7. Early surveying instruments, including the great quadrate
of Schissler.
The story of the free cities of Greece shows how a love of the higher
and brighter things in life may thrive in a democracy. Whether such love
may develop in a civilization based on a philosophy of force is the
present problem of the Western world. To-day there are doubts, even
thoughts of despair, but neither man nor nation is to be judged by the
behaviour in a paroxysm of delirium. Lavoisier perished in the
Revolution, and the Archbishop of Paris was butchered at the altar by
the Commune, yet France was not wrecked; and Russia may survive the
starvation of such scholars as Danielevski and Smirnov, and the massacre
of Botkin. To have intelligent freemen of the Greek type with a stake in
the State (not mere chattels from whose daily life the shadow of the
workhouse never lifts), to have the men and women who could love the
light put in surroundings in which the light may reach them, to
encourage in all a sense of brotherhood reaching the standard of the
Good Samaritan--surely the realization in a democracy of such reasonable
ambitions should be compatible with the control by science of the forces
of nature for the common good, and a love of all that is best in
religion, in art, and in literature.
Amid the smoke and squalor of a modern industrial city, after the
bread-and-butter struggle of the day, "the Discobolus has no gospel."
Our puritanized culture has been known to call the Antinous vulgar.
Copies of these two statues, you may remember, Samuel Butler found
stored away in the lumber-room of the Natural History Museum, Montreal,
with skins, plants, snakes, and insects, and in their midst, stuffing an
owl, sat "the brother-in-law of the haberdasher of Mr. Spurgeon."
Against the old man who thus blasphemed beauty, Butler broke into those
memorable verses with the refrain "O God! O Montreal!"
Let us not be discouraged. The direction of our vision is everything,
and after weltering four years in chaos poor stricken humanity still
nurses the unconquerable hope of an ideal state "whose citizens are
happy ... absolutely wise, all of them brave, just, and self-controlled
... all at peace and unity and in the enjoyment of legality, equality,
liberty, and all other good things." Lucian's winning picture of this
"Universal Happiness" might have been sketched by a Round Table pen or
some youthful secretary to the League of Nations. That such hope
persists is a witness to the power of ideals to captivate the mind and
the reality may be nearer than any of us dare dream. If survived, a
terrible infection, such as confluent smallpox, seems to benefit the
general health. Perhaps such an attack through which we have passed may
benefit the body cosmic. After discussing the various forms of
government, Plato concludes that "States are as the men are, they grow
out of human characters,"[18] and then, as the dream-republic approached
completion, he realized that after all the true State is within, of
which each one of us is the founder, and patterned on an ideal the
existence of which matters not a whit. Is not the need of this
individual reconstruction the Greek message to modern democracy? And
with it is blended the note of individual service to the community on
which Professor Gilbert Murray has so wisely dwelt.
[18] _Republic_, Book VIII.
With the hot blasts of hate still on our cheeks, it may seem a mockery
to speak of this as the saving asset in our future; but is it not the
very marrow of the teaching in which we have been brought up? At last
the gospel of the right to live, and the right to live healthy, happy
lives, has sunk deep into the hearts of the people; and before the
war, so great was the work of science in preventing untimely death
that the day of Isaiah seemed at hand, when a man's life should be
"more precious than fine gold, even a man than the golden wedge of
Ophir." There is a sentence in the writings of the Father of
Medicine upon which all commentators have lingered, "[Greek: ên gar
parê philanthrôpiê, paresti kai philotechniê]"[19]--the love of
humanity associated with the love of his craft!--philanthropia and
philotechnia--the joy of working joined in each one to a true love
of his brother. Memorable sentence indeed! in which for the first
time was coined the magic word "philanthropy," and conveying the
subtle suggestion that perhaps in this combination the longings of
humanity may find their solution, and Wisdom--_Philosophia_--at last be
justified of her children.
[19] _oeuvres complètes d' Hippocrates._ Par E. Littré, IX, 258.