Part 14

Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And hear the children sporting on the shore, And hear the mighty waves, rolling for evermore.

Need I pass on to Aristotle, and show in detail how his philosophy so dominated mediæval learning that it was adopted and protected by the Church, and that it became one of the efforts of the spirit of reform in logic and in psychology to break the shackles which this great thinker had, as the modern spirits often complained, forged to keep the human intellect from its advance? Need I tell you that this was owing to a travesty of the great man, learned not from his own pregnant words but through translations and commentaries?

I will conclude with a reference to the two great systems that dominated the Roman world after Plato and Aristotle had turned philosophy into an ethical channel--I mean those of the Stoics and of the Epicureans, who mapped out human character with a clearness that makes them our teachers to the present day. Not that they avoided speculating on the nature of the universe. The physics of Epicurus, borrowed from Democritus, are among the most difficult of studies, and the Stoics embraced in their view as the motive of action of their wise man all the harmony of the universe. These speculations may now be antiquated, but as the teachers of ethical types, as the expounders of what the highest human wisdom finds in its search for happiness, these two schools have fixed the types of civilised men for all time. Every man in this audience is born either a Stoic or an Epicurean, or what is perhaps far more common, alternates from one to the other according to circumstances. In its simplest form the great question is: Are we to live for duty, or live for pleasure--not of course mere vulgar pleasure of the senses, but that refined balance of intellectual and moral pleasure which you will find best explained in my old friend Walter Pater’s _Marius the Epicurean_; or else are we to seek for our standard outside ourselves, in the laws which the Moral Governor of the world has established for its welfare, and co-operate with Him in the promotion of His great ends? Such is the ideal wise man of the Stoics, who despised all earthly delights, all physical pleasures, for the sake of the great law of duty, and the great mission of living for some nobler purpose than mere animal or social comforts. We have its best expression in the peroration of Cicero’s account of the system[47]; or if you will have it in a more familiar shape, in the loud clarion of Saint Paul: “As deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things.”[48] For he too was bred a Stoic, and was not afraid in his addresses to cultivated men of his day to preach Stoic theology, akin to Pantheism.

If the time should ever come when men will no longer be led by revelation, when they will reject miracle and prophecy, and determine to be led by the mere light of reason (men have often anticipated such a future, regardless of the fact that hitherto religious scepticism has always ended in a recoil from this liberty, and a revival of positive and even superstitious creeds)--if, I say, such an age should ever lay aside the Christian faith, there will still remain the ethical types which Zeno and Epicurus have crystallised in their systems--there will always remain the man of duty and the man of pleasure, the man who lives for others and he who lives for himself, in terms of modern philosophic jargon, the Altruist and the Egoist, the Spiritualist and the Materialist.

* * * * *

And here I break off my unfinished task, unfinished indeed as it must be, for beyond the many things that I have omitted though I knew them, there are many more omitted because I knew them not, because I have not fathomed the unfathomable depth and the myriad variety of that genius which is living, and suggesting, and working all through the ideal aspects of our modern life. There are probably few men who have lived longer and more intimately with the old Greeks, in more phases of their life, ever probing and seeking for deeper and better knowledge of their vast legacy to mankind, of which the rodent tooth of time, the sacrilegious hands of men, have lost or destroyed so much. The farther I seek, the wider the vistas I see opening before me. So now, when my part in the race is nearly run, there remains to me no higher earthly satisfaction than this, that I have carried the torch of Greek fire alight through a long life--no higher earthly hope than this, that I may pass that torch to others, who in their turn may keep it aflame with greater brilliancy perhaps, but not with more earnest devotion, “in the Parliament of men, the Federation of the world.”

INDEX

A

Achæan League, organisation and dissolution, 203, 204

_Acontius and Cydippe_, love story of a modern type, 94

Actium, battle, 71

_Æneid_ of Virgil, _see_ Virgil

Æolic school, characteristic, 53

Æschylus, source of his tragedy, 36, 37; one of the “three tragic poets,” 47; Milton’s view of, 47; characters of his plays, 48; judge of tragedy, 73; music of, 136 _Agamemnon_: great play, 27; opening of, 48; “vulgar and trivial persons,” 48; contributes to Byron, 55; Browning’s version, 57; often translated into English, 58 _Prometheus Vinctus_: model for _Paradise Lost_, 47

Æsculapius, shrine of, 176

_Agamemnon_, _see_ Æschylus

Agatharchus, discovers principles of perspective, 130

Alcæus, poet, 37

_Alexander_, _Life of_, 97

Alexandria, library, collecting of, gives impetus to literary criticism, 91

Alexandrian school, development of mechanics, 162; invention of the _sakia_, 165

_Alkestis_, _see_ Euripides

Alma-Tadema, Sir Edward, influenced by Greek art, 131, 132

Amyot, imitated Greek novel, 96

Anatomy, how studied by Greeks, 148

Anaxagoras, principal feature of his system, 229; on original particles, 229; Aristotle on, 229; his famous _Nous_, 230, 231

Anaximander, makes advances in astronomy, 216, 217; geological observations of, 218

Anaximenes, idea of the fundamental element of the world, 216, 217; theory of eclipses, 217

Antiphon, treatises of, 82

_Antony and Cleopatra_, _see_ Shakespeare

_Aphrodite_ of Melos, mentioned, 118

Apollonius of Perga, treatment of conic sections, 161, 167

Apollonius Rhodius, delights in nature, 59 _Argonautics_: great epic, 41; model for Milton, 43; and Goethe’s _Faust_, 44

Arabic numerals, 157

Archilochus, poet, 37

Archimedes, triumphs of, in mechanics, 162, 167

Architecture, earliest form of house, 99; houses of the dead, 100-102, 110, 111; square house, 102; evolution of classical, 103; building materials, 103; Doric, 104; temples, 105, 110; distinction between house and temple, 106, 107; perfection of religious, 106, 107; arch not used by Greeks, 107, 108; Greek and Roman, compared, 108; purpose in parts of a building, 109; origin of arch, 109; Roman use of arch, 110; ornamentation of, by sculpture, 120

Archytas, 167

_Areopagitica_, _see_ Milton

_Argonautics_, _see_ Apollonius Rhodius

Argos, slaves in, 188

Aristides, studied oratory, 70

Aristocracies, in classical and mediæval times, 184

Aristophanes, as critic, 92; ridicules Asklepiads, 176

Aristophanes, diction and metre, 37; greatest master of Greek comedy, 60, 61; Frere’s translation, 61, 64; Rogers’s translation, 61; influence and legacy, 61 _Birds and Frogs_: 27

Aristotle, almost canonised, 19; criticism of _Iphigenia in Aulis_, 62, 72; criticism of Medea, 62; distinction between prose and poetry, 62, 63; on Herodotus, 62, 63, 73; on dramatic poetry and history, 72, 74; and Herodotus, on style and subject of history, 74; treatise on Language, 149; treatise on Reasoning, 150; arithmetical proof of theorem in geometry, 156; on geometry, 159; “master of those that knew,” 167; brought up in Socratic method, 167; style of writing, 167, 168; system of collaboration, 168, 171; collaborators, 169; does no original work in mathematics, 169; competence in mathematics, 170; sciences promoted by, 171; views on slavery, 189; views on craftsmen, 189; essential in his ideal of a state, 206; objection to atomic theory, 233; influence on modern thought, 237; his philosophy and the Church, 242 _Constitution of Athens_: 169 _Poetic_: on tragic poetry, 61; on dramatic poetry and history, 72

Aristoxenus, collaborator with Aristotle, 169

Arithmetic, starting-point of mathematics, 153; importance of, to Pythagoras, 153; numbers the essence of the universe, 153, 154; Greek meaning of, 154; Pythagorean speculations on natural series of units, 155; specimens of treatment by Pythagoras, 156; importance of numbers ten and twelve, 156; Greek notation, 157; Euclid’s works on, 161; books on history of, 170

Arnold, Matthew, compares Milton’s style with Virgil’s, 46; writes plays after Greek models, 58 _Merope_: 58

Art, earliest Greek, 12; proper province of, 33, 34; use of the term, 98

Artificiality of Greek poetry, defined, 33, 34

Asklepiads, method of, 176

Assemblies, in Greek democracies, 183

Astronomy, books on history of, 170

_Atalanta_, _see_ Swinburne

Athens, debts in, 186; leadership, 201; degeneration of spiritual life in, 210

Atomic theory, developed by Leucippus and Democritus, 231, 232; results of, 233; Aristotle’s objections to, 233

Atomists, doctrine of, 218, 219

Atreus, tomb of, 102, 111

Attic citizens, character, 208

Attic Code of laws, 190, 261

Attic life, portrayed by Menander, 208, 209

B

Bacchylides, comparison of Gray with, 54

Beehive huts, earliest form of house, 99; extant examples, 99, 100; not easily defended, 99; once a general type, 100; houses of the dead, 100-102; Treasury of Athens, 101; development of, 102

Biography, Plutarch, model, 80

_Birds and Frogs_, of Aristophanes, 27

Blow’s anthem, “I beheld and lo! a great multitude,” 126

Boccaccio, and Greek novels, 95

Botany, promoted by Aristotle, 171

Botticelli, Greek influence on, 131

Brougham, Lord, on Demosthenes, 84

Browning, Robert, his version of _Agamemnon_, 57; version of Euripides, 57, 58, 64

Brydges, Sir Egerton, on choruses in _Samson Agonistes_, 50

Buckle’s _Civilisation_, famous opening, 5

Burke, Edmund, style influenced by Isocrates, 90; translation of the _Tract on the Sublime_, 92

Burlington Art Club of London, collection of Greek fragments, 21

Byron, Lord, leader of Romantic school, 55; knowledge of Greek poetry, 55; borrows from Æschylus, 55; interested in Greek life and Greece, 56; interests Romanticists in Greece, 56

Byzantine architecture, 18

C

Calverley’s _Theocritus_, 64

Cambridge Platonists, 240

Carrey, Jacques, drawings of Parthenon, 52

Cathedral of Henry the Lion at Brunswick, 119

Chalmers, Thomas, Scotch orator, style, 90

Chapman, translation of the Iliad, 45, 51

_Charioteer_ of Delphi, 117

Choral hymns, Doric, 41

Cicero on Pindar, 50; on history, 80; style modelled on that of Isocrates, 88, 90 _De Finibus_: 245

City states, in Greece, 183; combinations and alliances, 200

Colours, use, 118

Comedy, Greek, influence, 60, 61

Composition in sculpture, 120, 122

_Comus_, _see_ Milton

Constantinople, adheres to Hellenic traditions, 182

_Constitution of Athens_, 169

Contracts, civil, 194

Conversation, perfection of Greek style, 90, 91; Plato’s _Dialogues_, 91

Corcyrean massacre, Thucydides on, 77

Cornford, Mr., _Thucydides Mythistoricus_, referred to, 77

Criticism, literary, beginnings, 91; models of, 92; _Tract on the Sublime_, 92

Cyclic poets, 42

_Cyrus_, of Xenophon, 94

D

Dante, gloomy splendour, 19 _Inferno_: 27

_Daphnis and Chloe_, author unknown, 96; best specimen of Greek novel, 96

Dark Ages, conditions in, 181; causes of retrogression, 282

Darwin, Charles, on sense of colour, 128

Death penalty, 192

Debts, reduction of by Solon, 186

_Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, _see_ Gibbon

Decoration, painting a branch of, 132, 133; household, 145, 146

_De Corona_, _see_ Demosthenes

_De Finibus_ of Cicero, 245

_De Jure Pacis et Belli_, by Hugo Grotius, 198

Delos, discoveries at, 145

Delphi, treasury of Siphnos, 122; hymn discovered at, 134

Democritus, development of Atomic theory, 231, 232; consequences to which his theory led him, 233

Demosthenes, combined orator and politician, 70; character of orations, 83, 84 _De Corona_: greatest

Greek oration, 83; style, 84

Derby, Lord, translator, 57

Descartes, teachings of, 216, 224; on colour, 216; on extension and thought, 224

Diagoras of Melos, atheist, 215

Dialects, Homeric, 33, 40, 41; main cause of their use, 40

_Dialogues_ of Plato, _see_ Plato

Diatonic scale, basis of Greek music as well as of modern, 135, 142-144

Didot, _Epistolographi Graeci_, 92

Dikæarchus, collaborator with Aristotle, 169

Dion Chrysostom, rhetor and sophist, 93

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, essays of, 92

Dionysius of Syracuse, tyrant, 205

Diophantus, work in arithmetic and algebra, 161, 162, 167

Donatello’s problem, 113

Dorians, literary prose had its origin among them, 67, 68

Doric choral hymns, 41

Doric pillar, 104

Doric temple, 104

Dörpfeld, Dr., Greek critic, 27; discoveries at Tiryns, 105

Drama, Greek, beginnings, 36; influence, 46 _ff_, 57, 58

Dryden, John, translation of Virgil, 53; model for Gray, 54 _Ode to St. Cecilia_: shows Greek influence, 55

E

_Eclogues_ of Virgil, 24

Education, Greek: ethical inquiry, 215; subjects of thought, 215; relation of music to, 136, 137, 144; relation of mathematics and science to philosophy, 179; higher: and Greek studies, 20; relation of mathematics and philosophy, 179; essential element, 214; best exponent, 215; relation to character, 241

Egypt, greatness, 5; influence on Greece, 11

Egyptian art, influence on Greek art, 145

Elea, school of, founder, 221

Eleusinian Mysteries, 115

Empedocles, wrote in verse, 39; principal feature of his system, 229; postulated principles of Love and Hate, 230, 231

_Entretiens sur l’architecture_, _see_ Viollet-le-Duc

Epic poetry, Greek, 41; modern, 42; influence, 42

Epicteta, will of, 196

Epicureans, on music and morals, 138; and Stoics, 244

Epicurus, system of, 245

Epidauros, place of pilgrimage, 176

_Epistolographi Graeci_, 92

_Epoch of Irish History_, _see_ Mahaffy, J. P.

_Erechtheus_ of Swinburne, 58

Etruscans, and the arch, 105; culture of, 110

Euclid, how attained perfection, 158, 159; on optics, 166; father of geometry, 167; founds Peripatetic Mathematics, 170 _Elements_: summary of all principles discovered previously, 158; three kinds of data, 159; careful definitions, 159; misfortune of, 160; thirteen books, 160, 161

Eudemus the Rhodian, collaborator with Aristotle, 169; his history of sciences, 170

Eudoxus, astronomer, 167

Euripides, Milton’s view of, 47; introduces “vulgar and trivial persons” into his plays, 48; influence on development of _Samson Agonistes_, 49; choruses of, 51; Browning’s version of his plays, 57-58, 64; and Tennyson, 60; Medea, 62 _Alkestis_: Browning’s version of, 57 _Iphigenia in Aulis_: type of heroine, 62; Aristotle’s criticism of, 62, 72 _Mad Herakles_: Browning’s version of, 57

_Everyman_, represents horrors of Middle Ages, 115

_Excursion_, _see_ Wordsworth

F

_Fall of Miletus_, _see_ Phrynichus

_Faust_, _see_ Goethe

Federation, early example, 203

Fick, Augustus, on place-names, 7

Frere’s translation of Aristophanes, 61, 64

G

Geometry, Euclid’s, 158-161, 167; books on history of, 170

_Georgics_ of Virgil, 24

Germany, reduction of many states into one empire, 204

Gibbon, Edward, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, conception which moved author to write, 79

Gladstone, William E., style of eloquence, 89

Goethe, _Faust_: a world epic, 27; borrowings from _Argonautics_, 44

Golden Age of Greek Literature, 91

Gray, Thomas, Greek temper, 54; compared with Simonides and Bacchylides, 54; swept away by Romantic wave, 54; prefers Celtic and national subjects, 54; Greek style, 54; grasps splendour of Pindar, 54; shows influence of Greek poetry, 54, 55; love of nature, 59

Greece, advantageous position of, 11; economic conditions in time of Polybius, 206; modern character of civilisation, 207

Greek culture, vital essence, 182; Latin, compared with, 182

Greek learning, revival of, 17-20

Greek scholars in Western Europe, 17, 18

Greek society, conditions, 213, 214

Greek studies, place in higher education, 20-22; and Latin, 22, 23; source of culture, 23; comparative value of originals and translations, 23-26

Greeks, the, explanations of pre-eminence insufficient, 3-7; pre-eminence unexplained, 7-9; originality, 9; genius of race analogous to genius of individual, 9; powers of assimilation and reproduction, 10-12; important position between two civilisations, 11; effect of diverse influences, 11, 12; receptive, but not absorbed, 13, 14; persistence of characteristics, 15; accomplishments in world’s history, 16-18; influence of, 53; not wanting in love for nature, 59; why no means of expressing Christian spirit, 113; and Christianity, 113; race of varied experience, 116; sense of fitness in sculpture, 116; power of logic upon their minds, 152; triumphs gained by hard thinking, 179; traders, 187; attitude toward monarchy, 205; furnish lessons in failures as well as in achievements, 205, 206; middle classes most important, 206; adopt limitation of family, 207

Grote, George, historian, 56; not interested in travelling in Greece, 56; on Attic citizens, 208

Grotius, Hugo, _De Jure Pacis et Belli_, 198

_Guesses at Truth_, _see_ Hare

H

_Hamlet_ of Shakespeare, 48

Hare, _Guesses at Truth_, quoted, 52

Hecatæus, historian, 71

Hegemony of Greece, what it was, 201; leaders, 201

Hellenic race, _see_ Greeks

Heracleitus of Ephesus, early writer of prose, 67; his fundamental element of the world, 219; on qualities of matter, 220, 221

Herculaneum, 145

_Hermes_ of Praxiteles, 106

_Hero and Leander_, 96

Herodotus, Father of History, world model of art of history, 71-75; subject, 71, 74, 78; essence of history as an art, 73; agrees with Aristotle as to style and subject of history, 74; style, 74, 75; so-called inventions of, 76; vindicated, 76; compared with Thucydides, 76, 78; on Cyrene, 77; quoted, 116

Heron, development of mechanics and hydrostatics, 147, 162, 167; ingenious inventions of, 162-164, 165

Herondas, _Mimes_, inferior poetry, 39

Hiero of Xenophon, 116

Hipparchus, astronomer, 167

Hippocrates of Kos, Father of Rational Medicine, 67, 171; founds school of medicine, 171; style of writing, 172; works out a system of treatment, 172; _Aphorisms_ quoted, 172; John Stearne on works of, 174; mental attitude of, 174; ignores supernatural causes of diseases and cures, 175; quoted, 175; combats superstition, 176; principles, 177; oath of practitioners, 178

Hipponax, 41

History, early annalists, 70; Herodotus and Thucydides, 71; models of the art and science of history, 71; Aristotle’s view of, 72, 74; Herodotus on history as art, 73, 74; views of Herodotus and Aristotle compared, 74; simplicity, 75; Herodotus vindicated, 76; Thucydides compared with Herodotus, 76; views of Thucydides, 77; style of Thucydides, 78, 79; human history as a great drama, 79; characteristics that will make it last, 80

_History of Greek Literature_, _see_ Mahaffy, J. P.

Homer, understood by all generations, 14; his influence through Pope, 53

Homeric dialect, 33, 40, 41

Homeric poems, artificiality, 33; beacon light, 37; translations, 45, 51, 52

Horace, Greek lyrics, 4; version of Alcæus, Sappho, and Pindar, 53

Hydrostatics, development by Heron, 147, 162

Hylozoists, study of, basis of higher work in science, 234

I

_Iliad_, translated into many languages, 26; a world epic, 27, 41; imitated, 41; model for all time, 42; and Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, 42, 43; Chapman’s translation, 45, 51; Pope’s translation, 51, 52, 53; expunged texts, 183

Immigration, no inducements for, in Greece, 207

India, civilisation, 6

_Inferno_ of Dante, 27

Interest, rate of, in Greece, 187

Intermarriage, 198

International relations of Greek states, 198; war, 199-200; political combinations or alliances, 200 _ff_

Invalides in Paris, 111

Ionia, subjugation of, checks development of Greek prose, 67

Ionic school, subjects of speculation, 216; study of, important, 234

_Iphigenia in Aulis_, _see_ Euripides

Ireland, landed gentry, 212

Isæus, treatises of, 82; speeches, 194-196

Isocrates, father of political essay, 86; originates political pamphlets, 87; devises and perfects laws of prose composition, 88; teaches his style, 88

J

Jonson, Ben, knowledge of Greek, 45

K

Keats, John, Greek spirit, 46; not familiar with Greek originals, 46, 56 _Ode on a Greek Vase_: 132

Keltic influences on Greece, 12

Kos, school of, 176, 178

L

Land legislation in Greece compared with that in Ireland and Scotland, 187

Language, perfected use of, by Greeks, 148; analysis of, 149; Greek: Non-Aryan roots, 7; permanence, 14

_Laocoon_, 116

Laplace’s theory, 220

Latin, place in higher education, 22, 23; medium of Greek influence, 45

Latin culture, why not permanent, 182; compared with Greek, 182

Latin races, 3

_Latin Vulgate_, the, St. Jerome compares it with Greek and Hebrew originals, 19

Law, Greek, Attic Code model for Romans and other nations, 190; criminal, 191 _ff_; compared with that of Modern Europe, 192; safety of citizens, 192; death penalty, 192, 193; civil, 193-198; contracts, 194; testaments or wills, 194-197; international, 198 _ff_

Leighton, Lord, influenced by Greek art, 131, 132

Lepanto, battle, 72

Letter-writing, Greek letters not remarkable, 93; Cicero’s formulæ, 93; exceptions, 93

Leucippus, development of Atomic theory, 231; father of modern systems, 236

Literary criticism, beginnings, 91; models, 92; _Tract on the Sublime_, 92

Loans, 194

Local government, not representative, but popular, 189, 190

Locke, teachings of, 216

Logic, approached by Greeks through analysis of language, 148; beginnings of logical studies, 149; treatises of Aristotle on theory of Reasoning, 149, 150; importance of common logic, 150; small attention paid to, in American education, 150, 152; English and European training in, 151; power of, on Greek minds, 151, 152; and Greek mathematics, 153

Lourdes, place of pilgrimage, 177

Lucretius, claims, 4

Lyric poetry, beginnings, 37; influence, 53-57, 59, 60

Lysias, presentation of argument in character, 83

M

_Macbeth_, of Shakespeare, 48

Macedonian power, 205, 211

Machinery, inventions of Heron, 162-164; moving force of automatic _sakia_, 165

_Mad Herakles_, _see_ Euripides

Magee, Archbishop, style of eloquence, 89; modelled after Chalmers, 90; style based upon principles of Isocrates, 90

Mahaffy, J. P., _Epoch of Irish History_: referred to, 173 _History of Greek Literature_: on poetry, 31; on obscurity of Thucydides, 79; on Isocrates and Demosthenes, 82; on conversation, 91 _Rambles and Studies in Greece_: on persistence of characteristics, 15, 16 _Social Life in Greece_: main thesis, 15

_Marius the Epicurean_, by Walter Pater, 244