea. Nevertheless, sex is often attributed
to plants, and the simile of the _Loves of Plants_ enters into works of
the poets. Plants are frequently described as male and female in ancient
biological writings also, and Pliny goes so far as to say that some
students considered that all herbs and trees were sexual.[26] Yet when
such passages can be tested it will be found that these so-called males
and females are usually different species. In a few cases a sterile
variety is described as the male and a fertile as the female. In a small
residuum of cases diœcious plants or flowers are regarded as male and
female, but with no real comprehension of the sexual nature of the
flowers. There remain the palms, in which the knowledge of plant sex had
advanced a trifle farther. 'With dates', says Theophrastus, 'the males
should be brought to the females; for the males make the fruit persist
and ripen, and this some call by analogy _to use the wild fig_
(ολυνθαζειν {olynthazein}).[27] The process is thus: when the male is in
the flower they at once cut off the spathe with the flower and shake the
bloom, with its flower and dust, over the fruit of the female, and, if
it is thus treated, it retains the fruit and does not shed it.'[28] The
fertilizing character of the spathe of the male date palm was familiar
in Babylon from a very early date. It is recorded by Herodotus[29] and
is represented by a frequent symbol on the Assyrian monuments.

    [26] Pliny, _Naturalis historia_, xiii. 4.

    [27] The curious word ολυνθαζειν {olynthazein}, here translated _to
    use the wild fig_, is from ολυνθος {olynthos}, a kind of wild fig
    which seldom ripens. The special meaning here given to the word is
    explained in another work of Theophrastus, _De causis plantarum_,
    ii. 9, xv. After describing caprification in figs, he says το δε επι
    των φοινικων συμβαινον ου ταυτον μεν, εχει δε τινα ὁμοιοτητα τουτω
    δι' ὁ καλουσιν ολυνθαζειν αυτους {to de epi tôn phoinikôn symbainon
    ou tauton men, echei de tina homoiotêta toutô di' ho kalousin
    olynthazein autous} 'The same thing is not done with dates, but
    something analogous to it, whence this is called ολυνθαζειν'
    {olynthazein'}.

    [28] _Historia plantarum_, ii. 8, iv.

    [29] Herodotus i. 193.

The comparison of the fertilization of the date palm to the use of the
wild fig refers to the practice of Caprification. Theophrastus tells us
that there are certain trees, the fig among them, which are apt to shed
their fruit prematurely. To remedy this 'the device adopted is
caprification. Gall insects come out of the wild figs which are hanging
there, eat the tops of the cultivated figs, and so make them swell'.[30]
These gall-insects 'are engendered from the seeds'.[31] Theophrastus
distinguished between the process as applied to the fig and the date,
observing that 'in both [fig and date] the male aids the female--for
they call the fruit-bearing [palm] _female_--but whilst in the one there
is a union of the two sexes, in the other things are different'.[32]

    [30] _Historia plantarum_, ii. 8, i.

    [31] _Ibid._ ii. 8, ii.

    [32] _Historia plantarum_, ii. 8, iv.

Theophrastus was not very successful in distinguishing the nature of the
primary elements of plants, though he was able to separate root, stem,
leaf, stipule, and flower on morphological as well as to a limited
extent on physiological grounds. For the root he adopts the familiar
definition, the only one possible before the rise of chemistry, that it
'is that by which the plant draws up nourishment',[33] a description
that applies to the account given by the pre-Aristotelian author of the
work περι γονης {peri gonês}, _On generation_. But Theophrastus shows by
many examples that he is capable of following out morphological
homologies. Thus he knows that the ivy regularly puts forth roots from
the shoots between the leaves, by means of which it gets hold of trees
and walls,[34] that the mistletoe will not sprout except on the bark of
living trees into which it strikes its roots, and that the very peculiar
formation of the mangrove tree is to be explained by the fact that 'this
plant sends out roots from the shoots till it has hold on the ground and
roots again: and so there comes to be a continuous circle of roots round
the tree, not connected with the main stem, but at a distance from
it'.[35] He does not succeed, however, in distinguishing the real nature
of such structures as bulbs, rhizomes, and tubers, but regards them all
as roots. Nor is he more successful in his discussion of the nature of
stems. As to leaves, he is more definite and satisfactory, though wholly
in the dark as to their function; he is quite clear that the pinnate
leaf of the rowan tree, for instance, is a leaf and not a branch.

    [33] _Ibid._ i. 1, ix.

    [34] _Ibid._ iii. 18, x.

    [35] _De causis plantarum_, ii. 23.

Notwithstanding his lack of insight as to the nature of sex in flowers,
he attains to an approximately correct idea of the relation of flower
and fruit. Some plants, he says, 'have [the flower] around the fruit
itself as vine and olive; [the flowers] of the latter, when they drop,
look as though they had a hole through them, and this is taken for a
sign that it has blossomed well; for if [the flower] is burnt up or
sodden, the fruit falls with it, and so it does not become pierced. Most
flowers have the fruit case in the middle, or it may be the flower is on
the top of the pericarp as in pomegranate, apple, pear, plum, and myrtle
... for these have their seeds below the flower.... In some cases again
the flower is on top of the seeds themselves as in ... all thistle-like
plants'.[36] Thus Theophrastus has succeeded in distinguishing between
the hypogynous, perigynous, and epigynous types of flower, and has
almost come to regard its relation to the fruit as the essential floral
element.

    [36] _Historia plantarum_, i. 13, iii.

[Illustration: Fig. 8. THEOPHRASTUS
From VILLA ALBANI
Copy (second century A. D.?) of earlier work]

Theophrastus has a perfectly clear idea of plant distribution as
dependent on soil and climate, and at times seems to be on the point of
passing from a statement of climatic distribution into one of real
geographical regions. The general question of plant distribution long
remained at, if it did not recede from, the position where he left it.
The usefulness of the manuscript and early printed herbals in the West
was for centuries marred by the retention of plant descriptions prepared
for the Greek East and Latin South, and these works were saved from
complete ineffectiveness only by an occasional appeal to nature.

With the death of Theophrastus about 287 B. C. pure biological science
substantially disappears from the Greek world, and we get the same type
of deterioration that is later encountered in other scientific
departments. Science ceases to have the motive of the desire to know,
and becomes an applied study, subservient to the practical arts. It is
an attitude from which in the end applied science itself must suffer
also. Yet the centuries that follow were not without biological writers
of very great ability. In the medical school of Alexandria anatomy and
physiology became placed on a firm basis from about 300 B. C., but
always in the position subordinate to medicine that they have since
occupied. Two great names of that school, Herophilus and Erasistratus,
we must consider elsewhere.[37] Their works have disappeared and we have
the merest fragments of them. In the last pre-Christian and the first
two post-Christian centuries, however, there were several writers,
portions of whose works have survived and are of great biological
importance. Among them we include Crateuas, a botanical writer and
illustrator, who greatly developed, if he did not actually introduce,
the method of representing plants systematically by illustration rather
than by description. This method, important still, was even more
important when there was no proper system of botanical nomenclature.
Crateuas by his paintings of plants, copies of which have not improbably
descended to our time, began a tradition which, fixed about the fifth
century, remained almost rigid until the re-discovery of nature in the
sixteenth. He was physician to Mithridates VI Eupator (120-63 B. C.),
but his work was well known and appreciated at Rome, which became the
place of resort for Greek talent.[38]

    [37] See the companion chapter on _Greek Medicine_.

    [38] The surviving fragments of the works of Crateuas have recently
    been printed by M. Wellmann as an appendix to the text of
    Dioscorides, _De materia medica_, 3 vols., Berlin, 1906-17, iii. pp.
    144-6. The source and fate of his plant drawings are discussed in
    the same author's _Krateuas_, Berlin, 1897.

Celsus, who flourished about 20 B. C., wrote an excellent work on
medicine, but gives all too little glimpse of anatomy and physiology.
Rufus of Ephesus, however, in the next century practised dissection of
apes and other animals. He described the decussation of the optic nerves
and the capsule of the crystalline lens, and gave the first clear
description that has survived of the structure of the eye. He regarded
the nerves as originating from the brain, and distinguished between
nerves of motion and of sensation. He described the oviduct of the sheep
and rightly held that life was possible without the spleen.

The second Christian century brings us two writers who, while
scientifically inconsiderable, acted as the main carriers of such
tradition of Greek biology as reached the Middle Ages, Pliny and
Dioscorides. Pliny (A. D. 23-79), though a Latin, owes almost everything
of value in his encyclopaedia to Greek writings. In his _Natural
History_ we have a collection of current views on the nature, origin,
and uses of plants and animals such as we might expect from an
intelligent, industrious, and honest member of the landed class who was
devoid of critical or special scientific skill. Scientifically the work
is contemptible, but it demands mention in any study of the legacy of
Greece, since it was, for centuries, a main conduit of the ancient
teaching and observations on natural history. Read throughout the ages,
alike in the darkest as in the more enlightened periods, copied and
recopied, translated, commented on, extracted and abridged, a large part
of Pliny's work has gradually passed into folk-keeping, so that through
its agency the gipsy fortune-teller of to-day is still reciting garbled
versions of the formulae of Aristotle and Hippocrates of two and a half
millennia ago.

The fate of Dioscorides (flourished A. D. 60) has been not dissimilar.
His work _On Materia Medica_ consists of a series of short accounts of
plants, arranged almost without reference to the nature of the plants
themselves, but quite invaluable for its terse and striking descriptions
which often include habits and habitats. Its history has shown it to be
one of the most influential botanical treatises ever penned. It provided
most of the little botanical knowledge that reached the Middle Ages. It
furnished the chief stimulus to botanical research at the time of the
Renaissance. It has decided the general form of every modern
pharmacopœia. It has practically determined modern plant nomenclature
both popular and scientific.

Translated into nearly every language from Anglo-Saxon and Bohemian to
Arabic and Hebrew, appearing both abstracted and in full in innumerable
beautifully illuminated manuscripts, some of which are still among the
fairest treasures of the great national libraries, Dioscorides, the
drug-monger, appealed to scholasticized minds for centuries. The
frequency with which fragments of him are encountered in papyri shows
how popular his work was in Egypt in the third and fourth centuries. One
of the earliest datable Greek codices in existence is a glorious volume
of Dioscorides written in capitals,[39] thought worthy to form a wedding
gift for a lady who was the daughter of one Roman emperor and the
betrothed of a second.[40] The illustrations of this fifth-century
manuscript are a very valuable monument for the history of art and the
chief adornment of what was once the Royal Library at Vienna[41] (figs.
9-10). Illustrated Latin translations of Dioscorides were in use in the
time of Cassiodorus (490-585). A work based on it, similarly
illustrated, but bearing the name of Apuleius, is among the most
frequent of mediaeval botanical documents and the earliest surviving
specimen is contemporary with Cassiodorus himself.[42] After the
revival of learning Dioscorides continued to attract an immense amount
of philological and botanical ability, and scores of editions of his
works, many of them nobly illustrated, poured out of the presses of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

[Illustration: Fig. 9
ΣΟΓΚΟΣ ΤΡΥΦΕΡΟΣ {SOGKOS TRYPHEROS} = _Crepis paludosa_, _Mœn._]

[Illustration: Fig. 10
ΓΕΡΑΝΙΟΝ {GERANION} = _Geranium pyrenaicum_, _L._

Fifth-century drawings from JULIANA ANICIA M.S., copied from originals
of first century B. C. (?)]

    [39] The manuscript in question is Med. Graec. 1 at what was the
    Royal Library at Vienna. It is known as the _Constantinopolitanus_.
    After the war it was taken to St. Mark's at Venice, but either has
    been or is about to be restored to Vienna. A facsimile of this grand
    manuscript was published by Sijthoff, Leyden, 1906.

    [40] The lady in question was Juliana Anicia, daughter of Anicius
    Olybrius, Emperor of the West in 472, and his wife Placidia,
    daughter of Valentinian III. Juliana was betrothed in 479 by the
    Eastern Emperor Zeno to Theodoric the Ostrogoth, but was married,
    probably in 487 when the manuscript was presented to her, to
    Areobindus, a high military officer under the Byzantine Emperor
    Anastasius.

    [41] The importance of this manuscript as well as the position of
    Dioscorides as medical botanist is discussed by Charles Singer in an
    article 'Greek Biology and the Rise of Modern Biology', _Studies in
    the History and Method of Science_, vol. ii, Oxford, 1921.

    [42] This manuscript is at the University Library at Leyden, where
    it is numbered Voss Q 9.

But the greatest biologist of the late Greek period, and indeed one of
the greatest biologists of all time, was Claudius Galen of Pergamon (A.
D. 131-201). Galen devoted himself to medicine from an early age, and in
his twenty-first year we hear of him studying anatomy at Smyrna under
Pelops. With the object of extending his knowledge of drugs he early
made long journeys to Asia Minor. Later he proceeded to Alexandria,
where he improved his anatomical equipment, and here, he tells us, he
examined a human skeleton. It is indeed probable that his direct
practical acquaintance with human anatomy was limited to the skeleton
and that dissection of the human body was no longer carried on at
Alexandria in his time. Thus his physiology and anatomy had to be
derived mainly from animal sources. He is the most voluminous of all
ancient scientific writers and one of the most voluminous writers of
antiquity in any department. We are not here concerned with the medical
material which mainly fills these huge volumes, but only with the
physiological views which not only prevailed in medicine until Harvey
and after, but also governed for fifteen hundred years alike the
scientific and the popular ideas on the nature and workings of the
animal body, and have for centuries been embedded in our speech. A
knowledge of these physiological views of Galen is necessary for any
understanding of the history of biology and illuminates many literary
allusions of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Between the foundation of the Alexandrian school and the time of Galen,
medicine was divided among a great number of sects. Galen was an
eclectic and took portions of his teaching from many of these schools,
but he was also a naturalist of great ability and industry, and knew
well the value of the experimental way. Yet he was a somewhat windy
philosopher and, priding himself on his philosophic powers, did not
hesitate to draw conclusions from evidence which was by no means always
adequate. The physiological system that he thus succeeded in building up
we may now briefly consider (fig. 11).

[Illustration: FIG. 11. Illustrating Galen's physiological teaching.]

The basic principle of life, in the Galenic physiology, is a _spirit_,
_anima_ or _pneuma_, drawn from the general world-soul in the act of
respiration. It enters the body through the _rough artery_ (τραχεια
αρτηρια {tracheia artêria}, _arteria aspera_ of mediaeval notation), the
organ known to our nomenclature as the trachea. From this trachea the
pneuma passes to the lung and then, through the _vein-like artery_
(αρτηρια φλεβωδης {artêria phlebôdês}, _arteria venalis_ of mediaeval
writers, the pulmonary vein of our nomenclature), to the left ventricle.
Here it will be best to leave it for a moment and trace the vascular
system along a different route.

Ingested food, passing down the alimentary tract, was absorbed as chyle
from the intestine, collected by the portal vessel, and conveyed by it
to the liver. That organ, the site of the innate heat in Galen's view,
had the power of elaborating the chyle into venous blood and of imbuing
it with a spirit or pneuma which is innate in all living substance, so
long as it remains alive, the _natural spirits_ (πνευμα φυσικον {pneuma
physikon}, _spiritus naturalis_ of the mediaevals). Charged with this,
and also with the nutritive material derived from the food, the venous
blood is distributed by the liver through the veins which arise from it
in the same way as the arteries from the heart. These veins carry
nourishment and _natural spirits_ to all parts of the body. _Iecur fons
venarum_, the liver as the source of the veins, remained through the
centuries the watchword of the Galenic physiology. The blood was held to
ebb and flow continuously in the veins during life.

Now from the liver arose one great vessel, the hepatic vein, from
division of which the others were held to come off as branches. Of
these branches, one, our _common vena cava_, entered the right side of
the heart. For the blood that it conveyed to the heart there were two
fates possible. The greater part remained awhile in the ventricle,
parting with its impurities and vapours, exhalations of the organs,
which were carried off by the _artery-like vein_ (φλεπς αρτηριωδης
{phleps artêriôdês}, the mediaeval _vena arterialis_, our pulmonary
artery) to the lung and then exhaled to the outer air. These impurities
and vapours gave its poisonous and suffocating character to the breath.
Having parted thus with its impurities, the venous blood ebbed back
again from the right ventricle into the venous system. But for a small
fraction of the venous blood that entered the right ventricle another
fate was reserved. This small fraction of venous blood, charged still
with the _natural spirits_ derived from the liver, passed through minute
channels in the septum between the ventricles and entered the left
chamber. Arrived there, it encountered the external pneuma and became
thereby elaborated into a higher form of spirit, the _vital spirits_
(πνευμα ζωτικον {pneuma zôtikon}, _spiritus vitalis_), which is
distributed together with blood by the arterial system to various parts
of the body. In the arterial system it also ebbed and flowed, and might
be seen and felt to pulsate there.

But among the great arterial vessels that sent forth arterial blood thus
charged with vital spirits were certain vessels which ascended to the
brain. Before reaching that organ they divided up into minute channels,
the _rete mirabile_ (πλεγμα μεγιστον θαυμα {plegma megiston thauma}),
and passing into the brain became converted by the action of that organ
into a yet higher type of spirits, the _animal spirits_ (πνευμα ψυχικον
{pneuma psychikon}, _spiritus animalis_), an ethereal substance
distributed to the various parts of the body by the structures known
to-day as nerves, but believed then to be hollow channels. The three
fundamental faculties (δυναμεις {dynameis}), the _natural_, the _vital_,
and the _animal_, which brought into action the corresponding functions
of the body, thus originated as an expression of the primal force or
pneuma.

This physiology, we may emphasize, is not derived from an investigation
of human anatomy. In the human brain there is no _rete mirabile_, though
such an organ is found in the calf. In the human liver there is no
_hepatic vein_, though such an organ is found in the dog. Dogs, calves,
pigs, bears, and, above all, Barbary apes were freely dissected by Galen
and were the creatures from which he derived his physiological ideas.
Many of Galen's anatomical and physiological errors are due to his
attributing to one creature the structures found in another, a fact that
only very gradually dawned on the Renaissance anatomists.

The whole knowledge possessed by the world in the department of
physiology from the third to the seventeenth century, nearly all the
biological conceptions till the thirteenth, and most of the anatomy and
much of the botany until the sixteenth century, all the ideas of the
physical structure of living things throughout the Middle Ages, were
contained in a small number of these works of Galen. The biological
works of Aristotle and Theophrastus lingered precariously in a few rare
manuscripts in the monasteries of the East; the total output of hundreds
of years of Alexandrian and Pergamenian activities was utterly
destroyed; the Ionian biological works, of which a sample has by a
miracle survived, were forgotten; but these vast, windy, ill-arranged
treatises of Galen lingered on. Translated into Latin, Syriac, Arabic,
and Hebrew, they saturated the intellectual world of the Middle Ages.
Commented on by later Greek writers, who were themselves in turn
translated into the same list of languages, they were yet again served
up under the names of such Greek writers as Oribasius, Paul of Aegina,
or Alexander of Tralles.

What is the secret of the vitality of these Galenic biological
conceptions? The answer can be given in four words. _Galen is a
teleologist_; and a teleologist of a kind whose views happened to fit in
with the prevailing theological attitude of the Middle Ages, whether
Christian, Moslem, or Jewish. According to him everything which exists
and displays activity in the human body originates in and is formed by
an intelligent being and on an intelligent plan, so that the organ in
structure and function is the result of that plan. 'It was the Creator's
infinite wisdom which selected the best means to attain his beneficent
ends, and it is a proof of His omnipotence that he created every good
thing according to His design, and thereby fulfilled His will.'[43]

    [43] A good instance of Galen's teleological point of view is
    afforded by his classical description of _the hand_ in the περι
    χρειας των εν ανθρωπου σωματι μοριων {peri chreias tôn en anthrôpou
    sômati moriôn}, _On the uses of the parts of the body of man_, i. 1.
    This passage is available in English in a tract by Thomas Bellott,
    London, 1840.

After Galen there is a thousand years of darkness, and biology ceases to
have a history. The mind of the Dark Ages turned towards theology, and
such remains of Neoplatonic philosophy as were absorbed into the
religious system were little likely to be of aid to the scientific
attitude. One department of positive knowledge must of course persist.
Men still suffered from the infirmities of the flesh and still sought
relief from them. But the books from which that advice was sought had
nothing to do with general principles nor with knowledge as such. They
were the most wretched of the treatises that still masqueraded under the
names of Hippocrates and Galen, mostly mere formularies, antidotaries,
or perhaps at best symptom lists. And, when the depression of the
western intellect had passed its worst, there was still no biological
material on which it could be nourished.

The prevailing interest of the barbarian world, at last beginning to
settle into its heritage of antiquity, was with Logic. Of Aristotle
there survived in Latin dress only the _Categories_ and the _De
interpretatione_, the merciful legacy of Boethius, the last of the
philosophers. Had a translation of Aristotle's _Historia animalium_ or
_De generatione animalium_ survived, had a Latin version of the
Hippocratic work _On generation_ or of the treatises of Theophrastus _On
plants_ reached the earlier Middle Ages, the whole mental history of
Europe might have been different and the rediscovery of nature might
have been antedated by centuries. But this was a change of heart for
which the world had long to wait; something much less was the earliest
biological gift of Greece. The gift, when it came, came in two forms,
one of which has not been adequately recognized, but both are equally
her legacy. These two forms are, firstly, the well-known work of the
early translators and, secondly, the tardily recognized work of certain
schools of minor art.

The earliest biological treatises to become accessible in the west were
rendered not from Greek but from Arabic.[44] The first of them was
perhaps the treatise περι μυων κινησεως {peri myôn kinêseôs}, _On
movement of muscles_ of Galen, a work which contains more than its title
suggests and indeed sets forth much of the Galenic physiological system.
It was rendered into Latin from the Arabic of Joannitius (Hunain ibn
Ishaq, 809-73), probably about the year 1200, by one Mark of Toledo. It
attracted little attention, but very soon after biological works of
Aristotle began to become accessible. The first was probably the
fragment _On plants_. The Greek original of this is lost, and besides
the Latin, only an Arabic version of a former Arabic translation of a
Syriac rendering of a Greek commentary is now known! Such a work
appeared from the hand of a translator known as Alfred the Englishman
about 1220 or a little later. Neither it nor another work from the same
translator, _On the motion of the heart_, which sought to establish the
primacy of that organ on Aristotelian grounds, can be said to contain
any of the spirit of the master.[45]

    [44] The early European translations from the Arabic are tabulated
    with unparalleled learning by M. Steinschneider, 'Die Europäischen
    Uebersetzungen aus dem Arabischen bis Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts',
    in the _Sitzungsberichte der kais. Akad. der Wissenschaften in
    Wien_, cxlix and cli, Vienna, 1904 and 1905.

    [45] C. H. Haskins, 'The reception of Arabic science in England,'
    _English Historical Review_, London, 1915, p. 56.

A little better than these is the work of the wizard Michael the Scot
(1175?-1234?). Roger Bacon tells us that Michael in 1230 'appeared [at
Oxford], bringing with him the works of Aristotle in natural history and
mathematics, with wise expositors, so that the philosophy of Aristotle
was magnified among the Latins'.[46] Scott produced his work _De
animalibus_ about this date and he included in it the three great
biological works of Aristotle, all rendered from an inferior Arabic
version.[47] Albertus Magnus (1206-80) had not as yet a translation
direct from the Greek to go upon for his great commentary on the
_History of animals_, but he depended on Scott. The biological works of
Aristotle were rendered into Latin direct from the Greek in the year
1260 probably by William of Moerbeke.[48] Such translations, appearing
in the full scholastic age when everything was against direct
observation, cannot be said to have fallen on a fertile ground. They
presented an ordered account of nature and a good method of
investigation, but those were gifts to a society that knew little of
their real value.[49]

    [46] Roger Bacon, _Opus majus_, edited by J. H. Bridges, 3 vols.,
    London, 1897-1900. Vol. iii, p. 66.

    [47] On the Aristotelian translations of Scott see A. H. Querfeld,
    _Michael Scottus und seine Schrift, De secretis naturae_, Leipzig,
    1919; and C. H. Haskins, 'Michael Scot and Frederick II' in _Isis_,
    ii. 250, Brussels, 1922.

    [48] J. G. Schneider, _Aristotelis de animalibus historiae_,
    Leipzig, 1811, p. cxxvi. L. Dittmeyer, _Guilelmi Moerbekensis
    translatio commentationis Aristotelicae de generatione animalium_,
    Dillingen, 1915. L. Dittmeyer, _De animalibus historia_, Leipzig,
    1907.

    [49] The subject of the Latin translations of Aristotle is traversed
    by A. and C. Jourdain, _Recherches critiques sur l'âge des
    traductions latines d'Aristote_, 2nd ed., Paris, 1843; M. Grabmann,
    _Forschungen uber die lateinischen Aristoteles Ubersetzungen des
    XIII. Jahrhunderts_, Münster i/W., 1916; and F. Wüstenfeld, _Die
    Ubersetzungen arabischer Werke in das Lateinische seit dem XI.
    Jahrhundert_, Göttingen, 1877.

Yet the advent of these texts was coincident with a returning desire to
observe nature. Albert, with all his scholasticism, was no contemptible
naturalist. He may be said to have begun first-hand plant study in
modern times so far as literary records are concerned. His book _De
vegetabilibus_ contains excellent observations, and he is worthy of
inclusion among the fathers of botany. In his vast treatise _De
animalibus_, hampered as he is by his learning and verbosity, he shows
himself a true observer and one who has absorbed something of the spirit
of the great naturalist to whose works he had devoted a lifetime of
study and on which he professes to be commenting. We see clearly the
leaven of the Aristotelian spirit working, though Albert is still a
schoolman. We may select for quotation a passage on the generation of
fish, a subject on which some of Aristotle's most remarkable
descriptions remained unconfirmed till modern times. These descriptions
impressed Albert in the same way as they do the modern naturalist. To
those who know nothing of the stimulating power of the Aristotelian
biological works, Albert's description of the embryos of fish and his
accurate distinction of their mode of development from that of birds, by
the absence of an allantoic membrane in the one and its presence in the
other, must surely be startling. Albert depends on Aristotle--a
third-hand version of Aristotle--but does not slavishly follow him.

'Between the mode of development (_anathomiam generationis_) of birds'
and fishes' eggs there is this difference: during the development of the
fish the second of the two veins which extend from the heart [as
described by Aristotle in birds] does not exist. For we do not find the
vein which extends to the outer covering in the eggs of birds which some
wrongly call the navel because it carries the blood to the exterior
parts; but we do find the vein that corresponds to the yolk vein of
birds, for this vein imbibes the nourishment by which the limbs
increase.... In fishes as in birds, channels extend from the heart first
to the head and the eyes, and first in them appear the great upper
parts. As the growth of the young fish increases the albumen decreases,
being incorporated into the members of the young fish, and it disappears
entirely when development and formation are complete. The beating of
the heart ... is conveyed to the lower part of the belly, carrying pulse
and life to the inferior members.

'While the young [fish] are small and not yet fully developed they have
veins of great length which take the place of the navel-string, but as
they grow and develop, these shorten and contract into the body towards
the heart, as we have said about birds. The young fish and the eggs are
enclosed and in a covering, as are the eggs and young of birds. This
covering resembles the dura mater [of the brain], and beneath it is
another [corresponding therefore to the pia mater of the brain] which
contains the young animal and nothing else.'[50]

    [50] The enormous _De Animalibus_ of Albert of Cologne is now
    available in an edition by H. Stadler, _Albertus Magnus De
    Animalibus Libri XXVI nach der cölner Urschrift_, 2 vols., Münster
    i/W., 1916-21. The quotation is translated from vol. i, pp. 465-6.

In the next century Conrad von Megenberg (1309-98) produced his _Book of
Nature_, a complete work on natural history, the first of the kind in
the vernacular, founded on Latin versions, now rendered direct from the
Greek, of the Aristotelian and Galenic biological works. It is well
ordered and opens with a systematic account of the structure and
physiology of man as a type of the animal creation, which is then
systematically described and followed by an account of plants. Conrad,
though guided by Aristotle, uses his own eyes and ears, and with him and
Albert the era of direct observation has begun.[51]

    [51] Conrad's work is conveniently edited by H. Schultz, _Das Buch
    der Natur von Conrad von Megenberg, die erste Naturgeschichte in
    deutscher Sprache, in Neu-Hochdeutsche Sprache bearbeitet_,
    Greifswald, 1897. Conrad's work is based on that of Thomas of
    Cantimpré (1201-70).

But there was another department in which the legacy of Greece found an
even earlier appreciation. For centuries the illustrations to herbals
and bestiaries had been copied from hand to hand, continuing a tradition
that had its rise with Greek artists of the first century B. C. But
their work, copied at each stage without reference to the object, moved
constantly farther from resemblance to the original. At last the
illustrations became little but formal patterns, a state in which they
remained in some late copies prepared as recently as the sixteenth
century. But at a certain period a change set in, and the artist, no
longer content to rely on tradition, appeals at last to nature. This new
stirring in art corresponds with the new stirring in letters, the
Arabian revival--itself a legacy of Greece, though sadly deteriorated in
transit--that gave rise to scholasticism. In much of the beautiful
carved and sculptured work of the French cathedrals the new movement
appears in the earlier part of the thirteenth century. At such a place
as Chartres we see the attempt to render plants and animals faithfully
in stone as early as 1240 or before. In the easier medium of parchment
the same tendency appears even earlier. When once it begins the process
progresses slowly until the great recovery of the Greek texts in the
fifteenth century, when it is again accelerated.

During the sixteenth century the energy of botanists and zoologists was
largely absorbed in producing most carefully annotated and illustrated
editions of Dioscorides and Theophrastus and accounts of animals,
habits, and structure that were intended to illustrate the writings of
Aristotle, while the anatomists explored the bodies of man and beast to
confirm or refute Galen. The great monographs on birds, fishes, and
plants of this period, ostensibly little but commentaries on Pliny,
Aristotle, and Dioscorides, represent really the first important efforts
of modern times at a natural history. They pass naturally into the
encyclopaedias of the later sixteenth century, and these into the
physiological works of the seventeenth. Aristotle was never a dead hand
in Biology as he was in Physics, and this for the reason that he was a
great biologist but was not a great physicist.

With the advance of the sixteenth century the works of Aristotle, and to
a less extent those of Dioscorides and Galen, became the great stimulus
to the foundation of a new biological science. Matthioli (1520-77), in
his commentary on Dioscorides (first edition 1544), which was one of the
first works of its type to appear in the vernacular, made a number of
first-hand observations on the habits and structure of plants that is
startling even to a modern botanist. About the same time Galenic
physiology, expressed also in numerous works in the vulgar tongue and
rousing the curiosity of the physicians, became the clear parent of
modern physiology and comparative anatomy. But, above all, the
Aristotelian biological works were fertilizers of the mind. It is very
interesting to watch a fine observer such as Fabricius ab Acquapendente
(1537-1619) laying the foundations of modern embryology in a splendid
series of first-hand observations, treating his own great researches
almost as a commentary on Aristotle. What an impressive contrast to the
arid physics of the time based also on Aristotle! 'My purpose', says
Fabricius, 'is to treat of the formation of the foetus in every animal,
setting out from that which proceeds from the egg: for this ought to
take precedence of all other discussion of the subject, both because it
is not difficult to make out Aristotle's view of the matter, and because
his treatise on the Formation of the Foetus from the egg is by far the
fullest, and the subject is by much the most extensive and
difficult.'[52]

    [52] Hieronimo Fabrizio of Acquapendente, _De formato foetu_, Padua,
    1604.

The industrious and careful Fabricius, with a wonderful talent for
observation lit not by his own lamp but by that of Aristotle, bears a
relation to the master much like that held by Aristotle's pupil in the
flesh, Theophrastus. The works of the two men, Fabricius and
Theophrastus, bear indeed a resemblance to each other. Both rely on the
same group of general ideas, both progress in much the same ordered calm
from observation to observation, both have an inspiration which is
efficient and stimulating but below the greatest, both are enthusiastic
and effective as investigators of fact, but timid and ineffective in
drawing conclusions.

But Fabricius was more happy in his pupils than Theophrastus, for we may
watch the same Aristotelian ideas fermenting in the mind of Fabricius's
successor, the greatest biologist since Aristotle himself, William
Harvey (1578-1657).[53] This writer's work _On generation_ is a careful
commentary on Aristotle's work on the same topic, but it is a commentary
not in the old sense but in the spirit of Aristotle himself. Each
statement is weighed and tested in the light of experience, and the
younger naturalist, with all his reverence for Aristotle, does not
hesitate to criticize his conclusions. He exhibits an independence of
thought, an ingenuity in experiment, and a power of deduction that
places his treatise as the middle term of the three great works on
embryology of which the other members are those of Aristotle and Karl
Ernst von Baer (1796-1876).[54]

    [53] William Harvey, _Exercitationes de generatione animalium_,
    London, 1651.

    [54] Karl Ernst von Baer, _Ueber die Entwickelungsgeschichte der
    Thiere_, Königsberg, 1828-37.

With the second half of the seventeenth century and during a large part
of the eighteenth the biological works of Aristotle attracted less
attention. The battle against the Aristotelian physics had been fought
and won, but with them the biological works of Aristotle unjustly passed
into the shadow that overhung all the idols of the Middle Ages.

The rediscovery of the Aristotelian biology is a modern thing. The
collection of the vast wealth of living forms absorbed the energies of
the generations of naturalists from Ray (1627-1705) and Willoughby
(1635-72) to Réaumur (1683-1757) and Linnaeus (1707-1778) and beyond to
the nineteenth century. The magnitude and fascination of the work seems
almost to have excluded general ideas. With the end of this period and
the advent of a more philosophical type of naturalist, such as Cuvier
(1769-1832) and members of the Saint-Hilaire family, Aristotle came
again to his own. Since the dawn of the nineteenth century, and since
naturalists have been in a position to verify the work of Aristotle, his
reputation as a naturalist has continuously risen. Johannes Müller
(1801-58), Richard Owen (1804-92), George Henry Lewes (1817-78), William
Ogle (1827-1912) are a few of the long line of those who have derived
direct inspiration from his biological work. With improved modern
methods of investigation the problems of generation have absorbed a
large amount of biological attention, and interest has become specially
concentrated on Aristotle's work on that topic which is perhaps, at the
moment, more widely read than any biological treatise, ancient or
modern, except the works of Darwin. That great naturalist wrote to Ogle
in 1882: 'From quotations I had seen I had a high notion of Aristotle's
merits, but I had not the most remote notion what a wonderful man he
was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different
ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.'

CHARLES SINGER.




MEDICINE

     Ἡροφιλος δε εν τω Διαιτητικω και σοφιαν φησιν ανεπιδεικτον και
     τεχνην αδηλον και ισχυν αναγωνιστον και πλουτον αχρειον και λογον
     αδυνατον, ὑγιειας απουσης.

    {Hêrophilos de en tô Diaitêtikô kai sophian phêsin anepideikton kai
    technên adêlon kai ischyn anagôniston kai plouton achreion kai logon
    adynaton, hygieias apousês.}


Herophilos, a Greek philosopher and physician (_c._ 300 B. C.), has
truly written 'that Science and Art have equally nothing to show, that
Strength is incapable of effort, Wealth useless, and Eloquence powerless
if Health be wanting'.[55] All peoples therefore have had their methods
of treating those departures from health that we call disease, and among
peoples of higher culture such methods have been reduced in most cases
to something resembling a system. In antiquity, as now, a variety of
such systems were in vogue, and those nations who practised the art of
writing from an early date have left considerable records of their
medical methods and doctrines. We may thus form a fairly good idea of
the medical principles of the Mesopotamian, the Egyptian, the Iranian,
the Indian, and the Chinese civilizations. Much in these systems, as in
the medical procedure of more primitive tribes, was based upon some
theory of disease which fitted in with a larger theory of the nature of
evil. Of these theories the commonest was and is the demonic, the view
that regards deviation from the normal state of health as due either to
the attacks of supernatural beings or to their actual entry into the
body of the sufferer. A medical system based on such a view is
susceptible of great elaboration in a higher civilization, but not being
founded on observation is hardly capable of indefinite development, for
a point must ultimately be reached at which the mind recoils from
complex conclusions far remote from observed phenomena. The medicine of
the ancient and settled civilization of such a people as the
Assyro-Babylonians, for instance, of which substantial traces have been
recovered, is hardly, if at all, more effective, though far more
systematized, than that of many a wild and unlettered tribe that may be
observed to-day. Of such medicine as this we may give an account, but we
can hardly write a _history_. We cannot establish those elements of
continuity and of development from which alone history can be
constructed.

    [55] The works of Herophilus are lost. This fine passage has been
    preserved for us by Sextus Empiricus, a third-century physician, in
    his προς τοις μαθηματικους αιτιρρητικοι {pros tois mathêmatikous
    aitirrêtikoi}, which is in essence an attack on all positive
    philosophy. It is an entertaining fact that we should have to go to
    such a work for remains of the greatest anatomist of antiquity. The
    passage is in the section directed against ethical writers, xi. 50.

It is the distinction of the Greeks alone among the nations of antiquity
that they practised a system of medicine based not on theory but on
observation accumulated systematically as time went on. The claim can be
made for the Greeks that some at least among them were deflected by no
theory, were deceived by no theurgy, were hampered by no tradition in
their search for the facts of disease and in their attempts at
interpreting its phenomena. Only the Greeks among the ancients could
look on their healers as _physicians_ (= naturalists, φυσις {physis} =
nature), and that word itself stands as a lasting reminder of their
achievement.[56]

    [56] The word φυσικος {physikos}, though it passed over into Latin
    (Cicero) with the meaning _naturalist_, acquired the connotation of
    _sorcerer_ among the later Greek writers. Perhaps the word
    _physicianus_ was introduced to make a distinction from the
    charm-mongering _physicus_. In later Latin _physicus_ and _medicus_
    are almost always interchangeable.

At a certain stage in the history of the Western world--the exact point
in time may be disputed but the event is admitted by all--men turned to
explore the treasures of the ancient wisdom and the whole mass of Greek
medical learning was gradually laid before the student. That mass
contained much dross, material that survived from early as from late
Greek times which was hardly, if at all, superior to the debased
compositions that circulated in the name of medicine in the middle
centuries. But the recovered Greek medical writings also contained some
material of the purest and most scientific type, and that material and
the spirit in which it was written, form the debt of modern medicine to
antiquity.

It is a debt the value of which cannot be exaggerated. The physicians of
the revival of learning, and for long after, doubtless pinned their
faith too much to the written word of their Greek forbears and sought to
imprison the free spirit of Hippocrates and Galen in the rigid wall of
their own rediscovered texts. The great medical pioneers of a somewhat
later age, enraged by this attempt, the real nature of which was largely
hidden from them, not infrequently revolted and rightly revolted against
the bondage to the Greeks in which they had been brought up. Yet it is
sure that these modern discoverers were the true inheritors of the
Greeks. Without Herophilus we should have had no Harvey and the rise of
physiology might have been delayed for centuries; had Galen's works not
survived, Vesalius would never have reconstructed Anatomy, and Surgery
too might have stayed behind with her laggard sister, Medicine; the
Hippocratic collection was the necessary and acknowledged basis for the
work of the greatest of modern clinical observers, Thomas Sydenham, and
the teaching of Hippocrates and of his school is the substantial basis
of instruction in the wards of a modern hospital. In the pages which
follow we propose therefore to review the general character of medical
knowledge in the best Greek period and to consider briefly how much of
that great heritage remained accessible to the earlier modern
physicians. The reader will thus be able to form some estimate of the
degree to which the legacy has been passed on to our own times.

It is evident that among such a group of peoples as the Greeks, varying
in state of civilization, in mental power, in geographical and economic
position and in general outlook, the practice of medicine can have been
by no means uniform. Without any method of centralizing medical
education and standardizing teaching there was a great variety of
doctrines and of practice in vogue among them, and much of this was on a
low level of folk custom. Such lower grade material of Greek origin has
come down to us in abundance, though much of it, curiously enough, from
a later time. But the overwhelming mass of earlier Greek medical
literature sets forth for us a pure scientific effort to observe and to
classify disease, to make generalizations from carefully collected data,
to explain the origin of disease on rational grounds, and to apply
remedies, when possible, on a reasoned basis. We may thus rest fairly
well assured that, despite serious and irreparable losses, we are still
in possession of some of the very finest products of the Greek medical
intellect.

There is ample evidence that the Greeks inherited, in common with many
other peoples of Mediterranean and Asiatic origin, a whole system of
magical or at least non-rational pharmacy and medicine from a remoter
ancestry. Striking parallels can be drawn between these folk elements
among the Greeks and the medical systems of the early Romans, as well as
with the medicine of the Indian Vedas, of the ancient Egyptians, and of
the earliest European barbarian writings. It is thus reasonable to
suppose that these elements, when they appear in later Greek writings,
represent more primitive folk elements working up, under the influence
of social disintegration and consequent mental deterioration, through
the upper strata of the literate Greek world. But with these elements,
intensely interesting to the anthropologist, the psychologist, the
ethnologist, and to the historian of religion, we are not here greatly
concerned. Important as they are, they constitute no part of the special
claim of the Greek people to distinction, but rather aid us in uniting
the Greek mentality with that of other kindred peoples. Here we shall
rather discuss the course of Greek scientific medicine proper, the type
of medical doctrine and practice, capable of development in the proper
sense of the word, that forms the basis of our modern system. We are
concerned, in fact, with the earliest evolutionary medicine.

We need hardly discuss the first origins of Greek Medicine. The material
is scanty and the conclusions somewhat doubtful and perhaps premature,
for the discovery of a considerable fragment of the historical work of
Menon, a pupil of Aristotle, containing a description of the views of
some of the precursors of the Hippocratic school, renews a hope that
more extended investigation may yield further information as to the
sources and nature of the earliest Greek medical writings.[57] The study
of Mesopotamian star-lore has linked it up with early Greek astronomical
science. The efforts of cuneiform scholars have not, however, been
equally successful for medicine, and on the whole the general tendency
of modern research is to give less weight to Mesopotamian and more to
Egyptian sources than had previously been admitted; thus very recently
an Egyptian medical papyrus of about 1700 B. C. has been described which
bears a distinct resemblance to some of the Hippocratic treatises.[58] A
number of drugs, too, habitually used by the Greeks, such as
_Andropogon_, _Cardamoms_, and _Sesame orientalis_, are of Indian
origin. There are also the Minoan cultures to be considered, and though
our knowledge is not yet sufficient to speak of the heritage that Greek
medicine may or may not have derived from that source, it seems not
improbable that Greek hygiene may here owe a debt.[59] Omitting,
therefore, this early epoch, we pass direct to the later period,
between the sixth and fourth centuries, from which documents have
actually come down to us.

    [57] This fragment has been published in vol. iii, part 1, of the
    _Supplementum Aristotelicum_ by H. Diels as _Anonymi Londinensis ex
    Aristotelis Iatricis Menonis et Aliis Medicis Eclogae_, Berlin,
    1893. See also H. Bekh and F. Spät, _Anonymus Londinensis, Auszuge
    eines Unbekannten aus Aristoteles-Menons Handbuch der Medizin_,
    Berlin, 1896.

    [58] As we go to press there appears a preliminary account of the
    very remarkable Edwin Smith papyrus, see J. H. Breasted in _Recueil
    d'études egyptologiques dédiées à la mémoire de Champollion_, Paris
    1922, and _New York Historical Society Bulletin_, 1922.

    [59] It is tempting, also, to connect the Asclepian snake cult with
    the prominence of the serpent in Minoan religion.

The earliest medical school of which we have definite information is
that of Cnidus, a Lacedaemonian colony in Asiatic Doris. Its origin may
perhaps reach back to the seventh century B. C. We have actual records
that the teachers of Cnidus were accustomed to collect systematically
the phenomena of disease, of which they had produced a very complex
classification, and we probably possess also several of their actual
works. The physicians of Cos, their only contemporary critics whose
writings have survived, considered that the Cnidian physicians paid too
much attention to the actual sensations of the patient and to the
physical signs of the disease. The most important of the Cnidian
doctrines were drawn up in a series of _Sentences_ or Aphorisms, and
these, it appears, inculcated a treatment along Egyptian lines of the
symptom or at most the disease, rather than the patient, a statement
borne out by the contents of the gynaecological works of probable
Cnidian origin included in the so-called 'Hippocratic Collection'. A few
names of Cnidian physicians have, moreover, come down to us with titles
of their works, and a later statement that they practised anatomy. There
can be little doubt too that the Cnidian school drew also on Persian and
Indian Medicine.

The origin of the school of the neighbouring island of Cos was a little
later than that of Cnidus and probably dates from the sixth century B.
C. Of the Coan school, or at least of the general tendencies that it
represented, we have a magnificent and copious literary monument in the
Corpus Hippocraticum, a collection which was probably put together in
the early part of the third century B. C. by a commission of Alexandrian
scholars at the order of the book-loving Ptolemy Soter (reigned 323-285
B. C.). The elements of which this collection is composed are of varying
dates from the sixth to the fourth century B. C., and of varying value
and origin, but they mainly represent the point of view of physicians
of the eastern part of the Greek world in the fifth and fourth
centuries.

The most obvious feature, the outstanding element that at once strikes
the modern observer in these 'Coan' writings, is the enormous emphasis
laid on the actual course of disease. 'It appears to me a most excellent
thing', so opens one of the greatest of the Hippocratic works, 'for a
physician to cultivate _pronoia_.[60] Foreknowing and foretelling in the
presence of the sick the past, present, and future (of their symptoms)
and explaining all that the patients are neglecting, he would be
believed to understand their condition, so that men would have
confidence to entrust themselves to his care.... Thus he would win just
respect and be a good physician. By an earlier forecast in each case he
would be more able to tend those aright who have a chance of surviving,
and by foreseeing and stating who will die, and who will survive, he
will escape blame....'[61]

    [60] This word _pronoia_, as Galen explains (εις το Ἱπποκρατους
    προγνωστικον {eis to Hippokratous prognôstikon}, K. xviii, B. p.
    10), is not used in the philosophic sense, as when we ask whether
    the universe was made by chance or by _pronoia_, nor is it used
    quite in the modern sense of _prognosis_, though it includes that
    too. _Pronoia_ in Hippocrates means knowing things about a patient
    before you are told them. See E. T. Withington, 'Some Greek medical
    terms with reference to Luke and Liddell and Scott,' _Proceedings of
    the Royal Society of Medicine_ (_Section of the History of
    Medicine_), xiii, p. 124, London, 1920.

    [61] _Prognostics_ 1.

Just as the Cnidians by dividing up diseases according to symptoms
over-emphasized diagnosis and over-elaborated treatment, so the Coans
laid very great force on prognosis and adopted therefore a largely
expectant attitude towards diseases. Both Cnidian and Coan physicians
were held together by a common bond which was, historically if not
actually, related to temple worship. Physicians leagued together in the
name of a god, as were the Asclepiadae, might escape, and did escape,
the baser theurgic elements of temple medicine. Of these they were as
devoid as a modern Catholic physician might be expected to be free from
the absurdities of Lourdes. But the extreme cult of prognosis among the
Coans may not improbably be traced back to the medical lore of the
temple soothsayers whose divine omens were replaced by indications of a
physical nature in the patient himself.[62] We are tempted too to link
it with that process of astronomical and astrological prognosis
practised in the Mesopotamian civilizations from which Ionia imitated
and derived so much. Religion had thus the same relation to medicine
that it would have with a modern 'religious' medical man as suggesting
the motive and determining the general direction of his practice though
without influence on the details and method.

    [62] There is a discussion of the relation of the Asclepiadae to
    temple practice in an article by E. T. Withington, 'The Asclepiadae
    and the Priest of Asclepius,' in _Studies in the History and Method
    of Science_, edited by Charles Singer, vol. ii, Oxford, 1921.

During the development of the Coan medical school along these lines in
the sixth and fifth centuries, there was going on a most remarkable
movement at the very other extreme of the Greek world. Into the course
and general importance of Sicilian philosophy it is not our place to
enter, but that extraordinary movement was not without its repercussion
on medical theory and practice. Very important in this direction was
Empedocles of Agrigentum (_c._ 500-_c._ 430 B. C.). His view that the
blood is the seat of the 'innate heat', εμφυτον θερμον {emphyton
thermon}, he took from folk belief--'the blood is the life'--and this
innate heat he closely identified with soul. More profitable was his
doctrine that breathing takes place not only through what are now known
as the respiratory passages but also through the pores of the skin. His
teaching led to a belief in the heart as the centre of the vascular
system and the chief organ of the 'pneuma' which was distributed by the
blood vessels. This pneuma was equivalent to both soul and life, but it
was something more. It was identified with air and breath, and the
pneuma could be seen to rise as shimmering steam from the shed blood of
the sacrificial victim--for was not the blood its natural home? There
was a pneuma, too, that interpenetrated the universe around us and gave
it those qualities of life that it was felt to possess. Anaximenes (_c._
610-_c._ 545 B. C.), an Ionian predecessor of Empedocles, may be said to
have defined for us these functions of the pneuma; ὁιον ἡ ψυχη ἡ ἡμετερα
αηρ ουσα συγκρατει ἡμας, ὁλον τον κοσμον πνευμα και αηρ περιεχει {hoion
hê psychê hê hêmetera aêr ousa synkratei hêmas, holon ton kosmon pneuma
kai aêr periechei}, 'As our soul, being air, sustains us, so pneuma and
air pervade the whole universe';[63] but it is the speculation of
Empedocles himself that came to be regarded as the basis of the
Pneumatic School in Medicine which had later very important
developments.

    [63] The works of Anaximenes are lost. This phrase of his, however,
    is preserved by the later writer Aetios.

Another early member of the Western school who made important
contributions to medical doctrine--in which relation alone we need
consider him--was Pythagoras of Samos (_c._ 580-_c._490 B. C.). For him
number, as the purest conception, formed the basis of philosophy. Unity
was the symbol of perfection and corresponded to God Himself. The
material universe was represented by 2, and was divided by the number
12, whence we have 3 worlds and 4 spheres. These in turn, according at
least to the later Pythagoreans, give rise to the four elements, earth,
air, fire, and water--a primary doctrine of medicine and of science
derived perhaps from ancient Egypt and surviving for more than two
millennia. The Pythagoreans taught, too, of the existence of an animal
soul, an emanation of the soul of the universe. In all this we may
distinguish the germ of that doctrine of the relation of man and
universe, microcosm and macrocosm, which, suppressed as irrelevant in
the Hippocratic works, reappears in the Platonic and especially in the
Neoplatonic writings, and forms a very important dogma in later
medicine.

A pupil of Pythagoras and an older contemporary of Empedocles was
Alcmaeon of Croton (_c._ 500 B. C.), who began to construct a positive
basis for medical science by the practice of dissection of animals, and
discovered the optic nerves and the Eustachian tubes. He even extended
his researches to Embryology, describing the head of the foetus as the
first part to be developed--a justifiable deduction from appearances.
Alcmaeon introduced also the doctrine that health depends on harmony,
disease on discord of the elements within the body. Curiosity as to the
distribution of the vessels was excited by Empedocles and Alcmaeon and
led to further dissection, and Alcmaeon's pupils Acron (_c._ 480 B. C.)
and Pausanias (_c._ 480 B. C.), and the later Philistion of Lokri,[64]
the contemporary of Plato, all made anatomical investigations.

    [64] For the work of these physicians see especially M. Wellmann,
    _Fragmentsammlung der griechischen Aerzte_, Bd. I, Berlin, 1901.

The views of Empedocles, and especially his doctrine that regarded the
heart as the main site of the pneuma, though rejected by the Coan school
as a whole, were not without influence on Ionia. Diogenes of Apollonia,
the philosopher of pneumatism, a late fifth-century writer who must have
been contemporary with Hippocrates the Great, himself made an
investigation of the blood vessels; and the influence of the same school
may be traced in a little work περι καρδιης {peri kardiês}, _On the
heart_, which is the best anatomical treatise of the Hippocratic
Collection. This work describes the aorta and the pulmonary artery as
well as the three valves at the root of each of the great vessels, and
it speaks of experiments to test their validity. It treats of the
pericardium and of the pericardial fluid and perhaps of the musculi
papillares, and contrasts the thickness of the walls of right and left
ventricles. The author considers that the left ventricle is empty of
blood--as indeed it is after death--and is the source of the innate heat
and of the absolute intelligence. These views fit in with the doctrines
of Empedocles, so that we may perhaps even venture to regard this work
as a surviving document of the Sicilian school. It is interesting to
observe that we have here the first hint of human dissection, for the
author tells us that the hearts of animals may be compared to that of
man. The distinction of having been the first to write on human anatomy,
as such, belongs however, probably to a later writer, Diocles, son of
Archidamus of Carystus, who lived in the fourth century B. C.[65]

    [65] Galen, περι ανατομικων εγχειρησεων {peri anatomikôn
    encheirêseôn}, _On anatomical preparations_, § 1, K. II, p. 282.

We may now turn to the Hippocratic Corpus as a whole. This collection
consists of about 60 or 70 separate works, written at various periods
and in various states of preservation. At best only a very small
proportion of them can be attributed to Hippocrates, but the discussion
of the general question of the 'genuineness' of the works is now
admitted to be futile, for it is certain that we have no criteria
whatever to determine whether or no a particular work be from the pen of
the Father of Medicine, and the most we can ever say of such a treatise
is that it appears to be of his school and in his spirit. Yet among the
great gifts of this collection to our time and to all time are two which
stand out above all others, the picture of a man, and the picture of a
method.

The man is Hippocrates himself. Of the actual details of his life we
know next to nothing. His period of greatest activity falls about 400 B.
C. He seems to have led a wandering life. Born of a long line of
physicians in the island of Cos, he exerted his activities in Thrace,
Abdera, Delos, the Propontis (Cyzicus), Thasos, Thessaly (notably at
Larissa and Meliboea), Athens, and elsewhere, dying at Larissa in
extreme old age about the year 377 B. C. He had many pupils, among whom
were his two sons Thessalus and Dracon, who also undertook journeys, his
son-in-law Polybus, of whose works a fragment has been preserved for us
by Aristotle,[66] together with three other Coans bearing the names
Apollonius, Dexippus, and Praxagoras. This is practically all we know
of him with certainty. But though this glimpse is very dim and distant,
yet we cannot exaggerate the influence on the course of medicine and the
value for physicians of all time of the traditional picture that was
early formed of him and that may indeed well be drawn again from the
works bearing his name. In beauty and dignity that figure is beyond
praise. Perhaps gaining in stateliness what he loses in clearness,
Hippocrates will ever remain the type of the perfect physician. Learned,
observant, humane, with a profound reverence for the claims of his
patients, but an overmastering desire that his experience shall benefit
others, orderly and calm, disturbed only by anxiety to record his
knowledge for the use of his brother physicians and for the relief of
suffering, grave, thoughtful and reticent, pure of mind and master of
his passions, this is no overdrawn picture of the Father of Medicine as
he appeared to his contemporaries and successors. It is a figure of
character and virtue which has had an ethical value to medical men of
all ages comparable only to the influence exerted on their followers by
the founders of the great religions. If one needed a maxim to place upon
the statue of Hippocrates, none could be found better than that from the
book Παραγγελιαι {Parangeliai}, _Precepts_:

  ην γαρ παρη φιλανθρωπιη παρεστι και φιλοτεχνιη

  {ên gar parê philanthrôpiê paresti kai philotechniê}

  'Where the love of man is, there also is love of the Art.'[67]

    [66] _Historia animalium_, iii. 3, where it is ascribed to Polybus.
    The same passage is, however, repeated twice in the Hippocratic
    writings, viz. in the περι φυσιος ανθρωπου {peri physios anthrôpou},
    _On the nature of man_, Littré, vi. 58, and in the περι οστεων
    φυσιος {peri osteôn physios}, _On the nature of bones_, Littré, ix.
    174.

    [67] Παραγγελιαι {Parangeliai}, § 6.

The numerous busts of him which have reached our time are no portraits.
But the best of them are something much better and more helpful to us
than any portrait. They are idealized representations of the kind of man
a physician should be and was in the eyes of the best and wisest of the
Greeks.[68]

    [68] See Fig. 1.

[Illustration: Fig. 1. HIPPOCRATES
British Museum, second or third century B. C.]

[Illustration: Fig. 2. ASCLEPIUS
British Museum, fourth century B. C.]

The method of the Hippocratic writers is that known to-day as the
'inductive'. Without the vast scientific heritage that is in our own
hands, with only a comparatively small number of observations drawn from
the Coan and neighbouring schools, surrounded by all manner of bizarre
oriental religions in which no adequate relation of cause and effect was
recognized, and above all constantly urged by the exuberant genius
for speculation of that Greek people in the midst of whom they lived and
whose intellectual temptations they shared, they remain nevertheless,
for the most part, patient observers of fact, sceptical of the
marvellous and the unverifiable, hesitating to theorize beyond the data,
yet eager always to generalize from actual experience; calm, faithful,
effective servants of the sick. There is almost no type of mental
activity known to us that was not exhibited by the Greeks and cannot be
paralleled from their writings; but careful and constant return to
verification from experience, expressed in a record of actual
observations--the habitual method adopted in modern scientific
departments--is rare among them except in these early medical authors.

The spirit of their practice cannot be better illustrated than by the
words of the so-called 'Hippocratic oath'. That document, though of late
date in its present form, throws a flood of light on the ethics of Greek
medicine.

     'I swear by Apollo the physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and
     Panacea, invoking all the gods and goddesses to be my witnesses,
     that I will fulfil this Oath and this written covenant to the best
     of my power and of my judgment.

     'I will look upon him who shall have taught me this art even as on
     mine own parents; I will share with him my substance, and supply
     his necessities if he be in need; I will regard his offspring even
     as my own brethren, and will teach them this art, if they desire to
     learn it, without fee or covenant. I will impart it by precept, by
     lecture and by all other manner of teaching, not only to my own
     sons but also to the sons of him who has taught me, and to
     disciples bound by covenant and oath according to the law of the
     physicians, but to none other.

     'The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of the patients to
     the best of my power and judgment, not for their injury or for any
     wrongful purpose. I will not give a deadly drug to any one, though
     it be asked of me, nor will I lead the way in such counsel; and
     likewise I will not give a woman a pessary to procure abortion. But
     I will keep my life and my art in purity and holiness. Whatsoever
     house I enter, I will enter for the benefit of the sick, refraining
     from all voluntary wrongdoing and corruption, especially seduction
     of male or female, bond or free. Whatsoever things I see or hear
     concerning the life of men, in my attendance on the sick or even
     apart from my attendance, which ought not to be blabbed abroad, I
     will keep silence on them, counting such things to be as religious
     secrets.

     'If I fulfil this oath and confound it not, be it mine to enjoy
     life and art alike, with good repute among all men for all time to
     come; but may the contrary befall me if I transgress and violate my
     oath.'[69]

    [69] Translation by Professor Arthur Platt.

Respected equally throughout the ages by Arab, Jew, and Christian, the
oath remains the watchword of the profession of medicine.[70] The
ethical value of such a declaration could not escape the attention even
of a Byzantine formalist, and it is interesting to observe that in our
oldest Greek manuscript of the Hippocratic text, dating from the tenth
century, this magnificent passage is headed by the words 'from the oath
of Hippocrates according as it may be sworn by a Christian.'[71]

    [70] It must, however, be admitted that in the Hippocratic
    collection are breaches of the oath, e. g. in the induction of
    abortion related in περι φυσιος παιδιου {peri physios paidiou}.
    There is evidence, however, that the author of this work was not a
    medical practitioner.

    [71] Rome Urbinas 64, fo. 116.

When we examine the Hippocratic corpus more closely, we discern that not
only are the treatises by many hands, but there is not even a uniform
opinion and doctrine running through them. This is well brought out by
some of the more famous of the phrases of this remarkable collection.
Thus a well-known passage from the _Airs, Waters, and Places_ tells us
that the Scythians attribute a certain physical disability to a god,
'but it appears to me', says the author, 'that these affections are just
as much divine as are all others and that no disease is either more
divine or more human than another, but that all are equally divine, for
each of them has its own nature, and none of them arise without a
natural cause.' But, on the other hand, the author of the great work on
_Prognostics_ advises us that when the physician is called in he must
seek to ascertain the nature of the affections that he is treating, and
especially 'if there be anything divine in the disease, and to learn a
foreknowledge of this also.'[72] We may note too that this sentence
almost immediately precedes what is perhaps the most famous of all the
Hippocratic sentences, the description of what has since been termed the
_Hippocratic facies_. This wonderful description of the signs of death
may be given as an illustration of the habitual attitude of the
Hippocratic school towards prognosis and of the very careful way in
which they noted details:

     'He [the physician] should observe thus in acute diseases: first,
     the countenance of the patient, if it be like to those who are in
     health, _and especially if it be like itself, for this would be the
     best_; but the more unlike to this, the worse it is; such would be
     these: _sharp nose, hollow eyes, collapsed temples; ears cold,
     contracted, and their lobes turned out; skin about the forehead
     rough, distended, and parched; the colour of the whole face
     greenish or dusky_. If the countenance be so at the beginning of
     the disease, and if this cannot be accounted for from the other
     symptoms, inquiry must be made whether he has passed a sleepless
     night; whether his bowels have been very loose; or whether he is
     suffering from hunger; and if any of these be admitted the danger
     may be reckoned as less; and it may be judged in the course of a
     day and night if the appearance of the countenance proceed from
     these. But if none of these be said to exist, and the symptoms do
     not subside in that time, be it known for certain that death is at
     hand.'[73]

    [72] Kühlewein, i. 79, regards this as an interpolated passage.

    [73] Littré, ii. 112; Kühlewein, i. 79. The texts vary: Kühlewein is
    followed except in the last sentence.

Again, in the work _On the Art_ [_of Medicine_] we read: 'I hold it to
be physicianly to abstain from treating those who are overwhelmed by
disease',[74] a prudent if inhumane procedure among a people who might
regard the doctor's powers as partaking of the nature of magic, and
perhaps a wise course to follow at this day in some places not very far
from Cos. Yet in the book _On Diseases_ we are advised even in the
presence of an incurable disease 'to give relief with such treatment as
is possible'.[75]

    [74] Περι τεχνης {Peri technês}, § 3.

    [75] Περι νουσων α' {Peri nousôn a'}, § 6.

Furthermore, works by authors of the Hippocratic school stand sometimes
in a position of direct controversy with each other. Thus in the
treatise _On the Heart_ an experiment is set forth which is held to
prove that a part at least of imbibed fluid passes into the cavity of
the lung and thence to the parts of the body, a popular error in
antiquity which recurs in Plato's _Timaeus_. This view, however, is
specifically held to be fallacious by the author of the work _On
Diseases_, who is supported by a polemical section in the surviving
Menon fragment.

Passages like these have convinced all students that we have to deal in
this collection with a variety of works written at different dates by
different authors and under different conditions, a state that may be
well understood when we reflect that among the Greeks medicine was a
progressive study for a far longer period of time than has yet been the
case in the Western world. An account of such a collection can therefore
only be given in the most general fashion. The system or systems of
medicine that we shall thus attempt to describe was in vogue up to the
Alexandrian period, that is, to the beginning of the third century B. C.

Anatomy and physiology, the basis of our modern system, was still a very
weak point in the knowledge of the pre-Alexandrians. The surface form of
the body was intimately studied in connexion especially with fractures,
but there is no evidence in the literature of the period of any closer
acquaintance with human anatomical structure.[76] The same fact is well
borne out by Greek Art, for in its noblest period the artist betrays no
evidence of assistance derived from anatomization. Such evidence is not
found until we come to sculpture of Alexandrian date, when the somewhat
strained attitudes and exaggerated musculature of certain works of the
school of Pergamon suggest that the artist derived hints, if not direct
information, from anatomists who, we know, were active at that time. It
is not improbable, however, that separate bones, if not complete
skeletons, were commonly studied earlier, for the surgical works of the
Hippocratic collection, and especially those on fractures and
dislocations, give evidence of a knowledge of the relations of bones to
each other and of their natural position in the body which could not be
obtained, or only obtained with greatest difficulty, without this aid.

    [76] A reference to dissection in the περι αρθρων {peri arthrôn},
    _On the joints_, § 1, appears to the present writer to be of
    Alexandrian date.

There are in the Hippocratic works a certain number of comparisons
between human and animal structures that would have been made possible
by surgical operations and occasional accidents. The view has been put
forward that some anatomical knowledge was derived through the practice
of augury from the entrails of sacrificial animals. It appears, however,
improbable that a system so scientific and so little related to temple
practice would have had much to learn from these sources, and, moreover,
since we know that animals were actually dissected as early as the time
of Alcmaeon it would be unnecessary to invoke the aid of the priests.
The unknown author of the περι τοπων των κατα ανθρωπον {peri topôn tôn
kata anthrôpon}, _On the sites of_ [_diseases_] _in man_, a work written
about 400 B. C., declares indeed that 'physical structure is the basis
of medicine', but the formal treatises on anatomy that we possess from
Hippocratic times give the general anatomical standard of the corpus,
and it is a very disappointing one. The tract _On Anatomy_, though
probably of much later date (perhaps _c._ 330 B. C.), is inferior even
to the treatise _On the Heart_ (perhaps of about 400 B. C.).

Physiology and Pathology are almost as much in the background as anatomy
in the Hippocratic collection. As a formal discipline and part of
medical education we find no trace of these studies among the
pre-Alexandrian physicians. But the meagreness of the number of
ascertained facts did not prevent much speculation among a people eager
to seek the causes of things. Of that speculation we learn much from the
fragments of contemporary medical writers and philosophers, from the
medical works of the Alexandrian period, and to some extent from the
Hippocratic writings themselves. But the wiser and more sober among the
writers of the Hippocratic corpus were bent on something other than the
causes of things. Their pre-occupation was primarily with the suffering
patient, and the best of them therefore excluded--and we may assume
consciously--all but the rarest references to such speculation.

The general state of health of the body was considered by the
Hippocratists to depend on the distribution of the four elements, earth,
air, fire, and water, whose mixture (_crasis_) and cardinal properties,
dryness, warmth, coldness, and moistness, form the body and its
constituents. To these correspond the cardinal fluids, blood, phlegm,
yellow bile and black bile. The fundamental condition of life is the
_innate heat_, the abdication of which is death. This innate heat is
greatest in youth when most fuel is therefore required, but gradually
declines with age. Another necessity for the support of life is the
_pneuma_ which circulates in the vessels. All this may seem fanciful
enough, but we may remember that the first half of the nineteenth
century had waned before the doctrine of the humours which had then
lasted for at least twenty-two centuries became obsolete, and perhaps it
still survives in certain modern scientific developments. Moreover, the
finest and most characteristic of the Hippocratic works either do not
mention or but casually refer to these theories which are not essential
to their main pre-occupation. Their task of observation of symptoms, of
the separation of the essentials from the accidents of disease, and of
generalization from experience could go on unaffected by any view of the
nature of man and of the world. Even treatment, which must almost of
necessity be based on _some_ theory of causation, was little deflected
by a view of elements and humours on which it was impossible to act
directly, while therapeutics was further safeguarded from such influence
by the doctrine of _Nature as the healer of diseases_, νουσων φυσεις
ιητροι {nousôn physeis iêtroi}, the _vis medicatrix naturae_ of the
later Latin writers and of the present day.

Diseases are to be cured, in the Hippocratic view, by restoring the
disturbed harmony in the relation of the elements and humours. These, in
fact, tend naturally to an equilibrium and in most cases if left to
themselves will be brought to this state by the natural tendency to
recovery. The process is known as _pepsis_ or, to give it the Latin
form, _coctio_, and the turning-point at which the effects of this
process exhibit themselves is the _crisis_, a term which, together with
some of its original content, has still a place in medicine. Such a
turning-point does in fact occur in many diseases, especially those of a
zymotic character, on certain special days, though undue emphasis was
laid by the Greek physicians upon the exact numerical character of the
event. It was no unimportant duty of the physician to assist nature by
bringing his remedies to bear at the critical times. If the crisis is
wanting, or if the remedies are applied at the wrong moment, the disease
may become incurable. But diseases were only immediately or proximately
caused by disturbances in the balance or harmony of the humours. This
was a mere hypothesis, as the Hippocratists themselves well knew. There
were other more remote causes which came into the actual purview of the
physician, conditions which he could and did study. Such conditions
were, for instance, injudicious modes of life, exposure to climatic
changes, advancing age, and the like. Many of these could be directly
corrected. But for those that could not there were various therapeutic
measures at hand.

That human bodies are and normally remain in a state of health, and that
on the whole they tend to recover from disease, is an attitude so
familiar to us to-day that we scarcely need to be reminded of it. We
live some twenty-three centuries later than Hippocrates; for some
sixteen of those centuries the civilized world thought that to retain
health periodical bleedings and potions were necessary; for the last
century or two we have been gradually returning on the Hippocratic
position!

The chief glory of the Hippocratic collection regarded from the clinical
point of view is perhaps the actual description of cases. A number of
these--forty-two in all--have survived.[77] They are not only unique as
a collection for nearly 2,000 years, but they are still to this day
models of what succinct clinical records should be, clear and short,
without a superfluous word, yet with all that is most essential, and
exhibiting merely a desire to record the most important facts without
the least attempt to prejudge the case. They illustrate to the full the
Greek genius for seizing on the essential. The writer shows not the
least wish to exalt his own skill. He seeks merely to put the data
before the reader for his guidance under like circumstances. It is a
reflex of the spirit of full honesty in which these men lived and worked
that the great majority of the cases are recorded to have died. Two of
this remarkable little collection may be given:

     'The woman with quinsy, who lodged with Aristion: her complaint
     began in the tongue; voice inarticulate; tongue red and parched.
     _First day_, shivered, then became heated. _Third day_, rigor,
     acute fever; reddish and hard swelling on both sides of neck and
     chest; extremities cold and livid; respiration elevated; drink
     returned by the nose; she could not swallow; alvine and urinary
     discharges suppressed. _Fourth day_, all symptoms exacerbated.
     _Fifth day_, she died.'

    [77] They are to be found as an Appendix to Books I and III of the
    _Epidemics_ and embedded in Book III.

We probably have here to do with a case of diphtheria. The quinsy, the
paralysis of the palate leading to return of the food through the nose,
and the difficulty with speech and swallowing are typical results of
this affection which was here complicated by a spread of the septic
processes into the neck and chest, a not uncommon sequela of the
disease. The rapid onset of the conditions is rather unusual, but may be
explained if we regard the case as a mild and unnoticed diphtheria,
subsequently complicated by paralysis and by secondary septic infection,
for which reasons she came under observation.

     'In Thasos, the wife of Delearces who lodged on the plain, through
     sorrow was seized with an acute and shivering fever. From first to
     last she always wrapped herself up in her bedclothes; kept silent,
     fumbled, picked, bored and gathered hairs [from the clothes];
     tears, and again laughter; no sleep; bowels irritable, but passed
     nothing; when urged drank a little; urine thin and scanty; to the
     touch the fever was slight; coldness of the extremities. _Ninth
     day_, talked much incoherently, and again sank into silence.
     _Fourteenth day_, breathing rare, large, and spaced, and again
     hurried. _Seventeenth day_, after stimulation of the bowels she
     passed even drinks, nor could retain anything; totally insensible;
     skin parched and tense. _Twentieth day_, much talk, and again
     became composed, then voiceless; respiration hurried. _Twenty-first
     day_, died. Her respiration throughout was rare and large; she was
     totally insensible; always wrapped up in her bedclothes; throughout
     either much talk, or complete silence.'

This second case is in part a description of low muttering delirium, a
common end of continued fevers such as, for instance, typhoid. The
description closely resembles the condition known now in medicine as the
'typhoid state'. Incidentally the case contains a reference to a type of
breathing common among the dying. The respiration becomes deep and slow,
as it sinks gradually into quietude and becomes rarer and rarer until it
seems to cease altogether, and then it gradually becomes more rapid and
so on alternately. This type of breathing is known to physicians as
'Cheyne-Stokes' respiration in commemoration of two distinguished Irish
physicians of the last century who brought it to the attention of
medical men.[78] Recently it has been partially explained on a
physiological basis. We may note that there is another and even better
pen-picture of Cheyne-Stokes respiration in the Hippocratic collection.
It is in the famous case of 'Philescos who lived by the wall and who
took to his bed on the first day of acute fever'. About the middle of
the sixth day he died and the physician notes that 'the respiration
throughout was _like that of a person recollecting himself_ and was
large and rare'. Cheyne-Stokes breathing is admirably described as 'that
of a person recollecting himself'.

    [78] John Cheyne (1777-1836) described this type of respiration in
    the _Dublin Hospital Reports_, 1818, ii, p. 216. An extreme case of
    this condition had been described by Cheyne's namesake George Cheyne
    (1671-1743) as the famous 'Case of the Hon. Col. Townshend' in his
    _English Malady_, London, 1733. William Stokes (1804-78) published
    his account of Cheyne-Stokes breathing in the _Dublin Quarterly
    Journal of the Medical Sciences_, 1846, ii, p. 73.

Such records as these may be contrasted with certain others that have
come down from Greek antiquity. We may instance two steles discovered at
Epidaurus in 1885, bearing accounts of forty-four temple cures. The
following two are fair samples of the cures there described:

     '_Aristagora of Troizen._ She had tape-worm, and while she slept in
     the Temple of Asclepius at Troizen, she saw a vision. She thought
     that, as the god was not present, but was away in Epidaurus, his
     sons cut off her head, but were unable to put it back again. Then
     they sent a messenger to Asclepius asking him to come to Troizen.
     Meanwhile day came, and the priest actually saw her head cut off
     from the body. The next night Aristagora had a dream. She thought
     the god came from Epidaurus and fastened her head on to her neck.
     Then he cut open her belly, and stitched it up again. So she was
     cured.'

     'A man had an abdominal abscess. He saw a vision, and thought that
     the god ordered the slaves who accompanied him to lift him up and
     hold him, so that his abdomen could be cut open. The man tried to
     get away, but his slaves caught him and bound him. So Asclepius cut
     him open, rid him of the abscess, and then stitched him up again,
     releasing him from his bonds. Straightway he departed cured, and
     the floor of the Abaton was covered with blood.'[79]

    [79] The Epidaurian inscriptions are given by M. Fraenkel in the
    _Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum_ IV, 951-6, and are discussed by
    Mary Hamilton (Mrs. Guy Dickins), _Incubation_, St. Andrews, 1906,
    from whose translation I have quoted. Further inscriptions are given
    by Cavvadias in the _Archaiologike Ephemeris_, 1918, p. 155 (issued
    1921).

In the records of almost all temple cures, a great number of which have
survived in a wide variety of documents, an essential element is the
process of εγκοιμησις {enkoimêsis}, _incubation_ or temple sleep,
usually in a special sleeping-place or Abaton. The process has a close
parallel in certain modern Greek churches and in places of worship much
further West; there are even traces of it in these islands, and it is
more than probable that the Christian practice is descended by direct
continuity from the pagan.[80] The whole character of the temple
treatment was--and is--of a kind to suggest to the patient that he
should dream of the god, an event which therefore usually takes place.
Such treatment by suggestion is applicable only to certain classes of
disease and is always liable to fall into the hands of fanatics and
impostors. The difficulty that the honest practitioner encounters is
that the sufferer, in the nature of the case, can hardly be brought to
believe that his ailment is what in fact it is, a lesion of the mind. It
is this which gives the miracle-monger his chance.

    [80] We are almost told as much in the apocryphal _Gospel of
    Nicodemus_, § 1, a work probably composed about the end of the
    fourth century.

Examine for a moment the two cases from Epidaurus, which are quite
typical of the series. We observe that the first is described simply as
a case of 'tape-worm' without any justification for the diagnosis. It is
not unfrequent nowadays for thin and anxious patients to state,
similarly without justification, that they suffer from this condition.
They attribute certain common gastric experiences to this cause of which
perhaps they have learned from sensational advertisements, and then they
ask cure for a condition which they themselves have diagnosed, but which
has no existence in fact. Such a case is often appropriately treated by
suggestion. Though the elaborateness of the suggestion in the temple
cure is a little startling, yet it can easily be paralleled from the
legends of the Christian saints. Moreover, we must remember that we are
not here dealing with an account set down by the patient herself, but
with an edificatory inscription put up by the temple officials.

In the second inscription, the man with an abdominal abscess, we have a
much simpler state of affairs. It is evident that an operation was
actually performed by the priest masquerading as Asclepius, while the
patient was held down by the slaves. He is assured that all is a dream
and departs cured with the tell-tale comment 'and the floor of the
Abaton was covered with blood'.

These cases might be multiplied indefinitely without great profit for
our particular theme, for in such matters there is no development, no
evolution, no history. There can be no doubt that a very large part of
Greek practice was on this level, as is a small part of modern medicine,
but it is not a level with which we are here dealing and we shall
therefore pass it by. But a word of caution must be added. Such temple
worship has been compared with modern <DW43>-analysis. That method, like
all methods, has doubtless been abused at times; but it is in essence,
unlike the temple system, a purely scientific process by which the
ultimate basis of the patient's delusions are laid bare and demonstrated
to him.

There is indeed another side to these Asclepian temples. They gradually
developed along the lines of our health resorts and developed many of
the qualities--lovely and unlovely--that we associate with certain
continental watering places. On the bad side they became gossiping
centres or even something little better than brothels, as we may gather
from the _Mimes_ of Herondas. On the good side they formed a quiet
refuge among beautiful and interesting surroundings where the sick,
exhausted, and convalescent might gain the benefits that accrue from
pure air, fine scenery, and a regular and regulated mode of life. It is
more than probable too that the open air and manner of living benefited
many cases of incipient phthisis.

Returning to the Hippocratic collection, the purely surgical treatises
will be found no less remarkable than those of clinical observation. A
very able surgeon, Francis Adams (1796-1861), who was eminent as a Greek
scholar, gave it as his opinion in the middle of the nineteenth century
that no systematic writer on surgery up to his time had given so good
and so complete an account of certain dislocations, notably of the
hip-joint, as that to be found in the Hippocratic collection. Some types
of injury to the hip, as described in the Hippocratic writings, were
certainly otherwise quite inadequately known until described by Sir
Astley Cooper (1768-1841), himself a peculiarly Hippocratic
character.[81] The verdict of Adams was probably just, though since his
time the surgery of dislocations, aided especially by X-rays, has been
enabled to pass very definitely beyond the Hippocratic position.
Admirable, too, is the Hippocratic description of dislocation of the
shoulder and of the jaw. In dislocation of hip, shoulder, or jaw, as in
most similar lesions, there is considerable deformity produced. The
nature and meaning of this deformity is described with remarkable
exactness by the Hippocratic writer, who also sets forth the resulting
disability. The principles and indeed the very details of treatment in
these cases are, save for the use of an anaesthetic, practically
identical with those of the present day. The processes are unfortunately
not suitable for detailed quotation and description here, but they are
of special interest since a graphic record of them has come down to us.
There exists in the Laurentian Library at Florence a ninth-century Greek
surgical manuscript which contains figures of surgeons reducing the
dislocations in question. There is good reason to suppose that these
miniatures are copied from figures first prepared in pre-Christian times
many centuries earlier, and we may here see the actual processes of
reduction of such fractures, as conducted by a surgeon of the direct
Hippocratic tradition[82] (see Figs. 3, 4).

    [81] Astley Paston Cooper, _Treatise on Dislocations and Fractures
    of the Joints_, London, 1822, and _Observations on Fractures of the
    Neck and the Thighbone_, &c., London, 1823.

    [82] This famous manuscript is known as Laurentian, Plutarch 74, 7,
    and its figures have been reproduced by H. Schöne, _Apollonius von
    Kitium_, Leipzig, 1896.

[Illustration: From MS. of APOLLONIUS OF KITIUM, of Ninth Century
Copied from pre-christian original

Fig. 3 REDUCING DISLOCATED SHOULDER

Fig. 4 REDUCING DISLOCATED JAW]

In keeping with all this is most of the surgical work of the collection.
We are almost startled by the modern sound of the whole procedure as we
run through the rough note-book κατ' ιητρειον {kat' iêtreion},
_Concerning the Surgery_, or the more elaborate treatise περι ιητρου
{peri iêtrou}, _On the Physician_, where we may read minute directions
for the preparation of the operating-room, and on such points as the
management of light both artificial and natural, scrupulous cleanliness
of the hands, the care and use of the instruments, with the special
precautions needed when they are of iron, the decencies to be observed
during the operation, the general method of bandaging, the placing of
the patient, the use and abuse of splints, and the need for tidiness,
order, and cleanliness. Many of these directions are enlarged upon in
other surgical works of the collection, among which we find especially
full instructions for bandaging and for the diagnosis and treatment of
fractures and dislocations. A very fair representation of such a surgery
as these works describe is to be found on a vase-painting of Attic
origin of the earlier part of the fifth century, and, therefore, a
generation before Hippocrates (see fig. 5). There are also several
beautiful representations on vases of the actual processes of bandaging
(fig. 6).

[Illustration: FIG. 5.
A GREEK CLINIC OF ABOUT 480-470 B. C. From a vase-painting.

In the centre sits a physician holding a lancet and bleeding a patient
from the median vein at the bend of the right elbow into a large open
basin. Above and behind the physician are suspended three cupping
vessels. To the right sits another patient awaiting his turn; his left
arm is bandaged in the region of the biceps. The figure beyond him
smells a flower, perhaps as a preservative against infection. Behind the
physician stands a man leaning on a staff; he is wounded in the left
leg, which is bandaged. By his side stands a dwarfish figure with
disproportionately large head, whose body exhibits deformities typical
of the developmental disease now known as _Achondroplasia_; in addition
to these deformities we note that his body is hairy and the bridge of
his nose sunken; on his back he carries a hare which is almost as tall
as himself. Talking to the dwarf is a man leaning on a long staff, who
has the remains of a bandage round his chest.

See E. Pottier, 'Une Clinique grecque au V^{e} siècle (vase antique du
collection Peztel)', _Fondation Eugène Piot, Monuments et Mémoires_,
xiii. 149, Paris, 1906. (Some of our interpretations differ from those
of M. Pottier.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 6. A kylix from the Berlin Museum of about 490 B. C.
It bears the inscription ΣΟΣΙΑΣ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕΝ {SOSIAS EPOIÊSEN}, _Sosias
made_ (_me_), and represents Achilles bandaging Patroclus, the names of
the two heroes being written round the margin. The painter is
Euphronios, and the work is regarded as the masterpiece of that great
artist. The left upper arm of Patroclus is injured, and Achilles is
bandaging it with a two-rolled bandage, which he is trying to bring down
to extend over the elbow. The treatment of the hands, a department in
which Euphronios excelled, is particularly fine. Achilles was not a
trained surgeon, and it will be observed, from the position of the two
tails of the bandage, that he will have some difficulty when it comes to
its final fastening!]

Among the surgical procedures of which descriptions are to be found in
the Hippocratic writings are the opening of the chest for the condition
known as _empyema_ (accumulation of pus within the pleura frequently
following pneumonia), and trephining the skull in cases of fracture of
that part--two fundamental operations of modern surgery. Surgical art
has advanced enormously in our own times, yet a text-book containing
much that is useful to this day might be prepared from these surgical
contents of the collection alone.

When we pass to the works on Medicine, in the restricted sense, we enter
into a region more difficult and perhaps even more fascinating. We are
no longer dealing with simple lesions of known origin, but with the
effects of disease and degeneration, of the essential character of which
the Hippocratic writers could in the nature of the case know very
little. Rigidly guarding themselves from any attempt to explain disease
by more immediate and hypothetical causes and thus diverting the
reader's energies in the medically useless direction of vague
speculation--the prevalent mental vice of the Greeks--the best of these
physicians are content if they can put forward generalized conclusions
from actually observed cases. Many of their thoughts have now become
household words, and they have become so, largely as a direct heritage
from these ancient physicians. But it must be remembered that ideas so
familiar to us were with them the result of long and carefully recorded
experience and are like nothing that we encounter in the medicine of
other ancient nations. Such conclusions are best set forth perhaps in
the wonderful book of the _Aphorisms_ from which we may permit ourselves
a few quotations:

     'Life is short, and the Art long; the opportunity fleeting;
     experiment dangerous, and judgement difficult. Yet we must be
     prepared not only to do our duty ourselves, but also patient,
     attendants, and external circumstances must co-operate.'[83]

    [83] The first lines are the source of the famous lines in Goethe's
    _Faust_:

      'Ach Gott! die Kunst ist lang
      Und kurz ist unser Leben,
      Mir wird bei meinem kritischen Bestreben
      Doch oft um Kopf und Busen bang.'

In this one memorable paragraph, so condensed in the original as to be
almost untranslatable, he who 'first separated medicine from philosophy'
puts aside at once all speculative interest while in the actual presence
of the sick. His whole energy is concentrated on the case in hand with
that peculiar attitude, at once impersonal and intensely personal, that
has since been the mark of the physician, and that has made of Medicine
both a science and an art.

     'For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure.'[84]

     'The aged endure fasting most easily; next adults; next young
     persons, and least of all children, and especially such as are the
     most lively.'

     'Growing bodies have the most innate heat; they therefore require
     the most nourishment, and if they have it not they waste. In the
     aged there is little heat, and therefore they require little fuel,
     for it would be extinguished by much. Similarly fevers in the aged
     are not so acute, because their bodies are cold.'

     'In disease sleep that is laborious is a deadly symptom; but if
     sleep relieves it is not deadly.'

     'Sleep that puts an end to delirium is a good symptom.'

     'If a convalescent eats well, but does not put on flesh, it is a
     bad symptom.'

     'Food or drink which is a little less good but more palatable is to
     be preferred to such that is better but less palatable.'

     'The old have generally fewer complaints than young; but those
     chronic diseases which do befall them generally never leave them.'

    [84] The extreme of treatment refers in the original to the extreme
    restriction of diet, ες ακριβειην {es akribeiên}, but the meaning of
    the Aphorism has always been taken as more generalized.

Here we have a group of observations, some of which have become
literally household words, nor is it difficult to understand how such
sayings have passed from professional into lay keeping. This magnificent
book of _Aphorisms_ was very early translated into Latin, probably
before and certainly not later than the sixth century of the Christian
era, and thus became accessible throughout the West. Manuscripts of this
Latin version, dating from the ninth and tenth centuries of our era,
have survived in the actual places in which they were written, at Monte
Cassino in Southern Italy and at Einsiedeln in Switzerland, and in 991
the book of _Aphorisms_ was well known and closely studied at the
Cathedral school of Chartres. From France the _Aphorisms_ reached
England, and they are mentioned in documents of the tenth or eleventh
century. By now, too, the book had been translated into Syriac and later
into Arabic and Hebrew, so that in the true mediaeval period it was
known both East and West, and in the vernacular as well as the classical
tongues. From the oriental dialects several further translations were
again made into Latin. An enormous number of manuscripts of the work
have survived in almost every Western dialect, and these show on the
whole that the text has been surprisingly little tampered with. In the
middle of the thirteenth century some of the better-known Aphorisms were
absorbed into a very popular Latin poem that went forth in the name of
the medical school of Salerno, though with a false ascription to a yet
earlier date. The Salernitan poem, being itself translated into every
European vernacular, further helped to bring Hippocrates into every
home.

But by no means all the Aphorisms are of a kind that could well become
absorbed into folk medicine. It is only those concerning frequently
recurring states to which this fate could befall. The book contains also
a number of notes on rare conditions seldom seen or noted save by
medical men. Such are the following very acute observations:

     'Spasm supervening on a wound is fatal.'

     'Those seized with tetanus die within four days, or if they survive
     so long they recover.'

     'A convulsion, or hiccup, supervening on a copious discharge of
     blood is bad.'

     'If after severe and grave wounds no swelling appears, it is very
     serious.'

These four sentences all concern wounds. The first two refer to the
disease _tetanus_, which is very liable to supervene on wounds fouled
with earth, especially in hot and moist localities. The disease is
characterized by a series of painful muscular contractions which in the
more severe and fatal form may become a continuous spasm, a type that is
referred to in the first sentence. It is true of tetanus that the later
the onset after the wound is sustained the better the chance of
recovery. This is brought out by the second sentence. The third and
fourth sentences record untoward symptoms following a severe wound, now
well recognized and watched for by every surgeon. There were, of course,
innumerable illustrations of the truth of these Aphorisms in extensive
wounds, especially those involving crushed limbs, in the late war.

     'Phthisis occurs most commonly between the ages of eighteen and
     thirty-five.'

     'Diarrhœa supervening on phthisis is mortal.'

The period given by the _Aphorisms_ for the maximum frequency of onset
of the disease is closely borne out by modern observations. The second
Aphorism is equally valid; continued diarrhœa is a very frequent
antecedent of the fatal event in chronic phthisis, and post-mortem
examination has shown that secondary involvement of the bowel is an
exceedingly common condition in this disease.

No less remarkable is the following saying: 'In jaundice it is a grave
matter if the liver becomes indurated.' Jaundice is a common and
comparatively trivial symptom following or accompanying a large variety
of diseases. In and by itself it is of little importance and almost
always disappears spontaneously. There is a small group of pathological
conditions, however, in which this is not the case. The commonest and
most important of these are the fatal affections of cirrhosis and cancer
of the liver in which that organ may be felt to be enlarged and
hardened. If therefore the liver can be so felt in a case of jaundice,
it is, as the Aphorism says, of gravest import. Representations of such
cases have actually come down to us from Greek times. Thus on a monument
erected at Athens to the memory of a physician who died in the second
century of the Christian era we may see the process of clinical
examination (fig. 7). The physician is palpating the liver of a dwarfish
figure whose swollen belly, wasted limbs, and anxious look tell of some
such condition as that described in the Aphorism. The ridge caused by
the enlarged liver can even be detected on the statue.

[Illustration: Fig. 7. ATHENIAN FUNERARY MONUMENT
Second century A. D. British Museum

Inscription reads: 'Jason, also called Dekmos, the Acharnian, a
physician', followed by his genealogy. By side of patient stands a
cupping vessel.]

'We must attend to the appearances of the eyes in sleep as presented
from below; for if a portion of the white be seen between the closing
eyelids, and if this be not connected with diarrhœa or severe purging,
it is a very bad and mortal symptom.' In this, the last Aphorism which
we shall quote, we see the Hippocratic physician actually making his
observations. Now during sleep the eyeball is turned upward, so that if
the eye be then opened and examined only the white is seen. In the later
stages of all wasting and chronic diseases the eyelids tend not to be
closed during sleep. Such patients, as is well known, often die with the
eyes open and sometimes exhibiting only the whites.

But the Hippocratic physician was not content to make only passive
observation; he also took active measures to elicit the 'physical
signs'. In modern times a large, perhaps the chief, task of the student
of medicine is to acquire a knowledge of these so-called physical signs
of disease, the tradition of which has been gradually rebuilt during the
last three centuries. Among the most important measures in which he
learns to acquire facility is that of auscultation. This useful process
has come specially into vogue since the invention of the stethoscope in
1819 by Laennec, who derived valuable hints for it from the Hippocratic
writings. Auscultation is several times mentioned and described by the
Hippocratic physicians, who used the direct method of listening and not
the mediate method devised by Laennec. There are, however, certain cases
in which the modern physician still finds the older non-instrumental
Hippocratic method superior. In the Hippocratic work περι νουσων {peri
nousôn}, _On diseases_, we read of a case with fluid in the pleura that
'you will place the patient on a seat which does not move, an assistant
will hold him by the shoulders, and you will shake him, applying the ear
to the chest, so as to recognize on which side the sign occurs'. This
sign is still used by physicians and is known as _Hippocratic
succussion_. In another passage in the same work the symptoms of
pleurisy are described and 'a creak like that of leather may be heard'.
This is the well known _pleuritic rub_ which the physician is accustomed
to seek in such cases, and of which the creak of leather is an excellent
representation.

Such quotations give an insight into the general method and attitude of
the Hippocratics. Of an art such as medicine, which even in those times
had a long and rational tradition behind it, it is impossible to give
more than the merest glimpse in such a review as this. The actual
practice is far too complex to set down briefly. This is especially the
case with the ancient teaching as regards epidemic disease at which we
must cursorily glance. The Hippocratic physicians and indeed all
antiquity were as yet ignorant of the nature, and were but dimly aware
of the existence, of infection.[85] For them acute disease was something
imposed on the patient from outside, but how it reached him from outside
and what it was that thus reached him they were still admittedly
ignorant. In this dilemma they turned to prolonged observation and noted
as a result of repeated experience that epidemic diseases in their world
had characteristic seasonal and regional distributions. One country was
not quite like another, nor was one season like another nor even one
year like another. By a series of carefully collated observations as to
how regions, seasons, and years differed from each other, they succeeded
in laying the basis of a rational study of epidemiology which gave rise
to the notion of an 'epidemic constitution' of the different years, a
conception which was very fertile and stimulating to the great
clinicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is by no
means without value even for the modern epidemiologist. The work of the
modern fathers of epidemiology was consciously based on Hippocrates.

    [85] The ancients knew almost nothing of infection _as applied
    specifically_ to disease. All early peoples--including Greeks and
    Romans--believed in the transmission of qualities from object to
    object. Thus purity and impurity and good and bad luck were
    infections, and diseases were held to be infections in that sense.
    But there is little evidence in the belief of the special
    infectivity of _disease as such_ in antiquity. Some few diseases
    are, however, unequivocally referred to as infectious in a limited
    number of passages, e. g. ophthalmia, scabies, and phthisis in the
    περι διαφορας πυρετων {peri diaphoras pyretôn}, _On the differentiae
    of fevers_, K. vii, p. 279. The references to infection in antiquity
    are detailed by C. and D. Singer, 'The scientific position of
    Girolamo Fracastoro', _Annals of Medical History_, vol. i, New York,
    1917.

Before parting with the Hippocratic physician a word must be said as to
his therapeutic means. His general armoury may be described as
resembling that of the modern physician of about two generations ago.
During those two generations we have, it is true, added to our list of
effective remedies but, on the other hand, there has been by common
consent a return to the Hippocratic simplicity of treatment. After rest
and quiet the central factor in treatment was Dietetics. This science
regarded the age--'Old persons use less nutriment than young'; the
season--'In winter abundant nourishment is wholesome, in summer a more
frugal diet'; the bodily condition--'Lean persons should take little
food, but this little should be fat, fat persons on the other hand
should take much food, but it should be lean'. Respect was also paid to
the digestibility of different foods--'white meat is more easily
digestible than dark'--and to their preparation. Water, barley water,
and lime water were recommended as drinks. The dietetic principles of
the Hippocratics, especially in connexion with fevers, are substantially
those of the present day, and it may be said that the general medical
tendency of the last generation in these matters has been an even closer
approximation to the Hippocratic. 'The more we nourish unhealthy bodies
the more we injure them'; 'The sick upon whom fever seizes with the
greatest severity from the very outset, must at once subject themselves
to a rigid diet'; 'Complete abstinence often acts well, if the strength
of the patient can in any way sustain it'; yet 'We should examine the
strength of the sick, to see whether they be in condition to maintain
this spare diet to the crisis of the disease'. 'In the application of
these rules we must always be mindful of the strength of the patient and
of the course of each particular disease, as well as of the constitution
and ordinary mode of life in each disease.'

Besides diet the Hippocratic physician had at his disposal a
considerable variety of other remedies. Baths, inunctions, clysters,
warm and cold suffusions, massage and gymnastic, as well as gentler
exercise are among them. He probably employed cupping and bleeding
rather too freely, and we have several representations of the
instruments used for these operations (fig. 8). He was no great user of
drugs and seldom names them except, we may note, in the works on the
treatment of women, which are probably of Cnidian origin and whence the
greater part of the 300 constituents of the Hippocratic pharmacopœia are
derived. Thus his list of drugs is small but several known to him are
still used by us.

The work of these men may be summed up by saying that without
dissection, without any experimental physiology or pathology, and
without any instrumental aid they pushed the knowledge of the course and
origin of disease as far as it is conceivable that men in such
circumstances could push it. This was done as a process of pure
scientific induction. Their surgery, though hardly based on anatomy, was
grounded on the most carefully recorded experience. In therapeutics they
allowed themselves neither to be deceived by false hopes nor led aside
by vain traditions. Yet in diagnosis, prognosis, surgery and
therapeutics alike they were in many departments unsurpassed until the
nineteenth century, and to some of their methods we have reverted in the
twentieth. Persisting throughout the ages as a more or less definite
tradition, which attained clearer form during and after the sixteenth
century, Hippocratic methods have formed the basis of all departments of
modern advance.

But the history of Greek medicine did not end with the Hippocratic
collection; in many respects it may indeed be held only to begin there;
yet we never get again a glimpse of so high an ethical and professional
standard as that which these works convey. From Alexandrian times
onwards, too, the history of Greek medicine becomes largely a history of
various schools of medical thought, each of which has only a partial
view of the course and nature of medical knowledge. The unravelling of
the course and teachings of these sects has long been a pre-occupation
of professed medical historians, but the general reader can hardly take
an interest in differences between the Dogmatists, Empirics, and
Methodists whose doctrines are as dead as themselves. In this later
Alexandrian and Hellenistic age the Greek intellect is no less active
than before, but there is a change in the taste of the material. A
general decay of the spirit is reflected in the medical as in the
literary products of the time, and we never again feel that elevation of
a beautiful and calmly righteous presence that breathes through the
Hippocratic collection and gives it a peculiar aroma.

We shall pass over the general course of later Greek medicine with great
rapidity. A definite medical school was established at Alexandria and
others perhaps at Pergamon and elsewhere. Athens, after the death of
Aristotle and his pupils, passes entirely into the background and is of
no importance so far as medicine is concerned. At Alexandria, where a
great medical library was collected, anatomy began to be studied and two
men whose discoveries were of primary importance for the history of that
subject, Erasistratus and Herophilus, early practised there. With
anatomy as a basis medical education could become much more systematic.
It is a very great misfortune that the works of these two eminent men
have disappeared. Of Herophilus fragments have survived embedded in the
works of Galen (A. D. 130-201), Caelius Aurelianus (fifth century), and
others. These fragments have been the subject of one of the earliest,
most laborious, and most successful attempts made in modern times to
reconstruct the lost work of an ancient author.[86] For Erasistratus our
chief source of information are two polemical treatises directed against
him by Galen. Recently, too, a little more information concerning the
works of both men has become available from the Menon papyrus.

    [86] K. F. H. Marx, _Herophilus, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der
    Medizin_, Karlsruhe, 1838.

It has been found possible to reconstruct especially a treatise on
anatomy by Herophilus with a considerable show of probability. He opened
by giving general directions for the process of dissection and followed
with detailed descriptions of the various systems, nervous, vascular,
glandular, digestive, generative, and osseous. There was a separate
section on the liver, a small part of which has survived. It is of his
account of the nervous system that we have perhaps the best record, and
it is evident that he has advanced far beyond the Hippocratic position.
In the braincase he saw the membranes that cover the brain and
distinguished between the cerebrum and cerebellum. He attained to some
knowledge of the ventricles of the brain, the cranial and spinal nerves,
the nerves of the heart, and the coats of the eye. He distinguished the
blood sinuses of the skull, and the _torcular Herophili_ (winepress of
Herophilus), a sinus described by him, has preserved his name in modern
anatomical nomenclature. He even made out more minute structures, such
as the little depression in the fourth ventricle of the brain, known to
modern anatomists as the _calamus scriptorius_, which still bears the
name which he gave it (καλαμος ὡ γραφομεν {kalamos hô graphomen}),
because it seemed to him, as Galen tells us, to resemble the pens then
in use in Alexandria.[87] We still use, too, his term _duodenum_
(δωδεκαδακτυλος εκφυσις {dôdekadaktylos ekphysis} = twelve-finger
extension), for as Galen assures us, Herophilus 'so named the first part
of the intestine before it is rolled into folds'.[88] The duodenum is a
U-shaped section of the intestine following immediately on the stomach.
Being fixed down behind the abdominal cavity it cannot be further
convoluted, and this accounts for Galen's description of it. It is about
twelve fingers' breadth long in the animals dissected by Herophilus.

    [87] Galen, περι ανατομικων εγχειρησεων {peri anatomikôn
    encheirêseôn}, _On anatomical preparations_, ix. 5 (last sentence).

    [88] Galen, περι φλεβων και αρτηριων ανατομης {peri phlebôn kai
    artêriôn anatomês}, _On the anatomy of veins and arteries_, i.

Erasistratus, the slightly younger Alexandrian contemporary of
Herophilus, has the credit of further anatomical discoveries. He
described correctly the action of the epiglottis in preventing the
entrance of food and drink into the windpipe during the act of
swallowing, he saw the lacteal vessels in the mesentery, and pursued
further the anatomy of the brain. He improved on the anatomy of the
heart, and described the auriculo-ventricular valves and their mode of
closure. He distinguished clearly the motor and sensory nerves. He seems
to have adopted a definitely experimental attitude--a very rare thing
among ancient physicians--and a description of an experiment made by him
has recently been recovered. 'If', he says, 'you take an animal, a bird,
for example, and keep it for a time in a jar without giving it food and
then weigh it together with its excreta you will find that there is a
considerable loss of weight.'[89] The experiment is a simple one, but it
was about nineteen hundred years before a modern professor, Sanctorio
Santorio (1561-1636), thought of repeating it.[90]

    [89] The quotation is from chapter xxxiii, line 44 of the _Anonymus
    Londinensis_. H. Diels, _Anonymus Londinensis_ in the _Supplementum
    Aristotelicum_, vol. iii, pars 1, Berlin, 1893.

    [90] Sanctorio Santorio, _Oratio in archilyceo patavino anno 1612
    habita; de medicina statica aphorismi_. Venice, 1614.

The anatomical advances made by the Alexandrian school naturally reacted
on surgical efficiency. The improvement so effected may be gathered, for
instance, from an account of the anatomical relationships in certain
cases of dislocation of the hip given by the Alexandrian surgeon
Hegetor, who lived about 100 B. C. In his book περι αιτιων {peri
aitiôn}, _On causes_ [_of disease_], he asks 'why (certain surgeons) do
not seek another way of reducing a luxation of the hip.... If the joints
of the jaw, shoulder, elbow, knee, finger, &c., can be replaced, the
same, they think, must be true of all parts, nor can they give an
account of why the femur cannot be put back into its place.... They
might have known, however, that from the head of the femur arises a
ligament which is inserted into the socket of the hip bone ... and if
this ligament is once ruptured the thigh bone cannot be retained in
place'.[91] This passage contains the first description of the structure
known to modern anatomists as the _ligamentum teres_, a strong fibrous
band which unites the head of the femur with the socket into which it
fits in the hip bone, like the string that binds the cup and ball of a
child's toy. This ligament is ruptured in certain severe cases of
dislocation of the hip.

    [91] This is the only passage of Hegetor's writing that has
    survived. It has been preserved in the work of Apollonius of Citium.

After the establishment of the school at Alexandria, medical teaching
rapidly became organized, but throughout the whole course of antiquity
it suffered from the absence of anything in the nature of a state
diploma. Any one could practise, with the result that many quacks,
cranks, and fanatics were to be found among the ranks of the
practitioners who often were or had been slaves. The great Alexandrian
school, however, did much to preserve some sort of professional
standard, and above all its anatomical discipline helped to this end.

Between the founding of the Alexandrian school and Galen we are not rich
in medical writings. Apart from fragments and minor productions, the
works of only five authors have survived from this period of over four
hundred years, namely, Celsus, Dioscorides, Aretaeus of Cappadocia, and
two Ephesian authors bearing the names of Rufus and Soranus.

The work of Celsus of the end of the first century B. C. is a Latin
treatise, probably translated from Greek, and is the surviving medical
volume of a complete cyclopaedia of knowledge. In spite of its
unpromising origin it is an excellent compendium of its subject and
shows a good deal of advance in many respects beyond the Hippocratic
position. The moral tone too is very high, though without the lofty and
detached beauty of Hippocrates. Anatomy has greatly improved, and with
it surgical procedure, and the work is probably representative of the
best Alexandrian practice. The pharmacopœia is more copious, but has not
yet become burdensome. The general line of treatment is sensible and
humane and the language concise and clear. Among other items he
describes dental practice, with the indications for and methods of tooth
extraction, the wiring of teeth, and perhaps a dental mirror. There is
an excellent account of what might be thought to be the modern operation
for removal of the tonsils. Celsus is still commemorated in modern
medicine by the _area Celsi_, a not uncommon disease of the skin. The
_De re medica_ is in fact one of the very best medical text-books that
have come down to us from antiquity. It has had a romantic history.
Forgotten during the Middle Ages, it was brought to light by the
classical scholar Guarino of Verona (1374-1460) in 1426, and a better
copy was discovered by his friend Lamola in 1427. Another copy was found
by Thomas Parentucelli (1397-1455), afterwards Pope Nicholas V in 1443,
and the text was later studied by Politian (1454-94). Though one of the
latest of the great classical medical texts to be discovered, it was one
of the first to be printed (Florence, 1478), and it ran through very
many early editions and had great influence on the medical renaissance.

[Illustration: Fig. 8. VOTIVE TABLET representing cupping and bleeding
instruments from Temple of Asclepius at Athens. In centre is represented
a folding case containing scalpels of various forms. On either side are
cupping vessels.]

After Celsus comes Dioscorides in the first century A. D. He was a Greek
military surgeon of Cilician origin who served under Nero, and in him
the Greek intellect is obviously beginning to flag. His work is
prodigiously important for the history of botany, yet so far as rational
medicine is concerned he is almost negligible. He begins at the wrong
end, either giving lists of drugs with the symptoms that they are said
to cure or to relieve, or lists of symptoms with a series of named
drugs. Clinical observation and record are wholly absent, and the spirit
of Hippocrates has departed from this elaborate pharmacopœia.

With the second century of the Christian era we terminate the creative
period of Greek medicine. We are provided with the works of four
important writers of this century, of whom three, Rufus of Ephesus,
Soranus of Ephesus, and Aretaeus of Cappadocia, though valuable for
forming a picture of the state of medicine in their day, were without
substantial influence on the course of medicine in later ages.

Rufus of Ephesus, a little junior to Dioscorides, has left us the first
formal work on human anatomy and is of some importance in the history of
comparative anatomy. In medicine he is memorable as the first to have
described bubonic plague, and in surgery for his description of the
methods of arresting haemorrhage and his knowledge of the anatomy of
the eye. A work by him _On gout_ was translated into Latin in the sixth
century, but remained unknown till modern times.

Soranus of Ephesus (A. D. _c._ 90-_c._ 150), an acute writer on
gynaecology, has left a book which illustrates well the anatomy of his
day. It exercised an influence for many centuries to come, and a Latin
abstract of it prepared about the sixth century by one Moschion has come
down to us in an almost contemporary manuscript.[92] It is interesting
as opposing the Hippocratic theory that the male embryo is originated in
the right and the female in the left half of the womb, a fallacy derived
originally from Empedocles and Parmenides, but perpetuated by Latin
translations of the Hippocratic treatises until the seventeenth century.
His work was adorned by figures, and some of these, naturally greatly
altered by copyists, but still not infinitely removed from the facts,
have survived in a manuscript of the ninth century, and give us a
distant idea of the appearance of ancient anatomical drawings.[93] We
may assist our imagination a little further, in forming an idea of what
such diagrams were like, with the help of certain other mediaeval
figures representing the form and distribution of the various anatomical
'systems', veins, arteries, nerves, bones, and muscles which are
probably traceable to an Alexandrian origin.[94]

    [92] Leyden Voss 4° 9^{*} of the sixth century is a fragment of this
    work.

    [93] V. Rose, _Sorani Ephesii vetus translatio Latina cum additis
    Graeci textus reliquiis_, Leipzig, 1882; F. Weindler, _Geschichte
    der gynäkologisch-anatomischen Abbildung_, Dresden, 1908.

    [94] The discovery and attribution of these figures is the work of
    K. Sudhoff. A bibliography of his writings on the subject will be
    found in a 'Study in Early Renaissance Anatomy' in C. Singer's
    _Studies in the History and Method of Science_, vol. i, Oxford,
    1917.

Aretaeus of Cappadocia was probably a contemporary of Galen (second half
of the second century A. D.). As a clinical author his reputation stands
high, perhaps too high, his descriptions of pneumonia, empyema,
diabetes, and elephantiasis having especially drawn attention. In
treatment he uses simple remedies, is not affected by polypharmacy, and
suggests many ingenious mechanical devices. It would appear that
Aretaeus is not an independent writer, but mainly a compiler. He relies
largely on Archigenes, a distinguished physician contemporary with
Juvenal, whose works have perished save the fragments preserved in this
manner by Aretaeus and Aetius. Aretaeus was a very popular writer among
the Greeks in all ages, but he was not translated into Latin, and was
unknown in the West until the middle of the sixteenth century.[95] He is
philologically interesting as still using the Ionic dialect.

    [95] First Latin edition Venice, 1552; first Greek edition Paris,
    1554.

There remains the huge overshadowing figure of Galen. The enormous mass
of the surviving work of this man, the dictator of medicine until the
revival of learning and beyond, tends to throw out of perspective the
whole of Greek medical records. The works of Galen alone form about half
of the mass of surviving Greek medical writings, and occupy, in the
standard edition, twenty-two thick, closely-printed volumes. These cover
every department of medicine, anatomy, physiology, pathology, medical
theory, therapeutics, as well as clinical medicine and surgery. In style
they are verbose and heavy and very frequently polemical. They are
saturated with a teleology which, at times, becomes excessively tedious.
In the anatomical works, masses of teleological explanation dilute the
account of often imperfectly described structures. Yet to this element
we owe the preservation of the mass of Galen's works, for his intensely
teleological point of view appealed to the theological bias both of
Western Christianity and of Eastern Islam. Intolerable as literature,
his works are a valuable treasure house of medical knowledge and
experience, custom, tradition, and history.

As in the case of the Hippocratic corpus, so in the case of the Galenic
corpus we are dealing to some extent with material from various
sources. In the case of Galen, however, we have a good standard of
genuineness, for he has left us a list of his books which can be checked
off against those which we actually possess. The general standpoint of
the Galenic is not unlike that of the Hippocratic writings, but the
noble vision of the lofty-minded, pure-souled physician has utterly
passed away. In his place we have an acute, honest, very contentious
fellow, bristling with energy and of prodigious industry, not unkindly,
but loving strife, a thoroughly 'aggressive' character. He loves truth,
but he loves argument quite as much. The value of his philosophical
writings, of which some have survived, cannot be discussed here, but it
is evident that he is frequently satisfied with purely verbal
explanations. An ingenious physiologist, a born experimenter, an
excellent anatomist and eager to improve, possessing a good knowledge of
the human skeleton and an accurate acquaintance with the internal parts
so far as this can be derived from a most industrious devotion to
dissection of animals, equipped with all the learning of the schools of
Pergamon, Smyrna, and Alexandria, and rich with the experience of a vast
practice at Rome, Galen is essentially an 'efficient' man. He has the
grace to acknowledge constantly and repeatedly his indebtedness to the
Hippocratic writings. Such was the man whose remains, along with the
Hippocratic collection, formed the main medical legacy of Greece to the
Western world.

Some of Galen's works are mere drug lists, little superior to those of
Dioscorides;[96] with the depression of the intelligence that
corresponded with the break up of the Roman Empire, it was these that
were chiefly seized on and distributed in the West. Attractive too to
the debased intellect of the late Roman world were certain spurious,
superstitious, and astrological works that circulated in the name of
Galen and Hippocrates.[97] The Greek medical writers after Galen were
but his imitators and abstractors, but through some of them Galen's
works reached the West at a very early period in the Middle Ages. Such
abstractors who were early translated into Latin were Oribasius
(325-403), Paul of Aegina (625-690), and Alexander of Tralles (525-605).
Of the best and most scientific of Galen's works the Middle Ages knew
little or nothing.

    [96] e. g. περι κρασεως και δυναμεως των ἁπαντων φαρμακων {peri
    kraseôs kai dynameôs tôn hapantôn pharmakôn} and the φαρμακα
    {pharmaka}.

    [97] e. g. _De dinamidiis Galeni_, _Secreta Hippocratis_ and many
    astrological tracts.

Later Galen and Hippocrates became a little more accessible, not by
translation from the Greek, but by translation from the Arabic of a
Syriac version. The first work to be so rendered was a version of
_Aphorisms_ of Hippocrates which, however, as we have seen, were already
available in Latin dress, together with the Hippocratic _Regimen in
acute diseases_, and certain works of Galen as corruptly interpreted by
Isaac Judaeus. These were rendered from Arabic into Latin by
Constantine, an African adventurer who became a monk at Monte Cassino
and died there in 1087. Constantine was a wretched craftsman with an
imperfect knowledge of both Arabic and Latin. More effective was the
great twelfth-century translator from the Arabic, Gerard of Cremona
(died 1185), who turned many medical works into Latin from Arabic, and
who was followed by a whole host of imitators. Yet more important for
the advance of medicine, however, was the learned revival of the
thirteenth century. In the main that revival was based on translations
from Arabic, but a certain number of works were also rendered direct
from the Greek. During the thirteenth century Aristotle's scientific
works began to be treated in this way, but more important for the course
of medicine were those of Galen, and they had to wait till the following
century. The long treatise of Galen, περι χρειας των εν ανθρωπου σωματι
μοριων {peri chreias tôn en anthrôpou sômati moriôn}, _On the uses of
the bodily parts in man_, was translated from the Greek into Latin by
Nicholas of Reggio in the earlier part of the fourteenth century. This
work, with all its defects, was by far the best account of the human
body then available. Many manuscripts of the Latin version have
survived, and it was translated into several vernaculars, including
English, and profoundly influenced surgery. The rendering into Latin of
this treatise, and its wide distribution, may be regarded as the
starting-point of modern scientific medicine. Its appearance is moreover
a part of the phenomenon of the revived interest in dissection which had
begun to be practised in the Universities in the thirteenth century,[98]
and was a generally accepted discipline in the fourteenth and
fifteenth.[99]

    [98] Dissection of animals was practised at Salerno as early as the
    eleventh century.

    [99] The sources of the anatomical knowledge of the Middle Ages are
    discussed in detail in the following works: R. R. von Töply,
    _Studien zur Geschichte der Anatomie im Mittelalter_, Vienna, 1898;
    K. Sudhoff, _Tradition und Naturbeobachtung_, Leipzig, 1907; and
    also numerous articles in the _Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und
    Naturwissenschaften_; Charles Singer, 'A Study in Early Renaissance
    Anatomy', in _Studies in the History and Method of Science_, vol. i,
    Oxford, 1917.

Until the end of the fifteenth century progress in anatomy was almost
imperceptible. During the fifteenth century more Galenic and Hippocratic
texts were recovered and gradually turned into Latin, but still without
vitally affecting the course of Anatomy. The actual printing of
collected editions of Hippocrates and Galen came rather late, for the
debased taste of the Renaissance physicians continued to prefer
Dioscorides and the Arabs, of whom numerous editions appeared, so that
medicine made no advance corresponding to the progress of scholarship.
The Hippocratic works were first printed in 1525, and an isolated
edition of the inferior Galen in 1490, but the real advance in Medicine
was not made by direct study of these works. So long as they were
treated in the old scholastic spirit such works were of no more value
than those of the Arabists or others inherited from the Middle Ages.
Even Hippocrates can be spoilt by a commentary, and it was not until the
investigator began actually to compare his own observations with those
of Hippocrates and Galen that the real value of these works became
apparent. The department in which this happened first was Anatomy, and
such revolutionaries as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1518), who never
published, and Vesalius (1514-1564), whose great work appeared in 1543,
were really basing their work on Galen, though they were much occupied
in proving Galen's errors. Antonio Benivieni (died 1502), an eager
prophet of the new spirit, revived the Hippocratic tradition by actually
collecting notes of a few cases with accompanying records of deaths and
post-mortem findings, among which it is interesting to observe a case of
appendicitis.[100] His example was occasionally followed during the
sixteenth century, as for instance, by the Portuguese Jewish physician
Amatus Lusitanus (1511-_c._ 1562), who printed no fewer than seven
hundred cases; but the real revival of the Hippocratic tradition came in
the next century with Sydenham (1624-1689) and Boerhaave (1668-1738),
who were consciously working on the Hippocratic basis and endeavouring
to extend the Hippocratic experience.

    [100] Benivieni's notes were published posthumously. Some of the
    spurious Greek works of the Hippocratic collection have also case
    notes.

Lastly surgery came to profit by the revival. The greatest of the
sixteenth-century surgeons, the lovable and loving Ambroise Paré
(1510-1590), though he was, as he himself humbly confessed, an ignorant
man knowing neither Latin nor Greek, can be shown to have derived much
from the works of antiquity, which were circulating in translation in
his day and were thus filtering down to the unlearned.

Texts of Hippocrates and of Galen had formed an integral part in the
medical instruction of the universities from their commencement in the
thirteenth century. The first Greek text of the _Aphorisms_ of
Hippocrates appeared in 1532, edited by no less a hand than that of
François Rabelais. With the further recovery of the Greek texts and
preparation of better translations, these became almost the sole mode of
instruction during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The
translators became legion and their competence varied. One highly
skilled translator, however, is of special interest to English readers.
Thomas Linacre (1460?-1524), Physician to Henry VIII, Tutor to the
Princess Mary, founder and first president of the College of
Physicians, a benefactor of both the ancient Universities and one of the
earliest, ablest, most typical, and most exasperating of the English
humanists, spent much energy on this work of translation for which his
abilities peculiarly fitted him. He was responsible for no less than six
important works of Galen, of which one, the _De temperamentis et de
inaequali intemperie_, printed at Cambridge in 1521, was among the
earliest books impressed in that town and is said to be the first
printed in England for which Greek types were used. It has been honoured
by reproduction in facsimile in modern times. Such works as these,
purely literary efforts, had great vogue for a century and more, and
were much in use in the Universities. These humanistic products
sometimes produced, among the advocates of the new scientific method, a
degree of fury which was only rivalled by that of some of the humanists
themselves towards the translators from the Arabic. But these are now
dead fires. As the clinical and scientific methods of teaching gained
ground, textual studies receded in medical education, as Hippocrates and
Galen themselves would have wished them to recede.

The texts of Hippocrates and Galen have now ceased to occupy a place in
any medical curriculum. Yet all who know these writings, know too, not
only that their spirit is still with us, but that the works themselves
form the background of modern practice, and that their very phraseology
is still in use at the bedside. Modern medicine may be truly described
as in essence a creation of the Greeks. To realize the nature of our
medical system, some knowledge of its Greek sources is essential. It
would indeed be a bad day for medicine if ever this debt to the Greeks
were forgotten, and the loss would be at least as much ethical as
intellectual. But there is happily no fear of this, for the figure and
spirit of Hippocrates are more real and living to-day than they have
been since the great collapse of the Greek scientific intellect in the
third and fourth centuries of the Christian era.

CHARLES SINGER.

     The author has to thank Mr. R. W. Livingstone, Dr. E. T.
     Withington, Prof. A. Platt, and Mr. J. D. Beazley for corrections
     and suggestions.




LITERATURE


A man walking down Shaftesbury Avenue from Piccadilly to Charing Cross
Road passes the _Lyric Theatre_. If it is the evening, a _dramatic_
performance is probably taking place inside. It may be a _tragedy_, or
some form of _comedy_. If it is a _musical comedy_ and he enters, he
will see elaborate _scenery_ and a play which may open with a _prologue_
and which is partly composed of _dialogue_ between the various
_characters_, partly of songs in various _metres_ sung by a _chorus_ to
the accompaniment of an _orchestra_. As the words in italics indicate,
our imaginary passer-by will have seen, though he may not have suspected
it, a symbol of the indelible mark which the Greeks have set on the
aesthetic and intellectual life of Europe, and of the living presence of
Greece in the twentieth century. An ancient Athenian might be startled
at the sight of a musical comedy and its chorus, but he would be looking
at his own child, a descendant, however distant, degenerate, and hard to
recognize, of that chorus which with dance and song moved round the
altar of Dionysus in the theatre of his home.

The same imprint, clear or faint, is on all our literary forms, except
perhaps one. Epic, lyric, elegiac, dramatic, didactic, poetry, history,
biography, rhetoric and oratory, the epigram, the essay, the sermon, the
novel, letter writing and literary criticism are all Greek by origin,
and in nearly every case their name betrays their source. Rome raises a
doubtful claim to satire, but the substance of satire is present in the
Old Comedy, and the form seems to have existed in writings now lost.
There are even one or two _genres_, such as the imaginary speech, which
Greece invented and which are not, fortunately, found in modern
literature. When the curtain rose on Homer, European literature did not
exist: long before it falls on the late Byzantines, the lines were laid
on which it has moved up to our own day. This is the entire work of a
single people, politically weak, numerically small, materially
poor--according to the economy of nature which in things of the mind and
the spirit gives a germinating power to few. The Greeks are justly
admired for individual poems, plays, and pieces of writing; but it was
something even greater to have explored the possibilities of literature
so far that posterity, while it has developed Greek _genres_, has not
hitherto been able to add to them. This is one part of the Greek Legacy
to literature.

Another part are the works themselves. Literature can only be judged by
reading it, and certainly it cannot be characterized in a few pages. But
a man ignorant of Greek and anxious to estimate its value might form
some idea by inquiring the opinions of qualified judges. He would find
them unanimous: I suppose it is true that no man of eminence qualified
to speak has ever spoken of Greek literature in any tone but one. The
first testimony is that of the Romans. It is borne by their literature,
starting in translations from Greek, adopting one after another of their
_genres_, permeated through and through (and most of all in the greatest
writers) by imitations, reminiscences, influences of Greek, confessing
and glorying in the debt. 'In learning,' says Cicero, 'and in every
branch of literature, the Greeks are our masters.'[101] A Roman boy
should begin his studies with Greek, Quintilian thought, 'because Latin
learning is derived from Greek.'[102] The same note is repeated in the
literature of the Renaissance, and re-echoed by the most various voices
of our own century.

    [101] _Tusc._ 1. 1. 2.

    [102] _Inst. Or._ I. 1. 12.

'Though one of the Greek tragedians may seem rather greater and more
complete than another, their work as a whole has a single pervading
quality. It is marked by grandeur, excellence, sanity, complete
humanity, a high philosophy of life, a lofty way of thinking, a powerful
intuition (_Anschauung_). We find these qualities in their surviving
lyric and epic poetry as well as in their drama: we find them in their
philosophers, orators, and historians and, to an equally high degree, in
their surviving sculpture.'[103]

    [103] Goethe, _Gespräche_, 3. 387.

'Beside the great Attic poets, like Aeschylus and Sophocles, I am
absolutely nothing.'[104]

    [104] Ibid., 3. 443.

'He spoke with great animation of the advantage of classical study,
Greek especially. "Where," he said, "would one look for a greater orator
than Demosthenes; or finer dramatic poetry, next to Shakspere, than that
of Aeschylus or Sophocles, not to speak of Euripides." Herodotus he
thought "the most interesting and instructive book, next to the Bible,
which had ever been written".'[105]

    [105] Wordsworth, _Table-talk_.

'The period which intervened between the birth of Pericles and the death
of Aristotle is undoubtedly, whether considered in itself or with
reference to the effects which it has produced upon the subsequent
destinies of civilized man, the most memorable in the history of the
world.... The wrecks and fragments of these subtle and profound minds,
like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur
and perfection of the whole. Their very language ... in variety, in
simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other
language of the western world.' Then, after some words on their
sculpture, he adds: 'their poetry seems to maintain a very high, though
not so disproportionate a rank, in the comparison' (with other
literatures).[106]

    [106] Shelley, _On the Manners of the Ancients_.

'The Greeks are the most remarkable people who have yet existed.... They
were the beginners of nearly everything, Christianity excepted, of which
the modern world makes its boast.... They were the first people who had
a historical literature; as perfect of its kind (though not the highest
kind) as their oratory, their sculpture, and their architecture. They
were the founders of mathematics, of physics, of the inductive study of
politics, of the philosophy of human nature and life. In each they made
the indispensable first steps, which are the foundation of all the
rest.'[107]

    [107] Mill, _Dissertations_, ii. 283 f.

'I have gone back to Greek literature with a passion quite astonishing
to myself.... I felt as if I had never known before what intellectual
enjoyment was. Oh that wonderful people! There is not one art, not one
science, about which we may not use the same expression which Lucretius
has employed about the victory over superstition "_Primum Graius homo_".
I think myself very fortunate in having been able to return to these
great masters while still in the full vigour of life and when my taste
and judgement are mature. Most people read all the Greek that they ever
read before they are five-and-twenty.... A young man, whatever his
genius may be, is no judge of such a writer as Thucydides. I had no high
opinion of him ten years ago. I have now been reading him with a mind
accustomed to historical researches and to political affairs; and I am
astonished at my own former blindness, and at his greatness. I could not
bear Euripides at college. I now read my recantation. He has faults
undoubtedly. But what a poet!'[108]

    [108] Macaulay, _Life and Letters_, i. 43.

These men--and there is no difficulty in adding to their number--are not
only qualified but unprejudiced witnesses. They have no _parti pris_.
They cannot be accused, as schoolmasters and dons are sometimes accused,
of holding shares in a great Trading Bank of Greece and Rome Unlimited,
and having a personal motive for their enthusiasm. Nor can it be said
that they admired Greece because they knew nothing better. All--Goethe
no less than the others--had English literature in their hands, knew it
well and appreciated its greatness. Yet this, given in their own words,
is the impression which Greek made on them. _Securus iudicat orbis
terrarum_; and the verdict here is plain. It is clear that we have in
Greek a surviving body of poetry and prose which is of unique interest
to any one who cares for literature.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have tried to give a summary answer to the question, What did the
Greeks achieve? They invented every literary _genre_ which we know, they
laid the lines which European literature has followed, they created a
body of prose and poetry which has won the homage of the world. The
further question, What can the world still learn from them, is less easy
to answer. The answer lies in Greek literature, and the essence of a
literature cannot be extracted and bottled in a number of abstract
formulae. No literature is great in virtue of its qualities, which are
always something less than the literature itself, but only in so far as
it expands to the breadth of the universe and climbs to its height. This
is the final test which must be applied. How far Greek literature
satisfies it, can be judged from the testimonies which have been quoted
above.

Remembering this let us deliberately narrow our view and talk of
qualities: and here, narrowing it again, let us confine the discussion
to certain qualities, which are found indeed in all literatures, but are
elsewhere neither so universal nor carried to so high a power. No one
can think of Greek literature without thinking of them; they live on the
lips of its admirers, and in them the inspiration of Greek literature is
chiefly enshrined. These essential qualities are Simplicity, Perfection
of Form, Truth and Beauty. Greek literature is much more than these
qualities. The _Agamemnon_, the _Oedipus_, the _Bacchae_ are not to be
explained wholly by them. The greatness of these plays is partly
something individual, and partly it is what makes _King Lear_ or
_Faust_ or _Brand_ great: and that is neither entirely nor mainly
simplicity or beauty or truth or form. But my object is to emphasize
qualities for which Greek is exceptional, and though some critics may
have talked of the beauty of Greek literature till beauty was absurdly
supposed to be its chief or only quality, they were right to recognize
the prominence of beauty there, and though truth is a mark of the
greatest writing in all languages, it is more universal in Greek than in
any other literature.

       *       *       *       *       *

If a reader turned from Milton to Homer, from Shakespeare to Sophocles,
from Plato or Aristotle to some modern work on ethics, politics, or
literary criticism, he would find one point of difference between the
earlier and the later writers in the greater simplicity of the former.
They are briefer: the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ has 1530 lines while the first
two acts of _Hamlet_ alone have more than 1600, and Greek histories and
philosophical writings are correspondingly shorter than their modern
counterparts. The whole of Thucydides could be printed in a twenty-four
page issue of _The Times_, and leave room to spare; the essay of
Aristotle on Poetry, which for generations dictated the principles of
dramatic writing, has forty-five short pages; the _Republic_ of Plato,
which has influenced thought more than any other philosophic work, has a
little over three hundred. Brevity indeed is not always simplicity, and
it is possible to be at once simple and lengthy. But any one who
examines these Greek writers will find that they are brief, because,
avoiding bypaths and by-plots, elaboration or minute detail, they strike
out the central features of their picture with an effortless economy of
line. Their writing has a double quality. It shows a firm hold on the
central and fundamental things: and it presents them unmixed with and
unconfused by minor issues, so that they stand out like forest trees
which no undergrowth of brushwood masks. It is important to make this
distinction, for all great literature has the first of these qualities;
the second is largely an accident of time. As civilization moves further
from its origin, it cannot but receive a thousand tributaries that
continually augment its volume, and colour and confuse its streams: at
the sources it flows clear and untroubled. The interests of an early age
are the primal and essential interests of human nature and the
literature of such an age presents them unalloyed and uncomplicated by
lesser issues. In the thinkers the main and fundamental problems stand
clearly out, and Plato and Thucydides take us straight to them. The
poets make their poetry from emotions and interests that are as old as
man, and have none of the refinements and complications which education
and a long inheritance of culture superadd to the essential stuff of
human nature. 'You Greeks are always children,' said the Egyptian priest
to Solon; and he spoke the truth in a sense which he did not mean. The
Greeks' feelings were not dulled or sophisticated by the _damnosa
hereditas_ of the past. Neither their life nor their mental atmosphere
was complicated. They had not 'thought themselves into weariness'. They
were the children of the world, and they united the startling acuteness,
directness, and simplicity of children to the intellects of men.

Pater took _La Gioconda_ of Leonardo da Vinci to symbolize the
difference of modern and ancient art, and to illustrate the intricacy
and complication of the former, as compared with the simplicity of the
latter. 'Hers is the head,' he writes of the Monna Lisa, 'upon which all
"the ends of the world are come", and the eyelids are a little weary. It
is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little
cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite
passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white goddesses or
beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this
beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the
thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in
that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward
form.... She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the
vampire, she has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the
grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day
about her ...; and all this lives only in the delicacy with which it has
moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.
The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand
experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of
humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of
thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of
the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea.' Slightly fanciful and
Pateresque as these words are, they are substantially true, as any one
who sets Monna Lisa by a piece of fifth-century sculpture can easily
see. There is the same contrast between Greek literature and our own.
How 'troubled' would Homer or Sophocles be by the writings of Browning
or Meredith, of Henry James or Conrad, in whom so many eddies and
cross-currents of thought and experience unite.

Compare the story of Hector and Andromache with some famous passage from
any of these writers. 'So spake glorious Hector and stretched out his
arm to his boy. But the child shrunk crying to the bosom of his
fair-girdled nurse, dismayed at the look of his dear father and in fear
of the bronze and the horsehair crest that nodded fiercely from his
helmet's top. Then his dear father and his lady mother laughed aloud:
forthwith glorious Hector took the helmet from his head and laid it, all
gleaming, on the earth; then kissed he his dear son and danced him in
his arms, and spoke in prayer to Zeus and all the gods, "O Zeus and all
ye gods, grant that this my son may be as I am, pre-eminent among the
Trojans, and as valiant in might, and may he be a great king of Troy."
So he spoke and laid his son in his dear wife's arms; and she took him
to her fragrant bosom, smiling through tears. And her husband had pity
to see her and caressed her with his hand, and spoke and called her by
her name: "Dear one, I pray thee be not of oversorrowful heart; no man
against my fate shall send me to my death; but destiny, I ween, no man
hath escaped." So spake glorious Hector and took up his
horsehair-crested helmet; and his dear wife departed to her home, often
looking back and letting fall great tears. And she came to the
well-built house of man-slaying Hector, and found therein her many
handmaidens, and stirred lamentation in them all. So they wept for
Hector, while he yet lived, in his house; for they thought that he would
no more come back to them from battle.'[109] These are emotions shared
by mankind twenty centuries before Christ and twenty centuries after
him, common equally to Shakespeare or Napoleon and to the stupidest and
least educated of mankind; and these emotions are expressed with a
simplicity as elemental as themselves. Subjects as simple may be found
in our literature; expression as direct would be hard to find. Even a
primitive like Chaucer is the heir of dimly apprehended inheritances
from Greece and Rome, and is haunted by fancies from lost and living
fairylands of literature. It is in our Bible that we find the elemental
feelings of Homer and an expression even more direct. 'And she departed
and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. And the water was spent in
the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. And she went
and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot:
for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat down
over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept.'[110]

    [109] Homer, _Iliad_, vi. 466 ff. (with omissions: chiefly from the
    translation of Lang, Leaf, and Myers). It should be remembered that,
    of the three figures in this scene, the husband will be dead in a
    few days, while within a year the wife will be a slave and the child
    thrown from the city wall.

    [110] Genesis xxi. 14 f.

Like the writer of the Pentateuch, Homer lived in a world whose
emotions were elemental, and writing of this kind came naturally to him.
The weight of tradition began to weigh on succeeding ages, but it never
became heavy, because the accumulations were small and the world was
still comparatively simple. Also its poets and prose writers moved in
the fields of action as soldiers and politicians, continually
confronting the realities of life, and knowing them as they are, not as
they appear in a study. Thus their topics are central, the writing is
simple. The subjects of the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ or the _Hercules Furens_
might be called morbid; but not the handling of them by Sophocles and
Euripides. The unnatural element is in the background and almost
unnoticed; the interest lies in the spectacle of great men in
overwhelming disaster--an elemental theme and belonging to the general
life of man. The treatment is as simple as in Homer, the figures few,
subordinate interests out of sight, the light thrown full on the central
tragedy. Hence comes a rare intensity, an immediacy of impression, a
sense of nearness to the thing described, which will strike anyone who
reads the messenger's speech in the _Hercules Furens_, or the scene
where the identity of Oedipus is discovered, or indeed any great passage
in Greek Drama. This simplicity of treatment persists, when with
Menander and the Alexandrians we pass into a world more like our own and
find literature, still simple in form, but more artistic, more
intellectual, more literary, less centrally and fundamentally human.

It would be foolish to demand that modern writers should have the
simplicity of Homer or the age of Pericles, or to pretend that they
cannot be great without it. Every age must and will have its own
literature, reflecting the minds and circumstances of those who write
it. Nor is the advantage entirely on the side of the Greeks. A drama of
Shakespeare or a novel of Tolstoi, with their long roll of _dramatis
personae_, are more like life than a Greek tragedy with its absence of
byplot and its few, central, characters. A modern historian would have
recorded and discussed aspects of the history of fifth-century Greece
which Thucydides ignores. Modern literature may claim that, with less
intensity, it has greater amplitude and a more faithful presentation of
the complexity of life. On the other hand the Greeks are free from that
dominance of the abnormal which is one danger of modern literature; they
do not explore sexual and other aberrations or encourage their readers
to explore them. They are also free from that dominance of the
unessential, which, in life as in literature, is a more innocent but
more subtle and perhaps equally ruinous vice. That is why their
simplicity is refreshing and salutary. _Porro unum necessarium._ In life
human beings return from a distracting variety of interests to a few
simple things; or, if they do not return, run the risk of losing their
souls. In literature, which is the shadow of life, they need to do the
same.

       *       *       *       *       *

The simplicity of Greek literature is accompanied by the highest
literary art. Nothing could be more surprising. The primitive conditions
that preserve simplicity are apparently incompatible with technical
perfection, which is a late-born child of literature and the creation of
matured taste, long experiment, and patient work. But in Greek, and
perhaps only in Greek, _naïveté_ and art go hand in hand. There is
something almost uncanny in Homer's union of the two: it is a paradox
that the character of Achilles, the death of Hector, the primitive
cunning of Odysseus, should be portrayed in such a metre and such a
vocabulary; it seems unnatural that so highly wrought and refined a
medium should be used to depict the life and ideas of a society which is
nearer to savagery than to civilization. But unnatural or not, so it is.

The most obvious quality of Greek literature is its form, the high level
of its technique. There are exceptions: the earlier plays of Aeschylus
are crude in conception, the prose of Gorgias is as fantastic as that
of Lyly, the sentences of Thucydides are often awkward and
ungrammatical; Aeschylus stands at the origin of drama, Gorgias and
Thucydides are the creators of periodic prose, and they have the
weaknesses of pioneers. But in general, Greek work in poetry and prose
is highly wrought and finely finished; and so rapidly did their art find
itself, that within the lifetime of Aeschylus Sophocles reached the
highest level of dramatic and literary technique, and within a
generation from Thucydides Plato evolved his unequalled style. An
artistic instinct was in the blood of the Greeks, and betrays itself
throughout their literature, in the choric odes with their complicated
respondencies and subtle variations; in Plato arranging and rearranging
the first eight words of his _Republic_; in the interest which the
Greeks took in the theory of literary art, seeking here as elsewhere
λογον διδοναι {logon didonai}, to give an account of their practice. How
much more they reflected on it than we do, the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle,
the _De Compositione_ of Dionysius and the endless writings of the
rhetoricians show.

This is universally admitted, but justice is more rarely done to even
clearer evidence of the Greek gift for technique. Other nations have
understood the art of writing, and left those monuments in words which
are as unsubstantial and fleeting as air, yet more imperishable than
brass or stone; but no nation has created literary art in the sense in
which the Greeks created it, or developed, as they did, the various
literary _genres_ out of nothing. They had no models or guides or
external help. Rome had Greek literature to follow and herself gave
patterns to her successors; but the Greeks made what they made out of
nothing, and are thus creators in the true sense of the word, and as no
other people have been. Two instances, Homer and the Greek Drama, will
serve to show this.

In the dawn of a literature at least, we expect roughness and crudity,
an uncertain judgement and a faltering hand; but the first known Greek
poem, like Athena in the myth, is born full grown and mature. Yet its
makers made the story and the rich language and the elaborate and
unrivalled metre for themselves. It does not lessen this achievement
that the Homeric poems may have been the fine flower of a period of
poetic growth; the work that went to form them was done by Greeks. But
it needs imagination to appreciate the difficulty of the task which they
undertook unconsciously and performed without theory or deliberate
purpose by the mere light of nature.

It is hard to create even a primitive poetic vocabulary, where one does
not exist, and there is nothing primitive about

    ὁι δ' ὡς τ' αιγυπιοι γαμψωνυχες αγκυλοχειλαι
    πετρη εφ' ὑψηλη μεγαλα κλαζοντε μαχωνται,

    {hoi d' hôs t' aigypioi gampsônyches ankylocheilai
    petrê eph' hypsêlê megala klazonte machôntai,}

or

    ὁσσον δ' ηεροειδες ανηρ ιδεν οφθαλμοισιν
    ἡμενος εν σκοπιη, λευσσων επι οινοπα ποντον,
    τοσσον επιθρωσκουσι θεων ὑψηχεες ἱπποι.[111]

    {hosson d' êeroeides anêr iden ophthalmoisin
    hêmenos en skopiê, leussôn epi oinopa ponton,
    tosson epithrôskousi theôn hypsêchees hippoi.}

    [111] _Iliad_, xvi. 428 f.: 'As vultures with crooked talons and
    curved beaks that upon some high crag fight, screaming loudly.'
    _Ibid._ v. 770 f.: 'As far as a man's view ranges in the haze, as he
    sits on a point of outlook and gazes over the wine-dark sea, so far
    at a spring leap the loud-neighing horses of the gods.'

It is hard, as the beginnings of Roman poetry show, to devise a metre
which is not rough, unmusical, or even grotesque: yet for richness and
strength this first metre of Europe has never been rivalled by the
Greeks or by any one else. The same natural technical skill appears in
more subtle things even than metre or language. Homer is born knowing by
some instinct the profound secret of literary art which Aristotle
formulated centuries later as the principle of unity of Action. The plot
of a play, he writes in the _Poetics_, 'should have for its subject a
single action, whole and complete, with a beginning, a middle, and an
end.... It will differ in structure from historical compositions, which
of necessity present not a single action, but a single period, and all
that happened within that period to one person or to many, little
connected together as the events may be.... Such is the practice, we may
say, of most poets. Here again the transcendant excellence of Homer
appears. He never attempts to make the whole war of Troy the subject of
his poem. It would have been too vast a theme, and not easily embraced
in a single view: while if he had kept it in moderate limits it would
have been over-complicated by the variety of incidents. As it is, he
detaches a single portion.'[112] Once stated, the principle of unity of
action becomes a commonplace of literary art. But, as the _Annals_ of
Ennius or the _Faerie Queen_ show, it is not obvious until stated, and
the poets from whose practice Aristotle made his induction, must have
had a rare technical instinct unconsciously to preserve unity of
interest through the complications of a long epic or drama. Such
achievements were only possible to a people with a natural genius for
literary art. In the hands of the Greeks the various elements of
literature found their τελος {telos} and achieved their natural form,
almost with the same instinctive evolution by which a seed unfolds to
its predestined shape.

    [112] _Poetics_, c. 23 (tr. Butcher).

This can be illustrated even better from Greek drama. A modern author
who wishes to write a play may not find the task easy, but he knows the
general form which a drama has to take and the general principles to be
followed in writing it. The right length is given him, the division into
scenes and acts, the methods of exposition and dialogue, the conception
of a _dénouement_, the law of unity of action, and the rest. The fathers
of Greek tragedy had no such help. They had no drama in our sense of the
word, but simply a band of fifty persons dressed like satyrs, and
dancing round an altar and singing a song. Out of this anything or
nothing might have been made. The Greeks, with the instinctive and
unerring motions of genius, developed from it the highest and most
elaborate of literary forms, and within a hundred years are writing
plays which Shelley classes with _King Lear_, and which Swinburne can
call, 'probably, on the whole, the greatest spiritual work of man'.

In divining the principles of literary art and evolving the various
kinds of literature no people can be compared to the Greeks, and
probably none can show a mass of work executed with so uniformly high a
finish. But when we compare writer with writer we shall find individual
artists to rival them. Though the strength of English literature does
not lie in technical perfection, Milton, Pope, and Tennyson--to name no
others--have in their different ways as firm a grasp of it as any Greek,
and it can be learned from French writers, with whom it is the rule
rather than the exception, as well as from the Greeks. This is hardly
true of another quality of Greek writing, which may be classed with
technical finish, though it is in fact something more. It is one of the
most characteristic features of Greek; yet on first acquaintance, it is
often disconcerting and even distasteful. If a reader new to the
classics opened Thucydides, his first impression would probably be one
of jejuneness, of baldness. If, fresh from Shelley or Tennyson, he came
across the epigram of Simonides on the Spartan dead at Thermopylae,

    ω ξειν', αγγελλειν Αακεδαιμονιοις ὁτι τηδε
      κειμεθα, τοις κεινων ῥημασι πειθομενοι,[113]

    {ô xein', angellein Aakedaimoniois hoti têde
      keimetha, tois keinôn rhêmasi peithomenoi,}

he might see little in it but a prosaic want of colour. This exceeding
simplicity or economy is a stumbling-block to those who are accustomed
to the expansive modern manner. Yet such a reader would have been making
the acquaintance of some of the finest things in Greek literature, which
is always at its greatest when most simple, and he would have been face
to face with a characteristic quality of it.

    [113] 'Stranger, tell the Spartans that we lie here, obeying their
    words.'

The contrast with the usual English manner may be illustrated by
quoting a famous epigram--Ben Jonson's epitaph on a boy actor:

    Weep with me, all you that read
      This little story;
    And know, for whom a tear you shed,
      Death's self is sorry.

    'Twas a child that so did thrive
      In grace and feature,
    As heaven and nature seemed to strive
      Which owned the creature.

    Years he numbered scarce thirteen
      When Fates turned cruel,
    Yet three filled zodiacs had he been
      The stage's jewel;

    And did act (what now we moan)
      Old men so duly,
    As sooth the Parcae thought him one,
      He played so truly.

    So, by error, to his fate
      They all consented;
    But, viewing him since, alas, too late!
      They have repented.

These lines--and they are not the whole of the poem--are enough to
illustrate the difference between the Greek method and the English, the
latter rich and profuse, following the flow of an opulent fancy, the
former reticent and restrained, leaving the reader's imagination room
and need to play its part. There are materials for half-a-dozen epigrams
in Ben Jonson's poem. Had he been Simonides or Plato, he would have
stopped after the fourth line and, in the opinion of some critics, by
saving his paper he would have improved his poem.

In their theory and in their practice the Greek writers were true to
this principle of Economy. Their proverbs proclaim it 'the half is
greater than the whole': 'sow with the hand and not with the whole
sack.' The great passages of their literature illustrate it. It is to be
found no less in Thucydides' account of the siege of Syracuse and in the
close of the _Phaedo_ or the _Republic_ than in the death of Hector or
the meeting of Priam and Achilles. The Greek writers may have emotions
that would seem to demand vehement and extended expression, topics to
inspire a poet and tempt him to amplify them; but resisting the
temptation they set the facts down quietly and pass on practically
without comment. The close of the _Phaedo_ exemplifies this restraint.
Plato has just related with severe economy of detail the death of his
master. His comment on the event which saddened and confounded his whole
life is but this: 'Such, Echecrates, was the death of our friend, the
best man, I think, that I have ever known, the wisest too and the most
just.'[114]

    [114] _Phaedo_, 118 B.

There are noble examples of reticence and economy in English literature,
some of the most conspicuous of which can be traced to classical
influence; but no one would contend that these qualities are the rule in
our great writers. The English genius is rich and lavish rather than
restrained. It is less in its nature to write like Sappho,

    Ἑσπερε, παντα φερων οσα φαινολις εσκεδας' αυως,
    φερεις οιν, φερες αιγα, φερεις απυ ματερι παιδα,[115]

    {Hespere, panta pherôn osa phainolis eskedas' auôs,
    phereis oin, pheres aiga, phereis apy materi paida,}

    [115] fr. 95: 'Star of evening, bringing all things that bright dawn
    has scattered, you bring the sheep, you bring the goat, you bring
    the child back to its mother.'

than like Byron,

    O Hesperus, thou bringest all good things--
      Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
    To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
      The welcome stall to the o'er-laboured steer;
    Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
      Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,
    Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
    Thou bring'st the child too to its mother's breast.

Something may be said in favour of both methods. Amplitude of treatment
and fullness of detail enrich the imagination while economy stimulates
it. The latter may become jejune, and is safe only in the hands of great
writers: the former is apt to provide too rich a feast and to leave the
full-fed mind inert. Everything is done for it and nothing left it to
do. Economy on the other hand throws the reader on his own resources. It
sets the imagination wandering in the fields of infinity. Some readers
find this one of the essential delights of literature, though others
prefer that the author should take them by the hand and indicate every
detail with the precision of the sign-posts at a German _Kurort_.

Economy is the reflection in literature of that σωφροσυνη {sôphrosynê},
which is the most deeply-rooted of Greek ideals, the most untranslatable
of Greek words. But it was helped by an accident. If the art of printing
were lost, modern works would contract within narrower limits, and the
Greek economy was encouraged by the fact that Fust was not yet born. We,
who do not rely on hand-copying for the propagation of our books,
naturally write at greater length: and while it loses in conciseness,
literature has a compensating gain in amplitude. But the habit of
writing for money, which encourages abundant production, and the
existence of the printing-press, which makes it easy, expose us to
dangers from which the ancients were free. The newspapers are the worst
offenders, saying many things which need not be said at all, and saying
everything in a superfluous and excessive way. But literature suffers
hardly less. The greatest figures of the last fifty years, such as
Browning, Meredith, Hardy and Conrad, dilute their pages with
unessential, if not inferior, stuff, and produce writing which has not
received the _summa manus_. Had their work been less by a half--a
modest reduction--it would have been more perfect because more time
could have been devoted to it, more powerful because each stroke would
have been precise and strong, more telling because these strokes would
not have been combined with ineffective blows. This is even truer of
lesser men and other forms of literature. It is because the _Agricola_
of Tacitus extends to but thirty pages, that the biography of a Roman
civil servant of no great genius will outlive those of far greater men.
The art of omission is the art which English writers most need to learn;
the literary _lima_ is their least-handled tool. Both art and tool were
perfectly understood and constantly used by the Greeks.

       *       *       *       *       *

The third mark of Greek Literature, with which I have to deal, is
perhaps its most important, certainly its most universal quality. It is
truthfulness. The Greeks told no fewer lies than other races, but they
had the desire and the power to see the world as it is. By this
essential quality they gave Europe the conception of philosophy and
science. These we inherit from them alone; Palestine and our German
ancestors neither created them, nor show any signs of the temper that
creates them, and Rome received her share from Greece.

The word 'Truthfulness' may seem to suggest the realism of some modern
writers. But the Greek truthfulness was different. It should be
distinguished from the laboured detachment and painful impartiality of
such a writer as Flaubert, whose realism conceals him in the same sense
as the walls of the engine-room conceal the panting machines within. The
Greek Truthfulness is spontaneous, natural, and effortless--the native
quality of the artist, who sees, and forgets himself in the vision. Nor
has it anything to do with photographic realism. It has not the
impersonality of that method or its flat and lifeless effect. A man, and
no machine, makes the picture, feeling intensely what he sees, and
though this intensity does not distort his vision, we are conscious, as
we read, of a human personality, and we feel the electric thrill of
life.

Nor is it akin to that type of modern realism, which, like a noxious
drug, lays hold on the spirits and depresses the heart--the realism
which paints so black a picture of human life, that it affects us
physically like days of continued fog, and gives us no more complete and
truthful a picture of the world. There is hardly any Greek writer,
perhaps none at all, of whom this can be said. Many moderns can
faithfully describe what is disagreeable, but their effects are often
brutal and always depressing. The gift of portraying suffering and evil
with unflinching truth, yet of conveying other feelings than those of
mere horror, is reserved for few. Its rarity perhaps explains the rarity
of great tragedy, of which it seems to be a condition that it shall
truthfully show what is darkest in life, without leaving a final and
dominant sense of gloom. The great Greek writers possessed this secret.
They are as sensitive to evil and suffering as any writer and fully as
faithful in recording them. But whereas other men are simply depressed
or disgusted or appalled, lose their vital forces, and gaze in paralysed
fascination, these writers, in virtue of a sense which is more aesthetic
than moral, are aware of tremendous issues, see in sordid suffering the
agonies of a labouring universe, and feel awe and wonder, not mere
disgust and distress, at what human beings suffer and endure. That is
why Homer leaves us with another feeling than depression, when he tells
how Priam begged his son's body from the man who killed him. 'So Priam
entered unseen of them and stood near and clasped with his hands the
knees of Achilles and kissed the terrible murderous hands that had slain
so many of his sons. But Achilles was amazed at the sight of Priam, and
amazed were the rest, and they looked at each other. And Priam entreated
and addressed him. "Remember your own father, godlike Achilles: he is of
like years with me, and stands on the hateful road of old age. Perhaps
the neighbours round about harry him and there is none to keep misery
and ruin from him. Yet when he hears that you are alive, he rejoices and
hopes, day in, day out, to see his dear son returning from Troy. But I
am utterly wretched, for I begat the best of sons in Troy, and none of
them is left. The one I had, who was the stay of Troy and its people,
you killed but now as he fought for his country--even Hector. Respect
the gods, Achilles, and pity me, and remember your own father. I am more
unhappy than he. I have faced what no other mortal man ever yet
faced--to stretch my hand to the face of my sons' slayer."'[116] There
is suffering and evil enough here, and there is no attempt to disguise
or lessen them. Yet most readers, I think, would read this passage with
different feelings from those provoked by the close of _Madame Bovary_
or of _Jude the Obscure_. Its truthfulness is neither ugly nor
depressing.

    [116] _Iliad_, xxiv. 277 f. (with omissions).

Nor again is the Greek truthfulness identical with objectivity. An
objective writer tells his story and conveys his impressions, as far as
possible, by relating facts without commenting upon them. Dramatists and
novelists are compelled by the nature of their art to be objective in
this sense of the word (though Fielding and Thackeray in the one field,
and Ibsen and Shaw in the other, manage to make their comments with
their own lips, not those of their characters). But such a writer would
not of necessity be more truthful or impartial than any one else. He can
distort truth as thoroughly by selecting certain facts and ignoring
others as by making misleading comments. He may be violently one-sided
and present only the facts that support his view, thus indirectly
putting himself into what he writes quite as fully as a confessed
partizan, though less openly. Such a writer is objective, but his
objectivity with him is no more than a literary method. Now it is true
that the Greeks use this method, telling a story without personal
comments, not only in their epics and plays where this method is
natural, but also in their histories and elsewhere. Thucydides for
instance tells the story of a great war, yet his comments on it are few,
and are mainly given in the dramatic and would-be objective form of
speeches by leading men of the day. But the Greeks have objectivity in a
far more important sense than this. Their objectivity is no literary
device but a quality of mind. They have the power of standing aloof from
matters in which they are personally interested, and surveying them from
outside like impartial spectators, with the keenest interest, but
without bias. As the Delphic priestess in the act of prophecy lost her
individuality and became the mouthpiece of the god, so the Greek allowed
facts to speak for themselves, became their mouthpiece and banished the
intrusive ego. If therefore we call the Greeks objective, all this must
be included in our definition of the word.

We shall understand Greek 'truthfulness' best, if, dropping
philosophical terms, and forgetting modern meanings, we remember a
saying of Anaxagoras, who, when asked for what purpose he was born,
replied: 'To contemplate the works of nature.' The disinterested passion
for contemplating things, which gathered inquiring groups round Socrates
to discuss what justice and friendship mean, or whether goodness is
knowledge and can be learnt, has its counterpart in literature. The
Greeks were fascinated by the spectacle of man and the world, and their
fascination is seen not only in their formal philosophy. Of their poets
too it may be said that they were born to see the world and human
life--not to moralize or to indulge in sentiment or rhetoric or
mysticism about it, but to see it. Keats's description of the poetic
temperament fits them closely: 'It has no self, it is everything and
nothing.... It enjoys light and shade.... A poet is the most unpoetical
of anything in existence, he is continually in, for, and filling some
other body.' In such a mood men will write literature that may justly be
called truthful. Avoiding the didactic, they will not distort truth to
suit personal bias; avoiding rhetoric, they will not sacrifice it to
fine phrases; avoiding sentiment and fancy, they will not gratify their
own or their hearer's feelings at the expense of truth; avoiding
mysticism, they will not move away from facts into a world of emotions.
Their care will be to see things, and their delight will be in the mere
vision. They will echo the words of Keats, 'If a sparrow comes before my
windows, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel'[117]:
they will not treat it as Shelley treats the skylark, or even as Keats
and Wordsworth treat the nightingale. Herein is one of the secrets of
Greek poetry, for the Greek poets, more than any others, bring us in a
manner entirely simple and natural into immediate contact with what they
describe, and thus escape the thousand distortions for which epigram,
rhetoric, sentiment, fancy, mysticism and romanticism are responsible.
This secret may be called 'directness'. It is the habit of looking
straight and steadily at things, and describing them as they are, the
very contrary of the habit of didactic comment and of rhetorical or
emotional inflation. The 'direct' writer, in the fullest extent that is
possible, keeps himself and his feelings in the background. He does not
allow the mists which rise from a man's personality to come between him
and his subject.

    [117] I have taken these quotations of Keats from Bradley, _Oxford
    Lecture on Poetry_, p. 238.

A few instances of directness will give a better idea of it than many
definitions. The epigram quoted a few pages back shows how the Greek
writer lets his subject speak instead of expressing his own feelings
about it. So does the following epitaph, placed by a father on his son's
grave.

    Δωδεκετη τον παιδα πατηρ απεθηκε Φιλιππος
      ενθαδε την πολλην ελπιδα Νικοτελην.[118]

    {Dôdeketê ton paida patêr apethêke Philippos
      enthade tên pollên elpida Nikotelên.}

    [118] Callimachus, _Epigr._ 20: 'His father Philip laid here to rest
    his twelve-year old son, his high hope, Nicoteles.'

The bereaved father says nothing of his sorrow, or the greatness of his
loss, but records his son's name and age and says that he was his
father's 'high hope', and so doing gives us everything. Simonides does
not express his own feelings about the heroism of the Spartan dead;
their grave speaks for them to the passer-by. Nor is this a mere
literary method, a way of writing which states facts and leaves them to
make an impression by their own weight, unaided by comment or
explanation. A comparison of Ben Jonson's epigram with the Greek
epitaph, will show that directness is much more than this. The fancies
with which Jonson closes are pretty; but they are false, for they are
really incompatible with deep feeling: the Greek directness never loses
from sight the dead child; it sees only that and the father's sorrow.

The following extract deals with a very different subject, but
illustrates directness equally well. The scene is the Athenian colony of
Amphipolis on the Struma; the dramatis personae are the Spartan general
Brasidas who wishes to capture it, and the Athenian Thucydides who was
then at Thasos, distant half a day's sail from Amphipolis. 'As soon as
Thucydides heard the news about Brasidas, he sailed quickly to
Amphipolis ... in order to garrison it if possible before it could
capitulate, or at any rate to occupy Eion (its seaport). Meanwhile
Brasidas, fearing the arrival of the Athenian fleet at Thasos and
hearing that Thucydides ... was one of the leading men of the country,
did his utmost to get possession of the city before he arrived.... He
therefore offered moderate terms.... These terms were accepted, and the
city was surrendered to him. On the evening of the same day Thucydides
and his ships sailed into Eion, but not until Brasidas had taken
possession of Amphipolis: another night, and he would have seized
Eion.'[119] The gist of the story contained in this extract is plain.
The Spartan general Brasidas seized the important town of Amphipolis,
and the Athenian general came too late to save it. But who would guess
that the Athenian general Thucydides was the historian Thucydides who
wrote these words, and that the episode which he here describes with
such detachment and neutrality earned him perpetual exile under pain of
death, from the country which he passionately loved? Thucydides has told
the bare facts, objectively, as if they related to some one else,
without a comment, without a word of protest, excuse, explanation or
regret on the crowning disaster of his life. He writes of himself in the
third person. This is not the way in which modern generals write of
their mishaps, but it is the Greek way. Thucydides has forgotten himself
and his feelings; he sees only the disastrous day when he sailed up the
Struma with his ships and found the gates of Amphipolis closed against
him. He ignores himself so far that he does not call it disastrous,
though disastrous it was for himself and his country. With the same
detachment he speaks of the enslavement of Melos and the tragedy of
Syracuse, though he thinks, and makes us feel, that the one was the
crowning crime, the other the crowning disaster of his country. He
narrates the plain facts and leaves the reader to draw his inferences.
If we did not know that he was an Athenian, we could hardly tell from
his history whether he took the side of Athens or Sparta in the war; so
entirely are he and his feelings kept in the background. Yet he was an
ardent patriot, and he is describing the war in which his country lost
supremacy and empire. No historian of the war of 1914-18, whether on the
Allied or the German side, is likely to write of it in this way.

    [119] _Thuc._ iv. 104, 105, 106 (tr. Jowett, mainly).

The art of Homer has the same quality of detachment. He is a Greek,
writing of a ten years' war between Greeks and Asiatics, yet most of his
readers sympathize with Hector rather than with Achilles. He himself
preferred neither, but saw and felt equally with both; with the hero who
fought the losing battle for Troy, and with him who lost his friend,
and, intoxicated with sorrow, could see and feel nothing but a passion
of revenge. It would seem hardly possible to write the close of the 22nd
Book of the _Iliad_, where the heroes meet, without taking sides; we, no
doubt, should take Hector's side. But Homer stands apart from the
quarrel, and sees both men and the feelings of both, writing with the
pen of the Recording Angel, not of the Judge. What he or Thucydides
thought in each case can only be guessed at. They have presented the
facts without comment, and the facts tell their own tale, explain
themselves, carry with them the feelings they should evoke, and shine by
their own light, like the phosphorescence of the sea.

Little thinking is needed to see that the direct, detached, objective
temper is the generative principle of the Greek achievement, for it is
the parent of science and philosophy, which are the children of a desire
to see things in themselves as they are, and not as the seer might wish
them to be. The effects of this temper in poetry can be appreciated by a
comparison of certain phenomena of our own literature which are absent
from Greek. The comparison will indicate, too, what modern writers can
learn from the Greeks, and enable us to judge whether the lessons are
needed.

The habit of keeping the eye on the subject, which is the essence of
directness, discourages, and indeed excludes, conventionality,
sentimentalism, fancifulness, which prevent a writer from seeing and
recording life as it is. These failings are always with us, and as I
have given one instance of their working in Ben Jonson's epigram and
have discussed the matter elsewhere,[120] I shall pass to diseases which
are more particularly modern, and with which directness is equally at
war.

    [120] _The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us_, pp. 74 ff.

The richness of the English language is in itself a danger. English,
like Latin, lends itself superbly to ranting, a capacity discovered by
the Elizabethans. Modern writers tend to more delicate excess, and have
exploited the musical quality of English. This is clear from such a
collection as the _Oxford Book of Victorian Verse_, which faithfully
represents the output of the age, and contains some fine poetry, but
also a very large percentage of what Horace called, _Versus inopes rerum
nugaeque canorae_. There is an intolerable deal of sack to a very little
bread among the imitators of Tennyson. To such rhetorical or musical
trifles no better antidote can be found than Greek literature, for there
is no rhetoric in it, and what melodious nothings it contained, were
parodied in its own age and have scantily survived to ours. In general
it avoided both by its directness. The rhetoric of Lucan or Byron, the
predominance of sound over sense in some of Shelley and much of
Swinburne arise because those poets shut their eyes to the real world
and become lost in the music of words. The Greek, starting with facts,
not with sounds or with feelings about facts, could not easily become
the victim of words. The temptation did not arise for him, or if it did,
his sin was easily detected. Herein he is a good model, especially for
poets who are apt to lose sight of the earth and pass into an unearthly
paradise of vague feelings. For the greatest poetry is the poetry of
things, not of words, and to whatever regions the Muse may take her
flight, she can only be safe if she starts from Earth, and keeps her
communication with it open.

Directness is also a protection against that literature of egotism which
is the excess into which subjective poetry easily falls. Legitimate when
kept within bounds, the habit of putting oneself into what one writes
can become an offence, and from this offence English literature is not
free. No one can complain because Milton and Wordsworth are less
detached than Shakespeare or Sophocles; but the subjectivity of Byron or
Carlyle is very different. Their subject is continually darkened by the
shadow of their personality; it suffers a partial, at times a total,
eclipse. Childe Harold sees himself in all that he sees, projects
himself into Belgium, Athens and Rome, and colours the bluest skies with
the jaundiced hues of his temperament. This is almost equally true of
Carlyle's pupils, Ruskin and Froude, and, among the moderns, of a swarm
of minor poets and novelists, who display before the public the pageant
of their indignant or bleeding hearts. Egotism is a fault of manners as
much as of morals, and has its peculiar effect and its appropriate
penalty. Its effect is to distract a man's attention from major to minor
issues, from the large world to the small self; its penalty is that it
wearies its audience, and the next generation, if not its own, dislikes
the continual obtrusion of an element in which it has no interest. Hence
oblivion, often unjust, is the punishment which the egotist suffers.
Even our age, interested as it is in personalities, has little time to
spare for those of Byron or Carlyle; it is too busy with the characters
of its own contemporaries to trouble about those of its predecessors.
But no Greek writer is forgotten for this cause. Whatever their other
offences, the Greeks are free from literary egotism. Directness turned
their eyes to the external world, and taught them to see even themselves
from without.

Egotism is a minor defect in English literature. To some it may even
seem to be a virtue. A more serious weakness, which our literature
shares with other modern literatures, is one-sidedness or incompleteness
of view, which reveals itself by a series of reactions, and in England
has taken the form of an oscillation between sentimentalism and a rather
cruel realism, the latter being dominant at the present time. These two
schools represent excesses of temperament, the one of generosity and
kindliness, the other of truth; and among our writers of genius Dickens
and Hardy typify them well. The one school desire in fiction to reward
their good characters and punish the bad, just as they would wish that
life should do; and truth is not allowed to thwart their benevolence or
their indignation. In defiance of all probability Micawber and Mr. Mell
make a success of life in Australia, though truth cries out that they
were born to be failures; while the foot of punishment moves more
swiftly and visibly in the pages of Dickens than it does in fact. Then
comes the veracious person, who, growing indignant at a travesty of life
that misleads the reader and insults truth, gives us the opposite
extreme in an imagined world where the shadows are deepened and the high
lights carefully blocked out. Scott and Dickens picture a world in which
at the end vice finds itself in the gutter while virtue marries the
heroine. Later, Thomas Hardy has given us _Jude the Obscure_ and _Tess
of the D'Urbervilles_.[121] Here is a protest, a redressing of the
balance, by an advocate who rises to supply a side of the case which has
been ignored. Yet once again Truth is violated, and by her sworn
servant; for the world that Hardy portrays is not the world as it is.
When Dickens makes Mr. Micawber the District Magistrate of Port
Middlebay, he is not representing life, but saying what he and his
audience would like to believe in order to feel comfortable when they
close the book. As a protest therefore against him in the next
generation comes Thomas Hardy, who after recording the miserable end of
Tess, writes 'The President of the immortals had ended his sport with
Tess'. In so writing he is no true recorder any more than was Dickens,
but the self-appointed Judge of a universe which he conceives to be
cruel.

    [121] In these novels and in _The Dynasts_ Mr. Hardy allows his
    personal views to depress one side of the scales: in his lesser
    novels he has often shown that he can hold the balance even. This
    distinction should be borne in mind in all the criticisms of his
    work, which I have ventured to make.

Neither Dickens nor Hardy can be called unveracious writers; both give a
picture of life that is true up to a point. Hardy, in particular, errs
less by distortion than by omission; he sees one side of life, but at
the expense of another side; he fails to hold the balance fairly, and
lacks the large charity of the universe. Both writers are incomplete. No
one could say of them, what is completely true of most Greek writers and
largely true of all, that they see life steadily and see it whole. Still
less can this be said of their followers, who, after the fashion of
disciples, imitate and develop their defects, and oscillate between
sentimental falsity, and the starkness and brutality which have been
familiar in English literature during the last twenty years and in
French literature for a much longer period. None of these writers, not
even the best, is direct. Like Dickens, they consult their generous
hearts, or, worse, ask: 'Can truth be told without making the public
angry?' Or, like Hardy, they veil a didactic purpose under the name of
realism, and register a bitter personal protest against the cruelty of
life. In either case they narrow their view, and see the world through a
mist of temperament.

This point may be illustrated by examining a famous passage from Homer,
and then asking how a sentimental and a realistic writer might have
treated it. Imagine the death of Hector in the hands of Dickens or
Hardy. The first most probably would not have permitted it to occur, or,
if he had, would have made Achilles the villain of the piece and
emphasized and developed the tragedy in the manner of his death scenes,
till he had wearied the reader with pathos. Confronted with such a
tragedy he would have given the rein to emotion. Mr. Hardy, we may
guess, would be impressed less by the pathos of the scene, than by the
savagery of Achilles and the misgovernment of a universe in which such
things were possible, and he would not have let these morals escape his
readers. By small touches, by stressing suitable incidents, he would
have made the tragedy more tragic, and the brutality more brutal. It is
thus that he has treated the death of Jude. By so doing, both Dickens
and Hardy in their different ways, would have been allowing their own
personalities rather than the facts to speak, and, seeing only one side
of the story, would have made it less complicated than life and less
complete. But in the _Iliad_ we see nothing of Homer's personality and
hear no voice but that of the facts. The story tells itself without the
heightening of artifice. The two men are brought before our
eyes--Hector, the last hope of Troy, with his wife and child waiting for
him at home--Achilles, mad with the memory of his dead friend. There is
no judgement and no comment, but only the thing as it was.

To those who would maintain that Dickens or Hardy give an accurate
picture of the world, there are two answers. First, their world is not
the world as Shakespeare or Meredith sees it; this for many persons will
be a sufficient disproof of its reality. Second, the history of English
and French literatures has been for the last 150 years a history of
successive reactions. The classical school was followed by the
romantics, the romantics by the realists; each was a protest and a
reaction against its predecessor. These swerving movements must have a
cause. Now there are no reactions in literature unless there is some
excess to provoke them. The existence of a reaction is a symptom of
disease, and not only would it never take place apart from disease, but
there is always a chance that it may go too far; for as in the body, so
in the world of letters, a balance once disturbed is difficult to
restore. But Greek literature, unlike our own and unlike French, at no
stage developed by reaction. Its epic poets are followed by the lyrists
and these by the tragedians: tragedy passes into the New Comedy, which
is followed by the learned and artistic poetry of Alexandria. In prose
the unperiodic style of Herodotus is succeeded by the style of
Thucydides; while Plato and the various orators develop different types
of writing. None of these styles, however, and none of these writers,
are in reaction against one another. Some traces of reaction against
the Homeric outlook of Sophocles may perhaps be found in Euripides. But
this contrast lies between two individual writers and not between two
literary schools, and has no analogy with the relation of the romantic
to the classical or to the realist movements. It is far less marked, for
instance, than the contrast between Voltaire and Victor Hugo or that
between Victor Hugo and Flaubert. There is no reaction in the
development of Greek literature, because at no stage is there any excess
to react from; and there is no excess, because the Greek writers are
direct and objective, because they are mirrors that reflect life, not
imperfect lenses that distort it each according to its own imperfection.

The literature of the Elizabethans here resembles Greek. It is indeed
more wayward, more fanciful, more personal, more luxuriant than the
Greek; but it is on the whole more disinterested, freer from any
didactic bent, more inclined to contemplate life for its own sake than
the literature of any succeeding epoch in England. Since the Puritans a
didactic strain has continually appeared in our writers. We have had
revolts and protests, and then, by reaction, more protests and revolts.
However admirable in morals, this Protestantism is injurious in
literature, for, like all rebellions, it ends in excess and destroys the
even-balanced temper which is essential to the creation of the greatest
literature. This didactic temper, often disguised as realism, has never
been stronger than in our own age, when many who might have found their
profession in the Churches are diverted to other paths and seek in
literature an outlet that in the past would have been found in the
pulpit. Messrs. Wells, Shaw, Galsworthy--to mention no others--are
parsons _manqués_, who were designed by nature to write not plays or
novels but sermons. Or rather they are dual personalities: clergyman and
creative writer have been combined in them and the clergyman has
corrupted the poet. The unsatisfied appetite for preaching which a
hundred years ago would have been quieted by writing an evangelical
tract, to-day issues in a novel or a play. The moral differs, the form
changes, the intention and temper are the same.

It is ungrateful to cavil at this moralizing and didactic temper, which
animates a large part of the nation and is responsible for much of the
British achievement. But its place is in the world of action not in that
of letters, and it does not produce the greatest literature or the
truest thought. The Greeks might have gained by a greater infusion of
it: we, on the other hand, can learn something from their intellectual
disinterestedness which in political and social controversies would make
opposing views more intelligible and the path to truth easier and
plainer, in literature would free us from excesses that are followed by
reaction to a contrary excess, and in national life would guard us from
the materialism which besets an industrial and commercial age. It is not
confined to the Greeks; but by no people is the ideal of intellectual
truth more clearly and universally exhibited than by those who first
brought it into an indifferent world, and who built upon it their
literature and art no less than their science and philosophy.

       *       *       *       *       *

The last quality of Greek literature of which I wish to speak is not one
which we should expect to find in combination with truthfulness; it is
certainly very rare in modern realists. Yet the Greek instinct for
beauty is beyond question. There is the evidence of Winckelmann, who,
living in a world that had forgotten Greek, rediscovered it; or of
Keats, who was not brought up to the familiarity with Greek that breeds
obtuseness and indifference, but made acquaintance with it when he was
of an age to judge. The impression made both on Keats and Winckelmann is
that of a new and surpassing beauty. There is the evidence of 'the
beautiful mythology of Greece',[122] the offspring of an untaught
folk-imagination, and so far richer in the quality of beauty than the
mythology of the North. Even in the sawdust of a mythological dictionary
the stories of Atalanta, Narcissus, Pygmalion, Orpheus and Eurydice,
Phaethon, Medusa keep their magic.

    [122] Keats, _Preface to Endymion_.

The following extract from the hymn of Demeter may illustrate this
beauty, though it is not one of the greatest passages of Greek
literature and its writer is unknown. It is the story of the Earth
Mother and her daughter Persephone:

                         ἡν Αιδωνευς
    ἡρπαξεν, δωκεν δε βαρυκτυπος ευρυοπα Ζευς,
    παιζουσαν κουρησι συν Ωκεανου βαθυκολποις
    ανθεα τ' αινυμενην, ῥοδα και κροκον ηδ' ια καλα
    λειμων' αμ μαλακον και αγαλλιδας ηδ' ὑακινθον
    ναρκισσον θ', ὁν φυσε δολον καλυκωπιδι κουρη
    Γαια Διος βουλησι χαριζομενη Πολυδεκτη,
    θαυμαστον γανοωντα· σεβας το γε πασιν ιδεσθαι
    αθανατοις τε θεοις ηδε θνητοις ανθρωποις·
    του και απο ῥιζης ἑκατον καρα εξεπεφυκει,
    κωζ' ἡδιστ' οδμη, πας δ' ουρανος ευρυς ὑπερθε
    γαια τε πας' εγελασσε και ἁλμυρον οιδμα θαλασσης.
    ἡ δ' αρα θαμβησας' ωρεξατο χερσιν ἁμ' αμφω
    καλον αθυρμα λαβειν· χανε δε χθων ευρυαγυια
    Νυσιον αμ πεδιον, τη ορουσεν αναξ Πολυδεγμων
    ἱπποις αθανατοισι[123]

                          {hên Aidôneus
    hêrpaxen, dôken de baryktypos euryopa Zeus,
    paizousan kourêsi syn Ôkeanou bathykolpois
    anthea t' ainymenên, rhoda kai krokon êd' ia kala
    leimôn' am malakon kai agallidas êd' hyakinthon
    narkisson th', hon physe dolon kalukôpidi kourê
    Gaia Dios boulêsi charizomenê Polydektê,
    thaumaston ganoônta; sebas to ge pasin idesthai
    athanatois te theois êde thnêtois anthrôpois;
    tou kai apo rhizês hekaton kara exepephykei,
    kôz' hêdist' odmê, pas d' ouranos eurys hyperthe
    gaia te pas' egelasse kai halmyron oidma thalassês.
    hê d' ara thambêsas' ôrexato chersin ham' amphô
    kalon athyrma labein; chane de chthôn euryagyia
    Nysion am pedion, tê orousen anax Polydegmôn
    hippois athanatoisi}.

    [123] _Hymn to Demeter_, l. 2 ff. The translation is mainly from
    Pater, _Greek Studies_. 'Whom, by the consent of far-seeing,
    deep-thundering Zeus, Aidoneus carried away, as she played with the
    deep-bosomed daughters of Ocean, gathering flowers in a meadow of
    soft grass and roses and crocus and fair violets and iris and
    hyacinths and the strange glory of the narcissus which the Earth,
    favouring the desire of Aidoneus, brought forth to snare the
    flower-like girl. A wonder it was to all, immortal gods and mortal
    men. A hundred blossoms grew up from the roots of it, and very sweet
    was its scent, and the broad sky above, and all the earth and the
    salt wave of the sea laughed to see it. She in wonder stretched out
    her two hands to take the lovely plaything: thereupon the wide-wayed
    earth opened in the Nysian plain and the king of the great nation of
    the dead sprang out with his immortal horses.'

Turn from this to some parallel poem in English literature, such as
_Oenone_ or _Tithonus_. Beautiful as Tennyson is, the Greek has a better
beauty, a beauty not of words or metaphors or highly-wrought art, but
simpler, more spontaneous and more instinctive, as though not man but
nature herself was speaking. Two writers, who are qualified to judge by
being themselves among the great poets of the world, and who knew and
appreciated other literatures, but speak in this way about Greek alone,
have testified to the uniqueness of this beauty. Goethe says stiffly but
precisely: 'in the presence of antiquity the mind feels itself placed in
the most ideal state of nature; and even to this day the Homeric hymns
have the power of freeing us, at any rate, for moments, from the
terrible burden which the tradition of many hundreds of years has rolled
upon us.' In these words Goethe has touched on the simplicity and the
naturalness of Greek beauty, in contrast to the more exotic and
elaborate beauty of which mediaeval and modern art and literature are
full. Keats writing about the Grecian urn also had in his mind the
liberating power of Greek beauty:

    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
    As doth eternity; Cold Pastoral!
    When old age shall this generation waste
      Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
    Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
    'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'--that is all
      Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.

These words point to another trait of Greek beauty, which any one who
has seen Greek statues must have felt: it does not provoke speculation
just as it does not excite desire, because no elements are mingled with
it that might stir such feelings. It has no admixture, but is mere
beauty, sought for itself.

Not only is Greek beauty different in quality from our own, but it is
more abundant. This surely would be the verdict of an impartial critic
who compared Homer, the lyrists, the tragedians, Plato, Theocritus, the
epigrammatists, with the corresponding names in modern literatures. It
amounts to a different way of viewing the world; the Greeks were more
sensitive to beauty than we are, just as some people are more sensitive
than others to colours or sounds, to moral or intellectual issues. This
is curiously illustrated in their treatment of tragic themes. There is
no want of tragedy in Homer or the dramatists--their view of life is
probably darker than our own--and they have been praised for a pessimism
that faced and admitted the black truth. Yet the cloud of evil is
continually broken by rays of beauty. Thus Homer lights up the tragic
parting of Hector and Andromache by the story of the child and the
nodding plumes, yet does not use the incident, as many writers would
have used it, to heighten the tragedy, which indeed it neither
emphasizes nor diminishes: it is merely a gratuitous touch of delight in
children, as accidental and natural as the brighter moments which, in
life if not in realistic novels, diversify the darkest hours. Thus too
Aeschylus preludes the bloody slaughter of Salamis with the white horses
of the dawn, the echoes in the cliffs, the foam whitening beneath the
oars, and when he speaks of the island where the Persians are butchered,
does not forget the dances in which Pan rejoiced there of old. Thus,
again, one of the most tragic moments in the _Hippolytus_ is followed by
the song,

    Could I take me to some cavern for mine hiding,
      In the hill-tops where the Sun scarce hath trod;
    Or a cloud make the home of mine abiding,
      As a bird among the bird-droves of God!
        Could I wing me to my rest amid the roar
        Of the deep Adriatic on the shore,
    Where the water of Eridanus is clear,
      And Phaëthon's sad sisters by his grave
    Weep into the river, and each tear
      Gleams, a drop of amber, in the wave.[124]

    [124] ll. 732 f. (tr. Murray).

The union of beauty and tragedy may be a paradox, but no reader can miss
its power. The mere story of Hector's death as told by Homer is
poignant, even when read in an English translation: the magic of the
original language and metre doubles the effect. The combination of these
two apparently inconsistent things, which is one of the marks of Greek
poetry, is, of course, found in other literatures; the description of
Ophelia's death in _Hamlet_ is an instance of it. But no drama except
Greek has that regular interweaving of tragedy with exquisite lyrics by
which some of its most powerful effects are secured.

Effect is the wrong word to use, for we have here no literary trick, but
a view of life, which is naturally complete and clearsighted, which is
sensitive to the beauty that no evil can destroy, which sees the
splendour in tragedy itself, and remembers that though the days of
darkness are many it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun.
This philosophy, implied throughout Greek literature, commends it to
many people. Those who disagree with the philosophy will not quarrel
with the beauty itself. Hellenism is one of the forces which are
continually being buried and re-found, and which, like talismans, have a
disturbing power when they fall afresh into human hands. Those who read
the literature of the age which rediscovered Greek will see that it
brought above all a sense of liberation and expansion. At the
Renaissance as in the eighteenth century, Greece found the world in
chains, and broke them and threw down the prison walls. The fetters of
the two epochs were different, but freedom was brought, at the
Renaissance partly, and in the age of Winckelmann entirely, by the
vision of beauty which Greece exhibited. Our own age has many chains and
knows well the burden of which Goethe spoke. It has multiplied ugliness
far faster than beauty, and its writers, prolific, interesting, and
thoughtful as they are, do not help it here. It may well find, as other
ages have found, in this quality of Greek literature a healing and
liberating power.

       *       *       *       *       *

English literature is surpassed by none, but its defects or dangers are
at points where Greek is strong. Greek simplicity recalls us to the
central interests of the human heart. Greek truthfulness is a challenge
to see the world as it is and shun the emptiness of mere music, the
falsities of rhetoric or sentiment, the incompleteness of writers who,
instead of seeing life as a whole, ignore or emphasize a part of it as
their own sympathies dictate. Greek beauty is a memorial of an aspect of
the universe to which ages of thought are often blind. Greek technique
is a lesson in 'form' and a reminder of its place in literature.

Nor is the study of Greek a danger to our national genius. Contact with
highly developed foreign models may warp or cramp a literature in its
infancy, but cannot harm it when full grown and robust. The native
character is then too firmly established to be corrupted, and it is pure
gain to have another standard for comparison, for detection of
weaknesses and their cure. A reference to English literature will
support this view and show that though the influence of Greek there has
often been great, it has not been distorting. Consider the English poets
who owe most to Greece--Milton, Gray, Shelley, Keats, Landor, Tennyson,
Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, Bridges. It would puzzle any critic to find a
common denominator between these men, or to trace back to Greece any
universal feature in their poetry, except perhaps perfection of form.
Technical perfection is not so serious or frequent a vice in English
writers, that it can be complained of, and even this common element
vanishes, if we add to the poets already quoted the Brownings, who
prized and understood Greek and the Greek spirit as well as any of them.

At first sight it may seem strange that Shelley and Keats, Arnold and
Swinburne, who were not merely passionate admirers of Greece but drew
their chief inspiration from her, should be so different in style and
matter. The explanation is simple. Some influences are tyrannous; they
impose themselves, they dominate, they enslave. But there is a better
and rarer type of influence, which stimulates and inspires yet leaves
the poet free to develop his own genius with enlarged horizons and
quickened sensibilities. Greek influence on our writers has been of this
kind; perhaps because its literature is singularly free from the
artifice and mannerism which lend themselves to mimicry and seems like
Nature with her many voices speaking.

R. W. LIVINGSTONE.




HISTORY


I

_The Relationship between Ancient Greek and Modern Western Civilization_

Ancient Greek society perished at least as long ago as the seventh
century A. D. Many historians would date its death a good many centuries
earlier, and all would agree that even if there are symptoms that life
still lingered in the body down to this time, its mental and physical
energies had long failed, and that the change from lethargy to death was
hardly perceptible when it came. Thus even on the most cautious
reckoning, there is an interval of thirteen centuries between the close
of Greek history and our own times, and the great age of Greek
history--the time when Ancient Greek society was in its prime, when it
was shaping its own destiny and deflecting the destiny of its
neighbours--is separated from our generation by more than two thousand
years. What legacy has come down, through these great periods of time,
from Ancient Greek society to the contemporary world? Before trying to
answer this big question, let us consider a smaller one: What is the
legacy of Ancient Greek History to our own society? That portion of
contemporary humanity which inhabits Western Europe and America
constitutes a specific society, for which the most convenient name is
'Western Civilization', and this society has a relationship with Ancient
Greek society which other contemporary societies--for instance, those of
Islam, India, and China--have not. It is its child.

This description of the relationship between Ancient Greece and the
modern Western world may be something more than a metaphor, for
societies like individuals are living creatures, and may therefore be
expected to exhibit the same phenomena. At any rate the metaphor
illustrates the facts. To begin with, the histories of the two societies
overlap. The origins of modern Western society may be traced back a
century or two before the Christian era, when the lands and races of
Western Europe came into contact with the Levant, where Greek society
had grown up and was then in its maturity. The germ of Western society
first developed in the body of Greek society, like a child in the womb.
The Roman Empire was the period of pregnancy during which the new life
was sheltered and nurtured by the old. The 'Dark Age' was the crisis of
birth, in which the child broke away from its parent and emerged as a
separate, though naked and helpless, individual. The Middle Ages were
the period of childhood, in which the new creature, though immature,
found itself able to live and grow independently. The fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, with their marked characteristics of transition,
may stand for puberty, and the centuries since the year 1500 for our
prime. The metaphor works out sufficiently well to throw light on our
particular problem: the legacy bequeathed to the Modern West by Ancient
Greece.

Children 'inherit' from their parents in several senses of the word.
There are features and instincts physically transmitted from the one to
the other. There are imitations in early childhood of the parent's
speech and gesture which are not perhaps strictly predetermined by the
relationship, but which are yet performed subconsciously and are in fact
so inevitable that the child is never aware that it is exercising choice
in the matter. And there is deliberate and conscious imitation at a
later stage when the child is sufficiently mature to appreciate its
parent's character. These several forms of 'legacy' from parent to child
differ primarily in the extent to which the acceptance and use of them
depends upon the child's own will, and it will probably be admitted that
the legacies which are the less certain to be transmitted are also the
more important if the transmission happens to take place. For example, a
child's life and character are more affected by deliberate imitation of
its parent at a relatively advanced age than by the unchosen inheritance
of some particular colour of hair and eye or shape of chin or pitch of
temperament. On the other hand, while the inheritance of these latter
characteristics from one among a limited number of ancestral strains is
inevitable, the voluntary legacy may never be transmitted at all. The
child will not claim it unless he knows his parent and admires or
respects him. The parent's premature death or removal or the lack of
sufficient sympathy between the parent and the child can in this case
inhibit the transmission, and the potential legacy, with its momentous
possibilities of influence upon the child's career, will never in fact
be bequeathed.

These considerations may guide us in an analysis of the legacy which we
have received from our parent society--the civilization of Ancient
Greece. First, has Ancient Greece transmitted to us anything comparable
to the physical and psychological legacy of an individual human parent
to her child? This is a difficult question for us to answer, just as it
is difficult for members of the same family to appreciate the 'family
likeness' between them. A Moslem or Hindu or Chinaman could judge better
than we. But it is certainly possible that the comparative similarity of
climatic conditions and the comparative unity of racial stock has
created a closer relationship between these two societies than between
either one of them and any other. The poetry and philosophy and social
life and political institutions of Ancient Greece and the Modern West
may conceivably constitute a single species when contrasted with the
institutions of other civilizations. A modern West European or American
may have a greater innate appreciation for Homer than for the Old
Testament or for Sokrates than for Buddha or Confucius. The parallel
which historians so often draw, or imply, between the conflict of
Ancient Greece with the Ancient East and that of the Modern West with
the Modern East may rest on a real kinship between the two Occidental
civilizations as contrasted with their respective Oriental neighbours.
But this is uncertain and on the whole unprofitable ground. When we come
to the 'subconsciously chosen' type of legacy, the analogy with the
relationship between parent and child becomes more evident.

Legacies of this type from Ancient Greek society are prominent in the
Middle Ages--the childhood of modern Western civilization which followed
the 'Dark Age' crisis of birth. One of the first needs of our young
Western society as it struggled to its feet was a symbol of its
unity--something corresponding to the attainment of self-consciousness
by the individual human being--and for this it borrowed the last
constructive idea of the Ancient Greek world. The mediaeval 'Holy Roman
Empire' had quite a different purpose and function, in the childhood of
modern Western civilization, from the purpose and function of the Roman
Empire in the old age of Ancient Greece. But the young civilization did
not think of inventing a new institution for its individual needs. In
its subconscious pursuit of its own development it conceived itself to
be reviving one of the customs of its venerable parent. The political
thinkers of Charlemagne's day never imagined that the idea of world
unity could be embodied in any other form.

Again, a century or so later, certain portions of Western society,
especially the populations of North and Central Italy and the Low
Countries, had outdistanced the rest in economic development and needed
institutions of local self-government to give their economic vitality
free play. In this case, again, Western civilization reverted to an
Ancient Greek institution and revived the 'city-state'. A little later
still, the rapidly growing and differentiating body of Western
civilization was impelled towards territorial expansion, and sought it,
like Ancient Greece in a similar period, round the shores of the
Mediterranean. This mediaeval movement of expansion, which is commonly
called the Crusades, but which made itself felt in Spain and Sicily and
the Aegean as well as in the 'Holy Land', is a remarkable parallel to
the propagation of Ancient Greek city-states round the same shores
between about 750 and 600 B. C. In drifting back upon the Mediterranean,
the mediaeval West was searching for new realms to conquer, but it was
really captured by the romance of its ancestral home.

Here, then, are three prominent features in mediaeval Western
history--the Holy Roman Empire, the Flemish and Italian communes, and
the Crusades--which were legacies from Ancient Greek history in the
sense of being subconscious reversions to the habits of the parent
society. But have these mediaeval legacies from Ancient Greece been
really important constituents in our history viewed as a whole? Have
they not rather been false growths which led to little or nothing? The
Holy Roman Empire was never more than a mirage. The sense of unity in
the modern Western world is derived not from this but from a really
original institution, the early Papal Church, in which any legacy from
Ancient Greece would be hard to discern. The national states of modern
Europe and America are derived not from mediaeval Ghent or Bruges or
Florence or Venice but from the new, though clumsy, feudal communities
of mediaeval England and France. And the expansion of Western society
has not followed the direction indicated by the Crusades. The false
trail of the Mediterranean was practically abandoned after less than
three centuries' trial. The true domain of modern Western civilization
has been found in regions which Ancient Greece hardly explored: Northern
Germany and Scandinavia and the British Isles, the North Sea and the
Baltic, the Atlantic and the continent of America. Thus our mediaeval
legacies from Ancient Greece--the subconscious reversions of
childhood--are historical curiosities rather than vital links between
the two civilizations. Our really important legacy from Ancient Greece
was adopted with full consciousness and deliberation when we stood on
the threshold of our own maturity.

The legacy of this third type which we have received from Ancient Greece
has been given the general name of the Renaissance. It was a determined
and successful attempt, on the part of our society, to learn everything
that the literary and artistic remains of our great predecessor could
teach us. It lay within our choice to study these remains or to pass
them by, and the fact that we chose to study them has been one of the
greatest and the most fortunate decisions in the career of our
civilization. The several aspects of this acceptance of what Ancient
Greece had to offer have been treated already in the other chapters in
this volume. Here it is merely necessary to point out that the
Renaissance was a study and assimilation not only of Ancient Greek
literature and art, but of architecture, natural science, mathematics,
philosophy, political ideas, and all the other higher expressions of a
great society. The absorption of this vast current of life largely
accounts for the wonderful impetus which has revealed itself in Western
civilization during the last four centuries.

Has the current now spent its force? Has the legacy adopted four
centuries ago been used up and exhausted? Under the inspiration of
Ancient Greece, has the modern West now created a literature, art,
architecture, science, mathematics, philosophy, and political thought
which equal or surpass the Ancient patterns and turn them from an
inspiration into an encumbrance? That seems to be the fundamental
question behind the controversy about the study of Ancient Greek life in
England to-day. Perhaps the answer may be found--if we may go back to
our metaphor--in the uniqueness of the individual personality.

If one considers the relations of a parent and child, or indeed of any
two human beings, it is evident that the one could never exhaust all
that could be learnt from the personality of the other. The one might
acquire every physical, mental, and moral attainment that the other
could display, and yet the other's unique individuality would remain--an
inexhaustible subject of study, throwing perpetual new light upon the
life of the observer himself and of his fellow human beings. This is
true of any two human beings, but if the two happen to be people of
commanding character and genius it becomes a truism which it would be
almost ludicrous to question. Let us apply this to the study not of one
individual but of one society by another, and let us take the case in
point, in which the two societies happen to be great civilizations. The
study of a great civilization has a unique value, not merely for members
of another civilization which stands to it in the relation of child to
parent, but for every seeker after knowledge who has a civilization of
his own. This ultimate and most precious legacy of Ancient Greece is at
the disposal of Moslems, Hindus, and Chinese, as well as Westerners. For
receiving it there are two qualifications: a good understanding and an
open mind.


II

_Ancient Greek Civilization as a Work of Art_

Civilizations are the greatest and the rarest achievements of human
society. Innumerable societies have been coming into being and perishing
during many hundreds of thousands of years, and hardly any of them have
created civilizations. One can count the civilizations on one's fingers.
We have had perhaps three in Europe: the Minoan in the Aegean Islands
(the dates 4000-1100 B. C. roughly cover its history); the Greek or
Graeco-Roman round the coasts of the Mediterranean (its history extends
between the eleventh century B. C. and the seventh century A. D.); and
our modern Western civilization round the coasts of the Atlantic, which
began to emerge from twilight in the eighth century A. D. and is still
in existence. Then there are the ancient civilizations of Egypt and
Lower Mesopotamia, which were first dominated by Ancient Greece and then
amalgamated into the single Middle Eastern civilization of Islam; and
there are the civilizations of India and China. Even if we count as
civilizations the societies existing in Mexico and Peru before the
Spanish Conquest, the total number of known independent civilizations,
compared with the total number of known human societies, is very small.
And it is so because the achievement is astonishingly difficult. There
are two constant factors in social life--the spirit of man and its
environment. Social life is the relation between them, and life only
rises to the height of civilization when the spirit of man is the
dominant partner in the relationship--when instead of being moulded by
the environment (as it is in the tropical forests of Central Africa and
Brazil), or simply holding its own against the environment in a kind of
equilibrium (as it does on the steppes of Central Asia or Arabia, among
the nomads), it moulds the environment to its own purpose, or
'expresses' itself by 'impressing' itself upon the world. The study of a
civilization is not different in kind from the study of a literature. In
both cases one is studying a creation of the spirit of man, or, in more
familiar terms, a work of art.

Civilization is a work of art--in the literal meaning of the phrase and
not merely by a metaphor. It is true that works of art are made by
individuals, civilization by a society. But what work of art is there in
which the individual artist owes nothing to others? And a civilization,
the work of countless individuals and many generations, differs in this
respect from a poem or a statue not in kind but only in degree. It is a
social work of art, expressed in social action, like a ritual or a
play. One cannot describe it better than by calling it a tragedy with a
plot, and history is the plot of the tragedy of civilization.

Students of the drama, from Aristotle onwards, seem to agree that nearly
all the great tragedies in literature are expositions of quite a few
fundamental plots. And it is possible that the great tragedies of
history--that is, the great civilizations that have been created by the
spirit of man--may all reveal the same plot, if we analyse them rightly.
Each civilization--for instance, the civilization of Mediaeval and
Modern Europe and again that of Ancient Greece--is probably a variant of
a single theme. And to study the plot of civilization in a great
exposition of it--like the Hellenic exposition or our own Western
exposition--is surely the right goal of a humane education.

But of course one asks: Why study Ancient Hellenic civilization rather
than ours? The study of any one civilization is so complex, it demands
so many preliminary and subordinate studies--linguistic, institutional,
economic, psychological--that it is likely to absorb all one's energies.
The greatest historians have generally confined themselves to the study
of a single civilization, and the great Greek historians--Herodotus,
Thucydides, and Polybius--concentrated on their own, and only studied
others in so far as their own came into contact with them. Clearly,
people who are going to be historians, not for life, but as an education
for life, must make their choice. They must practically confine
themselves to studying one civilization if they are to reap the fruits
of study at all, and in this case it is natural to ask: Why study
Hellenism rather than our own history? There are two obvious arguments
in favour of studying modern history. It seems more familiar and it
seems more useful. And it would be a mistake to misrepresent these
arguments by stating them only in their cruder forms. 'Familiar' does
not mean 'easy', and to say that modern history seems more useful than
ancient does not mean that the study of it is a closer approximation to
a Pelman course. There is an exceedingly crude view of education among
some people just now--perhaps it is largely due to the war, and may
disappear like other ugly effects of the war--which inclines to
concentrate education on applied chemistry, say, or engineering, with a
vague idea that people whose education has been devoted to these
subjects will be more capable of competing with foreigners in the dye
industry or of working in munition factories in the next emergency. In
the same way, conceivably, concentration on modern history might be
supposed to equip a student for securing concessions abroad for a firm,
or for winning a parliamentary election. Of course, this attitude,
though it is rather widespread just now, is absurd. The fallacy lies in
confusing the general theoretical knowledge of a subject acquired
through being educated in it with the technical knowledge and personal
experience which one must have to turn the same subject to practical
account in after life. There is no difference of opinion on this point
between 'humanists' and 'scientists'. The issue is between people who do
not appreciate the value of the pursuit of knowledge as an end in
itself, and those who do appreciate it and who therefore understand what
education means. True lovers of knowledge and true believers in
education will be found on the same side in this controversy, whether
the subject of their study happens to be the spirit of man or the laws
of its environment. But apart from that crude utilitarianism, which is
as unscientific as it is un-humane, a serious argument for studying
modern rather than ancient history can also be stated from the humane
and the scientific point of view. It may be argued that the direct
experience we have of our own civilization makes it possible for us to
have a deeper, and therefore a more humane and scientific, understanding
of it than we can ever have of Ancient Greece. And one might go on to
argue, on grounds of humanism alone, that such a comprehension of the
character and origins of our civilization would have a more profound
humanizing influence upon its development than a less intimate study of
a different civilization could produce. This argument is bound to appeal
to the generation which has experienced the war. The war is obviously
one of the great crises of our civilization. It is like a conflagration
lighting up the dim past and throwing it into perspective. The war makes
it impossible for us to take our own history for granted. We are bound
to inquire into the causes of such an astonishing catastrophe, and as
soon as we do that we find ourselves inquiring into the evolution of
Western Civilization since it emerged from the Dark Age. The shock of
the Peloponnesian War gave just the same intellectual stimulus to
Thucydides, and made him preface his history of that war with a critical
analysis, brief but unsurpassed, of the origins of Hellenic
civilization--the famous introductory chapters of Book I. May not these
chapters point the road for us and counsel us to concentrate upon the
study of our own history?

This question deserves very serious consideration, not merely from the
utilitarian, but from the scientific and humane point of view. But the
answer is not a foregone conclusion. There is a case for studying the
civilization of Ancient Greece which can be summed up in four points, as
follows:

(i) In Greek history the plot of civilization has been worked out to its
conclusion. We can sit as spectators through the whole play; we can say:
'This or that is the crisis; from this point onwards the end is
inevitable; or if this actor had acted otherwise in those circumstances
the issue would not nave been the same.' We can grasp the structure of
the tragedy and divide it into acts. But in our own history we are like
players in the middle of the piece, and though we may be able to say
'This is the third act or the fourth act', we cannot say 'This is the
last act or the last but one'. We cannot foretell the future; the work
of art we are studying is incomplete, and therefore we cannot possibly
apprehend it as an artistic whole, however vivid may be our experience
of isolated scenes and situations. The first point in favour of Greek
history is its completeness and its true perspective from our point of
view.

(ii) The second is that the historical experience of the Greeks has been
more finely expressed than ours. Its expression is in all Greek art and
literature--for it is a great mistake to suppose that historical
experience is expressed in so-called historical records alone. The great
poets of Greece are of as much assistance in understanding the mental
history of Greece (which is after all the essential element in any
history) as the philosophers and historians. And Greek historical
experience or mental history is better expressed in Greek literature
than ours is in the literature of modern Europe. Without attempting to
compare the two literatures as literatures it can be said with some
confidence that the surviving masterpieces of Greek literature give a
better insight into the subjective side of Greek history--into the
emotions and speculations which arose out of the vicissitudes of Greek
society and were its most splendid creations--than any insight into the
subjective side of modern history which we can obtain by studying it
through modern literature.

(iii) The third point is expressed in the concluding phrase of
Aristotle's definition of tragedy (_Poetics_, vi. 2). 'Tragedy', he
says, 'is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a
certain magnitude ... through pity and fear effecting the proper
καθαρσις {katharsis} or purgation, of these emotions.' (Butcher's
translation.) This word καθαρσις {katharsis}--purgation, purification,
cleansing, discharge--has been the subject of interminable controversy
among scholars, but any one acquainted with Ancient Greek literature who
has lived through the war will understand what it means. Certainly the
writer found, in the worst moments of the war, that passages from the
classics--some line of Aeschylus or Lucretius or Virgil, or the sense of
some speech in Thucydides, or the impression of some mood of bitterness
or serenity in a dialogue of Plato--would come into his mind and give
him relief. These men had travelled along the road on which our feet
were set; they had travelled it farther than we, travelled it to the
end; and the wisdom of greater experience and the poignancy of greater
suffering than ours was expressed in the beauty of their words. In the
writer's personal experience that relief was obtained from acquaintance
with Greek civilization as expressed in Greek literature. It put one in
communication with a different civilization from our own--with people
who had experienced all and more than we had experienced, and who were
now at peace beyond the world of time and change. Καθαρσις {Katharsis},
then, is the emotional value which is peculiar to the study of a
different civilization, and which one cannot get, at any rate with the
same intensity, by the study of his own.

(iv) This emotional value has its intellectual counterpart in the
comparative method of study, which one gets by studying, not his own
circumstances, but circumstances comparable to, without being identical
with, his own. This is a commonplace in the field of language. The study
of Ancient Greek is generally admitted to have more educative value for
an Englishman than the study of modern French or German, because Greek
and English embody the fundamental principles of human language in
entirely independent forms of expression, while French and English, in
addition to the elements common to all language, share the special
background of the Bible and the Classics, which have given them an
extensive common stock of phraseology and imagery. This applies equally
to the study of civilization. One learns more by studying Ancient Greek
religion and comparing it with Christianity than by studying
Christianity in ignorance of other religious phenomena; and one learns
more about institutions by studying the Greek city-state and comparing
it with the modern national state than by merely studying the evolution
of the national state in modern Europe. If we take utility to mean
intellectual and not practical utility--and as humanists and scientists
we do--we may claim without paradox that the study of Greek civilization
is valuable just because it is not our own.

These, then, are four points in favour of Greek history: we possess the
whole tragedy, it is a magnificent expression of the plot, and it has a
peculiar emotional value and a peculiar intellectual value which the
drama in which we ourselves are actors cannot have for us.

At this point it is necessary to give a sketch of the plot of Greek
history--every one must make his own sketch; the writer offers his to
provoke the reader to make his own--and then to illustrate the second
point, the beauty of the expression, by quoting half a dozen passages
from ancient authors. The other two points--the cathartic and the
comparative value of Greek history--are matters of personal experience.
I have little doubt that the reader will experience them himself if he
takes up this study seriously and from a broad point of view.


III

_The Plot of Ancient Greek Civilization_

The genesis of Ancient Greek civilization is certainly later than the
twelfth century B. C., when Minoan civilization, its predecessor, was
still in process of dissolution; and the termination of Ancient Greek
civilization must certainly be placed before the eighth century A. D.,
when modern Western civilization, its successor, had already come into
being. Between these extreme points we cannot exactly date its beginning
and end, but we can see that it covers a period of seventeen or eighteen
centuries.

It is easier to divide the tragedy into acts. We can at once discern two
dramatic crises--the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War and the
foundation of the Roman Empire. We can for convenience take precise
dates--431 B. C. and 31 B. C.--and group the action into three acts or
phases, one before, one between, and one after these critical moments.

It is best to give the analysis in tabular form:

_Act I_ (11th cent.-431 B. C.).

    1. Synoikismos (formation of the city-state, the cell of Greek
       society), 11th cent.-750 B. C.

    2. Colonization (propagation of the city-state round the
       Mediterranean), 750-600 B. C.

    3. Economic revolution (change from extensive to intensive growth),
       600-500 B. C.

    4. Confederation (repulse of Oriental universal empire and creation
       of an inter-state federation, the Delian League), 500-431 B. C.


_Act II_ (431 B. C.-31 B. C.).

    1. The Greek wars (failure of inter-state federation), 431-355 B.
       C.

    2. The Oriental wars (the superman, conquest of the East, struggle
       for the spoils, barbarian invasion), 355-272 B. C.

    3. The first rally (change of scale and fresh experiments in
       federation--Seleucid Asia, Roman Italy, Aetolian and Achaean
       'United States'), 272-218 B. C.

    4. The Roman wars (destruction of four great powers by one;
       devastation of the Mediterranean world), 218-146 B. C.

    5. The class wars (capitalism, bolshevism, Napoleonism), 146-31 B.
       C.


_Act III_ (31 B. C.-7th cent. A. D.).

    1. The second rally (final experiment in federation--compromise
       between city-state autonomy and capitalistic centralization), 31
       B. C.-A. D. 180.

    2. The first dissolution (external front broken by tribesmen,
       internal by Christianity), A. D. 180-284.

    3. The final rally (Constantine τον δημον προσεταιριζεται {ton dêmon
       prosetairizetai}--tribesmen on to the land, bishops into the
       bureaucracy), A. D. 284-378.

    4. The final dissolution (break of tradition), A. D. 378-7th cent.

This analysis is and must be subjective. Every one has to make his own,
just as every one has to apprehend for himself the form of a work of
art. But however the historian may analyse the plot and group it into
acts, it must be borne in mind that the action is continuous, and that
the first emergence of the Greek city-state in the Aegean and the last
traces of municipal self-government in the Roman Empire are phases in
the history of a single civilization. It may seem a paradox to call this
civilization a unity. But the study of Greek and Latin literature leaves
no doubt in one's mind that the difference of language there is less
significant than the unity of form, and that one is really dealing with
a single literature, the Hellenic, which in many of its branches was
imitated and propagated in the Latin language, just as it was to a
lesser extent in Hebrew, or later on in Syriac and Arabic. The unity is
even more apparent when, instead of confining our attention to
literature, we regard the whole field of civilization. It is not really
possible to draw a distinction between Greek history and Roman history.
At most one can say that at some point Greek history enters on a phase
which it may be convenient to distinguish verbally by connecting it with
the name of Rome. To take the case of the Roman Empire--the reader may
possibly have been surprised to find the Roman Empire treated as the
third act in the tragedy of Greece; yet when one studies the Empire one
finds that it was essentially a Greek institution. Institutionally it
was at bottom a federation of city-states, a solution of the political
problem with which Greek society had been wrestling since the fifth
century B. C. And even the non-municipal element, the centralized
bureaucratic organization which Augustus spread like a fine, almost
impalpable net to hold his federation of municipalities together, was
largely a fruit of Greek administrative experience. As papyrology
reveals the administrative system of the Ptolemaic Dynasty--the Greek
successors of Alexander who preceded the Caesars in the government of
Egypt--we are learning that even those institutions of the Empire which
have been regarded as most un-Greek may have been borrowed through a
Greek intermediary. Imperial jurisprudence, again, interpreted Roman
municipal law into the law of a civilization by reading into it the
principles of Greek moral philosophy. And Greek, not Latin, was still
the language in which most of the greatest literature of the Imperial
period was written. One need only mention works which are still widely
read and which have influenced our own civilization--Plutarch's _Lives_,
Marcus Aurelius' _Meditations_, and the New Testament. They are all
written in Greek, and who will venture to assert that the age in which
they were written falls outside Greek history, or that the social
experience which produced them was not an act in the tragedy of Hellenic
civilization? Even statistically the Empire was more Greek than anything
else. Probably a considerable majority of its inhabitants spoke Greek as
a lingua franca, if not as their mother-tongue. Nearly all the great
industrial and commercial centres were in the Greek or Hellenized
provinces. Possibly, during the first two centuries of the Empire, more
Greek was spoken than Latin by the proletariat of Rome itself. The Greek
core of the Roman Empire played the part of Western Europe in the modern
world. The Latinized provinces were thinly populated, backward, and only
superficially initiated into the fraternity of civilization. Latinized
Spain and Africa were the South America, Latinized Gaul and Britain the
Russia of the Ancient Greek world. The pulse of the Empire was driven
by a Greek heart, and it beat comparatively feebly in the non-Greek
extremities.


IV

_The Literary Expression of the Plot_

And now, after having suggested a reading of the plot, it is time to let
the actors speak for themselves. There is only space to quote half a
dozen passages, but they have been chosen to illustrate the critical
scenes and situations in the drama as it has been sketched out, and they
may persuade the reader that there is something to be said for the
present interpretation.

We shall not dwell on the period I have called the first act--that is,
the period before 431 B. C. But the reader is recommended, again, not to
lay aside the Greek poets when he takes up the Greek historians. Homer
will reveal more of the opening scenes than Herodotus; and the
exaltation of spirit produced by the repulse of the Persians, and
expressed institutionally in the foundation of the Delian League, can
hardly be realized emotionally without the poetry of Aeschylus. But the
philosophers and scientists are indispensable too. Professor Burnet's
_Early Greek Philosophy_, or his _Greek Philosophy from Thales to
Plato_, throws light on history and not merely on the Greek theory of
knowledge. And the reader should make acquaintance with the little work
on 'Atmospheres, Waters, and Localities' emanating from the Hippokratean
school of medicine. It is only thirty-eight pages in the Teubner text
(Hippocratis _Opera_, vol. i), and it gives clearer expression than
Herodotus to the fifth-century scientific point of view. Here is one
passage which might have been written in Victorian England. The writer
is describing a peculiar disease prevalent among the nomads of southern
Russia. 'The natives', he remarks, 'believe that this disease is sent by
God, and they reverence and worship its victims, in fear of being
stricken by it themselves. I too am quite ready to admit that these
phenomena are caused by God, but I take the same view about all
phenomena and hold that no single phenomenon is more or less divine in
origin than any other. All are uniform and all may be divine, but each
phenomenon obeys a law, and natural law knows no exceptions.'

It is hard to leave this first act of the tragedy. It is a triumph of
youth, and the phrase in which Herodotus sums up the early history of
Sparta expresses the prevailing spirit of early Hellenic civilization.
Ανα τε εδραμον και ευθενηθησαν {Ana te edramon kai euthenêthêsan}: 'They
shot up and throve.' But there is another phrase in Herodotus which
announces the second act--an ominous phrase which came so natural to him
that one may notice about a dozen instances of it in his history. Εδει
γαρ τω δεινι γενεσθαι κακως {Edei gar tô deini genesthai kakôs}: 'Evil
had to befall so-and-so, and therefore'--the story of a catastrophe
follows in each case. The thought behind the phrase is expressed in
Solon's words to Croesus (Herodotus, Bk. I, ch. 32): 'Croesus, I know
that God is ever envious and disordering' (ταραχωδες {tarachôdes}), 'and
you ask me about the destiny of man!'

Note the epithet translated 'disordering'; we shall meet the word ταραχη
{tarachê} again. It is the bitter phrase of a man who lived on from the
great age into the war, but not so bitter as the truth which the writer
could not bring himself wholly to express. 'No single phenomenon', as
contemporary Greek science realized, 'is more or less divine than any
other', and the 'envious and disordering' power, which wrecked Greek
civilization, was not an external force, but the very spirit of man by
which that civilization had been created. There is a puzzling line in
Homer which is applied once or twice to features in a landscape--for
instance, to a river: 'The gods call it Xanthos, mankind Skamandros.' So
we might say of the downfall of Greece: the Greeks attributed it to the
malignity of God, but the divine oracles gave a different answer.

Why did the Confederacy of Delos break down and Greece lose her youth in
a ruinous war? Because of the evil in the hearts of men--the envy
aroused by the political and commercial greatness of Athens in the
governing classes of Sparta and Corinth; and the covetousness aroused by
sudden greatness in the Athenians, tempting their statesmen to degrade
the presidency of a free confederacy into a dominion of Athens over
Greece, and tempting the Athenian proletariat, and the proletariat in
the confederate states, to misuse democracy for the exploitation of the
rich by the poor. Envy and covetousness begat injustice, and injustice
disloyalty. The city-states, in their rivalry for dominion or their
resentment against the domineering of one state over another, forgot
their loyalty to the common weal of Greece and fought each other for
empire or liberty. And the wealthy and well-born citizens forgot their
loyalty to the city in their blind, rancorous feud against the
proletariat that was stripping them of property and power, and betrayed
their community to foreign enemies.

'Strange how mortals blame the gods. They say that evil is our
handiwork, when in truth they bring their sufferings on themselves. By
their own folly they force the hand of fate. See, now, how Aigisthos
forced it in taking the wedded wife of Atreides and slaying her lord
when he returned, yet he had sheer destruction before his eyes, for we
ourselves had forewarned him not to slay the king nor wed his wife, or
vengeance would come by Atreides' son Orestes, whene'er he should grow
to manhood and long for his home. So spake our messenger, but with all
his wisdom he did not soften the heart of Aigisthos, and now he has paid
in full' (_Odyssey_, _a_ 32-43).

These lines from the first canto of the _Odyssey_ were imagined by a
generation which could still afford to err, but as Greece approached her
hour of destiny, her prophetic inspiration grew clearer. The poets of
the sixth century were haunted more insistently than the Homeridai by
the possibilities of disaster inherent in success of every kind--in
personal prosperity, in military victory, and in the social triumph of
civilization. They traced the mischief to an aberration of the human
spirit under the shock of sudden, unexpected attainment, and they
realized that both the accumulated achievement of generations and the
greater promise of the future might be lost irretrievably by failure at
this critical moment. 'Surfeit (κορος {koros}) breeds sin ὑβρις {hubris}
when prosperity visits unbalanced minds.' In slightly different words,
the proverb recurs in the collections of verses attributed to Theognis
and to Solon. Its maker refrained from adding what was in his and his
hearers' thoughts, that ὑβρις {hubris}, once engendered, breeds αιη
{aiê}--the complete and certain destruction into which the sinner walks
with unseeing eyes. But the whole moral mystery, to its remorseless end,
was uttered again and again in passionate words by Aeschylus, who
consciously discarded the primitive magical determinism in which
Herodotus afterwards vainly sought relief.

    Φιλει δε τικτειν ὑβρις
    μεν παλαια νεα--
    ζουσαν εν κακοις βροτων
    ὑβρις τοτ' η τóθ', ὁτε το κυριον μολη
    φαος τοκου,
    δαιμονα τ' εταν, αμαχον, απολεμον,
    ανιερον θρασος, μελαι--
    νας μελαθροισιν Ατας,
    ειδομενας τοκευσιν.

    {Philei de tiktein hubris
    men palaia nea--
    zousan en kakois brotôn
    hubris tot' ê tóth', hote to kyrion molê
    phaos tokou,
    daimona t' etan, amachon, apolemon,
    anieron thrasos, melai--
    nas melathroisin Atas,
    eidomenas tokeusin.}

    But Old Sin loves, when comes the hour again,
      To bring forth New,
    Which laugheth lusty amid the tears of men;
    Yea, and Unruth, his comrade, wherewith none
    May plead nor strive, which dareth on and on,
      Knowing not fear nor any holy thing;
    Two fires of darkness in a house, born true,
      Like to their ancient spring.

    (_Agamemnon_, vv. 763-71, Murray's transl.)

The poet of the crowning victory over Persia was filled with awe, as
well as exultation, at the possibilities for good or evil which his
triumphant generation held in their hands. Were they true metal or base?
The times would test them, but he had no doubt about the inexorable law.

    Ου γαρ εστιν επαλξις
      πλουτου προς κορον ανδρι
    λακτισαντι μεγαν δικης
      βωμον εις αφανειαν.

    {Ou gar estin epalxis
      ploutou pros koron andri
    laktisanti megan dikês
      bômon eis aphaneian.}

    Never shall state nor gold
      Shelter his heart from aching
    Whoso the Altar of Justice old
      Spurneth to night unwaking.

    (_Agamemnon_, vv. 381-4, Murray's transl.)

The _Agamemnon_ was written when Athens stood at the height of her glory
and her power, and before her sons, following the devices of their
hearts, 'like a boy chasing a wingèd bird', had set a fatal
stumbling-block in the way of their city, or smirched her with an
intolerable stain. The generation of Marathon foreboded the catastrophe
of the Peloponnesian War, yet the shock, when it came, was beyond their
powers of imagination, and the effect of it on the mind of Greece was
first expressed by the generation which was smitten by the war in early
manhood. This is how it was felt by Thucydides (iii. 82):

'So the class-war at Korkyra grew more and more savage, and it made a
particular impression because it was the first outbreak of an upheaval
that spread in time through almost the whole of Greek society. In every
state there were conflicts of class, and the leaders of the respective
parties now procured the intervention of the Athenians or the
Lakedaimonians on their side. In peace-time they would have had neither
the opportunity nor the inclination to call in the foreigner, but now
there was the war, and it was easy for any party of violence to get
their opponents crushed and themselves into power by an alliance with
one of the belligerents. This recrudescence of class-war brought one
calamity after another upon the states of Greece--calamities that occur
and will continue to occur as long as human nature remains what it is,
however they may be modified or occasionally mitigated by changes of
circumstance. Under the favourable conditions of peace-time, communities
and individuals do not have their hands forced by the logic of events,
and can therefore act up to a higher standard. But war strips away all
the margins of ordinary life and breaks in character to circumstance by
its brutal training. So the states were torn by the class-war, and the
sensation made by each outbreak had a sinister effect on the next--in
fact, there was something like a competition in perfecting the fine art
of conspiracies and atrocities....

(iii. 83) 'Thus the class-war plunged Greek society into every kind of
moral evil, and honesty, which is the chief constituent of idealism, was
laughed out of existence in the prevailing atmosphere of hostility and
suspicion. No argument was cogent enough and no pledge solemn enough to
reconcile opponents. The only argument that appealed to the party
momentarily in power was the unlikelihood of their remaining there long
and the consequent advisability of taking no risks with their enemies.
And the stupider the combatants, the greater their chances of survival,
just because they were terrified at their deficiencies, expected to be
outwitted and outmanœuvred, and therefore plunged recklessly into
action, while their superiors in intellect, who trusted to their wits to
protect them and disdained practical precautions, were often caught
defenceless and brought to destruction.'

There is the effect of the great Greek war upon the first generation.
Thucydides, of course, had a sensitive and emotional temperament. He is
always controlling himself and reining himself in. But one is struck by
an outburst of the same feeling in a younger man, Xenophon, who was
ordinarily in harmony with his age and was probably rather unimaginative
and self-complacent by nature. The war had given Xenophon his
opportunity as a soldier and a writer. He was not inclined to quarrel
with the 'envious and disordering' powers that had ruined Greek
civilization. But in the last paragraph of the History of his Own Times
he is carried away, for he has just been describing the battle of
Mantinea (362 B. C.), in which he had lost his son.

'The result of the battle', he writes, 'disappointed every one's
expectations. Almost the whole of Greece had mobilized on one side or
the other, and it was taken for granted that if it came to an action,
the victors would be able to do what they liked and the vanquished would
be at their mercy. But Providence so disposed it that both sides ...
claimed the victory and yet neither had gained a foot of territory, a
single city or a particle of power beyond what they had possessed before
the battle. On the contrary, there was more unsettlement and disorder
(ταραχη {tarachê}) in Greece after the battle than before it. But I do
not propose to carry my narrative further and will leave the sequel to
any other historian who cares to record it.' (_Hellenica_, vii. 5 fin.)

Space forbids quotation from Plato, but the reader is recommended, while
studying his metaphysics for his philosophy, to note his moods and
emotions for the light they throw upon the history of his lifetime.
Plato's long life--427 to 347 B. C.--practically coincided with the
first phase of the second act of the tragedy--the series of wars that
began in 431 B. C., and that had reduced the Greek city-states to
complete disunion and exhaustion by 355. Plato belonged to the cultured
governing class which was hit hardest by these first disasters. At the
age of twenty-nine, after witnessing the downfall of Athens, he had to
witness the judicial murder of Sokrates--the greatest man of the older
generation, who had been appreciated and loved by Plato and his
friends. Plato's own most promising pupil, whom he had marked out for
his successor, was killed in action in a particularly aimless
recrudescence of the war. Plato's political disillusionment and
perversity are easy to understand. But it is curious and interesting to
watch the clash between his political bitterness and his intellectual
serenity. In the intellectual and artistic sphere--as a writer,
musician, mathematician, metaphysician--he stood consciously at the
zenith of Greek history; but whenever he turned to politics he seems to
have felt that the spring had gone out of the year. He instinctively
antedated the setting of his dialogues. The characters nearly all belong
to the generation of Sokrates, which had grown to manhood before the war
and whose memories conjured up the glory that the war had extinguished.
Note, also, his 'other-worldliness', for it is a feature that comes into
Greek civilization with him and gradually permeates it. He turns from
science to theology, from the world of time and change to the world of
archetypes or ideas. He turns from the social religion of the city-state
to a personal religion for which he takes symbols from primitive
mythology. He turns from politics to utopias. But Plato only lived to
see the first phase of the catastrophe. As we watch the remainder of
this second act--those four terrible centuries that followed the year
431 B. C.--there come tidings of calamity after calamity, like the
messages of disaster in the Book of Job, and as the world crumbles,
people tend more and more to lay up their treasure elsewhere. In the
_Laws_, Plato places his utopia no farther away than Crete. Two
centuries later the followers of Aristonikos the Bolshevik, outlawed by
the cities of Greece and Asia, proclaim themselves citizens of the City
of the Sun. Two centuries later still, the followers of Jesus of
Nazareth, despairing of this world, pray for its destruction by fire to
make way for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Plato's state of mind gives the atmosphere of the first phase after the
catastrophe. For the second phase--the conquest of the East and the
struggle for the spoils--the reader may be referred to Mr. Edwyn Bevan's
_Lectures on the Stoics and Sceptics_ and to Professor Gilbert Murray's
Conway Memorial lecture on _The Stoic Philosophy_. They will show him a
system of philosophy which is no longer a pure product of speculation
but is primarily a moral shelter erected hastily to meet the storms of
life. The third phase--the rally of civilization in the middle of the
third century B. C.--is mirrored in Plutarch's lives of the Spartan
kings Agis and Kleomenes. Any one who reads them will feel the gallantry
of this rally and the pathos of its failure. And then comes the fourth
phase--the Roman wars against the other great powers of the
Mediterranean world. The Hannibalic war in Italy was, very probably, the
most terrible war that there has ever been, not excepting the recent war
in Europe. The horror of that war haunted later generations, and its
mere memory made oblivion seem a desirable release from an intolerable
world.

    Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
    quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.
    et velut anteacto nil tempore sensimus aegri,
    ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis,
    omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu
    horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris,
    in dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum
    omnibus humanis esset terraque marique,
    sic, ubi non erimus, cum corporis atque animai
    discidium fuerit quibus e sumus uniter apti,
    scilicet haud nobis quicquam, qui non erimus tum,
    accidere omnino poterit sensumque movere,
    non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo.

That is a passage of Lucretius (iii. 830-842) which follows upon an
elaborate argument to prove that death destroys personality and that the
soul is not immortal. Here is an attempt at a translation:

'So death is nothing to us and matters nothing to us, since we have
proved that the soul is not immortal. And as in time past we felt no
ill, when the Phoenicians were pouring in to battle on every front, when
the world rocked with the shock and tumult of war and shivered from
centre to firmament, when all mankind on sea and land must fall under
the victor's empire and victory was in doubt--so, when we have ceased to
be, when body and soul, whose union is our being, have been parted, then
nothing can touch us--we shall not be--and nothing can make us feel, no,
not if earth is confounded with sea and sea with heaven.'

Lucretius wrote that about a hundred and fifty years after Hannibal
evacuated Italy, but the horror is still vivid in his mind, and his
poetry arouses it in our minds as we listen. The writer will never
forget how those lines kept running in his head during the spring of
1918.

But the victors suffered with the vanquished in the common ruin of
civilization. The whole Mediterranean world, and the devastated area in
Italy most of all, was shaken by the economic and social revolutions
which the Roman wars brought in their train. The proletariat was
oppressed to such a degree that the unity of society was permanently
destroyed and Greek civilization, after being threatened with a violent
extinction by Bolshevik outbreaks--the slave wars in Sicily, the
insurrection of Aristonikos and the massacres of Mithradates in
Anatolia, the outbreaks of Spartakos and Catilina in Italy--was
eventually supplanted by a rival civilization of the proletariat--the
Christian Church. The revolutionary last phase in the second act--the
final phase before the foundation of the Empire--has left its expression
in the cry of the Son of Man: 'The foxes have holes and the birds of the
air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.' It
was one of those anonymous phrases that are in all men's mouths because
they express what is in all men's hearts. Tiberius Gracchus used it in
his public speeches at Rome; two centuries later it reappears in the
discourses of Jesus of Nazareth.

    Ergo inter sese paribus concurrere telis
    Romanas acies iterum videre Philippi,
    nec fuit indignum superis bis sanguine nostro
    Emathiam et latos Haemi pinguescere campos....
    Di patrii, Indigetes, et Romule, Vestaque mater
    quae Tuscum Tiberim et Romana Palatia servas,
    hunc saltem everso iuvenem succurrere saeclo
    ne prohibete. satis iam pridem sanguine nostro
    Laomedonteae luimus periuria Troiae....
    vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes
    arma ferunt; saevit toto Mars impius orbe;
    ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigae,
    addunt in spatio, et frustra retinacula tendens
    fertur equis auriga neque audit currus habenas.

    (_Georgics_, i. 489 seqq.)

'Therefore Philippi saw Roman armies turn their swords against each
other a second time in battle, and the gods felt no pity that Emathia
and the broad plains of Haemus should twice be fattened with our
blood....

'Gods of our fathers, gods of our country, god of our city, goddess of
our hearths who watchest over Tuscan Tiber and Roman Palatine, forbid
not this last saviour to succour our fallen generation. Our blood has
flowed too long. We have paid in full for the sins of our
forefathers--the broken faith of ancient Troy....

'The bonds are broken between neighbour cities and they meet in arms.
Ungodly war rages the world over. The chariots launched on the race
gather speed as they go; vainly dragging on the reins the driver is
swept away by his steeds and the team heeds not the bridle.'

It is a prayer for the lifting of the curse, and this time the 'envious
and disordering' powers gave ear. The charioteer regained control, and
we are carried on to the third act of the tragedy, in which no small
part of its beauty and a very great part of its significance is to be
found. The imperial peace could not save the body of Greek
civilization--the four centuries of war had inflicted mortal wounds; but
possibly it saved its soul. Although Augustus had not the abilities of
Caesar, he felt and pitied the sorrows of the world, and he succeeded in
expressing the pity and repentance, the ruthfulness for and piety
towards the past, which were astir in the spirits of his generation. But
what phrase is adequate to characterize the Empire? The words 'Decline
and Fall' suggest themselves, but how should they be applied? Gibbon
took the second century of the Empire, the age of the Antonines, as the
Golden Age of the Ancient World, and traced the decline and fall of the
Empire from the death of Marcus Aurelius. On the other hand, if the
present reading of the plot is right, the fatal catastrophe occurred six
centuries earlier, in the year 431 B. C., and the Empire itself was the
decline and fall of Greek civilization. But was it only that? One is apt
to think so when one reads the diary of Marcus Aurelius, and pictures
him in his quarters at Carnuntum, fighting finely but hopelessly on two
fronts--against the barbarians on the Danube and the sadness in his own
soul.

'Human life! Its duration is momentary, its substance in perpetual flux,
its senses dim, its physical organism perishable, its consciousness a
vortex, its destiny dark, its repute uncertain--in fact, the material
element is a rolling stream, the spiritual element dreams and vapour,
life a war and a sojourning in a far country, fame oblivion. What can
see us through? One thing and one only--philosophy, and that means
keeping the spirit within us unspoiled and undishonoured, not giving way
to pleasure or pain, never acting unthinkingly or deceitfully or
insincerely, and never being dependent on the moral support of others.
It also means taking what comes contentedly as all part of the process
to which we owe our own being; and, above all, it means facing death
calmly--taking it simply as a dissolution of the atoms of which every
living organism is composed. Their perpetual transformation does not
hurt the atoms, so why should one mind the whole organism being
transformed and dissolved? It is a law of nature, and natural law can
never be wrong.' (Μáρκος Αντωνινος εις εαυτóν {Márkos Antôninos eis
eautón}, ii fin.)

But after quoting Marcus Aurelius, the first citizen of the Empire, it
is necessary to add a quotation from Paul of Tarsos, a citizen who has
as good a claim as any other to be heard:

'"How are the dead raised up? With what body do they come?" Thou fool,
that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.... It is sown in
corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is
raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.' ...

It startles us to be reminded that these two actors appeared on the
stage in the same act of the drama, and that Paul actually played his
part a century before Marcus played his. Paul's voice suggests not only
a younger generation but quite a different play. His thought in the
lines just quoted is inspired by a predecessor whom Marcus regarded as
one of the innumerable prophets of the proletariat. 'Except a corn of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it
bringeth forth much fruit.' The saying was included in the miscellaneous
traditions about Jesus of Nazareth which were passing from mouth to
mouth among the illiterate masses, but which had not begun to excite the
curiosity of the educated classes in Marcus's day. What would the
scholar have made of it if a collection of these traditions had fallen
under his eye, scrawled on bad paper in barbarous Greek? Little enough,
for he would have missed the whole background of his own sentiment and
thought, which was nothing less than the background of Greek
civilization. Great literary memories crowd the brief passage of his
diary quoted above--Epiktetos and Lucretius and the Stoa, Plato and
Sokrates, Demokritos and the Hippokratean school of medicine from which
we took our first quotation, and simpler minds and more primitive
artists in the dim generations behind. We are carried right back through
the tragedy at which we have been looking on. The two men are worlds
apart, in spite of the fact that their propositions, when we strip them
naked, are much the same. 'The organism is transformed and
dissolved.'--'That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.'
They are both representing death as a phase in the process of nature,
but it is not till we grasp the similarity of the thought that we fully
realize the difference in the outlook and the emotion.

Under the smooth surface of the Empire there was a great gulf fixed
between the 'bourgeois' society of the city-states and the descendants
of the slaves imported during the Roman Wars; but the Empire, by
gradually alleviating the material condition of the proletariat,
insensibly affected their point of view. The development of their
religion--the one inalienable possession carried by the slaves from
their Oriental homes--is an index of the psychological change. In the
last phase of the Second Act, the 'Red Guards' of Sicily and Anatolia
had been led by prophets and preachers of their Oriental gods. Their
religion had lent itself to their revolutionary state of mind. But under
the Empire, as descendants of the plantation-slaves succeeded in
purchasing their freedom and forming a new class of shopkeepers and
clerks, their religion correspondingly reflected their rise in the
world. They remained indifferent, if not hostile, to the Imperial
Hellenic tradition, but they began to aspire to a kingdom of their own
in this world as well as in the next. The force which had broken out
desperately in the crazy wonder-working of Eunous of Enna and had then
inspired the 'other-worldly' exaltation of Paul of Tarsos, was soon
conducted into the walls of chapels, and the local associations of
Christian chapel-goers were steadily linked up into a federation so
powerfully organized that the Imperial federation of city-states had
eventually to choose between going into partnership with it or being
supplanted. Thus the empire of which Marcus and Paul were citizens was
more than the third act in the tragedy of Ancient Greece. While it
retarded the inevitable dissolution of one civilization it conceived its
successor, and when, after Marcus's death, imperial statesmanship
failed, and the ancient organism long preserved by its skill at last
broke down, the shock did not extinguish new and old together, but
brought the new life to birth. By the seventh century after Christ, when
Ancient Greek civilization may be said finally to have dissolved, our
own civilization was ready to 'shoot up and thrive' and repeat the
tragedy of mankind.

The writer can best express his personal feeling about the Empire in a
parable. It was like the sea round whose shores its network of
city-states was strung. The Mediterranean seems at first sight a poor
substitute for the rivers that have given their waters to make it. Those
were living waters, whether they ran muddy or clear; the sea seems just
salt and still and dead. But as soon as we study the sea, we find
movement and life there also. There are silent currents circulating
perpetually from one part to another, and the surface-water that seems
to be lost by evaporation is not really lost, but will descend in
distant places and seasons, with its bitterness all distilled away, as
life-giving rain. And as these surface-waters are drawn off into the
clouds, their place is taken by lower layers continually rising from the
depths. The sea itself is in constant and creative motion, but the
influence of this great body of water extends far beyond its shores. One
finds it softening the extremes of temperature, quickening the
vegetation, and prospering the life of animals and men, in the distant
heart of continents and among peoples that have never heard its name.

ARNOLD TOYNBEE.




POLITICAL THOUGHT


In a survey of the legacy of Ancient Greece to our modern civilization
and its problems, it might well seem at first sight as though the
political contribution of Greece could be ignored. Greek art, Greek
literature, Greek philosophy are among the world's abiding possessions,
for the human passions and questionings which gave them birth and the
human needs to which they minister will last as long as human life
itself. But Greek political thinking is so much bound up with the
peculiar and evanescent external conditions of fifth and fourth century
Greece, centres indeed so exclusively round the special problems of its
intellectual metropolis, Athens, that its interest might appear to have
passed away with the régime to which it owes its existence. The
_Agamemnon_ and the _Antigone_, with their teachings of destiny and
duty, the Hermes of Olympia and the Parthenon frieze, with their
ever-irresistible charm of youthfulness, the _Phaedo_ with its
discussion of immortality, the _Metaphysics_ of Aristotle with their
still subtler and more abstruse speculations, source of so much of our
Christian doctrine and apologetic--all these require little defence
against the Philistine of to-day, if only he can be induced to gaze at
his intended victim before he delivers his blow. But Thucydides with his
long and detailed account of an inter-tribal or inter-municipal war,
decked out with sham speeches which were never delivered: Plato with his
imaginary Utopia, half a small Greek provincial town, half an impossible
and unendurably regimented socialist model community, based on a
fine-drawn and fallacious comparison between the qualities of the human
soul and the class-divisions which happened to prevail in the Greek
society of the time: Aristotle with his laborious investigations into
the municipal pathology of his day and his detailed prescriptions for
the betterment of his fellow-provincials and their institutions--what
have we to do with all this in an age of world problems and conflicts
and of not merely continent-wide but international ideas and projects of
organization? The first duty of any one who seeks to interest the modern
reader in Greek political discussion is to be perfectly frank and lucid
about its limitations. He need have no cause to be afraid that, when
these have been written off from his prospectus, there will be too
little of value remaining.

These limitations can be summarized under two main heads. They arise,
firstly, from a _difference of scale_, and secondly, from a _difference
of outlook_, between ancient and modern political thought.

The difference of scale leaps to the eye at once, although its
consequences are not all of them so obvious. Ancient Greece was, for
political purposes, a congeries of sovereign states, generally centring
round the urban metropolis of a rural district smaller than that of an
average English county. The material upon which Greek political thought
worked was, therefore, from our modern point of view not only
small-scale but almost Lilliputian. This can best be appreciated when we
consider how many gradations of scale are interposed in the modern world
between the government of a town or district of the size of
fifth-century Athens and the government of our own sovereign state, the
British Commonwealth. Athens was far smaller than Leeds, Johannesburg,
or Chicago: yet to be Mayor of any of these is not to fill a position of
commanding responsibility, as political responsibility is understood in
the large-scale world of to-day. The American State, the South African
province and Dominion and (for certain purposes) the English County
stand between the giant municipality and the sovereign parliament. To a
British Premier passing from a coal strike which reacts upon the trade
of the entire world to an Imperial Conference engaged in tracing out an
agreed line of policy on the Pacific Question, the problems of a
Pericles, or even of an Alexander, would seem but child's play.

Let us see what results from this difference of scale. In the first
place, Greek political thought although (as we shall see) it aimed at
_universality_, at arriving at certain definite laws or conclusions
about politics, never succeeded in divesting itself of a certain element
of local or national individuality. When Plato and Thucydides think and
write of 'the State' they are also thinking of the City--the same word,
_polis_, serves indeed for the two--and not merely of the City, i. e.,
of any municipality, but of a particular city. There are elements in
Greek political thought which, just because they owe their inspiration
to Athens, can never be universalized. A treatise on education in which
general psychological conclusions were intermingled with conclusions
based on experience at some English school with a very unique tradition,
would require to be carefully examined and applied with caution to the
problems of adolescent life in Japan or Nigeria. Similarly, in so far as
Greek political thought is Athenian or (to use a much disputed term in
what I hold to be its proper sense) _national_, it is not truly
political.

The distinction that I am trying to draw is a difficult one and cannot
be understood without a short digression about the nature of the study
of politics. Politics is the study or activity of government, of the
management of the public or common affairs of men. We need
'politicians', men who will devote themselves to meeting the demand for
the management of our common affairs--we need them not because we are
Englishmen, Irishmen, or Americans, but because we are human beings
living together in society, and because our co-operative relations and
activities require to be guided and controlled. Whether the 'politician'
is a tyrant or a Minister of the people is not here to the point; the
point is that he is the manager of what the Romans called _res publica_,
the Latin for the good old English word 'Commonwealth'. Politics is
therefore primarily concerned with the practical problems arising out of
the fact that a number of different human beings are living together,
and the more different they are and the smaller their greatest common
measure, the more truly political do such problems become. The first
business, of the politician or governor is, as Aristotle said, to see
that men shall live (the twin problems of supply and defence), his
second to see that they shall live well (in the first instance the
problems of health and physical development and well-being). In the last
analysis _pure politics_, as our great grandchildren may discover if
ever the World-State becomes a reality, is mainly concerned with
_administration_, administration of the affairs common to all in the
interests of all.

Now ancient Greek politics were entangled, and modern politics also are
still too largely entangled, with the discussion of matters which are
not _common_ at all, and do not constitute the material of politics in
the true sense of the word--with questions arising, not out of the
common need for a common law, but out of the inner ultimate and
ineradicable differences between the various nations and other groupings
of mankind. When the League of Nations or the Dublin City Council is
discussing an epidemic of small-pox or the improvement of some dock or
wharf, or schools for mothers, or the problem of juvenile employment it
is dealing with common interests which affect human beings as human
beings: it is on the plane of politics proper. But when the Dublin City
Council, following in the wake of the nineteenth century democratic
movement throughout Europe, puts forward some proposal in order to give
satisfaction to the sentiment that Ireland being the home of a nation
ought to be a sovereign state, and when the League of Nations is asked
to deal with the political situation created by the clash of contending
nationalisms in the British Isles or elsewhere, both bodies, as
governing bodies, are out of their depth: for they are faced with an
impossible task. Established to deal with politics proper, with the
common affairs of men as men, they are bound to flounder helplessly when
they are cajoled into the thorny intimate and (let it be added) far more
fascinating region of national and individual personality--to a region
where, the deeper you penetrate, the less common, uniform, standardized
or standardizable are the interests involved, and the less susceptible
of being 'settled', or even understood, by the rough and ready
politician accustomed to deal with matters in the bulk and to measure up
the results on a quantitative reckoning in the cold and cosmopolitan
language of statistics.

In reading the Greek political writers then, we must be careful to
distinguish the universal from the local and ephemeral element. The
latter is indeed of great interest and value; but we shall tend to miss
the really precious and permanent elements in their thought if we do not
take pains to disentangle Thucydides the disillusioned Athenian patriot
from Thucydides the scientific historian and psychologist, and Plato the
aristocrat born out of due season from Plato the unrivalled student of
human nature and of the permanent needs of human society.

The failure to recognize this distinction has led to much
misunderstanding and shallow thinking in attempts to apply Greek ideas
and maxims too literally to modern life. It is only too common to hear
Englishmen, whose knowledge of politics and history, outside the
newspapers, is confined to stray reminiscences from a not very ardent
pursuit of the classics in their school and college days, basing
confident predictions of the failure of modern democracy on some _obiter
dictum_ of Thucydides or Plato and assessing the fate of the British
Commonwealth in terms borrowed from some judgement of Sallust or Tacitus
on its wholly different Roman prototype. It is flippancy or pedantry
like this which gives rise to the onslaughts of a Cobden or Herbert
Spencer or an H. G. Wells and to the practical man's suspicion of a
classical education. One might as well go to last year's market reports
for guidance in a business deal of to-day as have recourse to Plato, or,
for that matter, to Macchiavelli, in an existing political emergency. If
a classical education, designed as it is in England to promote
'character' rather than 'intellect' (a vicious distinction which leaves
no room for such a quality as intellectual integrity) often leaves
behind it but a meagre residuum of knowledge and ideas, it should at
least cause the public school man of yesterday and the London clubman of
to-day to realize the limitations of his field of study and to abstain
from confident political generalization. The Labour M.P. who once
remarked to the writer, _à propos_ of an Indian debate, that he had been
in the House just long enough to know that all he knew about India was
that he knew nothing about it, had been brought up, if not in a better
at least in a cannier school. There is no sounder training for the
student of politics and history, or indeed of any serious subject, than
to know everything about something, whether it be the chronological
order of Plato's dialogues or the problem of humidity in weaving-sheds,
or about placing a field or keeping a wicket. That is why the Duke of
Wellington who, if he lacked the intellectuality of a Foch, at least
knew both his England and his own job of military science, selected the
playing fields rather than the classical classrooms of Eton as the home
and training-ground of that concentrated and disinterested endeavour of
mind and spirit which had carried his army through patient years of
effort to victory. It is all to the good that our classical devotees,
faced with criticism and competition from many quarters, should be
acquiring both a greater humility and a greater seriousness.

Our first caution then, is that Greek political thought is both national
and universal, and that we must learn to distinguish what pertains to
nationality from what pertains to government.

A second result which flows from the small-scale character of Greek
politics is that we nowhere find an adequate treatment of the problem
of _foreign relations_. Foreign policy is one of the weak spots of
modern democracy; it is, perhaps, the element in our political technique
which is most in need of thoroughgoing revision. We have yet to induce
the modern citizen to pay continuous attention to issues which, although
they are seemingly remote from his purview, may at any moment shake the
whole fabric of his everyday existence; and, when we have done this, we
have to persuade him to approach these world-problems not in the spirit
of a competitive aggrandizement but with a view to discovering what is
the best line of policy in the interests of the world as a whole. So
long as the peoples remain self-absorbed, the governments will continue
to conduct their mutual relations on a basis of individual
self-interest, and the meetings of the Assembly of the League of Nations
will remain what they are at present, not gatherings of statesmen solely
bent, each from his own angle and upbringing, on the welfare of
humanity, but barterings of politicians who (with rare exceptions) have
come to the fair to do the best business they can for their own clients.
Now Thucydides and Plato give us no help for the League of Nations. Such
a phrase as 'the interests of humanity as a whole' would have been
politically meaningless to them. They did not think of humanity as a
whole; they thought of it as divided sharply into two sections, Greeks
and Barbarians, and of the Greek world as a small oasis of intelligence
and culture ringed round by a wide and indefinite expanse of barbarism.
We also, it is true, speak of 'advanced' and 'backward' peoples: but the
latter are not, as they were to the Greeks, a formidable mass, tribe
upon tribe, of military power extending up to and beyond the known or
legendary confines of the world; they are child-races under our watchful
care and control. We have explored and surveyed the whole earth, and
where we find weakness or inferiority, we establish a trusteeship. To
the Greeks, ever on their guard against barbarian inroads from north,
south, east and west, from Scythians and Libyans, Persians and
Carthaginians, the mandate clause of the Covenant would have seemed both
theoretically undesirable and practically impossible. No Greek writer
ever dreamed of a system of international co-operation between the
governments of the world as men then knew it. All of them thought in
terms of competition and ever-recurrent warfare or, at best, of a
precarious balance of power. Even Plato's Utopia had its soldier class;
and they were real soldiers, not merely police. In this respect, at any
rate, vanquished Germany, with practically the whole of her population
relieved from military duty and available for productive tasks, has the
advantage over the most ideal construction of ancient Greece.

There is a further point to be noted under this head. If Greek thought
gives us no guidance in foreign policy, it is no more helpful, except
very indirectly, in another difficult region, that of _industrial
policy_. The problem of industrial policy, or what is sometimes roughly
described as the Labour problem, may perhaps be thus stated: how to
secure or maintain for civilized mankind (or for our own particular
section of it) the goods and services it needs, whilst at the same time
providing justice and freedom for those who produce them. To put it more
shortly, how to secure that a good life for the consumer shall be
compatible with a good life for the producer. It is a problem which goes
to the root of democracy: for the world has never yet known a time when
the increase of wealth and the consequent growth of refinement and
civilization in the upper section of the community did not lead to
degradation and injustice in the lower. Here too the Greeks can give us
no help. They did not even face the problem but fail to solve it, like
the Romans. Their material civilization was so simple that the problem
hardly arose for them at all--except in certain cases, such as that of
the mine-slaves. But the fact that they acquiesced, without a twinge of
conscience or a trace of repining, in the institution of slavery
indicates how they would probably have faced it had it arisen. Confront
Plato with the complexity of modern industry, prove to him, as any
modern lecturer could, that, for Northern man at any rate, life can only
be maintained without degradation on a basis of widespread industrialism
and with our familiar equipment of railways, steamships, telephones, _et
hoc genus omne_, and it is safe to predict that he would fail to give
the reply which the modern reformer would expect from him. Instead of
embracing one of the many current varieties of socialism which
masquerade as his bastard progeny, he would either accept his
interlocutor's premisses and tell him to build up his precious northern
civilization on a basis of slavery; or he would reject them and advise
him, with Samuel Butler, to make a bonfire of the machines. The latter
is, indeed, the more probable alternative; for it is that to which the
more thoughtful and prophetic (perhaps one can add also, the more
Hellenic) of our modern guides are turning. When men so diverse as
Tagore the Indian sage and Rathenau the German Trust magnate tell us
that the disease from which we are suffering is 'mechanization', and
that our crying need is for greater simplicity, it seems safe to predict
that Plato would not reject the possibility of providing a 'good life'
for the modern man in a world divested of most of the rattling and
tinkling paraphernalia of which the nineteenth century so plumed itself
as the inventor.

Let us pass now to our second limitation, that arising not from the
difference of scale but from the difference of outlook between Greek and
modern speculation. We can best sum this up by saying that whereas
modern political thought, like modern thought generally, works from the
inner to the outer, from the individual to the state and society, the
ancient thinkers habitually work in the opposite direction, setting the
interests of the community or state above those of the individual. This
is what Fustel de Coulanges intended to convey when he declared that
ancient man had no conception of the meaning of liberty. Liberty is no
doubt a somewhat confusing and ambiguous term; it is hard to cut it
loose from its political associations, from national independence and
democratic self-government. We can perhaps therefore improve upon the
French writer by saying that the Greek political thinkers do not
recognize, or do not make proper allowance for, the rights and
responsibilities of the individual soul. Just as they failed to
distinguish between Nationality and Government, so they failed also to
distinguish between Conscience and Public duty. Socrates, indeed,
meeting his death in obedience both to Conscience and Law, had a glimpse
of the higher truth; but his followers did not take up this side of his
message or, in so far as they did so in their study of individual
morality, they did not relate it to their theories of politics. It was a
greater than Socrates who summed up and put the problem with his
incomparable directness and irony: _Render unto Caesar the things which
are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's_. If this had been
said in the presence of Thucydides, the keenest practical brain that
applied itself to Greek political thinking, he simply would not have
known what it meant. To him Caesar and God, or, to translate them into
his own language, Athens and Athena, were not opposing but practically
identical terms. When the Athenian, as he described him, 'spent his
body, as a mere external tool, in the city's service and counted his
mind as most truly his own when employed on her behalf,' he was,
according to the universal Greek belief, serving both his God and his
neighbour, both his own highest good and the noblest of the world's
causes. His life was a unity: for he had not yet learned to disentangle
his soul from the soul of the City or the herd, or his God from the god
of Israel or of Athens. The Greek thinkers, as we shall see, sincerely
endeavoured to distinguish between the 'good citizen' and 'the good man'
and to base the State on foundations of the spirit; but their work was
vitiated by their failure to realize the extent and urgency of the claim
of the individual soul. Men must be spiritually free before they can
co-operate politically on the highest terms. In the last analysis the
weakness of Greek political speculation can be traced back to the
weakness of Greek religion. Even Plato played with Pagan orthodoxy and
gave the Delphic Apollo a titular place in his Utopia, proving himself
as timid in touching Greek superstitions as English thinkers to-day are
in touching the Monarchy. It is this basis of insincerity which reveals
itself throughout the superstructure. Greek political thought contains
already the germs of the disease which, centuries later, led men,
plebeians first, later patricians also, to turn away from the outworn
symbols that stood for the union of Church and State and to seek comfort
in a religion which, if it undermined and eventually overturned the last
and greatest of the ancient Empires, established the City of the Soul
upon a firm and enduring basis. Julian's _Vicisti Galilaee_ marked the
end of one strain or tradition in ancient political thought which,
originating in the local worships of the City-State, had lasted on, with
gathering momentum, until, all over the known world, men bowed the knee
before the altar of Caesar, the God-Emperor. From this there was no way
forward except through revolution; and mankind paid, in the night of the
Dark Ages, for sins of compromise and insincerity committed during long
centuries of enlightenment.

The liabilities thus frankly stated, let us turn to the assets.

The first valuable contribution the Greeks made to political study was
that they invented it. It is not too much to say that, before
fifth-century Greece, politics did not exist. There were powers and
principalities, governments and subjects, but politics no more existed
than chemistry existed in the age of alchemy. An imitation of an idea,
as Plato has taught us, is not the same as an idea; nor is the imitation
of a science the same as a science. Rameses and Nebuchadnezzar, Croesus
the Lydian and Cyrus the Persian, ruled over great empires; but within
their dominions there were no politics because there were no public
affairs. There were only the private affairs of the sovereign and his
ruling class. Government and all that pertained to it, from military
service and taxation to the supply of women for the royal harem, was
simply the expression of the power and desire of the ruler. The great
advance made by Greece was to have recognized that public or common
interests exist and to have provided, first for their management, and
secondly for their study. In other words, the Greeks were the first to
rescue the body politic from charlatans and to hand it over to
physicians.

How great an achievement this was we can best recognize when we consider
how large a place the true study of politics, and the terms and ideas to
which it has given rise, fills in the life of the modern man--especially
of the modern Englishman. Justice and liberty, law and democracy,
parliament and public opinion--all these and many more we owe to the
peasants and craftsmen of the small Greek republics who, having felt the
need for a better management of their humble concerns, set to work to
provide it, with the same inventiveness, the same adaptation of means to
end, which led them, in other fields, to the invention of the classic
temple or of the drama. If it is going too far to say that every modern
politician owes his stock-in-trade of general ideas to the Greeks, there
are certainly few who do not owe them their perorations.

This is not the place to enlarge on the features of Greek political
organization or to point out the various elements in Greek political
theory or practice which have proved of permanent value. Only a very
summary appreciation can be attempted. But certain points can be picked
out as being of special interest to the citizen of to-day.

In the first place, the Greeks, having made clear to themselves that
public or common affairs existed, sat down resolutely to study them.
Convinced believers in reason, they did not fall into the convenient
English fallacy of believing that institutions are not made but 'grow',
or that difficulties which seem too thorny for timid fingers to touch
will settle themselves by being left alone. Political problems, they
felt, were caused by men, by the interaction of human wills and desires,
and by men, by the conscious and deliberate application of human
intelligence, they could and must be solved. In spite of their belief in
mysterious powers which control the destinies of men and nations, they
did not think it decent to abandon public affairs to Providence; nor did
they avert their gaze from them as too mundane for the squeamish
intellectual to handle and turn them over to the tender mercies of the
ignorant and less scrupulous demagogue or doctrinaire. Their public
affairs were no more interesting than ours: they were indeed
considerably less interesting--unless we are prepared to argue that the
election of generals to command an army far smaller than the Swiss is a
more arresting issue than the choice of a government to bear rule over
400 millions of men on five continents, or that the question of peace or
war between two small neighbouring mountain territories outweighs in
interest the discussion of the relations between the white and yellow
races of mankind. And, if Greek politics were not interesting in
themselves, they suffered still further by comparison with the other
topics which lay ready to claim the Greek citizen's attention. The
modern voter who is too idle to cast his ballot, will give up to
business or to pleasure, to motor-car and music-hall, the time and the
trouble that he owes to humanity. When the Athenian spent a hot and
exhausting day (for why should we think their nerves less susceptible to
glare than ours?) listening to a parliamentary debate or to a lawsuit on
a hard stone seat in the open air, he was postponing till to-morrow, or
till his crops and fruit-trees permitted him the leisure, the discussion
of some masterpiece of drama or some new issue of human thought which
had leapt during the last few days or months from the brain of a fellow
citizen into immortality. If it is hard for the citizen of New York to
spare the time to dethrone Tammany, or for the electors of Great Britain
to uproot its more outwardly respectable analogue on this side of the
Atlantic, when his life, and his newspapers, are full of vulgar and
ephemeral distractions, how much harder must it have been for a
Euripidean enthusiast, or a student of Socrates or Protagoras, to
descend for long days to solid earth in order to strike a bargain with a
Thracian chieftain or to assess some poor devil's damages in drachmae!
Let us honour, not pity or despise them, for having thought it right to
do so, for having deliberately determined to infuse into public affairs,
in themselves so drab and dull, so deficient in the fineness and
subtlety which characterize men's more intimate concerns, the interest
derived from the very fact that honest, sincere, and able minds devoted
themselves to their study. As Huxley could make the geological
procession of the ages revolve round a piece of chalk, and Sir Richard
Owen reconstruct primitive man from the bone of his great toe, so the
citizen of Athens, as we see him depicted for us in the pages of
Thucydides, could raise the great permanent issues of politics, and
cause them to remain living for us two thousand years later, in debates
which were ostensibly concerned with mere provincial trivialities. When
such was the atmosphere created, no wonder that those who stayed away
were held up to obloquy in an expression (ιδιωτης {idiôtês}) of which
our English 'idiot' is the exact transcription.

Let us dwell for a moment on the attitude of mind in which the Greek
citizen approached political problems. He was both a Conservative and a
Radical; or rather, he brought to politics the best of Conservatism
together with the best of Radicalism. He was a Conservative because he
reverenced tradition and recognized the power and value of custom. None
of our modern Conservative writers and defenders of the existing order,
not Burke himself or Bismarck or Chateaubriand, had a deeper sense than
the Athenian for 'those unwritten ordinances whose transgression brings
admitted shame'. Athens was a Conservative democracy. Most democracies,
despite the labels of their politicians, are in reality Conservative;
for the common man whose régime they represent is Conservative from the
very nature of his life and occupation; it takes leisure and travel, or
a wider education than any democracy has as yet bestowed on its young
people, to lift the minds of the mass of men out of the rut of habit.
But Athens was far more Conservative than the modern democracies with
whom we are acquainted. Where the British public rebukes an awkward
writer by conspiring to boycott his books, so that, unless he has
private means, he is eventually silenced, where the United States, going
a step farther, deny his works the privilege of the mails, Athens does
not scruple to administer hemlock, and, if an _élite_ is indignant or
sorrowful, the democracy applauds. Even at the height of the recent Red
Terror the United States never went so Conservative as this. This should
help us to realize the rock-firm basis of tradition, of use and wont, of
patriarchal sanctities, which underlay the working of fifth-century
Athenian democracy as we watch its apparent vicissitudes. The citizen
could use his mind as freely as he would on the material presented to
him for his consideration; but there was a point at which the State, and
his own instincts, cried 'Halt'; and, except in rare cases, he obeyed.
It is only fair to add that the most enlightened modern opinion would
entirely support the Athenian view against the discussion of 'unwritten
laws' in Parliament. The difference between the Conservative Athenian
democrat and the modern Liberal in such matters is, not that the one
refuses, while the other demands, the discussion of life's sanctities in
Parliament and law-court, but that the one appeals to custom and the
other to conscience as the sanction of the unwritten law itself. Whether
it be the gods or man, the law of the hearth or of the heart, that is at
issue, both agree that what is private and holy has no place in the
forum of common debate.

But, within these well-recognized limits, the Greek citizen was a
Radical; that is to say, he was ready to apply his reason to public
affairs without fear or prejudice. He loved straight and sincere
thinking; he tried hard to face the real situation before him and not to
be clouded or led astray by side-issues or inhibitions. There is many a
lesson in common honesty to be learnt by our politicians and public in
the speeches of Thucydides. Shallow critics have been known to dub them
cynical, an adjective which the English, adepts in self-deception, are
fond of applying to nations sincerer in self-analysis than themselves.
When we refuse formally to reopen an issue on which action is in fact
being taken daily, because it is a party question and a Coalition
government is in power, when we leave to the healing mercies of time a
problem with regard to which inaction itself constitutes a policy, when
we deliberately invent party labels or election cries designed to
confuse the mind of the voter and to distract him from the real issue,
when our politicians have become professionals in the art of what
Thucydides described as 'the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty
ends' and a British Premier, more euphemistically, as 'political
strategy', we might do worse than sit down to read, mark, learn, digest,
and apply to our modern situations, the immortal speeches or essays in
which Thucydides lays bare for us the heart of the political life of his
day, and to let them act as a purge of some of our own too sugary diet.
The bitter-sweet of truth is not always popular on the hustings; but it
is good feeding for the plain citizen, whether ancient or modern.

This leads on to a further reflection. The Greeks, in their political
thinking, were essentially realists, rather than idealists. This is true
of all the Greek writers, even those who, like Plato, starting from the
market-place of Athens, lead us up to a Utopia in the clouds. They were
realists in that they based their political studies on the world as it
is and human nature as it is, rather than on some personal and fanciful
conception of what man and the world ought to be. To put it in other
words, they are realists because they are psychologists, because they
applied the psychological method to political problems. That they were
the first to do so goes without saying: for no one before them had
applied any method at all, except in the most rough-and-ready manner.
But they did it so perfectly, with such utter and artistic simplicity,
that those who followed them accepted or criticized their results
without observing the basis of human study on which they were built up,
and it is only in quite recent years, through the work of patient
inquirers who, like Graham Wallas, have laboured systematically in both
fields, that politics and psychology have once more been drawn together.

It may perhaps seem strange to a modern reader to be told that, in this
very important respect, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle are sounder in
their method than the whole long line of political thinkers and
statesmen up to our own day. Let the reader who doubts it turn to the
texts. He will find that all the three writers whom I have named toiled
at the study of human nature before they set pen to paper. The
_Republic_ opens with several books of psychological analysis, no doubt
at times a little fantastic in its attempts at premature classification,
but full of life and reality, and not only Greek reality but human
reality. Aristotle precedes his work on _Politics_, in which he embodied
the results of a study of all the available political and constitutional
material of his day--for a Greek could work like a modern German or
American thesis-grubber when he tried--with a book on _Ethics_ which is
still regarded, quite rightly, as a standard work for the modern
student. As for Thucydides, his knowledge of men, the fruit of patient
experience deepened by disappointment, is felt behind every line of his
book, as one descries it in the features of his undegenerate descendant
Venizelos. Turn now to the moderns. Where in Hobbes or in Bentham, in
Locke or Burke or Rousseau, in the individualists or the Socialists, the
Hegelians or the anarchists, do we find, until quite recently, a really
wide and open-minded attempt to see man as he is? Our ears are assailed
by a chorus of catchwords, based on some arbitrary and ephemeral
estimate of men's reactions to outward events and institutions. Men
argue backwards and forwards as to whether 'human nature can be
changed', whether man is guided solely by self-interest, or is only
waiting to be set free from sordid cares to be guided solely by his love
for his fellows, whether fear or hope, custom or the sense of adventure,
form his natural and most compelling spur to action. Meanwhile in the
great debate, in Burke's _Reflections_ as in Marx's _Capital_, in Maine
and Mill and Mazzini, as among the hacks who vulgarize their results in
text-books and election literature, man as he is has vanished behind a
cloud of doctrine or verbiage. We need the simplicity, or cynicism, of
the Greeks to recall us to realities.

Let us for a moment imagine Thucydides face to face with the problems of
our post-war world of to-day. We have only to read his immortal analysis
of the war-mood of Greece, and of the nervous and emotional phenomena
which accompanied it, to realize that his first effort would have been
to explain us to ourselves. He would not allow us to acquiesce idly in
our vague disillusionment, our impatience of foreigners, our suspicion
of the idealisms of the Wilson brand. He would trace our discontent
ruthlessly to its sources and hold up to our eyes the strange compound
of sorrow and fatigue, impatience and disappointment, aspiration and
helplessness which makes us what we are. 'The war-mood brought with it
many and terrible symptoms such as have occurred and will always
continue to occur, so long as human nature remains what it is; though in
a severer or milder form, according to the variety of the particular
cases.' Thucydides would have had eyes for it in all its forms, mild or
severe, simple or complex, pitiful or repulsive. He would show us the
English upper and middle class, shaken out of its comfort and
complacency, its easy and patronizing security, by the shock of war and
bereavement, facing a future of unknown and terrifying ideas and forces,
with the brutal tax-gatherer administering the _coup de grâce_ to its
equanimity: the working class, called to fight for a cause which it but
dimly understood, in the hope of a new world which victory was to call
into being, exhorted by the nation's leaders to be as daring in its home
policies as in the trenches, and then confronted with a world of failing
markets and impoverished customers and with the full rigour of the
merciless laws of supply and demand which, just because it had wished
them out of existence, it had grown accustomed to believe could be
ignored, oscillating, according to age, temperament or experience,
between resignation and impotent fury, between old-fashioned
trade-unionism and the latest fashion in extremism: France, emerging
nerve-racked from a fifty years' obsession and a five years' nightmare,
half-dead with sorrow and suspense, yet too proud in victory to own her
weakness, looking round, half-defiant, half-wistful, among her allies
for one who can understand her unspoken need, and longing, with all the
intensity of her sensitive nature, to be able to resume, in security and
quietness of mind, the arts and activities of normal life in which she
has been, and will be again, the Athens of the modern world: Germany,
tougher in fibre than her western neighbour yet equally shaken and
exhausted: a land of sheep without a shepherd, rushing hither and
thither seeking for a direction and a _Weltanschauung_, her amazing
powers of industry and concentration and her rich and turbid life of
feeling running to waste for lack of channelled guidance: Belgium,
self-confident, industrious and rejuvenated: Italy, made one at last and
measuring her strength to face the tasks of a new epoch in her history:
and, behind, the great new surging world of the Slav, from the
disciplined enthusiasm of Prague, under her philosopher-president, to
the birth-agonies of a new Russia in the grip of the rough
tyrant-physicians of the Kremlin. All this a modern Thucydides would
attempt to set before us, not forgetting the conservative forces and the
gods of the older generation, the great Catholic and Protestant, Moslem
and Socialist traditions, the power of the bankers and the merchants,
the universities and the press, and all the various types of humanity
produced and hall-marked by their activity. And then, and not till then,
having shown us what we are, each of us in his niche and all of us
together in our little corner in the vast Temple of mankind, having made
us see our pettyisms and orthodoxies against a universal background of
time and space, he would have broken silence and allowed himself to
speak to us of remedies. _Know yourself_ is the first, perhaps the only,
message of the scientific historian to our bewildered age.

But by what right, it will be asked, in this age of _Wissenschaft_ and
_Fachmenschen_, of specialism and research-institutes and organized
intellectual production, do you speak of Thucydides as a scientific
historian? Here is a man who, without a university degree or any
university training at all, after a brief military career for which he
took no staff college course (as witness his generalship), sits down to
write a chronicle of the war in which he played a part, basing his
account simply on his own experience and on the testimony of such
eye-witnesses as he was able to meet. Any tiro on the history staff at a
modern college or university could predict the result--one of those
bulky volumes, full of detail and post-prandial reminiscence, in which
splenetic elderly gentlemen have so often sought to justify their own
existence, and to call down damnation on the War Office, before an
indifferent public. How can anything better be expected from a mere
soldier, a rough practical man, untrained in the arts of research, in
collecting facts on slips of paper and arranging and re-arranging them
till an induction emerges, in looking up reference books in libraries
and 'listing' them in a neat alphabetical bibliography, totally ignorant
of the _Hilfswissenschaften_, the laborious subsidiary studies on the
basis of which scientific history is built up, ignorant even of foreign
languages, who has read no sociology, and is not even aware of its
existence, whose geographical studies are limited to his own journeys
and the tales of his friends, who, finally, has the impertinence to
intersperse his narrative with fictitious speeches, thus destroying any
pretence at a scientific character for his treatise, and revealing it in
its true nature as a mere work of art or imagination? It may indeed be
doubted whether a modern trained librarian, working according to the
classification laid down by the standard Congress library at Washington,
would, when his attention was drawn to it, admit so offending a writer
on to his history shelves at all. His place, he would probably say, is
with the prose-poets, or with the writers of historical fiction next
door to them.

Yet turn to the opening chapters of Thucydides' book. You will find most
of the sciences on which long modern treatises are written: but you will
find something more: you will find them blended into a unity. Let those
who deny that Thucydides was a sociologist, who continue to claim that
Herbert Spencer, inventor of the horrid word, invented also the science,
re-read Thucydides' account of the evolution (for it was as an evolution
that he saw and depicted it) of Greek society from the earliest times to
his own day. Let those who cry up anthropology examine into his
treatment of legend and custom and his power, untrained in Seminar or
institute, to use it as sociological evidence. Let the geographers, too
forgetful sometimes that man is not the creature of environment alone,
refresh their minds by recalling those brilliant sallies in geographical
thinking in which he explains some of the features of early Greek
settlement and city-building. It is not only orthodox history, of the
school of Ranke, of which Thucydides is the father and inspirer: there
is not one of the many movements which have sought to broaden out
historical study in recent years, from Buckle and Leplay and Vidal de la
Blache down to the <DW43>-analysts of our own day and of to-morrow who
will not find in Thucydides some gleaming anticipation along the path of
their own thought.

Here we touch upon what is perhaps the cardinal merit of the Greek
political thinkers, as it is of the Greek contribution as a whole. They
saw all the problems: but saw each in its place within the larger whole.
They 'saw life steadily and saw it whole'. Matthew Arnold's line is
hackneyed enough; but it cannot be bettered. To put the same thought in
another way, the Greeks were natural Catholics, while we of to-day,
especially on the political field, are constantly relapsing into an
unhelpful Protestantism. By Catholicism I mean nothing doctrinal, or
indeed religious at all, but simply the habit of mind which insists on
looking at the whole before the parts, at setting the common before the
sectional interest, and in sweetening and harmonizing the inevitable
contrarieties and antagonisms of life by remaining steadily conscious of
its major and reconciling interests. A Catholic is one whose intellect,
to use the words of Newman, himself, despite his religious label, one of
the greatest of the tribe, 'cannot be partial, cannot be exclusive,
cannot be impetuous, cannot be at a loss, cannot but be patient,
collected and majestically calm, because it discerns the end in every
beginning, the origin in each end, the law in every interruption, the
limit in each delay, because it ever knows where it stands and how its
path lies from one point to another'. Protestantism, on the other hand,
is the attitude of protest, of revolt, of indignation: the spirit which
is conscious only of what it is _against_, and is too ignorant, or too
angry, to survey the whole field of problems involved in its protest or
to think out an alternative scheme. If the Greeks can render us no other
service in our discontents they can at least lift us, by the example of
their wide and fearless vision, out of our petty Protestant
rebelliousness and recrimination and plant our feet solidly on the rock
of steady Catholic thinking.

Take a few instances, drawn from Plato, of what I call the Catholic
spirit. Perhaps the most difficult and unsettling of all our modern
problems is that of the relations between men and women in a society
which has granted or is about to grant to women complete equality of
rights and opportunities without having effected the corresponding inner
revolution of thought and sentiment. Masculine society, in other words,
despite a multitude of professions, has not yet admitted, still less
assimilated, the educated woman into its ranks. Here is a problem with
far reaching and most difficult implications which Plato discussed more
than two thousand years ago, but in how different a spirit from so many
of the 'feminists' of to-day. Not that he was less 'advanced' in his
speculations: he was ready to face all that there was to face and to go
a good deal farther in his suggestions of policy than would be regarded
as printable in a modern English or American review. But his spirit is
throughout perfectly serene and, in the best sense of the word,
scientific, so that he can work out his argument to the end without a
trace of squeamishness or false modesty. Where shall we find in our
modern discussions of women's employment, equal work for equal pay, and
the like, the central point so simply and clearly stated as in the
following sentence: 'Then, if we find either the male or the female sex
excelling the other in any art or other pursuit, we shall say that this
particular pursuit must be assigned to one and not to the other; but if
we find that the difference simply consists in this, that the female
conceives and the male begets, we shall not allow that that goes any way
to prove that a woman differs from a man with reference to the subject
of which we are speaking, and we shall still consider that our guardians
and their wives should follow the same pursuits.' If all our modern
discussion were as clean and direct as this, we should have made greater
progress in this subject by now. Greek intellectual integrity, and
clarity of thought and expression, were not hampered by a festering and
obstructive legacy of what it is a libel on a great movement to describe
as Puritanism.

Take a second example--the influence of occupation on character. This is
a subject which goes to the root of many of our social problems for,
till we have studied the reactions of different classes of employment,
not only on the body but on the mind, and perfected our methods of
vocational guidance, we shall still have left open one of the greatest
avenues to unhappiness. The modern inquirer will find a very interesting
adumbration of this line of thought in the _Republic_; and if here, as
in the problem of the relations between men and women, he finds Plato's
remedies somewhat drastic, and is inclined to dissent from his veto on
actors and acrobats, let him consider the appalling extent to which,
during recent generations, the consumer has been pampered at the expense
of the producer, and ask himself how often, when he attends a music-hall
as a narcotic after a distracting day, or when he rings up on the
telephone or books a ticket at a railway office, he considers the kind
of life to which he is an accomplice in condemning those who minister to
his needs and desires. Plato believed in the value of beauty and, being
more than a mere modern aesthete, held no skindeep creed. He knew and
understood the vital significance of rhythm and harmony, of grace and
freedom, in the outward order of life as in the soul; and if he found
himself plunged down in the centre of one of our modern hives of
progress he would have some searching questions to ask. For 'absence of
grace' he tells us 'and bad rhythm and bad harmony are sisters to bad
words and bad nature' and 'we would not have our guardians reared among
images of evil as in a foul pasture and there day by day, and little by
little, gather impressions from all that surrounds them, until at last a
great mass of evil gathers in their inmost souls and they know it not'.
Has the most widespread malady of our time ever been better diagnosed;
and do not our capitalist and socialist physicians, with their merely
material remedies, look very small by the side of this commanding and
convincing simplicity of statement?

We have dwelt upon some of the special directions in which Thucydides
and Plato can be of help to us. Let us now turn briefly to the third of
the great triad. Aristotle is, of course, the most systematic thinker of
the three: and it is just for that very reason that the two elements
already noted in Greek political thought, the local and ephemeral and
the universal, are most closely interwoven and most baffling to
disentangle. Tutor of Alexander though he was, his mind is incapable of
stepping outside the city-state framework. His _Ethics_ is half a
treatise on human nature, half a book, akin to the _Characters_ of
Theophrastus, on deportment for a Greek citizen. No wonder that
successive generations of English undergraduates have failed to respond
to the human excellence or social charm, of his hero or paragon,
described as 'the big-souled' or 'magnificent man'. Similarly the
_Politics_ is a book in which it needs a trained reader, already
familiar with Greek life, to pick out the universal from the particular
and draw his own modern conclusions. But when you have read, say, the
first book of the _Politics_ in this spirit, when you have ruled out
from what is said of the State all that pertains solely to the City,
when you have made allowance for the hazardous biological,
psychological, and sociological generalizations ('man is more of a
political animal than bees or other gregarious animals', 'he who is by
nature not his own but another's and not a man is by nature a slave',
'the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the
individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part'), based,
as the examples show, on the embryonic condition of those sciences at
the time, you have a large residuum of practical wisdom that is and will
remain of value to the modern world.

Let us look for a moment at one element in this legacy, for it has
recently become a subject of much controversy--Aristotle's conception of
the State, and of its relation to other social and political groupings.
As has already been said, Greek political thought is open to criticism
for unduly neglecting the claim of the individual. Aristotle is less
open to this indictment than either of his great compeers: he does
indeed allow, for certain favoured individuals, an inner or
'theoretical' life, as he calls it, remote from the concerns of the
City-State and almost, except for its excessive intellectuality,
recalling the monastic ideal of the Middle Age. But this is only for the
fewest. Nevertheless it involved the admission that behind the citizen
remained the man, who might conceivably on occasion have his rights,
that 'political science', as he says, 'does not make men', as Thucydides
regarded Athens as making Athenians, 'but receives them from nature and
uses them'. And the justification for this taking over of human nature
by the state, this subjection of man over the whole or part of his
nature, is clearly set forth. It is that 'man when perfected [i. e.
taken over and educated by the State] is the best of animals, but, when
separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all', or, as he puts
it in another place, the man who does not participate in State or city
life is 'either a beast or a god'--more likely (as the order of the
words indicates) the former. In other words, it is law and justice, not,
as Thucydides would have it, an exaltation of the spirit to its highest
power, nor, as Plato preaches, some organic identification between the
inner life of the soul and the outward order of society, which is the
basis and justification of politics. 'It is justice', he says, using the
word in a strict, not a platonic or metaphysical sense, 'which is the
bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, i. e. the
determination of what is just, which is the principle of order in
political society.'

Now, with this principle clearly laid down, and with the claim of the
individual thus partially or at least implicitly recognized, it is
easier to understand Aristotle's _intransigeant_ attitude towards the
claims of associations other than the state, a point on which much
recent controversy has turned. 'Every state', so his _Politics_ open,
'is an association of some kind, and every association is established
with a view to some good.... But if all associations aim at some good,
the state, or political association, _which is the highest of all and
which embraces all the rest_, aims, and in a greater degree than any
other, at the highest good.' In other words, in cases of conflict of
allegiance between the state or political association and some other
form of grouping, whether Church or Trade Union or professional or
humanitarian organization, the claim of the state must take precedence.

This doctrine has been much attacked as involving an indefensible 'State
absolutism', a denial of 'personality' to lesser groups, even as a
negation of the right to lesser loyalties. Mr. Figgis, in a number of
suggestive, if unconvincing, writings, has recalled the theories of the
Jesuits and other anti-state minorities and protestants on this subject,
reinforcing them from the Nonconformist and Trade Union theories or
inclinations of our own day: and a whole school of younger 'progressive'
intellectuals made bold to follow him. The assault on state-sovereignty
has, however, already been brought to a standstill by the impact of
fact. Strange as it may appear in an age of sectarianism and rebel
theorizing, the war revealed the truth that the mass of mankind, now as
in ancient Greece, respond at need to the call of citizenship: that when
the cry goes up summoning each and all to the tents, it is not this or
that little tabernacle but the protecting shelter of the larger and more
truly representative state organizations to which men flock; that the
sects and conventicles which have fed the enthusiasm and provided the
activity of leisure hours cannot maintain their appeal when the whole
fabric of our society is in danger. Exclusive of those who refused
allegiance on true grounds of conscience, and the despicable remnant who
shammed a similar conviction, the number of Englishmen who definitely
set allegiance to some other political or social grouping before
allegiance to the state was surprisingly small. So little are
fundamental loyalties, or the dictates of an unanalysed common sense,
affected, in this country, by fine-spun theories and arguments.

But what we called commonsense views, after all, can be analysed and
ought to be analysed. And there is a very sound and practical reason, as
Aristotle knew, why men prefer the state to lesser associations. It is
because the state leaves them more free. Those who talk of
state-absolutism are ignoring the simple truth that there is no tyranny
like the tyranny of near neighbours. The smaller the group the tighter
its stranglehold over your life and activities. Groups and lesser
loyalties are highly necessary, and indeed desirable, in our modern
large-scale society; but they involve men, and especially weak-willed
and thoughtless men, in far greater dangers than their larger
citizenship. What the confessional at its worst may be to a woman,
professional or business or other loyalty may be to a man. The modern
world is full of men who have bartered away their integrity of soul to
preserve the unity of the party or the unbroken tradition of the
organization or the interests of the trade or even the existence of the
business. If the secrets of all hearts could be revealed, how many high
officials and dignitaries in Church and Party, in Trade Union and
employers' federation, would be discovered to be thinking and even
saying in private what their lesser loyalties forbid them to proclaim in
public to their fellow-guildsmen. The state, in its larger field, may
sometimes commit terrible blunders and even crimes; but at least, in
these days of large-scale government, it does not expose its citizens to
the daily falsehoods and hypocrisies, to the insidious clogging of the
wheels of progress with the grit of petty personal considerations, which
seem inevitable in the life of the smaller groupings of men and women.
Seen in this light, the state stands out as the guardian not only of
justice but of freedom, of an inner freedom of soul and spirit with
which the professional and syndicalist attitude of mind is so often in
flagrant, if unavowed, contradiction. If all this was not visible to
Aristotle when he penned his immortal opening paragraph of the
_Politics_, he is at least entitled to the credit of having laid his
doctrine of state-sovereignty on a foundation so sure that over twenty
centuries of discussion from the Stoics and Cynics, through Augustine
and Dante, down to Rousseau and Lenin, have not been able to shake it.
Against Church and Soviet, as against sage and hermit and anarchist, the
territorial state still holds its own over the whole civilized world;
and the latest construction of idealism at Geneva, misnamed though it
is, is but an association of such states, far larger indeed in average
size, but of the same kind and composition as those upon which the Greek
philosopher fixed as the true object of political study and the most
effective and enduring agency for securing a good life for civilized
mankind.

What are the chief and most enduring thoughts which contact with the
Greek political thinkers leaves with us? They are surely twofold, the
first concerning the material of politics, the second concerning the men
and women of to-day who are called to be citizens. Public affairs, we
feel, so far from being a tiresome preoccupation or 'a dirty business'
are one of the great permanent interests of the race: if they were not
too trivial or too debasing for great artists like Thucydides and Plato,
we need not fear lest they be too trivial or debasing for ourselves. And
if they are not beneath our study, neither should they elude it by being
enwrapped in clouds of rhetoric or in the cotton-wool of sentimentality.
The Greeks should teach us, once and for all, that the common affairs of
mankind are matter to think about as well as to feel about. What
distinguishes what we call a 'good' statesman and a 'public-spirited'
citizen from their less truly political colleagues is not that they have
warmer feelings--there are as many affectionate sons and loving husbands
among the tools of politics as among the elect--but the fact that by a
resolute use of the related powers of intellect and imagination they
have been able to raise their feelings on to a higher plane and to face
great issues with a mind attuned, not to the familiar appeal of hearth
and home, but to the grander and more difficult music of humanity. The
psychologists are teaching us, in the individual life, how we can
'sublimate' our emotions, when life denies them an outlet on the level
of our desire, by raising them to a higher and more rarified range of
feeling and action. As we can sublimate our love of individuals, so we
can sublimate our love of country, not quenching or denying our
patriotism, but consciously dividing and apportioning it. We must learn
to preserve for our blood and nation that precious part of our gift of
service which, just because it is intimate and of the family, cannot be
offered directly to humanity; but we must learn also the more difficult
lesson of transferring to the international stage, the arena where men,
because they are men, labour at common tasks and seek a greatest common
measure of co-operation, all these interests and loyalties which safely
and rightly belong there. This is the claim and call of the modern
Caesar, whether his separate capitals remain, as they are to-day, in
London, Paris, Washington, and the other centres of state-sovereignty,
or whether mankind can rise, if not in our own day, to the level of a
single allegiance. We shall neglect that call at our peril. For, unless
we render unto Caesar that which is properly his, unless we discard our
unthinking and divisive nationalisms, our noble sentiments will avail us
nothing and, in the civil war of the angels, patriotism against
patriotism, Mammon and Beelzebub will come into their own. In these days
of large-scale organization and mammoth syndicates, it takes a Caesar, a
multi-national government, to keep a giant trust at bay. Had the land of
Washington and Lincoln been broken up into separate governments instead
of drawn together into a single territory of United States, private
interests would have taken and defeated each government in detail, and
freedom would have vanished from the land--unless indeed, in some
conflict of devil with devil, of bank and railroad against oil and
lumber, the angels crept once more into their own. The same reasoning
applies to the smaller governments in other continents to-day. Local
patriotism is but a stripling David in face of the Goliaths of modern
commercialism. More and more men will be driven, if not by reason, then
by exploitation and suffering, to learn the lesson of what is still
mistakenly thought of as imperialism until they find themselves crying
out, with the apostle of the Gentiles, who fought his own battle against
nationalism, 'I appeal unto Caesar.'

But the Greeks have a message for us not only as regards the material of
our politics but as regards ourselves. What can we do to help humanity
forward in these problems of its common affairs? The age of
Utopia-dreams is over. We know now that modern science has made the
world one place and that social salvation is not to be found, as the
early socialists imagined, by fleeing from the haunts of men and
founding some model city in a wilderness. We must make our contribution
here and now, in the drab world in which fate has set us. If we cannot
hope to turn it into Utopia, let us at least make it as much like Utopia
as we can. This, after all, is Plato's message, even in the most
idealistic and visionary of his books. The famous passage is worth
quoting in detail:

     'Then do you think any less of our argument because we cannot prove
     that it is possible to found a state of the kind we have
     described?'

     'Surely not,' he said....

     'Then do not compel me to show that what we have decided in our
     argument could in all respects be reproduced in experience. If we
     manage to discover how a state could be organized in any close
     correspondence to our description, then you must allow that we have
     discovered that your commands could be realized. Will you not be
     content with that? I certainly should be.'

     'Yes, I will,' he said.

     'Then next apparently we must try to discover ... what is the
     smallest change by which a state might arrive at this manner of
     constitution....'

     'Most certainly,' he said.

     'Well, there is one change,' I said, 'which I think we could
     certainly prove would bring about the revolution. It is certainly
     neither a small nor an easy change, but it is possible.'

     'What is it?' he said.

     'Now,' I said, 'I am at the very topic which we likened to the
     greatest wave. Spoken, however, it shall be, even though it is
     likely to deluge me with laughter and ridicule.... Consider then
     what I am about to say.'

     'Say on,' he said.

     'Unless,' I said, 'lovers of wisdom bear sovereign rule in states,
     or those who are now called sovereigns and governors become sincere
     and capable lovers of wisdom, and government and love of wisdom be
     brought together, and unless the numerous natures who at present
     pursue either government or wisdom, the one to the exclusion of the
     other, be forcibly debarred from this behaviour, there will be no
     respite from evil, my dear Glaucon, for states, nor, I fancy, for
     humanity; nor will this constitution, which we have just described
     in our argument, come to that realization which is possible for it
     and see the light of day. It is this which has for so long made me
     hesitate to speak. I saw how paradoxical it would sound. For it is
     given to few to perceive that no other constitution could ever
     bring happiness either to states or individuals.'

Thus far the philosopher of antiquity. His words are sometimes
interpreted as a cry for some philosopher-genius to take the task of
government out of our too feeble grasp. But that is not his message for
us. The age in which philosopher-emperors were possible has passed
beyond recall. To us Plato's words are an appeal to become, each and all
of us, in our own sphere, lovers of wisdom according to the measure of
our ability. If we would amend the world around us--and it is in sore
need of amendment--our first duty is to eschew falsehood and to follow
truth in our own lives, in our thoughts and actions. Revolutions spring
not from without inwards but from within outwards; and it is often when
the external world seems most sick and sorrowful, when selfishness and
irresponsibility sit enthroned in the world's seats of government, that
the power of truth is most active in the silent region of the soul,
strengthening it in order that it may issue forth once again to impress
man's unconquerable purpose of order, justice and freedom upon the
recalcitrant material which forms the stuff of men's common problems on
this small globe of ours.

A. E. ZIMMERN.




THE LAMPS OF GREEK ART


Amid the superficialities and struggles of the world around us, it is
refreshing to turn back for a moment to the mellow wisdom of Matthew
Arnold; and I will start with a quotation from _Literature and Dogma_:
'As well imagine a man with a sense for sculpture not cultivating it by
the help of the remains of Greek art, or a man with a sense for poetry
not cultivating it by the help of Homer and Shakespeare, as a man with a
sense for conduct not cultivating it by the help of the Bible.' To
Arnold the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, Greek art, are the great and
eternal classics, which for all time must be the stimulus and the models
for the greatest of human achievements. Beyond doubt in the fifty years
since Arnold wrote there has been a marked drift away from classics of
every kind. To acknowledge classics at all seems a survival of the
spirit of aristocracy. We are convinced that we are better than our
fathers, and must break away from their tutelage. In some degree this
arises out of the unrest and nervous strain produced by the great war.
But it does not come only from nervous tension. It is a definite
tendency of society, which has to be considered on its merits by all who
feel called on to take a share in the world movement. We cannot ignore
those who are drifting away from the settled anchorages, or we run the
risk of being ignored ourselves.

The task has fallen to me to try to give reasons why Greek art has still
a claim on our attention. Among Englishmen the appreciation of art never
has been and never can be as keen as the appreciation of poetry and
philosophy. But on the other hand I think it can be shown that in the
field of art our debt to Greece is even greater than in the field of
philosophy and poetry. For in these latter we have a certain national
genius, and have produced classics recognized through Europe. But in art
our achievements have been but moderate; and at the present time a
living sense of art is probably rarer among us than in any highly
civilized country except America.

I will begin with a bold assertion, which I hope to justify as we
proceed. But for ancient Greece, the art of Europe would to-day be on
much the same level as the fantastic and degraded art of India. And but
for the continued influence of Greek art, that of Europe would
continually be in danger of drifting into chaotic extravagance.

In the century before the Persian wars of 500-480 B. C., Greece, both
Ionian and Dorian, was throwing out fresh shoots of life in every
direction, breaking through the crust of archaic convention, producing a
new standard of excellence, in poetry, in philosophy, in history, and in
art. In every province, morals, intellect, imagination, Greece was
striking out, to the right and the left. And in the century after the
Persian wars, she reaped the full harvest of her splendid sowing, and
produced the masterpieces which have remained ever since memorable, to
the study of which each generation recurs, and whence it learns of what
human nature is capable.

After 400 B. C. there was not, as many suppose, a sudden decline in the
quality of artistic production. Many of the works of the later centuries
were in their way almost unsurpassable. The philosophy of Aristotle, the
poetry of Theocritus, such statues as the Aphrodite of Melos and the
Victory of Samothrace, are great lights for all time. But the works of
maturity have seldom the charm which marks those which are full of the
optimism and promise of youth.

Ruskin has written an admirable work on the Seven Lamps of Architecture,
a work which, though it sometimes passes into extravagance, is full of
suggestion and even inspiration. It seems to me strange that while the
economic views of Ruskin, full of generosity, but also wanting in
measure and any basis of fact, should still be current among us, his
writings on art, in which his genius had full course, should be
comparatively neglected. However that may be, as one who has been
greatly stimulated by those writings, I propose to try to produce a
faint echo of one of them by speaking successively of the lamps of Greek
art, lamps which give us light and serve to show our way. I find in
Greek art eight notable features: (1) Humanism, (2) Simplicity, (3)
Balance and Measure, (4) Naturalism, (5) Idealism, (6) Patience, (7)
Joy, (8) Fellowship.

As my space is closely limited I cannot attempt to develop the subject
of Greek art in all its provinces and in all its bearings. I must limit
myself to the art of sculpture, the most characteristic branch, and the
only branch which has left us sufficient materials for the formation of
a satisfactory notion. And I must limit myself further to such of the
sculpture as represents the human form. In the representation of some
animals, such as the horse, the later Greeks produced some wonderful
examples, but in the depiction of animals other peoples have rivalled
them, whereas in the depiction of men and women they stand alone.


I

_Humanism._ Three great discoveries lay open to the awakened spirit of
man, when he began to realize and reflect upon his surroundings. The
first was the discovery of God, which was mainly the work of the
Prophets of Israel, though no doubt Greece added much on the
intellectual side; and the religions both of Judaea and Greece were
carried to a higher point by Christianity. The second was the discovery
of man himself, which was in all essentials the great work of Greek
thinkers and writers. The third, begun in Greece, has been carried very
much farther in modern times, the discovery of nature and her laws. I
think that reflection will show that of the three discoveries the last
is the least important, for though it has vastly changed the habits and
the surroundings of mankind, and has offered him long vistas of material
progress, yet it has not changed his nature much, nor added greatly to
his happiness. We know how the delights of thought, of art, of poetry
and music have overcome barbarism and given to multitudes a new pleasure
in existence. But the results of scientific progress have not as yet
done all that we might have hoped for mankind. Every great discovery in
physical science has been turned, primarily, not to the welfare but to
the destruction of mankind. The ocean-going ship is tracked by the
submarine; air-ships are used to drop bombs on defenceless cities, some
of the most notable achievements of chemistry are poison-gases. We may
of course hope that this is but a passing phase, and that brighter times
are before us. But I venture to suggest that the true road to progress
cannot be found unless we preserve the Jewish and the Greek points of
view. We must not lose sight of the ethical and religious bearing of
science, and not be content with merely regarding it as a means of
exploiting the material world. Instead of harnessing the forces of
nature to true human ends, to happiness, we have allowed them to be used
for any purpose, moral or immoral, by any one who by cunning or pushing
has gained control of them. We have dehumanized the world, and allowed
it to ride rough shod over human life.

The discovery of man and his capacities, then, is the great gift of
Greece to the world. There were epics before the _Iliad_, but no epic
full of charm, of tragedy, of tears and laughter. There were
philosophers before Socrates; but they were busied in trying to find the
physical constituents of the world. Socrates took up the motto of Delphi
'Know thyself', and became the progenitor of all who study the nature of
duty and of happiness. In the same way there was much art in the world
before the rise of Greece, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in Crete. But it
was not a humanist art. It represented the worship of the Gods, battles,
and sieges, the life of the fields. But the human figures in these
scenes were conventional: there was nothing in them to stir the finer
feelings, to produce a love of beauty, to raise man above the ordinary
daily level. The Greeks knew of earlier works of art; but they declined
to be seduced, as the Phoenicians and Etruscans were seduced, into a
facile imitation of them. They realized, no doubt subconsciously rather
than consciously, that they were called to set forth a new and human
art, and had in them powers which could produce it. They began a process
which developed with astonishing rapidity, and which cannot cease,
unless, as seems now not impossible, barbarism reinvades a weary world.

'Man is the measure of all things' is the doctrine ascribed to
Protagoras of Abdera, which shocked the people of Athens and is attacked
by Plato in his more constructive mood. It is a doctrine lending itself
to abuse, and still more to caricature; but it is really the teaching of
Socrates no less than of Protagoras; and it has held its own from his
times to those of the Utilitarians and Pragmatists. Certainly it is at
the basis of the Greek view of life, in which man with his feelings, his
faculties, and his endeavours, stands in the foreground, and all else
appears as a vague background.

It was quite natural that as the Greek thinkers interpreted all
experience in relation to human powers and faculties, so the artists of
Greece thought of all nature in terms of the human body. Thus while the
stern monotheism of later Israel absolutely prohibited the
representation in art of any living thing, and especially of man, Greek
artists entirely devoted themselves to such representation.

The great result of the working of the spirit of humanism in Greek art
was the representation of the Gods in human form. There is still
prevalent among us a survival of the Jewish hatred of the representation
of the divine element in the world by the mimetic art of sculpture. We
still repeat, day by day, the Jewish commandment, 'Thou shalt not make
to thyself any graven image'. Now I am not going to find any fault with
the intense feeling of iconoclasm, which was one of the mainsprings of
Jewish religion. I have no doubt that in the development of that
religion, hatred and contempt for the idols of the surrounding nations
was of inestimable value to the race. The struggle, ever renewed,
against the invasion of idolatry was necessary to the development of
that pure prophetic religion which it was the highest mission of the
Jewish race to set forth and propagate in the world. I would not even
speak against the echoes of it in the modern world. To the Moslems of
our days, as to the ancient Jews, it appears to be a necessary corollary
of any lofty and spiritual conception of the divine. And when we read of
the destruction of religious images by our Puritan ancestors we cannot
withhold from them an inner sympathy. The hatred of images was one side
of the pure and passionate belief in spiritual religion which it was the
mission of the great Reformers to revive and propagate in Europe.

But it is possible to appreciate this side of religion without being
blind to other aspects of it. Our religion comes not only from Judaea,
but also from Greece. The Jewish passion for the divine righteousness
lies at its roots. But that passion is consistent with narrowness,
bigotry, inhumanity. For the modifications of it which come from the
working of the spirit of humanism we have to turn to the Hellenes, for
the feeling of the likeness in nature between God and man, the love of
the beauty of the created works of God, the joy in whatever is sweet,
whatever is comely, whatever is charming. The beauty and majesty of God
appealed to the Greek, as the unapproachable transcendence of God
inspired the Jew.

So it fell to the Greek artists to try to set forth in marble and in
bronze the gentler and more social side of the divine nature. There is a
sweet reasonableness in the words of Maximus of Tyre: 'The Greek custom
is to represent the Gods by the most beautiful things on earth--pure
material, the human form, consummate art. The idea of those who make
divine images in human shape is quite reasonable, since the spirit of
man is nearest of all things to God and most godlike.'

The whole history of Greek sculpture, from its rise in the sixth century
to its decline in the third, is inspired by this desire to represent the
divine by the most beautiful things on earth. The sculpture of the great
nations of the East, Egypt and Assyria, is full of figures of the Gods,
and of scenes of worship. But these figures do not rise above the human.
The gods appear as conventional figures, mere ordinary men and women.
And to distinguish them from mortal beings, the artists of the East
proceed in the manner of symbolism: they make additions to the human
types which are to signify the divine attributes, but do not really
embody them. They add wings to represent the swiftness of the deity,
wings not meant for actual flight, but only symbols of rapid motion.
They represent them as victoriously overthrowing wild beasts and
monsters, which stand for the powers of evil, ever bent on thwarting
their action. In some of their most archaic works, the Greeks fall into
the imitation of this way. They represent Apollo flanked by two
vanquished griffins, Artemis with wings, and holding in her hands
captive lions. But their artistic sense soon revolted against such crude
and clumsy ways of representation. They began to try to represent the
divine character of their deities, not by arbitrary and external
symbols, but by modifying the human types in the direction of the ideal.
Sometimes, indeed, in later art we find survivals of early symbolism in
the form of an attribute. Hermes is still winged, but the wings are
transferred to his cap or his boots. Zeus may still carry the
thunderbolt, the symbol of his rule over the storm. Apollo may be still
radiate, combining human form with the rays which proceed from the
visible sun.

But these are only survivals, and do not affect the process, carried on
by artist after artist and school after school, by which the gods
absorbed ever more fully the qualities of the most perfect manhood.
Zeus, as father of gods and men, is an idealization of the human father,
combining justice and dignity with benevolence and kindness; Athena
becomes the embodiment of the divine reason and wisdom, perhaps the most
fully idealized of all the forms of the gods, since this armed and
victorious virgin with wisdom seated on her brow had little in common
with the secluded and domestic women of her city of Athens. Apollo has
not the muscles of the trained athlete, but in his nobleness of
countenance and perfect symmetry of shape, he stands for all that a
young man might grow towards by self-restraint and aspiration. At a
somewhat lower level Herakles bears the form of the wrestler, admirably
proportioned but more powerful than even the greatest of athletes;
Hermes is the ideal runner, every muscle adapted to swift and lithe
movements.

Thus in the types of the gods which were produced when Greek art was at
its best we have a series of supermen and superwomen who represent the
highest and best to which mortals can hope to attain, types embodying
the highest perfection of body and mind. The influence of those types
has gone on from century to century, never in the darkest ages wholly
forgotten, and serving at all times to redeem human nature from foulness
and degradation. All through the history of art they have been acting as
a raising and purifying element.

It was not until the decay of the Olympic religion in the fourth century
that these types fell to a lower level. The sense of beauty in the
artist remained as keen as ever, the technique of art even improved, but
the religion of humanism was debased by less noble tendencies, and the
gods took on too much not the nature of man as he might become, but the
form of man as he actually is in the world.

Not the forms only of the gods, but the history of their appearances on
earth and their dealings with mankind found expression in painting and
relief. Plato, as we know, condemned the myths of the gods as unworthy
from the ethical point of view. But we shall misjudge myths if we
suppose that they were actually believed in, or served to regulate
conduct. What they did was greatly to further the picturesqueness and
joy of life. And when they became less important in cultus they survived
in poetry, and served greatly to temper the harsh prose of actual life.
We must remember that some of the Jewish tales which have so much
interested and charmed our forefathers are hardly to be defended on
strict ethical principles, yet they have been a leavening and widening
influence. Who would wish to expel from churches the stories of Adam and
Eve, of Joseph and David, on grounds of ethical purism? The life of the
many is not so highly decorated that we should wish to expel from it
elements so pleasing.

As the Gods tend more and more to take forms beautiful but entirely
human, so do the notable features of the landscape, rivers and
mountains, sky and sea, take on themselves human shape. Sun and moon,
wind and storm, are completely humanized. The society of Olympus, the
powers manifested in nature, appear in sculpture as a human society, but
of more than human beauty and dignity. And such rendering of the gods
leads, as we shall presently see, to an ideal rendering of men. As the
gods come down in the likeness of men, so men are raised to the level of
the gods. Hence the intrinsic and inexhaustible idealism of Greek
sculpture, to which I will presently return.

Few works of art more fully and more attractively show the
anthropomorphic tendency of Greek art than the sunrise vase of the
British Museum. It shows us the whole morning pageant of nature
humanized. On the right appears the sun-god driving a chariot of winged
horses, who rise out of the sea. Before him the stars, represented as
youths, plunge into the water. To the left is the moon-goddess on
horseback, setting behind the hills, on one of which is a mountain-god
in an attitude of surprise. Before the sun hurries Eos, the winged dawn,
who by a bold citation of mythology is represented as pursuing Cephalus
the hunter, of whom she was enamoured. We have the features of the
daybreak; but they are all represented not as facts of nature, but in
their influence on Gods and men.

I do not figure this vase, as I have already done so in my _Principles
of Greek Art_; but instead I give an almost equally beautiful
representation from the lid of a toilet vase in the Sabouroff Collection
at Berlin. We have here the same three figures of the sun-god, the
moon-goddess, and the winged dawn, who, however, in this case is driving
a chariot. The form of the whole group and the radiate symbol in the
midst stands admirably for the vault of heaven (Fig. 1).

[Illustration: Fig. 1. VASE REPRESENTING SUNRISE]

Another extreme example of anthropomorphism is the embodiment of the
sustaining power of the pillar in the so-called Caryatids of the
Erechtheum (Fig. 2). Really they are Corae, maidens dedicated to Athena,
and willingly in her service bearing up the weight of the architrave of
her temple. Possibly the notion is not wholly satisfactory; but if it be
tolerated, could it have been more nobly carried out? The square and
stalwart form of the women, the mass of hair which strengthens their
necks, the easy pose, all make us feel that the task is not beyond their
strength or oppressive.

[Illustration: Fig. 2. CARYATID of Erechtheum]

Beside the Greek Caryatid I must be allowed to place a modern version,
by Rodin. For the power and the technique of Rodin I have great
admiration; but when his works are placed beside those of Greece, we
feel at once their inferiority in dignity, in simplicity, in ideality
(Fig. 3).

[Illustration: Fig. 3. CARYATID by Rodin]


II

The second lamp of Greek art is _Simplicity_. The artist sees quite
clearly what he desires to produce, and sets about producing it without
hesitation, without self-consciousness, with no beating about the bush.
Of course the more primitive and less conventional a society is, the
easier it is for artists to be simple. In a complicated society
simplicity and directness are apt to be confused with what is
commonplace or even with the foolish. The simplicity of Wordsworth and
of Tennyson does sometimes cross the line. The Greeks had the great
advantage of coming before other cultivated peoples, so that there was
no commonplace to avoid. They could be simple, as the wild rose and the
primrose are simple. What could be more simple than the _Iliad_? The
same simplicity marks Greek sculpture. It requires no great exercise of
the intellect to understand it. It presents every figure in a clear and
unsophisticated way.

As there is no more sure sign of a fine nature than the absence of
self-consciousness, so there is no more sure sign of greatness in art
than simplicity. The Greeks did not strive to be original, to make
people stare, to do the unusual. One of the most usual subjects in Greek
relief is a battle between male warriors and Amazons. Such battles adorn
many temples. And in every case they are distinctive in style. One could
not mistake a group from the temple at Phigaleia for a group from the
Mausoleum. And there is no sameness: almost every group has some point
or touch of its own, which makes it a variety on the usual theme. One
Amazon is falling from her horse, one is asking for quarter, one is
following up a retreating foe. But no group is insistent that the
passer-by should look at it. The relief was the decoration of a temple;
and if its originality drew men's attention from the temple itself, or
from the Deity seated enthroned within, it might justly be accused of
impertinence, of exceeding due measure. The sculptor did his best; but
he was careful to do nothing which was out of harmony with its
surroundings. He sank himself in his work. And even when he was engaged
on a more serious substantive work, what he most avoided was the
incongruous and unbecoming. He so worked that the attention of the
spectator was concentrated not on the character of the workmanship, but
on the person or the subject portrayed. The idea which he tried to
incorporate in marble or bronze was not his own thought about the
subject, but the character which really belonged to it in the mind of
the people.

This singleness of purpose is well illustrated by a story about the
painter Protogenes. He painted the figure of a Satyr, and beside it, as
a trifle, he inserted a partridge. But when he found that admiration for
the lifelikeness of the partridge tended to distract the attention of
visitors from the main figure, he painted it out.

No doubt simplicity implies limitation. It is not easy in any age to
strike the deepest note without some surrender of simplicity. The higher
phases of the mental and spiritual life, mysticism, symbolism, and the
like are not to be expressed with complete simplicity in any form of
art. One cannot deny that the Greek view of life was limited; that the
Greeks did not attempt to represent in art the highest aspirations of
the soul. It was an entirely perverted ingenuity which sought a
generation ago to find mystic meaning in the representations on Greek
vases. Attempts to portray the Deities of the Mysteries scarcely count
as works of art. Such figures as Sabazius, Isis, Mithras, only come into
ancient art in its decadence. I would not maintain that the modern
world, with its infinitely varied emotions, or the higher aspirations of
religions like the Christian or the Buddhist, could be satisfied with
such simple schemes as those of Greek sculpture, which appeal to human
instinct and human intelligence rather than to the more recondite
emotions. Such emotions, however, in my opinion, do not find any
appropriate embodiment in the arts of which I am treating--the graphic
and plastic arts. In poetry they have at all times found a noble
expression; and in modern days a perhaps still completer expression in
music, which was in pre-Christian days in a very rudimentary condition.
But painting is but ill suited to the rendering of these vague
aspirations. And still more unsuited is sculpture, the most imitative
and objective of all the arts. The attempts which have been made in
recent years by some sculptors to give a mystic turn to their art seems
to me doomed to failure by the essential nature of sculpture. A Western
mind can have little sympathy with the art which has moved most on
mystic lines, the art of India, which in such efforts has abandoned the
search for beauty, and so given up the really artistic point of view.
Mere prettiness no doubt is an unsatisfying ideal: but a loftier beauty,
in harmony with the world around us and the soul within us, is another
thing.

In order that simplicity may be in the highest degree admirable, it must
be combined with two other qualities--intense love of beauty, and the
utmost patience in execution. It must not lead on the one side to a mere
unideal copy of nature, nor on the other to a hasty and slovenly kind of
work.

The figure already mentioned, the Caryatid of the Erechtheum, is a model
of perfect simplicity. For further illustration of the quality I have
chosen the bronze charioteer from Delphi, and the Artemis from Gabii,
now in the Louvre. The former (Fig. 4) is a youth of noble family, clad
in the long dress necessary to protect from the wind a man driving a
chariot. The latter (Fig. 5), a work of the school of Praxiteles,
represents a young girl fastening her dress on her shoulder. Both are as
free as they can be from any attempt at novelty or originality: yet no
one with any taste could for a moment hesitate to pronounce them
admirable. The object of the artist was to make works as perfect as
possible. And to that end he goes straight, without any complication,
and without the least care that others may have done similar works,
against which he must assert originality.

[Illustration: Fig. 4
CHARIOTEER of Delphi]

[Illustration: Fig. 5
ARTEMIS of Gabii]

Beside the two figures I have cited I place a more modern group (Fig.
6), also by a man of genius, Peter Vischer. It has the same simplicity
and the same care in execution as the Greek works, but in beauty it will
not compare with them; and one feels regret that so great an artist
should have spent his powers on so unsuitable a subject as the rivets
and plates of a suit of armour. The lady, though not without charm,
seems artificial and affected beside the exquisite freshness of the girl
of Praxiteles.

[Illustration: Fig. 6. KNIGHT AND LADY
By Peter Vischer]


III

The third lamp of Greek art is _Balance and Measure_, the recognition of
limit and law. This is most obvious in architecture, and especially in
its most characteristic production, the temple. The form of the temple,
when once established, remained fixed, within certain limits of
variation, for all time. A most accomplished writer, M. Boutmy, has
admirably shown how all the constituent parts of the temple are related
one to the other, how a plan, a consistent rhythm, runs throughout it.
Each part has a definite function, which it accomplishes in the simplest
and clearest way. The pillars are made simply to support, and their
shape and slight decoration is in accordance with that purpose. Their
form ensures a maximum of stability. The channeling or fluting carries
the eye of the spectator upwards to the capital which swells outwards to
support the heavy straight line of the cornice. Above the cornice, the
grooves of the triglyphs carry on the lines of fluting from the columns
towards the roof. The walls of the temple are not primarily intended to
support, but to enclose the sacred cella, and are adorned only at their
upper edge, as a curtain might be, with a decorative frieze. The whole
building is thought out as a home for the statue of the deity which it
encloses; and no part is allowed to adorn itself except in subordination
to this general purpose. Like the shells of molluscs or the hives of
bees, it is the direct embodiment of an idea, a purpose, only a
conscious and reflective, not a merely instinctive purpose.

The sculptural decoration, which is so striking a feature of the temple,
is also carefully subordinated to purpose and idea. No part of the
structure which bears a strain, if we except one or two early and
unsatisfactory experiments, was decorated. The business of column and
architrave was to bear weight; and if they were ornate they would seem
less well adapted to that purpose. Only in parts of the building which
were from the point of view of construction otiose, such as pediment and
metope, was the art of the sculptor allowed to play; and even then it
was bound to play appropriately to the nature of the deity within and
the festivals of which the temple was to be the focus. There was no room
for cross-purposes or disturbing thoughts.

This rigidity of form and subordination to reason is as characteristic
of Attic tragedies as of temples. It would indeed be possible to work
out a close parallel between the two forms of art. But we must return to
our immediate subject, sculpture. Temple sculpture exhibits the
qualities of balance and measure in the highest degree. In case of the
pediment there is a central point, just under the apex, where the
dominant figures of the scene portrayed are placed; and on either side
of this central figure or group, figure balances figure, until we come
to the corners, which are occupied by reclining forms, dying warriors,
or river-gods or spectators. In case of the metope, the square field is
filled with two or three figures balanced about a central line, a scheme
self-contained and harmonious, which may be compared to a geometrical
diagram, and carries simplicity to the farthest point.

Rhythm, balance, symmetry are the translation into sculpture of the
spirit of discipline and self-control, which the Greeks learned by hard
necessity. The civilization of the Ionians in Asia is a brilliant
sunrise, an overflowing of the delight in life, in beauty, in the
exercise of all the faculties, which for a time dominated Greece itself.
And their art was joyous and free. The artists of Ionia invaded Athens
in the sixth century, visiting the luxurious court of Peisistratus, and
inspiring Peloponnesus, even Sparta, as the excavations of the British
School in Athens have abundantly shown. But the Ionians were trodden
down under the heavy foot of Persia: excess of freedom and want of
cohesion and discipline was their ruin. The Great King of Persia was
determined to trample in a like manner on Greece Proper; and he would
have succeeded but for the discipline and devotion of the Dorians. It
was the Spartans, aided by the brilliant military talent of Miltiades
and Themistocles, who saved Greece from slavery. A military caste, like
the Templars and Hospitallers of mediaeval Europe, they furnished the
backbone of the Greek army and dispersed the hordes of Asia as easily as
did the hardy Macedonians of Alexander the Great a century and a half
later.

The Athenians, with their quick wits, understood whence came their
salvation, and in the early part of the fifth century the tide of Ionian
influence was turned back, and Dorian manners, Dorian dress, Dorian art,
became dominant from Thessaly to Laconia. It is precisely the Dorian
ideas of discipline, of measure, of self-control, which entering into
the art of Greece made it a noble and continuous development, instead of
a mere brilliant flash. Plato was well aware of the dangers which beset
the Athenians from their extreme versatility and want of reverence, and
he foresaw how these qualities would in the end destroy the civilization
which they had adorned. He so clearly saw this that he was inclined to
prefer the conventional and monotonous art of Egypt to the brilliant
Greek art of his own time. This is, of course, to carry ethical
prejudice to the length of fanaticism, and to transgress the very law of
moderation which inspired him. But it was only in his old age that he
went thus far.

This careful balance and proportion may be observed, as has often been
pointed out, in the designs of Greek vases, where the painted subject
not only is in itself a balanced scheme, but is also planned in relation
to the shape of the vases themselves. A group suitable to an amphora
would look out of place on a drinking cup. And in the cup itself the
outside requires a different treatment from the inside. The whole is
planned not merely to give free scope to the artist, but to be
appropriate, fitting, harmonious. Our first figure well illustrates this
thesis.

Even in the case of substantive sculpture, figures or groups made to
stand by themselves in market-place or portico, the Greek love of
harmony, or as they would have put it, of rhythm and symmetry prevails:
ancient critics in those accounts of Greek sculpture, of which fragments
have come down to us in the writings of Pliny and Quintilian, lay great
stress on these features. They show us that whereas in early art a
merely external and mechanical balance had prevailed, in the course of
the fifth century this love of order and measure was taken into the very
being of art. Pythagoras of Rhegium, whose works are unfortunately lost
to us, made great progress in rhythm and symmetry. His contemporaries,
Myron and Polycleitus, who carried the athletic art of Peloponnesus
almost to its highest point, were celebrated, Myron for the rhythm in
motion which he infused into his sculpture, Polycleitus for the careful
balance of his athletes and the system of proportion which he embodied
in their figures. Pheidias was more essentially ideal than either of
these, as we shall presently see, but he also most diligently preserved
in the Parthenon and other works a spirit of measure and reasonableness.

Measure and balance in art differ widely from mere convention. 'Order is
Heaven's first law.' All fine character is formed, not by following
random impulses as they arise, but by making them conform to reason and
duty, disciplining them as wild horses are disciplined and taught to
serve mankind. Horses indeed may be over-disciplined, and by cruelty all
spirit may be taken out of them. And men may be over-disciplined, so
that their impulses die away from inanition. The Spartans were
over-disciplined; and through constant repression of natural tendencies
they became mere machines, and before long died out. But reasonable
restraint imposed on strong natural tendencies produces noble results in
all spheres of activity.

The same thing is true in art. Measure and discipline do not of course
make it easier to produce works of art; for in the nature of the case
discipline is at first grievous and is felt as a barrier. But for the
production of good and lasting works of art, discipline and law are
necessary. Take as an example the art which is simplest, poetry. It is
easier to write blank verse than to write sonnets. But it is far easier
to write _good_ sonnets than good blank verse, simply because the
constant restraint of the form stimulates thought and invention,
prevents too great haste, exercises the ingenuity. In the same way the
somewhat rigid laws of composition of pediment metope and frieze
compelled the Greek artist to think out schemes suitable to those forms.

It would not be possible to find a better example of order and balance
in reliefs than is furnished by the magnificent sarcophagus from Sidon
(Fig. 7), on one side of which is represented one of the victories of
Alexander the Great. At first sight it may seem a confused mêlée. But
when we look closer we see careful arrangement underlying the apparent
disorder. Alexander, charging from the left, is balanced by Parmenio
charging from the right: the horseman in the middle between the leaders
seems to come out of the background; and on either side of him is a
fighting group, to the left a Macedonian foot soldier fighting a Persian
on foot, to the right a light-armed Greek resisting a Persian horseman.
Two Persian archers balance one another. There are in the scene five
Greeks to eight Persians, indicating the numerical superiority of the
latter. And if we knew more about the battle we should probably find its
principal phases hinted at in the groups. The relief tells us far more
about the battle than would a naturalistic representation of one corner
of the field. The Greek artist could not work without using his reason
and his sense of order as well as his skilled hand.

[Illustration: Fig. 7. SARCOPHAGUS FROM SIDON]


IV

The fourth notable quality of Greek art is _Naturalism_. Painting and
sculpture, being representative or mimetic arts, are dependent for their
effects on the careful observation and loving study of nature. Probably
this is not the feature in works of Greek sculpture which would be most
conspicuous to a modern eye. And it cannot be doubted that the habit of
exact observation produced by modern nature studies, our familiarity
with such helps to sight as telescopes and magnifying glasses, our
constant use of photography, have made most of us better acquainted with
the phenomena of the world about us than were the Greeks. But compared
with the works of preceding ages, Greek sculpture must have seemed
amazingly naturalist. Even works of the archaic period, like the
pediments from Aegina, show a knowledge of the human form infinitely
more accurate than any to be found in Assyrian palaces or Egyptian
temples. There is probably always a good deal of illusion in the minds
of the schools which are constantly springing up, which profess to break
away from all conventions and to go back to nature herself. To reach
nature except through human senses and human combinations is quite
impossible. And any artist who determines to give us nature merely as
the photographic plate or the mechanical cast gives it to us simply
wastes his powers, and produces a result of no interest whatever to any
one. According to Pliny Lysippus professed to take nature alone for his
teacher; but in fact the works of Lysippus, so far as we can recover or
trace them, are full of most definite style. An artist has to look at
nature through his own eyes, and those eyes give to what he sees a
character based in part on his own personality. Everything he sees is
refracted in the waters of his subjectivity, from which he cannot
escape.

Nevertheless, the whole historic course of Greek sculpture is steeped in
the study of nature; and we see as it proceeds more and more clearly the
results of careful observation. The artist had in fact opportunities for
the study of what he considered the one important group of phenomena,
human bodies, such as a modern artist cannot hope to compass. In the
baths and gymnasia where all young men of free birth spent part of their
mornings in running, leaping, wrestling, or swimming, he could daily
watch the beautiful bodies of athletes in every variety of pose and
action. He knew them as a trainer knows horses, or a fancier knows dogs.
He would have little need of a special model; but would daily observe
some fresh detail of muscles, some notable pose which he could add from
memory to his conception of the human body.

But in the greatest periods of art naturalism is not predominant. Its
constantly working tendency is kept in check by noble ideas and noble
style. There is in the development of sculpture a constant approach to
nature, but nothing of the nihilism which looks on all aspects of nature
as equally fit subjects for art. The artists of the pediments of Aegina
could not bring themselves to conceal the beautiful bodies of the
fighting warriors by rigid armour like that copied in Vischer's group.
Thus we find the paradox of armed men in battle, but without armour. The
utmost pains are taken with the nude limbs. In the wonderful bronze
charioteer found at Delphi (Fig. 4), which dates from about 470 B. C.,
the garment necessary to protect the man from the rush of air is very
simply treated; but the arms and feet, which the garment does not
conceal, are wrought with marvellous accuracy and truth to nature. It
seems almost as if the artist were compensating himself for the
extremely simple work on the drapery by an almost excessively close
study of nature where it was possible. The head, on the other hand, is
typical and not individual; for in fact individual portraits were
scarcely possible at the time.

This would be the place to speak of Greek portraits, if space allowed
it. I will only point out the erroneousness of the popular view, that
Greek portraits were conventional and uninteresting; and that it was the
Romans who introduced individuality into portraiture. It is strange that
a view which is utterly false should have gained such currency. It is
true that Greek portraits of the fifth and even the fourth century have
in them much of the type, and individual traits are softened in accord
with the strongly idealizing tendencies of the age. But from the third
and second centuries we have a great number of portraits which are in
the highest degree characteristic and individual, a wonderful gallery of
philosophers and poets and statesmen which for lifelikeness cannot be
surpassed. All the finest of the portraits of Romans were by Greek
artists. I can give but one example of really fine Greek portraiture, a
statue of Demosthenes of the third century B. C. (Fig. 8). It is a
portrait indeed. The long lean arms and the pose are quite as individual
and characteristic as the face with its melancholy expression and deep
lines of anxiety. We have the man from head to foot; not as is so often
the case in modern statues, a portrait head set on a conventional body.

[Illustration: Fig. 8. DEMOSTHENES
By Polyeuctus]

For comparison with Demosthenes I set a statue of a great modern
statesman, Abraham Lincoln, by Barnard (Fig. 9), not the best statue of
him, but one which is approved by many. It aims at truth, but only
attains caricature, by exaggerating Lincoln's awkwardness and
angularity, the size of his hands and feet, and the anxiety in his face.
This exaggeration has been proved by a comparison with many photographs
of Lincoln, which show that he was careful in dress and by no means
wanting in dignity. The statue of Demosthenes is marvellous for truth;
but it adds a touch of pathos; the statue of Lincoln misses the truth,
through exaggerating the least pleasing features of the subject.

[Illustration: Fig. 9. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
By Barnard]

When we want to ascertain how close Greek sculpture could come to actual
fact, we turn from the great ideal age to the Hellenistic period.
Lysistratus, the brother of Lysippus, began to take moulds in plaster
from individual faces. At the great medical school of Alexandria the
anatomy of the human frame, from which earlier ages in a spirit of piety
had shrunk, became usual: some of the great physicians, such as
Herophilus and Erasistratus, being noted for the completeness of their
study of anatomy. In the art of the third century B. C. we see the
inevitable result of such studies in a more precise and learned
rendering of the muscles and the skin. And artists no longer hesitated
to represent bodies wasted with toil and exposure to the weather, or
emaciated with fasting. There are many such figures in our museums,
showing a marvellously close study of the forms of peasants and old
women and children. I figure one of these, preserved in the museum of
the Conservatori of the Capitol at Rome, an aged shepherdess carrying a
lamb (Fig. 10). But it will be observed that close as this form is to
the facts of common life, there is yet in it nothing repulsive. It is in
a sense a type rather than an individual, a poem of nature rather
than a portrait. It is parallel to the pastorals of Theocritus. It
strongly contrasts with such loathsome figures as some modern sculptors
in their exaggerated love of fact, even if repulsive, have inflicted
upon us, such as the Vieille Héaulmière of Rodin (Fig. 11), a figure of
an aged and decayed prostitute. I know, of course, that some critics
would defend the last-mentioned work on ethical grounds, as showing how
hideous the decay of sensual beauty may become; but I venture to doubt
whether sculpture is an appropriate vehicle for a moral lesson of that
kind, because it can only represent and cannot explain.

[Illustration: Fig. 10
AGED SHEPHERDESS
Alexandrian]

[Illustration: Fig. 11
LA VIEILLE HÉAULMIÈRE
By Rodin]


V

So we come to the fifth lamp of Greek art, _Ideality_. It is in the
idealism of their rendering of the body of man that the Greeks have
surpassed all other peoples and left an imperishable record. The history
of Greek art is the history of a search for beauty, for poetry, for
whatever can charm and delight.

In the earliest sculptural works of Greece, as Lange the Dane was the
first to point out, we find not a direct imitation of the facts of the
visible world, but impressions taken from that world, stored in the
memory, and put together in accordance with subjective purpose rather
than objective law. It is indeed thus that clever children work, when in
the picture-writing of their sketch books they violate the laws of
perspective by combining separate aspects and memories of an object into
an inconsistent whole. They will not omit any peculiarity of a person
which happens to have struck them, even when in the profile which they
sketch it would be invisible. They think of a face as turned towards
them, of legs as walking past them. Every face must have two eyes, every
body two arms, whether they would be visible under the natural
conditions or not. In early Greek reliefs it is common to find the body
down to the waist full-face, the body below the waist in profile, with
no transition between the two. The well-known metopes from Selinus in
Sicily are good examples. It is a kind of procedure common to the early
art of all peoples. But the Greeks differ from other nations in this;
that when they improved away these early crudities they retained the
predominance of thought over things, of man over nature, in a word of
the ideal element in art. They regarded the body of man not, as the
materialists do, as man himself, but as a shell produced by the inner
working of the spirit, to be seen by the eyes of thought and
imagination, as well as by the bodily eyes. Hence they were always
aspiring from that which exists in appearance to that which lies behind
the mere phenomenon. They realized that nature, when she produces an
individual, never wholly succeeds, she falls short of the idea. And the
artist by a loving sympathy with the creative Spirit, may venture to
improve what she has made, to carry out her intentions more fully, to
incorporate more completely the idea. The Greek artist, appreciating and
venerating the body, tries to raise it to a higher and more perfect
level. A simple kind of idealism may be found in athletic art. In their
practice of athletics the Greeks did not, like the moderns, think only
of the number of feet an athlete could leap, or the space of time he
would take to run a distance. They thought also of his _form_, of the
rhythmic and harmonious character of his action. If an athlete showed
ugly form, they would hiss him, as they would an incompetent actor. Most
of their exercises were done to the accompaniment of the flute. In all
the statues of athletes which have come down to us, not one shows an
inharmonious development, powerful chest and weak legs, or muscular legs
and poor arms. It is more than probable that as the features of
Alexander the Great influenced the portraits of his officers and
followers, so the specially beautiful forms of some of the athletes who
were most admired, tended to create a type, something of which appears
in all the athlete figures of the time.

No doubt any one who is well acquainted with Greek types and with the
forms of modern athletes will observe that the Greek physical build is
not identical with that of our days. The equable climate and the
unstrained life of the young men produced something more rounded and
fleshy than we see in the north. Our athletes are less harmoniously
built, with more prominent sinews, more harsh and wiry in type. An
American trainer who is also a sculptor, Dr. Tait McKenzie, working as
some of the Greek sculptors worked, from the average measurements of a
number of young men, has produced types of strength and beauty, by no
means exactly like the statues of Greece, but in their way almost
equally beautiful. I instance the beautiful fifth-century figures of
Greek boxers, softened by idealism, but admirable for strength and
symmetry; and the Apoxyomenos, a man scraping himself with a strigil, as
was the custom in the baths (Fig. 12). This is a work of the third
century, after the artists had imported their knowledge of anatomy into
their works, which had effects both good and bad. And beside the
Apoxyomenos I place an athlete by Tait McKenzie, produced from the
careful comparison and measurements of hundreds of young athletes of
Harvard and Philadelphia (Fig. 13). This is a work of modern idealism
produced by similar processes to those to which we owe the excellence of
Greek athletic sculpture.

[Illustration: Fig. 12
ATHLETE WITH STRIGIL]

[Illustration: Fig. 13
ATHLETE, by Tait McKenzie]

The types of female beauty come into Greek sculpture later than the
types of male beauty. In Ionian and early Attic sculpture women appear
closely wrapped up in drapery. Pheidias and his contemporaries did not
venture to represent undraped women. They showed the beauties of the
female form not apart from, but by the help of, drapery. It was reserved
for the age of Praxiteles and Scopas to represent the Goddess of Love in
the guise of a nude woman; and Praxiteles made an apology for the
innovation by introducing the motive of bathing as an explanation and a
palliation. And even the Aphrodite of Praxiteles is remarkably free
from all attempt at sensuous attraction, or self-consciousness. Solid,
noble, and stately in form, she is a type or model rather than an
individual. Later sculptors, it is true, departed from this line of
simple harmoniousness, and tried to make the figure more attractive to
the average man. But it does not become weak, and it does not become
vulgar. The noble Aphrodites of the fourth century have fixed the type
of female beauty in school after school of artists down to our own time.

This ideal is perhaps for us best incorporated in the Aphrodite of Melos
in the Louvre, a work of the Hellenistic age, combining with the great
fourth-century tradition a perfection of detail and an informing life
which belong to a later time. But while most people of taste profess a
devotion to her, that devotion is usually untinged by knowledge or real
appreciation; for there could hardly be a greater contrast than that
between the bodily forms of the Goddess of Melos and those of the women
who are most admired in our days. I was almost disposed to figure side
by side the Goddess and the bodily forms which figure in our fashion
plates. The fashion plates do not represent women as they are, but as
they would like to be; they represent not the actual, but the modern
ideal. And what an ideal!

Some readers may smile at the notion of taking seriously these ephemeral
productions. But no one would take them lightly who was familiar with
the facts of psychology. We well know that when certain types of women
are set constantly before the rising generation as beautiful and to be
imitated they will necessarily exercise a great influence on the future
of the race. Young men will look out for such types to admire and to
court: young women will try to resemble them. The hideous mistake in
aesthetics will exercise a constant dragging power, pulling the young
away from the light and the air of heaven towards the caves of evil
spirits.

Few more charming representations of young womanhood in Greece exist
than the Artemis from Gabii already cited (Fig. 5). One must confess
that the divine element in it is but slight. But what could be fresher,
simpler, more exquisitely natural?

No doubt as in the case of men, so in the case of women, we must make
allowance for race and climate. A full and rotund development of
physique is far rarer in northern than in southern Europe. The English
race is taller, less solidly built, slighter than the ancient Greek.
Among us hard tendons usually take the place of solid muscles. And the
practise of athletic games by women undoubtedly tends to make them in
some respects conform more to the male type. In moderation physical
exercises may improve health and strength without tending to deprive the
vital organs of nourishment. But the overtrained woman is farther from
the healthy life of nature than the overtrained man. And whether the
overexertion be of the body or of the intelligence, it tends to destroy
true womanliness.

It is a pity that some sculptor does not do for the ideal of womanhood
what Dr. Tait McKenzie has done for the ideal of athletic manhood. Of
course the process would not be the same. No one wants an ideal type of
the female athlete, unless we wish to restore the race of Amazons, but
we do sorely need to have before our eyes types which embody the
physical ideal of efficient womanhood. At present while nude womanhood
in art conforms in a great measure to the Greek tradition, clothed
womanhood follows the types of the street, modified by the baseless
caprices of fashion. The two stand in unreconciled contrast. The Greeks
when painting women on a vase often drew their figures in outline before
they added clothes. But any one who tries to draw the outline of the
female figure beneath the clothes on a fashion-plate will stand aghast
at what he has produced.

Cicero repeats an instructive story in regard to the painter Zeuxis, who
lived about 400 B. C. He was commissioned to make for the people of
Croton a painting of Helen of Troy. He first inquired, what seems to
have been a matter of common knowledge, who were the most beautifully
made young men in that city, which was noted for its athletes. He next
asked that he should be allowed to study the forms of the sisters of
these men, judging that the sisters must partake of the beauty of the
brothers. Out of these he selected five girls for more continued study,
and by such aid produced his picture. We cannot suppose that he would be
so clumsy as to select at random beautiful details from each of the
five; in that way he would produce only an eclectic monstrosity. But,
working in the presence of beautiful examples, his sense of beauty would
rise in tone to the highest of which he was capable.

In this story several points are noteworthy. It shows that the type of
beauty in men was more advanced and more generally recognized than the
type of beauty in women. And it shows the Greek artistic mind ever on
the watch to catch some new note of beauty to add to the traditional
stock. Professor Brücke, in his excellent work on the beauties of the
human form, observes that in the ideal statues of Greece many features
may be discovered which in the actual world of men and women are very
rare, but the charm of which can scarcely be disputed. There went on
from school to school, and from period to period, a sort of accumulation
of beauty which was ever increasing. Every beautiful model which was
studied added something to what Brücke calls the stock of beauty at the
disposal of artists.


VI

The sixth lamp of Greek art is _Patience_ in striving after perfection.
In the finer work of Greek sculptors one finds an utterly ungrudging
expenditure of time and care which reminds one of the working of
Nature herself, Nature who is never in a hurry, who is never contented
with a hasty sketch, but works regardless of time. We are told of
Protogenes that he spent seven years on a single figure, and I think he
would have spent seven more if he had thought that he could thereby have
improved his painting. Nothing strikes one more strongly in such works
as the charioteer of Delphi and the Hermes of Praxiteles than the pains
taken with every detail. It is by careful work, continued through
successive generations, that sculpture attained such mastery in the
representation of the muscles of the body as we find in the Borghese
fighting figure of the Louvre, and such delicacy in the rendering of
drapery as we find in the Victories of the Balustrade at Athens, or the
Victory of Samothrace.

But the delicacy and minuteness of Greek work is of course most obvious
in the reliefs of coins and in gems. The coins were not primarily meant
to please the eye, but to circulate in the fish-market; yet a multitude
of the dies are so exquisitely finished that they lose little when
magnified to many diameters, and will bear the most critical
examination. The intaglio gems were meant for the sealing of documents,
the seal taking the place of the modern signature; but the figures upon
seals are in their way as finished as great works of sculpture. Seals
even more usually than coins gain rather than lose if they are enlarged.
Yet they were executed without the help of magnifying glasses. Their
subjects are taken from the widest field, the figures of deities, tales
from mythology, portraits, animal forms; like the coins they introduced
as an undercurrent to the prosaic life of every day an element of poetry
and imagination.


VII

The seventh lamp, which goes as naturally with idealism as care and
patience go with naturalism, is joy, _joie de vivre_. Keats has
expressed the Greek sense of art in an immortal line, 'A thing of beauty
is a joy for ever'. It was the overflowing gladness which lies at the
root of creation and evolution which took eternal form in the painting
and sculpture of the Greeks and inspired all their works. The same
irrepressible joy which gives colour to the flowers, sweetness to the
fruit, song to the birds, and sexual desire to mankind reached here one
of its most perfect manifestations. The life of the Greeks was by no
means one of unmixed happiness. Each city was not unfrequently at war
with its neighbours; and the penalty of complete defeat was sometimes
the razing of its walls, the slaughter of its men, and the enslavement
of its women. Disease, even plague, constantly ravaged the land; and the
resources of modern surgery and modern anaesthetics were not present to
curb their ravages. The life of the majority in country huts, and still
more in the slums of the cities, most of all in the mines, was rougher
and more sordid than is the case in the modern world, in countries in
their normal state. And the people had not even that hope of a blessed
hereafter which sustained the people of the Middle Ages. Yet under all
these clouds, their spirit was hopeful and aspiring. And their art
reflects ever the brighter side of things. Surely they were wise and
right. We seek out works of art not to foster pessimism but to inspire
optimism, not to show us the world of nature on its repulsive side, but
to reveal to us how much underlying beauty is to be found in it. ''Tis
life not death for which we pant, More life and fuller that we want.'

At the same time, Greek art in some forms was extremely serious and
keenly alive to the darker side of existence. The Greeks invented
tragedy, the poetical reflection of the severity of fate. Would any
modern audience be found, which would be prepared to sit for a whole
summer day listening eagerly to the grand expression by such poets as
Aeschylus and Sophocles of the power of Nemesis, the instability of all
prosperity, the misfortunes which hunt those who have the ill luck to
displease the gods? Surely not. And not in Greek tragedy only, but in
elegiac poetry and in epigram, we find perfect reflections of our most
gloomy moods. But for such expressions of sorrow and despair the Greeks
felt that sculpture, and even painting, were not suitable vehicles. They
belong to moods, and are not suitable for illustration in the market
place and the temple. The roads which led to Greek cities were
frequently bordered with monumental tombs. If in the reliefs and
inscriptions of these tombs there had been any telling echo of the
sorrow and regret of bereaved survivors, every one would have entered
the cities in a black mood. As it is, as every one who has been in the
museums of Athens knows, the sepulchral artists carefully avoided
anything which might harrow the feelings. They represented the dead at
their best, engaged in victorious warfare, or in athletic sports or in
the happy family circle. A gentle air of melancholy could not be
avoided; but there was nothing to shock, nothing to oppress the spirits.
The deceased represented seemed still to share the occupations and
pleasures of the living, not to be shut off from the world of happiness.

Milton has expressed, in his magnificent prose, the profound joy of the
world of the Renaissance at the recovery of the Bible, and free liberty
of reading it, after it had been shut away from the laity by the
organized Church. Equally intense, and more exuberant, was the delight
of scholars and artists, when the asceticism and pessimism of the Middle
Ages, which had given birth to such bodies as the Carmelite monks and
the mendicant friars, gave way before the revival of Greek literature
and art. The world seemed suddenly to have renewed its youth. No doubt
the sudden expansion led to foul excesses; but it was yet a great
landmark in human progress.


VIII

The eighth light of Greek art is _Fellowship_. Perhaps there is no
quality in it which is more instructive for our days than this. The
extreme individualism which is the most remarkable characteristic of
modern times lays the utmost stress on the right or the duty of an
artist to express _himself_ in his work, to work out his own vein of
originality, to give to the world a rendering of his own qualities and
individuality. And no doubt no great artist can help doing this in a
measure. When he works he must be himself; he can only see the world
through the medium of his character and talents. And as every man is a
microcosm, a reflection in miniature of the great world of human beings,
what is really good and original in an artist must appeal to something
in the human world; must have a meaning for people of a certain class or
a certain training, or a certain country. But whether an artist is the
better for a conscious attempt thus to externalize his personality;
whether he is improved by being self-conscious and reflective in his art
is a different question.

Scarcely any feature of Greek art is more impressive to a student than
its continuous and uninterrupted course. When once it has started it
does not turn back, but goes forward steadily, for a time rising
superior to difficulty after difficulty, attaining a higher and higher
level, then in the fifth century branching out in various directions
into styles and groups, then going on with great technical skill, but
with a loss of inspiration. It is a course of evolution as steady as
that of any kind of plant or animal. This shows that it did not depend
upon the rise of successive men of talent or genius, each of whom was
intent on expressing himself; but upon the rise and influence of
successive artistic schools, each of which did not merely follow the
personality of a founder or teacher, but stood for a phase in the
development of the common life of the Greek people. The schools were
Ionian or Dorian, Attic or Argive, and harmonized with the whole
civilization of such fractions of the race. Ionian art went with the gay
and pleasure-loving ways of the Asiatic coast. Dorian art reflected the
restraint, the balance, the self-control of the people of Peloponnesus.
Attic art not only conformed to the refined taste of the people of
Athens, but suited also the strong mental bias of the most intellectual
city which ever existed. Of course these schools did not flourish in
complete isolation one from the other; city influenced city and artist
artist; but in a far less degree than would be the case now. A school of
sculpture was a species; and all the individuals of the species were
more like one another than they were like any of their contemporaries
outside.

Thus when we examine any work of Greek sculpture, before the eclectic
schools came into being, we find it easy to determine its period, often
within narrow limits, and we are usually able to assign it with
confidence to a particular school, imperfect as is our knowledge of the
history of Greek art. But we can scarcely ever say that it is the work
of an individual artist, unless it stands on a basis bearing the
author's name, or unless ancient critics and historians have left us
detailed descriptions of a work which survives. I am speaking of Greek
originals; the copies of earlier works made by Greek artists of a late
period for Roman galleries are often so confused in style and so
careless in execution that they serve only to mislead, even if they have
escaped the Italian restorer of recent date.

Great and connected series of statues and reliefs, such as constitute
the sculptural adornment of such temples as that of Zeus at Olympia or
the Parthenon or the Mausoleum, are the joint productions of a number of
sculptors who worked together, no doubt under the general supervision of
some architect or chief mason, but probably under very little control.
Such works combine considerable variety in execution with a general
similarity so great that a superficial observer does not see their
differences. Public opinion in London seems to hold that Pheidias made
the whole of the pediments and the frieze of the Parthenon; though in
some cases contiguous figures are so markedly various amid the general
likeness as to prove separate hands. In the case of the Erechtheum at
Athens there is extant a long list of payments to a number of artists
for the several figures of the frieze. There was no general contractor,
no artist who hired his masons by the day, but every man who produced
one of the figures in relief was paid for it sixty drachmas, without
regard to its difficulty or its simplicity.

It is comparatively easy to get a set of skilled stone-masons to carry
out with exactness a plan of which all the details are worked out for
them, and which requires only faithful copying. And it must have been
easy for a set of Egyptian sculptors who made their figures according to
a rigid conventional pattern to produce a uniform result. But for a
number of skilled workers who were allowed great liberty in detail to
produce an harmonious whole was infinitely harder. And that the Greek
masons regularly accomplished this result shows how strong upon them was
the influence of the school. Nor did they merely work from nature; but
their production was of an idealizing kind. It is clear that they must
have had not merely similar tools and similar mechanical processes, but
the same purposes and ideals. They must have had what we should call a
collective personality. It is more than probable that among the workers
on the Parthenon were Alcamenes and Agoracritus, two sculptors who rose
to great fame. It is certain that among the workers on the Erechtheum
was Praxias, a pupil of Calamis, and probably a relative of Praxiteles.
The distinction between artist and mason, so marked in our day, scarcely
existed in Greece. The mason who had talent became a noted sculptor; and
the sculptor, instead of making a model in wax or plaster, set to work,
like Michelangelo, on the block of marble himself. Probably sometimes,
like Benvenuto Cellini, he cast his own bronze statues.

Generally in all great periods of art there is such fellowship. And in
sculpture in particular the design and the execution are so closely
connected that it is an abuse to assign the two functions to different
men, and even to different classes of men. Greece was pre-eminently the
land of productive guilds, of families of artists, of groups of workers
who were of one heart and one spirit, and who therefore worked in one
style. One of the closest parallels to a Greek school of sculpture is to
be found in the group of Pre-Raphaelite artists of the middle of the
last century, Morris, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Millais, Collins, and their
companions. This group had a religious or ideal starting-point in the
revived Anglo-Catholicism which arose in Oxford at the time, and they
had principles of art in common which they embodied in their work. Their
paintings, before they diverged one from another, form a distinct
species, and have an interest for the historian of civilization greater
than that of any other English school.


IX

In order that we may estimate the influence of Greek art on the
civilization of Europe, it is necessary briefly to trace its
reappearances through the ages. Its first conquest was Rome. The
victorious Roman Generals, Marcellus, Scipio, Flamininus, Mummius, and
others, brought to the imperial city, to adorn their triumphs, an
immense quantity of Greek sculpture and paintings, of which they robbed
the great storehouses of works of art in the temples and stoae of
Hellas, Sicily, and Asia Minor. The earlier Emperors, especially Nero,
followed their example, so that in the time of Pliny the naturalist all
the public places of Rome were crowded with sculptures of bronze and
marble and with the painted masterpieces of great artists. It became
fashionable for wealthy Romans, such as Hortensius and Cicero, to stock
their country-houses with such works. Even so, the demand was not
satisfied; and Greek artists were imported into Rome, where they set up
great workshops, and poured out an incessant stream of fresh works of
art. Of such our modern museums are full. Generally speaking they are of
little artistic merit, copies of various degrees of excellence of the
great works of earlier generations. For the Roman plutocrats had little
taste. Because certain figures or groups had a great reputation, and
especially because they had been purchased at a high price by Greek
cities and kings, the Roman collector liked to have copies of them in
his villa; and the artists who produced these copies were mere workers
for hire, without originality and without aspirations. Sometimes when
employed on such works as the Arch of Titus, or the Column of Trajan,
the novelty of the theme stimulated the artist to attempt something of a
more original kind. And occasionally the fire within took course and
produced a finer work than ordinary. Under the art-loving Emperor
Hadrian there was a sort of St. Martin's summer of sculpture; but its
productions were smooth, elegant and refined rather than original or
interesting. The charm of art was not appreciated by the Roman people;
only the few who professed cultivation really cared whether a figure was
good or bad, and even the few were a little ashamed of their
preferences.

Into the Roman Empire, in the first three centuries of our era,
Christianity gradually ate its way. It originated among the Jews, to
whom all representation of living things was hateful. And it developed
under the influence of Greek oriental mysticism, which had no kinship
with sculpture and painting; and so far as it had any expression in
those arts worked in the direction of that symbolism against which Greek
art was a protest. Thus we could not expect any fresh inspiration for
art from early Christianity; on the contrary, Christianity would work
upon it as a blighting influence. If we examine the remains of Christian
art in those early centuries, in sarcophagus and mural painting, we find
that it merely copied the contemporary pagan art, only changing the
subjects portrayed, and introducing a further development in the
symbolic interpretation of ordinary scenes.

Christianity offered almost no field for the exercise of Greek
anthropomorphism. The latter was closely bound up with polytheism and
hero-worship. The Christian Apostles and Saints, who took the place of
the pagan Deities, were men who had lived on the earth and whose deeds
belonged not to mythology but to history, although at the time the line
between history and mythology was not clearly drawn, and history was
largely diluted with myth. A few impersonations of nature, such as
river-gods, lingered on in the paintings of the Roman catacombs. And
winged genii were common there, whether cupids or cherubs it would be
hard to say. But there was no realm into which artistic fancy could
stray, filling it with super-men and super-women. Angels might be
portrayed; but they all came from the Jewish angelology; and there was
no artistic tradition as to their types: it was only later that the
types of Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and others were distinguished.

The second principle of Greek art, balance and symmetry, had almost
disappeared in pagan art in the Antonine age. The reliefs of triumphal
arches and of sarcophagi are crowded with figures inserted without order
or method. Even the mural paintings of Pompeii have escaped from
control; and show no purposeful arrangement. Law and order have given
place to individual fancy, unless in cases where earlier schemes are
adopted. And with artistic arrangement has disappeared all attempt to
idealize, to produce forms nobler and more beautiful than those seen
every day. The figure of Antinous is the latest in which we find any
attempt to produce a type of ideal beauty. Even the Virgin Mary and her
Son are depicted without any attempt to render them beautiful. Nor
indeed does naturalism fare better than idealism. The representation of
the human body is no longer studied. The figures are clothed: and the
clothing is purely conventional, while the features of the landscape are
far less carefully introduced than in Hellenistic Greek art.

In fact one feels that the artist had little interest in his art. Scenes
from the Old and the New Testament are the usual subjects. But the
depiction is little more than picture-writing, mere copies of
traditional groups. The only thing regarded as of any interest is the
meaning. The ethical and spiritual point of view overlies and smothers
any interest in the representation.

And this predominance of the didactic element over the sense of
proportion, the love of beauty, the appreciation of nature prevails more
and more as Europe slowly moves towards the dark ages. The lamps of
Greek art burn more and more dimly. They are never wholly extinguished;
for in all ages there are born artists to whom they are the light of
life; and in mediaeval carvings one finds here and there a touch of
humanism, most often in grotesque or satyric figures. We must never
forget that some of the later masterpieces of Greek work, such as the
Column of Trajan and the Arch of Beneventum, were always to be seen. And
little as they were appreciated by ordinary people, an artist here and
there derived from them some appreciation of the beauty of humanity.

Then in the thirteenth century the dry bones began to come together. The
breath of fresh life stirred Europe, or at least parts of Europe, such
as North Italy, Southern Germany, Eastern France. The magnificent Gothic
Cathedrals rising in the north called forth the talent of the painter
and the sculptor for their adornment. A great Christian art arose, and
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries flourished widely. Certain
qualities of high art it certainly had. It was lighted by the lamp of
fellowship. The sculpture was the work not of individuals, but of
guilds, groups of workers of the same style, and inspired by the same
motives. It attained to great beauty in decoration, in the adaptation to
architectural purpose of the forms of plants and flowers. Where it was
most defective was in the rendering of the human form, whether nude or
draped, for in such matters the artists had no schooling to be compared
with that of the Greeks.

When the full Renaissance came with the dispersion of the educated
Greeks through Europe, there was a conscious reawakening of the artistic
influence of Greece, contemporaneously with the revived interest in
Greek literature and philosophy. A few great works of ancient sculpture,
the Laocoon, the Dying Gaul of the Capitol, the Apollo Belvedere were
discovered; and collections of ancient gems and coins were formed by
many of the wealthy. We can judge from the life of Benvenuto Cellini how
profound was the effect produced by such discoveries. The great Italians
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries felt as if they had climbed out
of darkness into light. To rival works of Greek art was looked upon as
the highest ambition which an artist could cherish. Sculptors so great
as Donatello and Michelangelo took the scanty remains of Greek
masterpieces as their models, and measured their attainments by the
degree of success which they reached in copying them. The lamps of Greek
balance and symmetry, Greek idealism, and Greek naturalism were
rekindled, and the crowd of artists vied one with another in walking by
their light.

We may mark four stages in the rediscovery of Greek sculpture. The first
is the Italian Renaissance already mentioned. The second originated in
the visit of Winckelmann to Italy in 1755, and the application by Goethe
and Lessing of his discoveries to the judgement of contemporary art. It
tended greatly to the raising and purifying of the artistic taste of
Europe. The splendid promise of the Renaissance had degenerated into the
mannerism and extravagance of Bernini and his contemporaries.
Winckelmann called it back to simplicity, to self-restraint, to
ideality. But before long this teaching also was perverted; and such
sculptors as Thorwaldsen and Canova were misled by the defects of the
inferior examples of Greek sculpture, which were the only ones
accessible to Winckelmann, into a slavish copy of the antique or works
of an artificial grand style. Then came the third wave of revived Greek
influence, when the sculptures of the Parthenon found a home in London,
and critics were able to observe how infinitely superior the
masterpieces of a really great age were to the copies of Roman times and
the adaptations of the Hellenistic age. When Haydon the painter first
saw the Parthenon marbles he was immensely impressed; but that which
struck him most strongly was not the ideality, for which they have since
become proverbial, but the wonderful naturalism of much of their detail
in contrast to the grandiose conventions of his contemporaries. The
fourth stage in our knowledge of Greek sculpture comes from the very
fruitful excavations on Greek soil, especially at Athens, Olympia, and
Delphi, which have shown us how widely varied is the range of the
ancient sculptors, how many their styles, how admirable their technique.
This extension of our knowledge has not, it is true, as yet much
affected contemporary art, as art was affected by the teachings of
Winckelmann and the publishing of the marbles of the Parthenon. Until
last year there was no book in English setting forth the results of the
excavations of Delphi; and there is even now no book in English
performing the same service for the excavations at Olympia. Sculptors
are so little educated in the history of their craft, that they do not
easily learn from new sources of knowledge. But by degrees, beyond
doubt, the new views of Greek art will filter down to them. A few
recently discovered sculptures, such as the Charioteer of Delphi, the
Hermes of Praxiteles, the bronze head from Beneventum in the Louvre, the
Demeter of Cnidus, have by their overpowering charm affected artists and
art. And most sculptors profess a great admiration for Greek works,
notably Rodin, who, although the tendency of his works is not in a
classical direction, yet uses the strongest language in praising the
Greek masterpieces. But in general the tendency of art towards extreme
individualism and the search after novelty have more than counteracted
the somewhat shallow admiration of sculptors for what is antique.


X

At present religion and culture alike are struggling against the waves
of barbarism reinvading. It is not my business to speak here of the
forces which are trying to crush religion among us. But I may fitly
conclude by sketching some of the tendencies against which culture based
upon that of Greece is our best antidote. If I have rightly set forth
the principles of Greek literature and art in past pages, the nature of
their influence under present conditions will be clear.

I must venture on a parallel which seems to me very suggestive, though
some readers may regard it as risky. There are two great standards set
up in the past, to control the wayward fanaticisms of men, and to keep
them within the bounds of reason and good sense. The standard in
religion is set by the New Testament: the standard in art is set by
Greece. As at the Renaissance the peoples of Europe went back for their
inspiration and their models to the literature and the art of Hellas, so
at the Reformation they, or at all events the Teutonic races, went back
to the early records of Christianity, appealing to them against the
venality and corruption of the dominant Church. And ever since, at
intervals, there has arisen, alike in the field of culture and in that
of religion, an echo of the appeal to the classical past. It is to the
New Testament that Apostles like John Wesley and George Fox made their
appeal, setting up in opposition to the conventions and worldliness of
the Church in their times the spirituality and simplicity of the
apostolic age, just as Goethe and Lessing turned men's minds from what
was contrary to reason and good taste in their surroundings to Greek
beauty and simplicity. And however some of the followers of Wesley and
Fox may have gone beyond due bounds towards fanaticism, yet in every
branch of the Christian Society the influence of those modern prophets
has been renovating and purifying, just as the schools of critics which
followed Goethe tended greatly to increase among us sweetness and light.

In our schools and colleges, until quite lately, the religion of the New
Testament and the tradition of the Greek and Roman Classics have gone
together, the one preserving us from superstition and materialism in
religion, the other making war upon the inherited barbarisms and
brutalities which we have from our not very distant ancestors. The
spirit of anarchy in religion would persuade us that there is no divine
sanction for goodness and no eternal stamp on vice, that morality is a
matter of convention which every society and every nation has a right to
invert if it judges such inversion in the line of its interests. The
spirit of anarchy in art proclaims that all the works of nature are
equally beautiful or equally ugly, that nothing which exists is unfit to
be represented in our galleries and public places, that so long as a
picture or a statue arouses a sentiment it does not matter whether the
sentiment be one of delight and aspiration or one of horror. If once the
idea of beauty as the end to be aimed at be expelled from art, art sinks
like a stone to the bottom of the sea. Some people are ready to tolerate
any monstrosity in art, however remote from nature, however offensive
to decency, however repugnant to humanity. The whole artistic
inheritance of the race from the day when men began to climb out of
barbarism is liable to be thrown away by an age which has unbounded
confidence in its own wisdom.

I should, however, be sorry to stop at this point, for I might leave on
readers the impression that I am in favour of the mere imitation of
works of Greek art. That is by no means my view. In the last century
several sculptors, overpowered by the charm of the antique, produced
statues which closely followed ancient patterns, such as the Hope and
the Hebe of Thorwaldsen, some of the statues of Rauch and Schadow, and
the tinted Venus of Gibson. Such works were necessarily stillborn; they
had not in them any breath of the life of a new age, any attempt to
conform to changed conditions. Very different was the following of the
antique by Michelangelo. He admired with enthusiasm such works of the
Greek chisel as he knew; but he produced not dull and academic
reflections of them, but works of the most splendid originality and the
greatest charm. He imbibed not the letter but the spirit of Greek art;
and even succeeded better than most artists in combining that spirit
with a breath of Christianity.

The parallel which I have drawn may be carried farther. A reversion to
the letter of the New Testament writers has been often attempted by
considerable religious leaders of our time, especially Tolstoi and the
Quakers. They have gone back to the injunctions of the Sermon on the
Mount, and tried literally to abide by them. But it has become apparent
to all but fanatics that such procedure would be fatal to civil
government and civilized life. It is the spirit not the letter of the
teaching of Jesus which is life-giving. In just the same way an
acceptance of the mere externals of Greek art would not help us at all;
but a revival of its spirit would be a great inspiration to modern
artists. The lamps of Greek art will give light in any age. Greek
idealism, Greek balance and measure, Greek love of what is natural and
healthful, Greek simplicity and moderation are of the very essence of
good art in all ages. We can no more revive the exact conditions under
which art arose than we can import into England the clear air, the
bright sun, the clear-cut shadows of the Greek landscape. But we can
still look up to the philosophy, the poetry, and the art of Greece as
classical, as a revelation of what is most pleasing and most enduring in
human nature. And if we neglect them and reject them from the education
of our children, we shall destroy what has been ever since the
Renaissance the source of pure joy and refined feeling in the majority
of cultured men; we shall make a great gap which material prosperity, a
deeper knowledge of the secrets of nature, the invention of fresh modes
of amusement, can never fill. And if we trust merely to the reflections
of the Greek spirit in modern literature and art, we shall be acting as
the Roman Church in its darker ages has acted, in shutting away from the
people recourse to the primary documents of religion, and obliging them
to be content with such interpretations of those documents as the ruling
hierarchy judged to be useful. We must retain the right of appeal to our
classical examples, whether in religion, in literature, or in art.
Arnold was right. The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, Greek art remain the
stars by which we may direct our course over stormy seas.

P. GARDNER.




ARCHITECTURE


Nobody has ever disputed the beauty of Greek Architecture. We recognize
the justice of a description of the Parthenon as 'le suprême effort du
génie à la poursuite du beau'; but the layman must sometimes ask himself
what does it mean? Where did it come from, where did it go to, why is it
thought so beautiful, how was it that this people relatively
insignificant in power, in territory, and in numbers, was able to attain
to this astonishing supremacy in art? These are questions not easily
answered. The evidence is fragmentary and not always conclusive, the
ruins of a few temples and buildings, a technical treatise by a
garrulous third-rate writer in the first century A. D.,[125] the
anecdotes of an indefatigable collector[126] a little later, the notes
of a traveller in the second century,[127] and the materials collected
by the patient research of scholars and archaeologists, pieced together
on more or less ingenious hypotheses. Indeed, a great part of what is
written on Greek Architecture is simply hypothesis. There is not much to
go on, yet Greek Architecture (and by this I mean the architecture of
the sixth and fifth centuries B. C.) remains one of the great
outstanding facts in the history of the Architecture of the Western
world, and the Art of the age of Pericles is the fountain-head to which
artists still return.

    [125] Vitruvius, _De Architectura_.

    [126] Pliny the Elder, _Historia Naturalis_, xxxvi.

    [127] Pausanias, Ἑλλαδος Περιηγησις {Hellados Periêgêsis}.

Where that art sprang from, and how it grew, is largely a matter of
speculation. There have been legends of civilizations wiped out in
tremendous cataclysms that left no trace behind them. Vague suggestions
are made that the cradle of the race was in Asia. All we know for
certain is that the earliest civilizations of which actual historical
evidence remains are those of Chaldea and Egypt, and that the art of
these countries reached a high degree of attainment long before we come
upon the earliest traces of art of any sort in Greece. That both these
countries contributed in varying degrees to the art of Greece is
certain, but that is not the whole of the story. As we shall see,
another element comes into play, which made of that art almost a new
creation, differing in outlook and ideal from any art that preceded it,
stamped by the genius of a vigorous northern race with a character all
its own. The art of the East and the art of the West never really fused.
There is a difference in kind between the joyous vitality of pure Greek
art, and the gloomy vision of Asia, with its craving for the vast and
terrible, its sombre imagination, its lack of humanity and indifference
to the individual.

It is not, however, till far down in the progress of history that this
differentiation asserts itself. Greek art is relatively a late
development. The Great Pyramid at Ghizeh was built some 2,000 years
before a stone was laid of the masonry of Mycenae. The Hall of Columns
of Karnak, with its columns sixty feet high, was probably coeval with
the Treasury of Atreus: in other words, when the art of Greece and of
the islands was scarcely out of the barbaric stage, a wonderful art had
been in existence across the Mediterranean from time immemorial. Both
Egypt and Chaldea attained a high degree of civilization long before the
Dorians were ever heard of. At some remote period the Egyptian influence
penetrated to Crete and Cyprus, the islands of the Aegean, and the
mainland of Greece; and the intermediaries were the Phoenicians, that
enterprising race of merchant adventurers, whose home was in Syria, and
whose fleets traversed the Mediterranean from East to West. The
Phoenicians were traders and not artists. In Egypt they came into
contact with a highly developed art, beyond their comprehension in its
essential features, yet including details which could easily be
apprehended by their quick commercial intelligence. Wherever they
touched on their voyages, Cyprus, Crete, the southern islands of the
Aegean, the mainland of Greece, the south of Italy, Sicily, Carthage,
the Balearic islands, Spain in the far west, they probably carried with
them, for trading purposes, minor articles of Egyptian workmanship which
may have supplied hints to the indigenous peoples. Where they
established settlements, they reproduced what they could recollect of
the methods of Egyptian architecture, possessing at second-hand a
knowledge of technical methods in advance of anything within the
knowledge of the people among whom they settled. Rudimentary
anticipations of the Ionic volute are found in Phoenician capitals,
vague reminiscences of what the traders had seen in Egypt and elsewhere.
Moreover, the Phoenicians, who possessed the skill of sailors in the use
of tackle, would have had little difficulty in handling large stones set
dry in more or less regular courses, which was a characteristic feature
of Cretan and Mycenaean building. It is too soon to describe the work as
architecture. It is doubtful if the Phoenicians possessed any aptitude
for the arts. Their rôle was that of intermediaries only.

Obscure as was the part played by the Phoenicians in the early origins
of art in Greece and the islands, there was another channel through
which Eastern influences came to bear on its development, which is even
more uncertain. To the west of Chaldea and north of Syria, dwelt a race
of which little is known, the Hittites. Carchemish, their capital, was
on the upper Euphrates, north-east of Antioch, and their power appears
to have extended westward through Asia Minor to the shores of the
Aegean. Dr. Sayce says that in the thirteenth century B. C. it extended
from 'the banks of the Euphrates to the shores of the Aegean, including
both the cultured Semites of Syria and the rude barbarians of the Greek
Seas', he even says that the Hittites 'brought the civilization of the
East to the barbarous tribes of the distant West'. What actually remains
of Hittite art hardly bears out this statement. When the Hittite power
was at its height, Minoan 'art' had long been practised in Crete, and
according to the most popular chronology, had already passed its prime
and given way to the art of Mycenae and Tiryns. The scanty evidence of
Hittite art consists of bas-reliefs of figures and animals cut on the
face of rocks along the natural caravan routes through Asia Minor from
East to West. This and the evidence of seals and engraved gems show that
Hittite art was derived first from Chaldea, later from Egypt. It
undoubtedly exercised some influence on the art of the early Greek
settlers on the eastern side of the Aegean, and gave it an Asiatic cast,
which it never lost throughout all its later developments. For the
Greeks of Asia Minor never really understood the austere ideal of Doric
art. Ionian art crossed westward to Greece, but the Dorian never went
east. It was the art of a strong northern race, that found no place for
itself among the softer peoples of Asia Minor.

At this point we can take up the first rudimentary beginnings of Greek
art. The discoveries of the last forty years have proved the existence
in Crete and Cyprus, Southern Greece, and the islands of the Aegean, of
an archaic art of obscure origin, of very great interest, and of
remarkable attainment in certain directions, long before the earliest
beginnings of what we mean when we speak of Greek architecture. So far
as architecture is concerned, this archaic art is of relatively minor
importance. It plays a small part, if any, in subsequent developments,
and though enthusiastic explorers claim to find in it anticipations of
the details of modern domestic architecture, the evidence produced is
unconvincing. Great movements in the arts always owe some debt to the
periods that have preceded them, but Minoan and Mycenaean art, at any
rate in regard to architecture, was rather the last word of a decaying
civilization than the first herald of the glorious art of Greece in the
sixth and fifth centuries B. C. We are still far back in remote ages,
remote that is so far as Greek art is concerned, anywhere between 2000
and 1000 B. C. or even earlier,[128] back in the Minoan age of Crete
with its rudimentary architecture, and its relatively high excellence in
the crafts, and in the age of Mycenae and Tiryns, the age that produced
the Lion Gate at Mycenae, and that strange half-barbaric work, if I may
be pardoned the term, the Treasury of Atreus. It is worth pausing to
consider these archaic buildings, not so much to show a relationship to
later work (which scarcely existed), as to call attention to the fact
that the Minoan and Mycenaean builders were moving unconsciously in a
direction that would never have led to the column and lintel
architecture of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. It might have led
to some form of dome construction, it could never have led to the Doric
of the Sicilian temples. No stronger evidence of the genius of the
Dorian invaders could be produced than that, with this unpromising art
in possession, they were yet able in the course of three or four
centuries to create Greek architecture. The design of the Lion Gate is a
strange jumble of ill-adjusted motives. It is set in a wall of great
stones roughly squared and laid dry. Two monolith jambs support a huge
lintel, cambered in the middle like the tie-beams of our
sixteenth-century roofs. Above the lintel the courses are gathered over,
leaving between their lower faces and the top of the lintel a
triangular space of a steep pitch (about 60°), in which was inserted a
frontispiece carved on a single stone representing two lions standing up
on either side of an archaic column supporting a fragment of a
rudimentary architrave.[129] The heraldic pose of the lions and the
technique of their sculpture, so suggestive of Assyrian reliefs with
their splendid sense of muscular form and energy, are far ahead of an
architecture that is still barbaric, scarcely architecture at all. There
is here nothing to suggest the Doric of Paestum and Selinus, much to
recall the megalithic buildings of Syria, and the sculpture of the
farther East.

    [128] Sir Arthur Evans has drawn up an ingenious chronology of Early
    Minoan (2800-2200 B. C.), Middle Minoan (2200-1700 B. C.), and Late
    Minoan (1700-1200 B. C.). The evidence is almost entirely that of
    pottery discovered on the site. The whole question of the relations
    of Minoan to Mycenaean art, and of this archaic art to the earlier
    civilizations of Egypt and Chaldea, is very obscure and uncertain.

    [129] The heraldic treatment of the lions is of Eastern origin. The
    Greeks had a tradition that the chieftains of Mycenae came from
    Lydia.

[Illustration: Fig. 1. LION GATE, MYCENAE]

The Treasury of Atreus is still more remarkable, not only because it
shows more skill in building, but because its design is based on a
structural motive which seems to have been wholly abandoned by the
successors of the Mycenaean builders. The Treasury of Atreus (or Tomb of
Agamemnon) was excavated in a hill, and consists of a long passage about
120 ft. by 21 ft. wide, with retaining walls of megalithic masonry on
either side, terminating in a great entrance doorway. This doorway is
flanked on either side by columns tapering downwards, and decorated with
chevrons in a manner very similar to Norman work of the eleventh
century, and apparently intended solely for ornament.[130] The entrance
opened into a circular domed chamber about 48 ft. 6 in. in diameter, 45
ft. 4 in. high, out of which opened another smaller chamber. The dome,
in section, is built on the curve of a parabola, formed with courses
projecting over one another, and not set out radial to the curve of the
dome--in other words it is not a true dome or arch, but a succession of
corbels. The internal face of the dome is dressed down, and was covered
with ornament of some sort, whether metal rosettes, or enamelled
terra-cotta, or wholly in metal, possibly the famous gold of Mycenae, is
not known. The whole of this chamber was covered in with a mound of
earth, in accordance with the primitive custom of concealing the
chieftain's grave. It is impossible to find, in this extremely
interesting monument or in the domed chamber of Orchomenos in Boeotia,
any trace of future developments in Greek architecture. Both in
intention and in its psychological background it seems almost as remote
from the Doric Temple as the Great Pyramid itself. In point of fact
architecture was still in a rudimentary stage. It has been proved
abundantly that Architecture comes late in the sequence of the Arts.
People could draw well, long before they could design. Among the
cavemen, for example, there were admirable draughtsmen, but they had to
make their drawings on the sides of caves. That there existed in the
Minoan and Mycenaean ages skilful potters and metal-workers, is shown by
the vases of Knossos and the gold cups found at Vaphio near Sparta; that
they built habitable buildings and decorated them to the best of their
ability is also proved, as, for example, the palace of Tiryns, but it
has not yet been shown that their builders reached the degree of skilled
design, at which building becomes architecture. Architecture had not yet
found itself in Greece.

    [130] Portions of these columns are now in the British Museum.

Then somewhere about 1000 B. C. came the Dorian invasions, and the art
of Crete and Mycenae vanished into space--possibly the legend was right
which said that the conquered people of the mainland carried it away
with them to Asia. Anyhow, the three or four centuries following the
Dorian invasions are a blank which future research may fill out for us,
and so far as art is concerned, there appears to have been a _détente_,
during which the new race was settling down to its conquest, finding
itself, and assimilating something at any rate of the older
civilization. The survival of such buildings as the Treasury of Atreus
show that the Dorians were not simple barbarians, destroying all that
came in their way. Even Sparta in its earlier days was not a mere
military machine. Discoveries made in 1906-9 suggest that from the ninth
to the seventh centuries B. C. Sparta had some sort of an art of its own
showing traces of Asiatic influence in its pottery--a little later
Sparta concluded an alliance with Croesus, King of Lydia, and Bathycles,
an artist of Magnesia in Ionia, was treated with honour in Sparta. The
Dorians were something more than fighters, they seem to have possessed
some sort of civilization, and to have been endowed with a natural
capacity for the arts, which after two or three centuries of experiment
will find its own splendid expression within very definite and original
lines. The legend of the return of the Heracleidae was to be justified
by their later history. No merely imitative race could have evolved the
perfect manner of the great Doric temples from the scraps of Egypt and
the East, and the rudimentary buildings of Crete and Mycenae.

Greek architecture for the purpose of this study is Dorian architecture,
and its elements are simple. It was evolved in the design of their
temples, and with the exception of their theatres it was summed up in
these temples. From the period during which Greek architecture was being
built up to its maturity, say from the seventh century B. C. to the
completion of the Parthenon in the fifth century B. C., the whole life
of the Greek was  and dominated by his religion and its
observances; and his religion was not the sinister mystery of Egypt, but
on the whole a cheerful open-air Pantheism that gloried in the life and
beauty of the visible world in which he lived. He himself was content to
live in a poor house, so long as he had his market-place, his ceremonial
theatre, and the glorious temples of his Gods. Moreover, to whatever
depths the Athenians may have sunk in the time of St. Paul, in the
heroic days of Pericles they were remarkable for constancy of purpose
and the steadfastness of their ideals. They stood on the ancient ways,
and it never occurred to them to abandon the tradition of their fathers,
their business was to carry it forward to perfection. The result was
that the architecture of their temples proceeded on lines that long use
had made sacrosanct; and its technique is summed up in the history of
two orders, the Doric and the Ionic.[131]

    [131] The order, I may say for the uninitiated, means the complete
    ordonnance of the column, the architrave resting immediately on its
    capital, the frieze and the cornice. It is the final expression of
    the simple device of the post and lintel, of the beam resting on the
    heads of two or more posts; and there is little doubt that in its
    ultimate origin, the Order is the translation into stone of the
    details of a rudimentary wooden construction.

Now, the order, its character, dimensions and disposition, with the wall
of the Cella (or enclosed shrine) within the colonnade, summed up the
elements, the vocabulary, if one may so put it, of Greek architecture;
and we come here at the outset on a curious quality of the Greek genius,
and one that differentiates it from the Roman. The properties of wood
and stone as materials are clearly different, things can be done with
the one which are impossible with the other; but the Greeks either did
not realize this or did not trouble their heads about it. They found
that the post and lintel was a simple means of building, and they
adopted it as their permanent method of construction. If the span became
too wide, they thickened the posts (the columns of Paestum are 7 ft. in
diameter) and increased the strength of the beam (the architrave). Hence
the vast solidity of the Doric order of the temples of Sicily and Magna
Graecia. The Greek was incurious about construction _qua_ construction.
He found, in the column and the lintel, means perfectly adequate to
realize his ideal of high unalterable beauty, and he was content. The
Romans, who for a time were satisfied with these simple methods, became
impatient of the constructive limitation of the post and lintel. They
wanted to cover in great spaces, and to leave the floor unencumbered;
and concentrating on this they arrived at the arch, the vault, and the
dome, and so became the greatest builders of the world. To them, the
orders were a mere appanage of decoration, which they never properly
appreciated, of which they mistook the intention, adopted the worst
elements, and often enough made a gross misuse. The Greeks took another
line. They adopted the column and lintel once for all as the only
possible method of construction, and devoted all their labours to the
incessant refinement of this type, eliminating the unessential, arriving
by constant selection at the most perfect expression of their purpose,
and their purpose was not that of the Roman and the modern architect,
mainly utilitarian, it was directed entirely to the aesthetic appeal,
the appeal to the emotions through beauty of line, of form, and in a
less degree of colour. 'The whole fabric of Greek art goes to pieces
when it is brought into contact with a purely utilitarian nation like
Rome.'[132]

    [132] _Hellenistic Sculpture_, by Guy Dickins, p. 85. The author,
    who wrote with something of the insight of the artist as well as the
    accurate knowledge of the scholar, died of wounds, on the Somme, in
    1916.

Of the two orders, the Doric and the Ionic, the Doric seems to me the
purest embodiment of the true Greek spirit, in its faultless form, and
its austere restraint and rejection of the unessential. It was,
moreover, the order _par excellence_ of the Greek temple of the
mainland. The Erechtheum was the only Ionic temple of first-rate
importance in Greece, and the employment of the Ionic order in Greece
was confined to interiors and minor buildings. As for the Corinthian
order, the favourite order of the Romans, it was scarcely recognized by
the Greeks. In all their great temples, in Greece, in Sicily, and Magna
Graecia, they used the Doric order.

[Illustration: Fig. 2. TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE AT PAESTUM]

How this order was arrived at we do not really know. Ingenious
conjectures have been made as to its origin in wooden construction,
and though some of these conjectures are more probable than others they
leave us pretty well where we were in regard to the stages by which it
reached its final form. It has been suggested that the Doric column
originated in the wooden post of the earliest temples, such as are
supposed to have existed in the Heraion at Olympia. The square post
would have its angles taken off, and become an octagon, and the further
elimination of the angles would gradually produce a form nearly circular
in plan, in which the arrises of the chamfered angles would remain, and
this might easily suggest to artists so sensitive as the Greeks, their
further refinement and definition by a slight hollow between the arrises
which would constitute the flutings of the Doric column. Its derivations
from the Minoan and Mycenaean columns seems most improbable. There are
two essential parts in the Doric column, the shaft and the capital (the
Greeks did not use any base for this order). The Minoan columns taper
downwards instead of upwards, an utterly unconstructional form, and
though in the palace of Knossos and at Tiryns columns of this shape
appear to have been used to carry lintels, the stone columns on either
side of the entrance to the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae were used for
decorative and not for structural purposes. On the other hand columns of
great massiveness tapering upwards had been used long before in Egypt;
and though there is evidence against it, it still seems probable that
the suggestion of the shaft of the Doric column may have come from
Egypt. We first find it in Greece in the seventh century B. C. at the
period when Psammetichus I (671-617 B. C.) opened Egypt to Greek trade
and settlement. The Greek colony of Naukratis on the west side of the
Nile delta was founded by Milesians about 650 B. C. and by the middle of
the sixth century B. C. definite trade relations were established
between Naukratis and the mainland of Greece. The Greek settlement at
Daphnae on the eastern arm of the Nile appears to have been founded at
about the same time as Naukratis, in both cases with the sanction and
encouragement of the Egyptian king. The earliest Doric temples in
Greece, Sicily, and Magna Graecia date from the end of the seventh
century and early part of the sixth century. The nearness of date makes
it probable that the shaft of the Doric order had its origin in the
Egyptian column seen by some quick-witted Greek when trading in Egypt.
When we come to the capital of the column, the rôles seem to be
reversed, for we find nothing in Egyptian architecture to suggest the
echinus moulding under the square abacus of the Doric column; whereas
the Mycenaean column had a rudimentary capital which may have suggested
the idea of the Doric capital. But the notable thing about it is that
when we first come across the Doric capital in Sicily and Greece, it is
already far in advance of anything that had gone before it in Greece,
and it is quite different from the columns of Egypt. In the Doric temple
of Corinth (650-600 B. C.) the columns have already reached the type
form, the tapered shaft with its entasis or slight convex curvature in
outline, its massive solidity (the ratio is one of diameter to four and
a quarter of height), and the bold parabolic curve of the echinus
moulding under the abacus of its cap. In this form, the Doric column was
an absolutely fresh note in architecture. Archaic though they were,
these columns at Corinth show that the Greeks were already on the track
of those refinements of form, those optical corrections and
compensations, which differentiate Greek architecture from that of any
other race. The exaggeration in the entasis of the archaic column
disappears, its tapering was diminished, its height increased, and the
overhang of the capitals reduced, till in the Theseion (465 B. C.) and
the Parthenon (450-438 B. C.) we reach the final inimitable type. The
column, which at Paestum was not much over four times the height of its
correct diameter, is now over five times, the great overhanging
capitals are reduced to reasonable dimensions, the depth of the
entablature is diminished, the axis of the column is slightly inclined
inwards to give the impression of stability, the shafts have the slight
curve or 'entasis' just sufficiently marked to prevent the outline of
the column looking incurved; the lines of the stylobate, or continuous
base, on which the columns stand, and the entablature which they carry,
have a slight rise toward the centre in order to correct the impression
of the lines sinking in the middle; the columns at the angles are
thickened, because standing free with the light all round them they
would otherwise appear smaller than the columns standing against the
background of the building. Nothing was left to chance; every aspect of
the building, the relation of every part to the whole, and of the whole
to its part, was studied profoundly, so that there should be no failure
in its perfect harmony. Except in Egyptian architecture, and there to a
much smaller extent, nothing like this had been done before. What the
Greeks did, was to formulate a rhythmical architecture, in which each
part stood in a definite and considered relation to the whole, so that
even in their ruined state these Doric temples give an irresistible
impression of a great idea, a great architectural epic, in which each
detail, however beautiful, was subordinated to the unity of the
conception as a whole. It is this abstract quality which lifts Greek
Doric so far above the ambitious art of later ages, and indeed above all
but the very finest work of any period of architecture.

[Illustration: Fig. 3. DORIC TEMPLE, CORINTH]

Many attempts have been made to discover the secret of this wonderful
perfection of proportion. That the Greeks had a system of their own,
that they worked to definite ratios of dimension and number, and
employed graphic methods of determining their proportions, such as the
use of triangles and the like to determine the limits of their designs,
seems certain. But no contemporary account of any such system remains;
and all the explanations that are given are _ex post facto_, made by
theorists analysing existing buildings, not by architects designing new
ones. Some four or five hundred years later Vitruvius compiled a
treatise on architecture, in which, following the doctrines of the
school of Alexandria, he expounded a Greek theory of proportion on the
basis of the human figure. Vitruvius is obscure, and does not seem to
have been certain himself whether the proportion of the parts of a
design were to bear a relation to the whole, analogous to that of
members of a human body to the body as a whole, or whether the
proportions of the order were to be taken from the actual proportions of
the human body; and he complicates the position by reference to the
'perfect numbers' of the Greeks. But here again he was uncertain whether
the 'perfect number' was ten or six. After which, and having, in his
reference to the human figure as the canon of proportion, unwittingly
set a trap for the scholars and artists of the Renaissance, he drops the
subject and digresses into a general classification of temples, with
formal rules for the placing and dimensions of columns, which have
formed the staple of treatises on classical architecture ever since. One
should speak with gratitude of the labours of Vitruvius, because, after
all, his is the only technical treatise left us on the subject; but he
applied to the pure Greek temples a system evolved centuries later by
critics and theorists; he was thinking chiefly of Roman versions of
Greek architecture, and he was more interested in technical rules and
precepts for the use of architects than in that abstract beauty which
was all the Greek cared for. No classification, however laborious, will
reach the mystery of Greek architecture. Its beauty is too subtle to be
reduced to any formula.

The Doric order reigned supreme throughout the great period from the
sixth till the end of the fifth century B. C. It failed with the failure
of the high ideals of Athens. Other forces came into play to which it no
longer responded, and later Greek critics even found fault with the
Doric order for certain 'mendosae et inconvenientes symmetriae';[133]
but that order, the true symbol of the sons of Heracles, was one of the
most momentous contributions ever made to the art of architecture. It
was the keynote of Greek architecture throughout its finest period.
Later it was superseded by the Ionic order, and when Rome became
paramount in the western world, that, in its turn, yielded its place of
pride to the Corinthian order, opulent, luxurious, a little vulgar, a
true register of the lowering of the sense and standard of beauty that
followed the downfall of Athens.

    [133] _Vitruvius_, iii. 1. The difficulty was, that if the triglyph
    was placed on the angle of the building (the practice of the Greeks)
    and the next triglyph was placed over the axis of the column, the
    metope (or panel) between these two triglyphs would be larger than
    the metopes between the triglyphs axial over the other columns. The
    Greeks solved it by reducing the width of the end intercolumniation,
    but later critics disliked this, and solved it by removing the end
    triglyph from the angle and placing it axial over the end column.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Aegean, the Ionic order was reaching
its perfect form through a similar process of systematic thought on a
type definitely adopted. The Greek colonies in Asia Minor were of very
early origin. Legend attributed their foundation to the earlier
inhabitants of Greece, driven out by the Dorians. By the sixth century
B. C. the Greek colonies were well established on the west and
south-west coasts of Asia Minor, and had evolved their own
characteristic architectural idiom in the Ionic order and its column,
more slender than the Doric, with its moulded base and its strange
characteristic capital, unsuitable from the constructional point of view
in stone or marble, yet ultimately attaining the exquisite beauty of
line and modelling of the capitals of the Erechtheion at Athens. Two
things seem fairly certain as to the origin of this capital; first, that
it was derived from the wooden horizontal head-pieces fixed on posts to
reduce the bearing of the primitive wooden lintels; and, secondly, that
the first suggestion of the volute reached the Ionian Greeks from the
East. A crude anticipation of the volute is found in Phoenician work,
and it also appears on a Hittite relief at Boghaz Keui in the middle of
Asia Minor. Its origin in either case was oriental, and we have here the
other motive in Greek architecture, Eastern, at any rate exotic, and, as
compared with Doric, almost alien to the true Greek genius. Yet this
astonishing people gave it a form as far removed from its barbarous
originals, as the Doric capitals of the Parthenon from the capitals of
the columns of Mycenae, and when the Greeks of both sides of the Aegean
drew together after the defeat of the Persians, the Ionic order crossed
the sea, and assumed a place of honour in the temples of Greece, still,
however, with rare exceptions, in subordination to the Doric order. In
the colonies in Asia Minor, the supremacy of the Ionic order had long
been recognized. The Ionic temple of Hera at Samos, 368 ft. long by 178
ft. wide, is supposed to have been built at the end of the sixth or
early in the fifth century B. C., and this was the forerunner of the
great fourth-century temples of Ionia, built when Architecture had
changed its direction and Hellenistic Art was beginning its adventurous
career.

With these two orders as the terms and idioms of expression the Greeks
built up the architecture of their temples. Their plans were the
simplest possible. The rudimentary type was a simple chamber or cella,
with a loggia open to the air except for two columns standing between
the two extremities of the side walls, which terminated in pilasters
known as 'antae'.[134] The next stage was to bring the colonnade
forward,[135] stage number three repeated the column at the other end of
the building,[136] stage number four continued the colonnade along the
sides,[137] stage number five doubled the colonnade on all four
sides,[138] and stage number six retained the outer rows of columns but
omitted the inner row along the sides, leaving a wide passage-way all
round the main building.[139] Vitruvius gives a further classification
by the spacing of columns which will be found in all the handbooks of
classic architecture. With minor variations in detail, these types
remained constant for the temples of Greece and Rome. The principal
alterations occurred in the extension of the temple proper, at the
expense of the surrounding colonnade. In the Archaic temples, such as
the older temples of Selinus in Sicily (sixth century B. C.), the
portico and colonnade occupy three-quarters of the site. In the temple
of Hephaestus (Theseion) at Athens (fifth century B. C.) the cella
occupies only a little more than half the total area, and in the
Parthenon, built some twenty years later, the size of the cella is still
further increased. Most of these temples were covered in. Hypaethral
temples, in which the cella was open to the sky, are mentioned by
Vitruvius, and it is probable that some of the larger ones at any rate
were partly open to the sky. But how the openings were arranged is
almost entirely a matter of conjecture. The roof used was of a very flat
pitch, one of height to four of base, later it was even flatter, and
this dictated the <DW72> of the pediments. This roof covered the whole of
the building, that is, both the cella and the colonnades on either side
of it, and as the Greeks were ignorant of the principle of the
triangulated truss built up of beams in compression and tension, they
were at a loss to know how to carry their roof without pushing out their
walls. Hence the great solidity of their buildings, and the rather
clumsy expedient of the colonnades in the interiors of temples which
appear to have been the only means they could think of to carry the
roof. One has to bear it in mind in thinking of Greek architecture, that
the Greeks were not constructors in the sense that the Romans were; they
built well, and the best of their masonry was extraordinarily
skilful--only by unusual skill in the cutting and setting of stone could
they have carried out the delicate curves in the columns and other parts
of their buildings--but construction, in the sense of the invention of
new methods to meet difficult conditions, did not interest the Greek,
and one cannot help thinking that the Greeks may have been more
successful with the outside of their buildings than with the inside. It
seems clear that they devoted most of their attention to the external
elevations. It is not really known for certain how they lit their
temples, though of course all sorts of suggestions of top-lighting have
been made. It is possible that in some cases they were lit only from the
principal entrance, and it is certain that the Greek did not want for
the interior of his temple any such floods of light as are necessary
under our northern skies. In the first place, he enjoyed a most
brilliant and penetrating light, so that within his colonnades reflected
light was amply sufficient to show the friezes and other ornaments, and
he did not hesitate to use strong primary colours to heighten and
explain their effect, wherever he found it necessary. In the second
place, within the shrine itself, other considerations came into play. A
certain luminous atmosphere, rather than positive light was what was
aimed at, and the deep shadows of these internal colonnades might have
helped this effect, adding to the mystery of the figure of the God.

    [134] Vitruvius gives this as the 'aedes in antis'.

    [135] Pro-style (colonnade in front).

    [136] Amphipro-style (colonnade at both ends).

    [137] Peripteral (single colonnade all round).

    [138] Dipteral (double colonnade all round).

    [139] Pseudo-dipteral (inner row of columns omitted).

This, too, may be the explanation of what must strike an architect as an
anomaly of design, the Greek habit of placing enormous figures in the
interior of their temples. The Greek, in his own way, was a very
religious man. In his temple, he was doing his utmost to set forth the
majesty of his God, and if it was necessary for this purpose he was even
prepared to sacrifice his principles as an artist, to ignore the scale
of his interior and the rhythmic harmony of his design, by the
introduction of gigantic figures. The eye judges by what it knows, and
the readiest way of arriving at some idea of the size of a building or a
monument is by relating it to the normal size of the human figure.
Vitruvius, in his confused way, suggested that the human figure was the
canon and standard of architectural design, but how is it possible to
determine the scale of a building which contained a figure at least six
times the size of a man, reaching from the floor to the roof? The
chryselephantine figure of Zeus at Olympia, made by Pheidias, is
supposed to have been some thirty-five feet high, and to have reached
nearly to the roof, passing the double tier of columns and the gallery
above the aisles of the cella. Moreover, this god was represented as
seated on his throne, so that by no possibility could it have been in
scale with the building so far as the architecture was concerned. Even
the gigantic temple of Zeus at Agrigentum with its external columns 61
ft. 9 in. in height, and large enough for a man to stand within one of
the flutings of the columns, could hardly have stood up to figures on
such a scale as this. Such a violent contrast in scale broke the
principle of συμμετρια {symmetria}, that strict relation of the part to
the whole which the Greek artists maintained elsewhere with scrupulous
care. Artists with such a consummate sense of proportion as the Greeks
possessed would hardly have made a mistake here, and the conclusion one
comes to is that where their religion was in question, everything had to
give way. Indeed, one can imagine the tremendous effect of this colossal
figure seen dimly in the half-light of the cella, filling the whole
temple with its presence. The same anomaly in scale occurred in the
Akropolis at Athens, where the vast figure of Athene Promachos must have
reduced the beautiful Caryatides of the Erechtheum to insignificance. M.
Choisy makes a gallant effort to show that this want of relationship in
scale, and also in the siting of the temples, was deliberate and
considered. As a fact, the general rule that seems to have been observed
in the time of Pericles was that new temples should always be built on
the site of the older ones,[140] but axis lines were neglected, and even
the masses of the Propylaea, beautiful building as it must have been,
did not balance. The Akropolis was just a collection of unrelated
buildings, and in the great Temenos of Delphi the various monuments were
all anyhow.[141] The Sacred Way meandered about like an S, and the only
method it observed was to clear the various treasuries and shrines which
appear to have been scattered about within the enclosure, with a
disregard of each other little less than brutal--a rather suggestive
symbol of the internecine rivalry of the small Greek states. At Delphi,
also, there was a huge figure of Apollo Sitalkas said to have been
seventeen metres high, which must have been hopelessly out of scale. The
fact was that Greek architects of the fifth century had not yet arrived
at the conception of the city as a whole. They had an admirable eye for
a site, for example, the position of the Parthenon itself, and the
temple of Hera Lacinia at Agrigentum placed high above the sea, but it
is unhistorical to invest even the architects of the Parthenon and the
Propylaea with a knowledge and outlook which was not thought of till a
hundred years later. Even the Greek architects and sculptors of the
fifth century B. C. were not omniscient, yet within their limits, in
their mastery of what they set themselves to do, the artists of the age
of Pericles remain unapproachable, and theirs was the Golden Age of
Architecture. They had fixed for all time essential elements of the art,
and had set up a standard of attainment in pure form which no subsequent
architecture has ever been able to reach.

    [140] The Erechtheum was an exception.

    [141] See _Delphi_, by Dr. Frederick Poulsen, p. 52. It is suggested
    that the Sacred Way was in existence before the shrines were built,
    and that its wanderings were necessitated by the gradients of the
    hillside. No sort of attempt, however, seems to have been made to
    correct this, or to treat it as an element of design.

The fall of Athens closed this splendid chapter, but Greek
architecture was by no means done with. The Silver Age, the Hellenistic
art that followed, is of intense interest. With the rise of the
Macedonian monarchy the stage of history shifted from the mainland to
the Ionian colonies on the coast of Asia Minor. Cities such as Ephesus
and Miletus became immensely prosperous, Mausolus of Halicarnassus, the
Attalids of Pergamon, possessed wealth that would have been unimaginable
to the Greeks of Marathon. The City State, fighting desperately for its
existence, inspired by high ideals of patriotism and religion, was a
thing of the past. These Greeks of Ionia were well content to enjoy the
comfort and prosperity of a settled civilization without having to fight
for it; and the whole atmosphere of their existence must have been
different from the strenuous life of Greece in the fifth century.
Moreover, the Ionian Greek, influenced, even if subconsciously, by the
spirit of Asia, was by temperament unable to maintain the intellectual
level of the Doric architecture of the mainland; and a difference
appears in the whole orientation of art, in sculpture perhaps even more
than in architecture. The history of Hellenistic art has yet to be
written. It has been described as decadent, and it was undoubtedly
responsible for some very poor stuff, but it also produced the 'Victory'
of Samothrace, one of the finest things ever done in sculpture, and some
very remarkable developments in architecture. It is not to be judged by
the standards of the art that preceded it. The Ionian Greek of the
fourth and third centuries B. C. broke away from the tradition of the
mainland, a tradition always rather alien to his instincts. His interest
lay less in a somewhat impersonal religion than in the assertion of his
own individuality. He did not understand the lofty patriotism, and the
high ideal of abstract beauty that had inspired Pericles and his artists
in the Akropolis; indeed, there is a curiously modern feeling about much
of his work, which became more marked as he came under the dominance of
Rome. The individualism, the realism, the revivalism, and the
commercialism of modern art, were all anticipated by the Hellenistic
artists of Ionia, of Rhodes, of Alexandria, and of Athens itself in the
Roman period. Civilization was becoming more complex, and one finds this
reflected in Hellenistic art, at once more florid than the Doric of the
fourth century, yet also more skilful in its handling of complicated
problems of planning and design. No one wanted archaic simplicity when
the wealth of Asia was flowing into the treasuries of the Ionian states,
and the expression of this opulent ease is found in their magnificent
temples, such as the third temple of Artemis at Ephesus, of which the
outer colonnade measured 342 ft. 6 in. by 163 ft. 9 in., or the vast
temple of Apollo Didymaeus at Miletus, 165 ft. wide by 360 ft. long out
to out of the colonnades; or the amazing monument of Mausolus of Caria
at Halicarnassus, or the great altar of Pergamon. Fragments of the
columns of the Temple of Artemis, now in the British Museum, tell of its
size and richness, they also give the first hint of the downfall of art
and civilization which was to follow centuries later. The Greeks of the
great period had kept the structural parts of their building free of
ornament. It would never have occurred to them to interfere with the
lines of the column in any way that would contradict its purpose; but
the Greek architects of Ephesus not only placed their columns on
pedestals (making them so far less stable in appearance), but they
adorned the lower part of their Ionic columns with figures, of admirable
execution, but perfectly inappropriate in the position they occupy. One
cannot imagine Pheidias making a mistake such as this. Splendid in
execution as Hellenistic sculpture often was, it won its place at the
expense of architecture; one looks in vain for that selection and
restraint which give its undying distinction to the earlier work.

[Illustration: Fig. 4. TEMPLE OF THESEUS, ATHENS]

The Greeks of the fifth century realized that architecture is an art
with a definite purpose other than that of a mere vehicle for sculpture,
and that it makes its aesthetic appeal by its own inherent qualities of
rhythm, and proportion, spacing, mass, and outline. Though they used
sculpture and colour to heighten and intensify the effect of their
architecture, they saw very clearly the function of the arts in relation
to each other, and kept their sculpture and their colour in strict
relation to the aesthetic purpose of their architecture. It is a point
on which later architects went lamentably astray. A great deal of early
Renaissance work is mere ornamentation of buildings, indeed in buildings
such as the Certosa of Pavia the architecture has almost ceased to
exist; and most of the bad architecture of the last fifty years is due
to the deplorable fallacy that ornament is architecture. The columns of
Ephesus, the sculpture of the altar of Pergamon, brilliant as they were
in technical accomplishment, were the first hint of that decline which
was in time to undermine the whole fabric of the Arts. Architecture was
deposed from its high intellectual dominance. It tended more and more to
become a conventional affair, and it was an easy transition from the
exuberance of Hellenistic art to the point-blank vulgarity of Roman
ornamental architecture.

It was, however, inevitable that the fine simplicity of Periclean art
should vanish with its ideals, and one finds a certain compensation in
the extension of the range and outlook of architecture, which we owe to
the Hellenistic architects of the fourth and succeeding centuries B. C.
So far as perfection of form was concerned, it was impossible to carry
the art beyond the stage to which Ictinus and Callicrates had brought
it; but there still remained something, and something very important, to
be done. Axial planning, the consideration of the relation of building
to building, seem to have been outside the consciousness of Greeks of
the fifth century, and each building was treated as an unrelated unit.
But the inconvenience of this, its loss of opportunity, and the
necessity of order and method, must have become apparent, as
civilization became more complex and more exacting. By the end of the
fourth century B. C. the tradition of architectural technique was
firmly established, and architects were able to turn their attention to
problems of large planning, and these they seem to have handled with
extraordinary skill. So far, what had been done in this direction had
been due to religious inspiration, as in the processional ways leading
to the Egyptian temples or the avenue of figures at Branchidae. What the
Hellenistic architects did was to think out consecutive schemes of city
planning, in which the dominant motive of arrangement was artistic. They
had learnt to treat the temples, the public buildings, the open spaces
and approaches, as the elements of one harmonious composition, in which
the utmost use was made of the natural opportunities of the site. At
Ephesus, for example, there is supposed to have existed a consecutive
scheme, larger than anything of the kind carried out even in France in
the eighteenth century, though the evidence, it should be noted, is
largely conjectural. As presented by sanguine and enthusiastic restorers
the scheme was magnificent. Next the port, and facing it on one side,
was the Arsenal, a regular building opening on to a court surrounded by
a colonnade, which again opened on to the great 'Place', a square
enclosure some 850 ft. wide north and south, by 650 ft. east and
west,[142] surrounded by a colonnade on all four sides, with exhedrae,
or semicircular recesses. In the centre of this Place was an oblong
water-piece, about 300 ft. by 200 ft., and on the farther side, opposite
the Arsenal buildings, were the Senate House and other public buildings;
and behind these and to the right and left of them the Theatre and the
Stadium, partly excavated in Mount Coressus. The Arsenal, the great
Place with its water-piece, and the public buildings, were laid out on
an axis line, and on a regular rectangulated plan.

    [142] The Place Vendôme measures 450 ft. × 420 ft.; Grosvenor Square
    about 650 × 530; and Lincoln's Inn Fields about 800 × 630, measured
    from wall to wall of buildings.

A scheme such as this (if it is possible to accept a conjectural
restoration), thought out in all its bearings, meant a real advance in
the range of architecture. It is useless to look for the faultless
beauty of the fifth century, but the resourcefulness and skill of the
Hellenistic architects gave a new meaning to the art; and indeed they
might almost be said to have established the first stage in the
development of its modern practice. It was from these able Hellenistic
architects that the Romans learnt the monumental planning of their
cities, and for centuries the architects most frequently employed were
Greeks of Asia Minor. At this point, Hellenistic architecture merges
into Roman, and loses its distinctive character. Through Roman it passes
on to modern architecture, and so in a sense the chain is complete; but
between this later art and pure Greek architecture there is a great gulf
fixed, differences not only of technique but of outlook, of ideal, and
of temperament. The mighty Doric of Paestum, Selinus, and Segesta, the
Theseion and the Parthenon, remains for all time the perfect expression
of the soul of ancient Greece.

It is one of the ironies of history that when in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries scholars and artists awoke to the fact that there
had been a great architecture in the past they should have known of no
other version of it but the Roman. What splendid developments might have
followed if the finer spirits of the Renaissance, Alberti, Bramante, or
Peruzzi, had founded their theories of architecture on the temples of
Sicily and Magna Graecia, instead of on the debased examples of Imperial
Rome! They, at least, would have caught a glimpse of the beauty of
abstract form and perfect harmony, the secret of which seems to have
been revealed to the Greeks alone among the peoples of the world--and to
them for only a transient period of their history. Unfortunately, when
Greek architecture was discovered in the second half of the eighteenth
century, it became the shibboleth of the 'virtuosi'. The national
traditions, both of France and England, were lost, Greek architecture
became the fashion, and the misguided enthusiasm of pedants and
amateurs insisted on literal reproductions which completed the
extinction of architecture as a vernacular art, and replaced it by the
series of revivalisms from which it has suffered for the last one
hundred and fifty years. Conscious and deliberate tinkering with the art
of architecture ended by destroying it.

We can never hope to revive Greek architecture, nor should we attempt to
do so. There was once a well-known Scotch architect who held that the
column and the lintel was the only permissible form of construction, and
with this limitation and ill-selected Greek details he produced some
fantastically ugly buildings. Following a similar line of thought a
famous critic of the last century condemned methods of construction not
sanctioned by the Old Testament. Both were wide of the mark; because,
above and beyond all technical details of architecture is the spirit in
which it is approached, the intellectual outlook of the artist on his
art, and this may express itself in widely differing forms. In Greek
architecture of the Golden period, that outlook was definite and
distinctive, and it was one that has a very urgent lesson for us to-day.
The aim and ideal of the Greek was beauty of form, and this beauty,
which he sought in the first instance as the expression of his religion,
ultimately became almost a religion in itself. To the realization of
this ideal he devoted all his powers, sparing himself no pains in
chastening his work till it had attained the utmost perfection possible.
He merged himself in this work, without thought of the expression of
himself in his vision of a divine and immutable beauty. It hardly
occurred to him that his individual emotions were worth preserving. (In
the sculpture of the great period the expression of the face is usually
one of unruffled calm.) Although religious emotion was the source and
inspiration of his work, his work was impersonal. He was aloof from that
feverish anxiety for self-revelation which has made much modern art so
interesting pathologically, and so detestable otherwise. Nor again had
he anything of the virtuoso about him. To him technique was not an end
in itself. In Hellenistic art it became so, but not in the Golden Age.
Indeed, he was sometimes almost careless of exact modelling, and in
architecture he did not use the order as a mere exhibition of
scholarship. In his search for beautiful form, he stood upon the ancient
ways, patient and serene, moving steadily to his appointed end. 'Ainsi
procède le génie grec, moins soucieux du nouveau que du mieux, il
reporte vers l'épuration des formes l'activité que d'autres dépensent en
innovations souvent stériles, jusqu'à ce qu'enfin il atteigne l'exquise
mesure dans les efforts, et dans les expressions l'absolue
justesse.'[143] There have been rare periods since, when Architecture
has moved with the same calm unhesitating purpose, Gothic architecture,
for example, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and certain phases
of eighteenth-century architecture in France and England, when tradition
was still active and vital, and artists were content to let well alone.

    [143] Choisy, _History of Architecture_, vol. i, p. 298.

Modern conditions seem to be wholly against the Greek standpoint in art.
The Arts are in the melting-pot, the old standards of attainment are
trampled under foot, and the prophets prophesy falsely. Quite lately we
were asked to find our inspiration in the fetishes of the Gold Coast,
and if the aim of the artist is to outstrip his brethren in brutality,
the advice is sound. A recent critic justified the antics of certain
artists by the necessity they were under of advertising themselves.
That, no doubt, is the readiest way to immediate success. But the
question for the critic is, not the personal advancement of the artist
but the value of his work; and one would ask if any good work at any
period in the history of art has been inspired by this ambition to shout
louder than one's neighbours. Certainly, the standpoint of the Greek was
the exact opposite. He did not seek advertisement and notoriety. He was
happy with his inner vision of beauty, and intent only on its
realization. He had not the smallest desire to shock or startle any
one. There are occasions when shock tactics are necessary, but they are
not necessary every day in the week, nor is it necessary to make a clean
sweep of the past before one sets to work in one's own little corner of
art.

What is wanted in modern art is some consciousness of this old Greek
spirit, some recognition of its value. The Greeks of the age of Pericles
wanted neither revivalism nor revolution; they moved forward, without
haste or anxiety, on traditional lines, and they were able to do so
because their art was so interwoven with their life that, in the plastic
arts, they could no more have changed their methods of expression than
they could have changed their manner of speech. That high outlook on
life is lost and hardly to be recovered under modern conditions of
social life and political government. It was perhaps only possible under
the true democracy of the small Greek city state, when every citizen
took his share in the ordered life of the community. Yet the Greek ideal
remains. In our fitful fever of honest intention and wrong judgement,
high endeavour and point-blank commercialism, Greek art, the art of
Pheidias and Ictinus, is still the wise mother to whom we must return.
The lesson of the Parthenon is the lesson of a steadfast vision of
beauty, held high above individual effort and failure, realizing itself
not in complex detail or calculated eccentricity, but in a serene and
exquisite simplicity of form. It teaches us that in the arts there are
no short cuts, and that anarchy, the destruction of what has been won
for us in the past, is not advance but the straight road to the
bottomless pit of barbarism. Instead of repudiating the work of his
fathers, the Greek carried it on to its perfection, and built his palace
of art on a sure foundation because he turned neither to the right hand
nor to the left, but steadily set his face towards the light.

REGINALD BLOMFIELD.

  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
  | Transcriber's Notes and Errata                               |
  |                                                              |
  | Greek text is followed by the transliterated version in      |
  | braces.                                                      |
  |                                                              |
  | The following typographical errors have been corrected.      |
  |                                                              |
  |     Error      Correction                                    |
  |     back       black                                         |
  |     stedfast   steadfast                                     |
  |                                                              |
  | The following words are found in hyphenated and unhyphenated |
  | forms in the text. The numbers of instances are given in     |
  | parentheses.                                                 |
  |                                                              |
  |     cuttle-fish (2)      cuttlefish (1)                      |
  |     fresh-water (1)      freshwater (1)                      |
  |     pre-occupation (4)   preoccupation (1)                   |
  |                          preoccupations (1)                  |
  |     re-arranging (1)     rearranging (1)                     |
  |     re-discovery (2)     rediscovery (3)                     |
  |     super-men (1)        supermen (1)                        |
  |     super-women (1)      superwomen (1)                      |
  |     text-book (5)        textbook (2)                        |
  |     text-books (2)       textbooks (3)                       |
  +--------------------------------------------------------------+





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Legacy of Greece, by Various

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