J. P. Mahaffy

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The products of the painter were akin to those of the epigrammatist, whose elegance may well be called by a poorer word—finish—and is to us rather the exhibition of great cleverness than the outcome of genius. It was the day also of social decadence, when the mere artist became the idol of society, and could parade his conceit and his vulgarity without fear of censure from patrons who only valued him as the ephemeral fashion. The gossip we hear about the old painters often exhibits this painfully modern triviality. ”

“ But with the dawn and the awakening of human life, the sounds of men react upon her troubled spirit and cause her to put aside her dread resolve. With her also, and with the Greek poet, the conception is fresher and better. It is the youth and health of Medea, the wine of life glowing in her veins which calls her back from suicidal gloom when cheerful sounds of human life illumine the dawn. ”

“ The struggle between Persia and Greece, its inception, its varying fortunes, the subjugation of Ionia, the anguish of Greece—all leading to the climax at Salamis and Platea, and the craven flight of Xerxes to his home—what greater or more complete subject could a historian choose? And in order to sweeten it with words, there are many pauses in the action, filled with delightful digressions, far more various and more restful than the choruses in a Greek tragedy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ SCIENCE: GRAMMAR—LOGIC—MATHEMATICS—MEDICINE WHEN I speak to you of Greek Science, of course I use the word in the old and proper sense to include all strict reasoning, especially of the deductive kind, particularly therefore pure Mathematics, and not merely the inferences from observation and experiment which now commonly assume and even monopolise the title of Science. I often see in educational programmes Science and Mathematics contrasted as distinct things, which indeed in this case they are, only because the Science so-called is often unworthy of the name. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But among them all Aristotle stands out as the “master of those that knew”—the man who attained in the Middle Ages such celebrity and authority that he narrowly escaped being canonised as a saint in the Roman calendar. If that distinction really belonged to the benefactors of mankind, I know not that any man ever lived who had a better claim to it. For his life and activity mark an epoch not only in the progress of many sciences, but in the general culture of the human mind, to which I know no parallel. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Should we indeed have inferred that the modelling of statues in marble and in bronze was absolutely perfect?
The two æsthetic qualities requisite for success in painting are obviously a sense of form, and a sense of colour; without a natural appreciation of the beauty inhering in each of these, the highest technical skill, however valuable, does not suffice. After what you have heard about Greek architecture and sculpture, I need not say another word to show that in the sense of form the Greeks were supreme and unapproachable. But what about their sense of colour? ”

“ The greatest English example in older days is the Areopagitica of Milton, who though manifestly inspired by Isocrates, is far from possessing his perfect control of language, perfect smoothness of period, perfect clearness of thinking, all of which make up the charm of the great master. Isocrates was the teacher of this great style, not only to pleaders and pamphleteers, but to historians, and he was blamed for making men like Ephorus and Theopompus, his favourite pupils, in writing their once famous works, think more of their diction than of their impartiality or their research. ”

“ When we pass from this large influence of Greek drama to that of the lyric fragments or the idylls and love stories of our modern poets, I am met by an old assertion of the pedants, that the Greeks were wanting in that love and feeling for nature which is the prerogative of the Romantic school. I see no such contrast between Classical and Romantic. Gray, the most classical of our lyric poets, was the first to insist upon the necessity of a poet refreshing his soul with the wild beauties of mountain scenery. ”

“ Could I offer you a clearer proof of the modern character of this civilisation, which had not only a youth and an age of gold, but then a silver autumn or a Martinmas summer, when Plutarch lived in his little deserted town, surrounded by a complete and terrible decadence? And it may not be out of place to remind you that even with many differences of age, of place, and of circumstances, the same moral causes that produce decay in one civilisation are likely to produce it in another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a common piece of arrogance among experimentalists to say that these wonderful anticipations of modern science were mere gropings in the dark, supported not by experiment, but by what we should call superficial observations. The wonder is all the greater that these men should in their theories have gone to the root of the matter, and thought out the metaphysical possibilities of the composition of the world. ”

“ For it is but natural that the rich should offer many sacrifices to the gods as they have both wealth and honour; but the poor less so, either from want of means, or want of good will toward the gods who have not favoured them, so that the poor ought to be specially subject to punishment for their transgressions or mistakes. But as I said before, this disease is heaven-sent like the rest. For everything happens according to nature.
This was the spirit that died out when the Greek world decayed, and Europe fell a victim to ignorance and superstition. ”

“ HIGHER THINKING, PHILOSOPHY, SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL THEOLOGY IN my last lecture I spoke of the small effect, or want of effect, which a mere intellectual training in the liberal arts might have upon the average morals of a large society. To-day I propose to take you into a higher atmosphere, and consider what occupied the élite of Greek society in their advanced education, and in their speculations on the nature of things. You must not underrate the enormous advantages the well-born youth then possessed in training his mind, as compared with the youth of to-day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Attic law, which represents the highest, and also the purest Greek feeling, was extremely jealous not only of the safety, but of the dignity of the citizen, and any assault in the streets, even if it caused no dangerous hurt, was severely punished by the law. As in modern societies, even to touch a man rudely, or against his will, was punished as an assault, and if the man assaulted happened to be performing any official duty for the state, the offence might be considered in the light of lèse-majesté, or treason against the dignity of the state. ”

“ The very idea of exceeding the excellence of a great Greek statue hardly enters the mind of the modern sculptor. If he could but approach the work of Praxiteles, or even of the nameless workers who carved the great tomb of Sidon, he would regard it as an astounding achievement.
We shall find not a few who attribute this perfection of Greek sculpture to the great opportunities they had of observing the play of limb and muscle in their daily exercises in the palæstra, where men and boys exercised naked. ”

“ But he was a great literary artist, and he felt that while all the other schools of poetry had gradually lost their contact with real life, and were becoming obtrusively artificial and outworn in public estimation, there was still a vein of folk-song, in scenery contrasting utterly with the crowded sandhills of Alexandria, which might, if treated with delicate art, appeal once more to the sympathy of a weary and decadent society. ”

“ Aristotle adds to this his definition of tragedy that the subject must be sweetened by graces of diction in every part, and this is exactly what the first great historian did, and what every one of his successors is bound to do, if his work is to live as a work of art, and not to be laid by as a mere repertory for learned reference. History as a matter of style is therefore one of the great legacies of the Greeks to mankind. ”