Produced by Chuck Greif, deaurider and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
What Have the Greeks Done
For Modern Civilisation?
The Lowell Lectures of 1908-09
By
John Pentland Mahaffy
C.V.O., D.C.L. (Oxon.), etc.
Of Trinity College, Dublin
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
COPYRIGHT, 1909
BY
J. P. MAHAFFY
[Illustration: colophon]
_Printed in the United States of America_
SANCTÆ MEMORIÆ
UXORIS CARISSIMÆ
CUJUS DULCI CONSORTIO
INGENII SUI PRIMITIAS
ABHINC JAM ANNOS XL
DEDICAVIT
NUNC SERUM LABOREM
CONSECRAT AUCTOR
PREFACE
These lectures, delivered in Boston at the invitation of the Curator of
the Lowell Institute, in December and January, 1908-9, are now published
owing to many requests both from those that heard them and from those
that did not. They are an attempt to cover the whole field of Greek
influence, not only in the various arts in which such influence is
generally realised, but also in those departments of thinking in which
moderns arrogate to themselves an unquestioned superiority. Yet it will
be found, even in the following necessarily brief and popular sketch,
that, as regards _thinking_, the Greeks were as supreme in science as in
other departments, and, though they did not discover the powers of steam
or electricity, they nevertheless carried out in mechanics works that no
modern builder, with all his vaunted control of nature, has yet
equalled, and so in other pursuits, not only Greek form, but Greek
thought, has been the greatest and the clearest that the world has yet
seen.
And yet I believed that the high honour in which Greek studies were long
held had been exchanged for indifference, or even contempt, especially
in America, where a hurried education planned for “practical life” was
said to be taking the place of the old liberal education intended to
breed gentlemen. But I found, during my actual visit to America, that I
had been misled as to the completeness of this degradation of Greek. As
is usual, the stranger begins by getting false impressions of the
country he visits, and can only correct these gradually by detailed
experience. There were many symptoms that public opinion in the States
is by no means satisfied with the thought of an absolute reign of modern
science, or of specialising education at the fancy of the ignorant youth
or the more ignorant parent. Even employers in factories are beginning
to find out, with that plain good sense which marks the solid core of
American society, that young men who receive a liberal education are
more intelligent and useful as tradesmen or mechanics than those who
have mastered only one subject. The intellectual outlook tells even upon
the handicraft of the apprentice.
There is therefore some prospect that the mistakes of the last
generation (possibly due to the influence of Harvard and other
universities) will be corrected, and that a proper college education
will again replace the bread-and-butter studies in the earlier years of
all good courses of training. If such a recovery of sound education
takes place, it is impossible that Greek shall not resume its old
importance. We now know far more of Hellenic work than did our
fore-fathers. We can vindicate Greek studies in a manner wholly strange
to them, had they ever thought a vindication called for. But, on the
other hand, the teaching of Greek must be reformed. It must be made a
human and lively study, taught like a modern language by dictation and
recitation, as well as by written composition and reading of authors. In
many English public schools, there has been a fashion not only of
teaching the old languages as if they were indeed dead, but of spoiling
the teaching of modern languages by copying this mistake. Much of the
prejudice against the learning of Greek has been created by this
blunder, and by its radiation into kindred studies. But this also I
trust will be mended, and we shall have a more intelligent method of
teaching all languages as living vehicles of human expression. Among
these, the Greek is far the most perfect.
If this little book may help toward this great reformation, it will have
amply succeeded in its purpose.
I must not send it out without thanking my many American friends for
their sympathy and encouragement. During my visit, everybody seemed
ready to hear what I had to say, and in some of the discussions which
were the result, notably at Philadelphia, there seemed to be quite a
body of opinion in my favour. Two observations are worth making here
before I conclude: The American professors of Greek and Latin have
exactly the same experience that we have in Ireland regarding the
abandonment of Greek while professing to retain Latin. Neither there nor
in Ireland have we failed to note the deterioration of Latin teaching,
and the conviction grows upon us that a teacher who knows no Greek
cannot be a Latin scholar in any real sense.
So much for the boasted retaining of Latin while sacrificing Greek.
The next observation concerns the now fashionable attending of courses
in English Literature. In no case during my visit did I hear a literary
conversation spring up among these students of English.
They have no doubt admirable professors in great numbers, specialists
on every English poet and prose writer worth naming. But apparently
poetry learnt without labour in the mother tongue is not assimilated or
appreciated as is the poetry of classical languages, and from them the
delight in literature as such spreads into kindred studies. Wherever I
cited the poets, or indeed great prose such as the Bible, among the
young people who had studied English as a subject for graduation, I
found a strange ignorance of what ought to have been most familiar. I
was almost driven to believe the paradox that without a classical
education even the proper appreciation of English literature is unusual.
J. P. M.
On board S. S. _Celtic_, January 20, 1909.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE ii
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. GREEK POETRY 31
III. GREEK PROSE 65
IV. GREEK ART--I: ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE 98
V. GREEK ART--II: PAINTING AND MUSIC 125
VI. SCIENCE: GRAMMAR--LOGIC--MATHEMATICS--MEDICINE 147
VII. POLITICS--SOCIOLOGY--LAW 181
VIII. HIGHER THINKING, PHILOSOPHY, SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL THEOLOGY 213
What Have the Greeks Done for Modern Civilisation?
I
INTRODUCTORY
After more than half a century spent on the study of old Greek life in
its art, politics, literature, philosophy, and science, I gladly adopt
this ample and dignified occasion to give a review of what I have
learned to this audience, whose intellectual standard, and whose
sympathy with the work of a student, are recognised throughout the
world. It is a great honour for any man from Europe to speak on this
platform, but it implies, in consequence, a grave responsibility, and it
is impossible to stand before you here without some feeling of awe, for
I feel I am addressing not merely this most fastidious audience, or even
the larger American public, with whom I gladly claim an old acquaintance
through my books, but the great congregation of the educated classes in
many and diverse lands.
I do not suppose that any of you will be disposed to dispute the fact
(which the very title of these lectures presupposes)--that modern
civilisation, from various points of view, owes a great debt to the old
Greeks. If there be any such sceptic here, I trust he will be converted
in the course of my conversation with him from this platform. But even
to those who readily admit the fact, explicit proofs of it may not be
useless, for they will show you the reasons that have long since
persuaded the world of teachers to make Greek essential in a liberal
education. Assuming, however, for the present the main fact, I think I
shall begin this discourse most profitably by discussing the supposed
causes which gave the Greeks this curious pre-eminence. It is perhaps,
to use familiar words, putting the cart before the horse, but you need
hardly be reminded that if in logic we often do not explain a statement
until we have established its truth, in time the order is different. The
causes of every great result are hidden in past ages, shrouded by the
mists of antiquity, covered with the cloud of oblivion, so that in the
present case the consideration of the prehistoric causes of the
greatness of the Greek intellect may well precede the evidence of that
greatness, which we gather by the lamp, often dim, of history, if not by
the searchlight of archæological science. Though this subject cannot but
prove dull to some of you, I shall do my best to relieve the dulness by
illustrations or even by digressions into kindred fields of knowledge.
I know that there are two considerations which, in the minds of people
who are easily satisfied, pass for an adequate account of this
extraordinary genius of the Greeks. It is usual, especially among those
who will not take the trouble to learn Greek, to say that it was really
through Rome that the greatness of the Hellenic race was created. Rome
conquered the Western world with her roads, her armies, her laws, her
language, and impressed even on barbarians the culture which she had
herself adopted and developed. The Latin races which were in the van of
civilisation up to the seventeenth century were the daughters of Rome
and had little direct teaching from Greece.
All this is perfectly true, but it only moves the problem one step
backward. Assuming that the Romans were the carriers of enlightenment to
the North and West of Europe, why did they depend so completely on Greek
teaching; why did they one and all confess that this was the unique
source of their progress? They came in due time into contact with the
culture of Carthage, of Syria, of Egypt. But the splendours of these
countries were never to the Romans more than mere curiosities, whereas
Greek culture was the very breath of their intellectual life. Virgil, a
very great poet, frames every one of his works on Greek models, and
translates even from second-rate Greek work. Horace, a very great
artist, prides himself on having made Greek lyrics at home in his
country, and Lucretius, whose reputation for originality among modern
critics is mainly due to the total loss of the original which he copied,
himself claims as his main credit that he had ventured to reproduce a
yet uncopied species of Greek poetry. It is hard to conceive a more
complete case made out for the unparalleled influence of Hellenic genius
upon proud and dominant neighbours. I will merely remind you how a fresh
wave of Greek influence, coming into Romanised Europe in the fifteenth
century, caused such a revolution in literature and art as to be called
a new birth (Renascence).
Let us turn to a widely different kind of explanation, which is wont to
be set forth at the opening of most modern histories of Greece, as a
_vera causa_ to account for a wonderful and exceptional result. This
theory is the echo of the famous opening of Buckle’s great book on
Civilisation, wherein it is asserted that man is the creature of
external circumstances and that these determine not only his physical,
but his intellectual increase. In particular, the greatness of Egypt and
its early victory over the obstacles of nature are attributed to the
heat and moisture of the climate; and so we are told that the temperate
airs of the Ægean, the multitude of its islands, its indented coast, its
fiords, its broken outlines, and varied scenery--these are such that the
people living among them would naturally develop the qualities which
have given the primacy in its turn to Greece. Such conclusions are based
upon very superficial and inaccurate observation. It was assumed that
Egypt had been necessarily an unity, owing to the isolation of its land
from neighbours, and to the fact that its great high-road, the Nile,
traversed the whole country. We now know this to be false, and that the
reduction of Egypt first to two, and then to one state was not
accomplished till after ages of separation among its _nomes_, and was
accomplished not by natural necessity but by the genius of a conqueror.
As regards the physical peculiarities of that country, they are all to
be found again on the Indus, with its affluents from far inland Alps
bringing down a periodical inundation, with its great delta spreading
from Hyderabad, with its long course through a desert which affords it
not a rivulet of increase: yet the peoples of the Indus have never
thriven and waxed great like the Egyptians. So far as our evidence leads
us, we may assert that had the Egyptians been settled on the Indus, and
the population of the Indus on the Nile, the respective parts played by
these rivers in civilisation would have been reversed. I am equally
convinced that had the Greek race been settled on the Adriatic, with
many fiords and islands, and over against Italy, instead of Asia Minor,
or on the west coast of Italy, with its headlands and bays, its great
and fruitful islands within sight,--these circumstances would have been
equally favourable to their genius, whereas they were not sufficient to
raise the Corsicans and Sardinians, perhaps the best situated of all,
from a very low level among nations. I will not cite Sicily, drawn from
its obscurity by the Greeks, for they were already great in the scale of
nations when they transformed that splendid island, long undistinguished
under Sikels, Sicans, Phœnicians, into a brilliant province of
Hellenedom. It may perhaps occur to some of you that the special
qualities of the race came from its being a purer branch of the great
Aryan stock than its brethren; that it was pre-eminently Japhet dwelling
in the tents of Shem, unalloyed with the dross of lower races, whose
animalism has survived in the defects of other Aryan stocks that dwelt
among them. But the very opposite seems to be the case. The more we
study the Greek language, the more we are impressed with the number of
strange roots, which point to a non-Aryan origin. Many of the words in
commonest use, such as βασιλεὑς and τὑραννος, are not to be explained
from Aryan roots, and anyone who has studied such place-names as Tiryns,
Assos, and their congeners will fairly conclude that the Greeks were not
purer from admixture than the Slavs or the Celts.[1] After all that has
been adduced, therefore, to account for the intellectual supremacy of
the Greeks, we are compelled to fall back on the ultimate fact--which
has not been explained--that they possessed a national genius denied to
their brethren and their neighbours. It is as yet an ultimate fact that
the human race is not promoted, except in numbers, by heat and
moisture. Some have been higher from the earliest moment that we can
observe, or infer, their conditions. Others have remained lower in spite
of the most favourable circumstances. This is a riddle which no
historian has yet solved. But is it stranger, I ask, than the sporadic
and unaccountable appearance, in a settled and known society, of
individual genius? This is the parallel case wherewith I cannot explain,
but only vindicate my position. Is it stranger that one nation should
emerge into history with exceptional gifts than that there emerges into
life, according to no law that we know, individual genius? If you look
back at the family history of those that have made or upset empires,
that have added new domains to science, that have created the poetry of
the world, you will find no law or reason to explain their sporadic
appearance, like that of brilliant meteors across the orderly stars of
the sky. They generally come from undistinguished parents; they have
undistinguished brothers and sisters; they do not transmit their great
qualities, save in some rare occasions, as if to show that there is even
here no prohibitive law. They may be single, or eldest, or youngest,
children, or in the middle of a large family. They need not be noted for
physical health. There was once a posthumous and yet prematurely born
infant, so puny and wretched that, but for the sorrows of the widowed
mother, little pains would have been taken to keep it alive, for it was
her first born. Charitable neighbours nursed it with amazing care, and
so saved its miserable spark of life from extinction. After a delicate
and monotonous youth, the child went to Cambridge; he was known in later
years as Sir Isaac Newton.
But if, so long as civilised societies cloak the first beginnings of
individual human life in mystery, we can only refer the sporadic
occurrence of genius to chance, is it any wonder, after the lapse of
ages has covered with its mists the childhood of nations, that we should
be unable to give any better answer to explain the occurrence of
national genius in one race, while its brothers and sisters are not
above the vulgar average? On one thing only I insist: let us not deny a
great fact because we cannot explain it.
Assuming then as ultimate that one nation may be gifted above the rest
with genius, let us consider in what the pre-eminence consists. And here
again we shall be aided by the analogy of individual genius. The first
and most superficial answer is that genius is original, that it strikes
out new ideas, new solutions of problems, new lines of research, while
the average man can only learn what others have already discovered for
him. But a deeper and more careful inquiry reveals to us that absolutely
new ideas are of the very rarest occurrence; almost the whole work of
human genius consists in assimilating what others have thought, in
combining what others have imagined separate, in recasting the form of
their thought, and so producing what seems a perfectly new thing, and
yet is only the old under a new aspect. No instance of this is more
signal than that of a great composer in music. The gift of original
melody, as it is called, is rare and precious. The possessor of it is
justly considered a genius. But no melody could possibly speak to us
except a combination of perfectly well known elements. The only
originality is in their assimilation and reproduction.
If then we admit that the assimilation of what others have done is a
most important feature in genius, we can affirm not only that the Greeks
were gifted with this power, but we can go further and say that they
settled in a part of the world eminently suited to suggest new ideas and
to afford scope for all the combinations which their genius prompted
them to make. I have already explained how widely I differ from those
who have laid great stress on the characteristics of the country
occupied by this race. External nature was the very thing that the
Greeks, all through their great history, felt less keenly than we should
have expected. Their want of a sense of the picturesque in nature has
even been cited as a notable defect. But, though repudiating all this
kind of argument, I am quite ready for widely different reasons to lay
much weight on the geographical position of Greece. It is an argument
which you will not find, I think, in your histories. This people
established their home on the confines of two very diverse
civilisations, so that they were able to assimilate ideas from both and
to weave them into a fabric of their own.
Concerning the influences coming from the south-east, there was never
any doubt. All the legends about Cadmus, Danaus, and the like assert the
importation of the culture of Phœnicia and of Egypt into Greece. The
same thing is said of the empire of Minos of Crete, which is now found
to have been a reality, and from which a very early culture passed
through the Ægean Islands to the coasts of Greece. Whether the early
graphic systems used at Cnossos made their way to Mycenæ or Tiryns we
have no evidence to determine. Most probably they did, and these may
have been the “dire symbols” which Homer mentions as sent with
Bellerophon to seal his fate with the Lycian king. But in any case the
Phœnician alphabet came in; the use of engraved seals was carried by the
same traders from Babylon; the ostrich eggs, the ivory from Africa, the
designs on many objects, tell no uncertain tale. For all that, the
earliest art of Greece--I will not call it Hellenic as yet--is not
Oriental but European, and with features of its own. And this need not
be referred to its originality; far more probably was it caused by
assimilating another kind of culture, which had features of its own and
which can be shown to have had its influence on Mycenæan art. This
civilisation dwelt in central Europe and came from the north to Greece.
It has been called Keltic, it has been called Pelasgian; we find it in
tombs, and in raths even as far as Ireland. It was from this source that
came the fancy for Baltic amber as an ornament--a thing as strange in
Greece as the ostrich egg. From here too came the shape of early bronze
weapons, probably the habit of burying the dead in beehive tombs;
actually many of the patterns used for ornament on tools and weapons.
And who can tell how much more filtered in from this source, which the
old Greeks called Pelasgian? Thus the Hellenic race was on the verge of
two kinds of culture, and created from both that distinct type which
ultimately became the most perfect in the world.
The genius for assimilating might seem to imply a collateral
weakness--the danger of absorption or degeneration into the nations
whose ideas are adopted and developed. There are cases in the history of
man where a conquered race has abandoned its language and religion and
adopted those of its conquerors. There are other cases where the
conqueror has been absorbed and the subject race has reasserted itself
in spite of dominant language and legislation intended to secure its
ultimate absorption. It is one of the salient features of the Hellenic
race that, though very receptive of foreign ideas, though always ready
to profit by the discoveries of neighbours, it never abandoned its
primacy in type, and was never absorbed into any other population,
except perhaps in isolated cases and after centuries of separation from
the mother stock. The Eretrians whom Darius brought as prisoners to Asia
and settled in the rich fields of Babylonia were doubtless in the long
run absorbed by the surrounding nationalities, but they were still
recognisable when Alexander conquered his Empire nearly two hundred
years later, and possibly they too may have kept up the affecting custom
of the people of Posidonia (Pæstum in Italy) at the other extremity of
the civilised world, who were indeed, as Strabo tells us, centuries
later, barbarised out and out by the Samnites, but who nevertheless
still met once a year to lament their fate, and to deplore their loss of
Hellenic life. Apart from these few and small exceptions, this race has
absolutely refused to be absorbed by any other, however civilised,
however dominant, and has remained the same in language and in
characteristics from the days when Homer composed for the Achæan chiefs,
down to this day, when every scholar or student looks upon Athens as the
goal of his pilgrimage.
The permanence of the Greek language is a great and striking evidence.
There was never, I suppose, a generation of Greeks from the 8th century
B.C. to the 20th A.D. which did not understand Homer; but if you are
disposed to ascribe this to sentimental causes, then I say that the
earliest Attic prose differs from the Attic prose of to-day so little as
to afford us an unique example of persistency. Let me state it in this
way: Herodotus, if you recalled him from his grave and put a Greek
newspaper of to-day into his hands, would at first find the type novel,
but would presently recognise in it his own alphabet. He would then
discover a dialect of his Greek, as he heard it at Athens, and though he
would doubtless call it very vulgar, and even barbarised, he would in a
day or two read it quite fluently. So far as my knowledge goes, you will
find nothing like this in Europe.
Turning to persistence of characteristics, it is superfluous for me to
expound to you this topic at any length, for in the book which forms the
basis of the old acquaintance between you and me, I mean my _Social Life
in Greece_, the main thesis, then, but now no longer, a paradox, was
that, though the classical Greeks did great intellectual and artistic
work which their descendants could not attempt to rival, yet the moral
features of the Homeric, the Alcaic, the Pindaric, the Platonic, the
Xenophontic, the Demosthenic Greek were much the same as those of our
friends who are now laying claim to Macedonia. There is the same
cleverness, not without a special delight in overreaching an opponent,
the same diligence, the same genuine patriotism, but also the same
undying jealousy of the success of others, the same want of spirituality
in religion, the same light esteem for veracity. The models of Phidias
and Polycletus, of Scopas and Praxiteles, were doubtless to be found in
real life[2]; so were the characters of Plato’s _Dialogues_, and in this
consisted the genius of their art and their literature, that they
apprehended and perpetuated the ideal, while the average man and average
society in Greece formed a standard of cultivated society, high, but by
no means perfect. I only mention their average qualities in order to
emphasise the fact that I do not stand before you a pedant seeing
nothing but the greatness of his favourite study, but as a plain man
estimating the history of the past in the light of common-sense.
Yet this is not easy when we stand face to face with the wonderful
performances of this undying race. What have the Greeks not accomplished
on the stage of the world’s history since they accepted the heritage of
the older and richer civilisations? First they dominated and so far
absorbed the pre-existing population as to feel themselves the only
possessors of the country. Some of them even boasted, and without
raising any controversy, that they were indigenous to that soil. Then
they spread themselves over all the Mediterranean coast, beginning with
Asia Minor, where they collided with the successive empires of
Mesopotamia. They went to Italy and Sicily, which became Greek lands, so
far as they were civilised, and then they successfully resisted the
great effort of the Persian Empire to make them a subject province. Even
their Asiatic brethren, who did fall under Persian sway for several
generations, never lost their nationality, nor could they be said to
have resumed it again when the Persian Empire fell under Macedonian
sway. When the Hellenic nationality came to dominate the kingdoms of
Macedonia, hither Asia, and Egypt, and even when the Romans supervened,
who treated it first with respect, presently with contempt, these
arrogant conquerors could never shake off the spiritual domination of
Greek literature, Greek philosophy, Greek art, and Greek urbanity. Nay,
so imperishable was the Greek influence that it caused a new boundary
line to be drawn between East and West, and founded on the old Greek
Byzantium a new capital, where Hellenic refinement and Hellenic art were
still to all the ruder Western world the acme of dignity and of
splendour. Even when this magnificence had been plundered by barbarous
crusaders, and again by less barbarous Turks, the fugitive handful of
learned Greeks, with their immortal heritage of letters, lit up an
intellectual flame in Western Europe that has never since been quenched.
This last great revival by means of the Greeks is, I think, peculiarly
instructive to us to-day. For nothing can show more clearly, or in a
larger example, how different is the effect of second-hand or
traditional knowledge from that of direct contact with the originals. It
was no doubt held in the later Roman Empire, and in the early Middle
Ages, that all the value of Hellenic culture had passed into Roman life,
that Roman law, Roman architecture, Roman organisation were far more
perfect than those of their teachers. Even the latest bloom of Greek
architecture, that Byzantine style which is still living in the
unapproachable St. Sophia of Constantinople, had been carried into
Italy, France, Germany, and England, where, under the name of decorated
Norman, it holds its place of honour in our church architecture. St.
Mark’s at Venice is the richest because it is a decadent example of that
Greek style, and so other Latin adaptations of Greek were supposed to
afford all the benefits of the originals; nay, in one case--that of the
Latin Vulgate--Saint Jerome went so far as to compare his version, with
the Greek and Hebrew originals written on each side of it, to Christ
crucified between the two thieves. There were Greek statues and Greek
temples in plenty to copy. Aristotle, confessedly the greatest and most
encyclopedic of Greek philosophers, could be had in a Latin translation
and narrowly escaped being canonised as a Latin saint. Was not Virgil
far deeper and more artistic than Homer? Was not the _Dies iræ_ far
grander in sound, as well as in sense, than the trivialities of Horace
or Ovid? So the Western world became Latin, and men were content with
the echoes of Greek in their Roman culture.
But when the real thing came to them again, as it were by accident, mark
the sudden and astonishing change. It was at once discovered that the
Romanised culture of previous centuries had degenerated from the nobler
types, that new influences from the north had in architecture and in art
altered its purity; that the gloomy splendour of Dante, the mightiest
outcome of the Middle Ages, had put out the cheerfulness and light of
Greek life, even as Virgil understood them, with a cruel and relentless
creed. With the return of Hellenic serenity, there was no doubt much
irreligion and paganism associated, but even to that point a revolt
against the spiritual tyranny of the Roman Church cannot be regretted by
those who refuse to believe that men can only be kept from crime by
threatening them with greater crime--I mean the infliction of eternal
torture upon any sentient being. The Gothic fane was no doubt the ideal
gloom wherein to worship a relentless God and his tortured Christ; the
Renaissance palace was a place of light and gladness, wherein men could
read with amazement the epic of Homer, the tragedy of Æschylus, the
comedy of Aristophanes, and learn from them what human culture had once
attained.
And so Greek studies resumed their place as the noblest part of a
liberal education. We got to know and appreciate Greek letters deeply
and thoroughly as no Roman had ever known them; we got to analyse and
understand Greek logic and philosophy and what is still more subtle, the
delicacies of Greek art. We began to add to the treasures unearthed for
us by the Renaissance, by probing for buried temples in Greece, and
searching the sands of Egypt for new texts. The culture of the
nineteenth century may fairly be called a culture that owes its
greatness largely to a thorough appreciation of the unique excellence
of classical Greek work. Never was I more impressed with this fact than
in visiting, three or four years ago, a little collection of old Greek
fragments gathered from private owners, and exhibited by the Burlington
Art Club in London. They were small things, bronze statuettes, busts,
ornaments, vases, but no intelligent man could avoid the strong and
instant conviction that all was essentially patrician art in the highest
sense. There was not a plebeian note in the whole exhibition.
These things being so, it seemed to men brought up as I have been, that
the supremacy of Greek studies, especially for the education of the
rising generation, was a fact that no man could contest.
Yet, strange to say, within the last twenty years, and possibly due to
the reaction of American influences upon Europe, the tide has turned and
the great flow of Greek studies is being succeeded by an ebb. Higher
education--formerly and indeed in the truest sense always--an
aristocratic privilege, is now to be the right of the democracy, which
has no time for it, and all of us, poor and rich, workers for our bread
and those whose bread is provided, are to pursue the same ends, and
attain the same cultivation. Need I add that the domain of modern
science is so enlarged as to demand a high place in the instruction of
those who will presently earn their living by some of its applications?
Thus the program has been enlarged and diversified beyond the capacity
of any learner, and we begin to think what can best be sacrificed in
order to save the rest. The advocates of modern science naturally set
themselves against what they are pleased to call the dead languages, and
so, as Greek seemed more remote to them, because of its strange
alphabet, they have so far prevailed as to get rid, from a vast number
of schools, of the study of that language. Even in the universities of
Europe there is an irresistible tendency to make it a voluntary subject
of study. The innovators, most of whom are ignorant in any proper sense
both of Greek and Latin, still profess a great respect for Latin and
loudly assert its importance even in modern education. But do not be
deceived. The day will come shortly when the same attack will be
directed against the second “dead language,” as they call it, and we
shall be expected to throw out another member of our spiritual family to
the wolves. For the attack is made in total ignorance of the relative
value of the topics assailed. Anyone with the smallest insight into the
matter knows full well that the loss of Latin is as nothing compared to
that of Greek. I am not going to argue that question before the present
audience. If at least three quarters of the good we get from Latin is
because Latin civilisation is based on Greek, is it not infinitely
better to study the great original than any copy, however successful?
And this brings us to the point for the sake of which I have made an
apparent digression.
Quite apart from the scientists (a very plebeian, but expressive, modern
term) who pretend that Latin is sufficient for the department of
language or the study of grammar, or of ancient history, we hear a great
many, both in England and in America, who are really fond of higher
cultivation, who feel obscurely that it is from Greek that such
cultivation comes, and who long to obtain from it what they find lacking
in modern refinement. But they strive to do this merely through
second-hand sources. They have recourse to English translations and
English commentaries and to lectures like the present, in order to fill
up the gap which they feel in their own early training. Now I will not
deny that modern translations are far more faithful than those of more
independent imitators, who were not afraid to colour Greek art with hues
from their own palette. I will not deny that the skill of the
photographer has reproduced for us the outlines of buildings and statues
far more accurately than the best of painters, albeit Turner’s
conception of Pæstum (for example) is truer in its own way than all the
photographs ever taken of that temple. But this brings me to state a
somewhat subtle truth, of the greatest import in the present context; a
great original is generally susceptible of divers interpretations,
whereas a copy, however excellent, seldom gives us more than one; so
that, while the former is eminently suggestive, the latter limits our
appreciation. The copy of a copy, in law worthless, is so also in
matters of art. In each reproduction something is lost, and remember
that the more minutely careful the copying, the more slavish is the work
likely to be. I know that there are such things as copies greater than
their originals. That is true of the Gospels in our English Bible; it is
also true of those portions of Virgil’s _Georgics_ which are translated
from Aratus. But these rare exceptions do not invalidate the general
truth of the principle I have enounced. And when even Virgil, probably
the most competent translator that ever lived, came to deal with a
master like Theocritus, how feeble the result! I may safely say that if
we had no knowledge of Theocritus save through Virgil’s _Eclogues_, he
would never have ranked as more than a third-rate poet with us.
The plain deduction is this: get at the originals at all cost. Do not be
satisfied with essays, or dissertations, or commentaries. Go and see the
originals, unlock the secrets of the tongue in which they were first
presented, and then there will open upon you such a Renaissance as
dawned upon the astonied humanists of the 15th century. The main use of
such a lecture as that which I am now delivering is that you should be
discontented with it, and should desire to pass from the illustration,
the commentary, the appreciation, to a direct study of the great
originals. Such a course may indeed be impracticable for many of you,
who in middle life cannot turn aside to the labour of acquiring another
language; for the mastering of a language is always an arduous task, and
all the more so as we advance in years. But if we cannot ourselves
learn, this generation ought at least to stimulate and direct the next.
For I fear that the present knowledge of Greek in this country is
confined to a small minority, while there is still a great majority who
have some ambition to be really cultivated. I remember some years ago
undertaking to teach a class at Chautauqua the _Alcestis_ of Euripides.
The difficulty that confronted me was that a score of Greek texts of
the play were not forthcoming, and that even in New York they were not
found without search and delay. The Greek masterpieces share indeed this
quality with other examples of perfect art, that even a copy is well
worth having, and so the many excellent translations from the Greek
which you have in all your libraries, are by no means to be despised.
But if you can attain the originals, and master them, the translations,
even if they have helped you in this task, lose all their value. I
remember seeing in Mr. Gladstone’s library at Hawarden a whole section
of his great accommodation for books devoted to translations of the
_Iliad_ into many languages. There were scores, perhaps hundreds, of
versions in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Danish,
Norwegian, Russian, Hindustani, and many other tongues, sent to him by
the translators as tributes of esteem for his own Homeric studies. I
asked him did he ever open any of them? He said, “No; all the time I can
spare I devote to studying the great originals.” But was there ever a
clearer demonstration than these myriad translations of the greatness of
a literary masterpiece? Even when there are many excellent versions
already published in their own language men will not be content with
these efforts, but will ever attempt again the fascinating, never
ending, never convincing task. You could tell, without knowing any
tongue but English, that there are four supreme poems which have
exercised a fascination over men that never grows old. They are the
_Iliad_ of Homer, the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus, the _Inferno_ of Dante,
the _Faust_ of Goethe. Two of these are Greek; but note also that, while
we could find in Greek several rivals[3] which are of hardly less
importance and by various poets, there is neither in German nor in
Italian any poem that can for one moment compare with the supreme pieces
I have named. So pre-eminent are the Greeks in literature. Their other
art has not survived save in ruins or fragments. But ask any real
specialist, such as the late Mr. Penrose, or Dr. Dörpfeld, what place
the best Greek architecture holds in the buildings of the world, and he
will tell you that never again can anything equal to the Parthenon at
Athens be constructed. The huge temple at Karnak in Egypt, the
marvellous church of Justinian at Constantinople, the lovely cathedral
of Rheims are probably the best specimens of perfection in building
which we possess, yet the Parthenon, with its apparent simplicity, shows
a subtle depth of artistic knowledge which justifies us in calling it
the finest of earthly buildings. Need I say one word of Greek supremacy
in other arts here, seeing that the details must form the subject of
subsequent lectures?
The danger I see before this generation is that which came upon the
Roman world insensibly and which resulted in a decadence not arrested
till it sank into the night of the dark ages. The later empire was
content to take Greek art and Greek letters at second hand, and to
substitute Latin culture for the models which had educated their
greatest masters. But as I have already told you the copy had not the
life of the original. So we too, with all our science, with our increase
of material knowledge and our restless running to and fro, may sink into
an ugly, tame, joyless conglomeration of societies, for whom new
discoveries supply hosts of new conveniences, but no return to the
happiness and the contentment of a simpler age. Our purblind toothless
children may have their congenital defects vamped up by science, and
without it we should indeed be stranded upon the reefs of despair. But
happiness does not lie here, no, nor in motors, nor in turbines, nor in
wireless messages across the globe, nor in daily newspapers full of
inextricable fact and falsehood.
I cannot believe that the civilised world will remain satisfied with
this dark outlook,--the monopoly of these factories of material
discovery, where furnace and electric light replace the glorious rays of
the Sun-God worshipped by the Greeks. There has generally been a great
power of recovery in our race at large; and periods of decay have been
followed by periods not only of renascence but of rejuvenescence. At all
epochs when the world grew dull and desponding and the times were out of
joint, we have the mystical tendency, the inclination to brush aside
human joys and cares and to fix the mind on the Eternal, on the
ineffable delights of communion with the Spirit of the Universe. That
this tendency is alive even in modern America, cannot but be obvious to
those who have studied the pathology of so-called Christian Science. The
other tendency is the humanist, that which seeks to recover for us the
joys and beauties of life, enhanced by art and protected by the
refinement of a sound education. This was the aspect of human happiness
which is most perfectly represented, so far as the world has yet run, by
the Greeks, and hence the careful and minute study of their life must
always appeal to those who desire the æsthetic reformation of modern
society. Once and again the Greeks have exercised this vast and
beneficent influence; is it vain to hope that even still it is not
exhausted, but potent to cure the ills of man? Peradventure, the
prophecy of our great and most Hellenic of poets may yet come true, with
a fulfilment wider and deeper than even his large vision could
compass:--
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains, from waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep!
II
GREEK POETRY
In coming before you to-day to treat of the influence of Greek poetry on
the modern world, I feel under a special advantage, which is also a
disadvantage. Many of you will know that two volumes of my _History of
Greek Literature_ are devoted to Greek poetry, and those of you who have
read them must already be familiar with my treatment of the authors and
their works in detail. To such of you, there can be no difficulty in
following the course of the present lecture. But on the other hand, it
is hard for me to give to such hearers new material, seeing that I have
already done my best in two volumes to satisfy their curiosity. To those
that are not familiar with the subject, there is the disadvantage, in
hearing a man whose intimacy with the subject is of such long standing,
that he may allude to things as obvious which to his audience are not
so, being beyond the bounds of their ordinary reading. But I may very
possibly be underrating the cultivation of this audience, which is said
to be on a very different level from that of any similar audience in
England. If so, you, like all competent critics, in contrast to the
vulgar and the ignorant, will appreciate the difficulties of my task and
will judge it with due allowance for these difficulties.
It is obviously my first duty to-day to put before you the _general_
features of Greek poetry which have made it a model for succeeding ages
and nations. Then I shall proceed, with as much detail as time permits,
to give instances of the effects, direct or indirect, of Greek poetry on
the poetry of English-speaking nations. You will find that the features
which are really the most important are not the obvious features, and
hardly those which we might name if we spoke hastily, or at random. The
chiefest and most remarkable, which permeates every Greek poet from
Homer to Theocritus, is that their work is carefully studied, and in no
sense the mere spontaneous outpouring of the human heart. “I lisped in
numbers, for the numbers came,” said, as a matter of pride, a very
artificial poet. Nothing would seem less worthy of it to a Greek poet.
He always despised what we call an untutored genius. We hear talk indeed
of divine madness and of the inspiration of the Muses, but so far as we
know, they never inspired an ignorant man, and never taught an educated
man to violate the traditions of his school. This studied work comes
before us in its full artificiality in the Homeric poems. It is more
than doubtful whether such a language was ever spoken. It is full of
strange forms, and the mixed dialect, sometimes even to us
ungrammatical, was the dialect invented or perfected by a school of
bards who did not profess to reproduce ordinary speech, but something
far higher and better, which only the educated poet could compose. And
when I use the term artificial, which has come in modern English to
signify something contrasted with natural, and therefore inferior,[4] I
must say a word in explanation of my meaning.
It is not the proper province of art to attain to a perfect
representation of nature, but a representation of perfect nature. For
example, the more the art of sculpture developed in Greece, the more
they attained to the representation of a natural but an ideally
beautiful figure, such as the Hermes of Praxiteles. So the last triumph
of a great actor is to reproduce perfectly human nature in its general
features, if not in its ideal features, and so the philosopher exclaims
in wonder at the plays of Menander, “O Menander and human life, which of
you has copied the other?” But if anyone imagines that art consists
merely in photographing vulgar everyday life, he can easily lapse into
absurdity. All our habits, so far as they are civilised, depart from
mere nature and employ artifice to conceal or improve it. If any of you
came here in purely natural attire, imagine the scene! I believe such
things were attempted in the wild society of Paris in the heyday of the
great Revolution, but even then their attire, though inferior in
quantity, was in quality not less artificial than the opinions of the
wearers.
It follows from these considerations that Greek poetry was always
developed in schools possessing fixed traditions, and following strict
laws both in metre and in diction. If any man thought to break loose
from these restrictions, and write in a manner wholly free and
unchecked, he would get no hearing in Greece. Such a phenomenon, for
example, as your Walt Whitman would have been impossible, or at least we
should never have heard of it.