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“ We see Europe's greatest sin precisely where we found Africa's and Asia's,—in human hatred, the despising of men; with this difference, however: Europe has the awful lesson of the past before her, has the splendid results of widened areas of tolerance, sympathy, and love among men, and she faces a greater, an infinitely greater, world of men than any preceding civilization ever faced. ”

“ The subtle Greek, who sent the arrows of his thought quivering into the heart of Europe: the practical Roman, fulfilling his great part in the commission to replenish and subdue the earth: the nations of modern Europe, with their culture, and power, and ambitions: the great Republic of the West, where the banner of religious freedom was unfurled, and great problems in politics and religion are being worked out—not one of these can be spared from the final association of men in the kingdom of God. Each has its contribution to bring. ”

“ You stretch out your gigantic hands a thousandfold every day over the waves; your relations with Europe are not only commercial as with Asia, they are also social, moral, spiritual, intellectual; you take Europe every day by the hand. How then could you believe, that if that hand of Europe, which you grasp every day, remains dirty, you can escape from soiling your own hands? ”

“ I judge in this way partly from my own experience, for I have seldom become acquainted with a Greek,—and I have known many,—who has not improved upon acquaintance, won my esteem, and, in most cases, my affection, and impressed me with the firm belief that there is no nation in the varied population of Europe which, if ruled with wisdom and justice, would exhibit loftier or more exalted qualities. ”

“ They are akin, fundamentally akin, in all the heights and depths of their requirements; it is Europe, the ONE Europe, whose soul presses urgently and longingly, outwards and upwards, in their multifarious and boisterous art--whither? ”

“ At the first thought of such a thing Europa drew back. But then she considered in her wise little head that there could be no possible harm in taking just one gallop on the back of this docile and friendly animal, who would certainly set her down the very instant she desired it. And how it would surprise her brothers to see her riding across the green meadow! ”

“ This trouble in the heart of the eleventh century arose from the insight which compassion gives; the European imagination, at rest with regard to its own safety, is for the first time perplexed by the fate of men of an alien race and faith, whose heroism it has nevertheless learnt to revere, as in after-times it was perplexed in pondering the fate of Greece and Rome, whose art and thought it vainly strove to imitate. ”

“ For nowhere in Europe do we meet with infants so lovely, with youths so soft, so virginal, so beautiful in their incipient manliness, with old men so grave, stately, and with countenances so magnificent, as among the living descendants of the Hellenes, whose destiny may yet be, one day, as enviable as their forms. ”

“ Endless are the varieties of lofty joy. In the age of Thales, Greece knew the delight of the first dim notion of cosmic unity and law. In the age of Christ, Europe felt the first high authentic message from a world beyond our own. ”

“ The first sun myth mentioned in the course of this work is the story of Europa, in which Europa is “the broad spreading light,” born in Phœnicia (the “purple land of morn”) , the child of Telephassa (“she who shines from afar”) , carried away from her eastern birthplace by the sky (Jupiter) , closely pursued by the sun (her brother Cadmus) , who, after passing through many lands, slays a dragon (the usual demon of drought or darkness) , and sets (dies) at last without having ever overtaken the light of dawn (Europa) .
Apollo. ”

“ European civility is the triumph of talent, the extension of system, the sharpened understanding, adaptive skill, delight in forms, delight in manifestation, in comprehensible results. Pericles, Athens, Greece, had been working in this element with the joy of genius not yet chilled by any foresight of the detriment of an excess. ”

“ And in this union we recognise the distinctive features of the West. The Greek genius is the European genius in its first and brightest bloom. From a vivifying contact with the Greek spirit Europe derived that new and mighty impulse which we call Progress. Strange it is to think that these Greeks, like the other members of the Indo-European family, probably had their cradle in the East; that behind Greek civilisation, Greek language, Greek mythology, there is that Eastern background to which the comparative sciences seem to point. ”

“ Rather I have only the desire to arouse others to a consciousness that it is as easy now to view and enjoy the visible remnants of the glory that was Greece, as it is to view those of the grandeur that was Rome. ”

“ What Europe is in a large way, Greece is in a small—a region of coasts, islands and peninsulas. Belonging more to one continent in its natural conformation, and to the other by its historical connexion, Greece forms the point of transition and the intermediate link between Asia and Europe.
The other six or seven principal countries in Europe, taken according to a strict geographical classification, and without paying attention to the political variations of territory, whether in antiquity, [84] the middle ages, or modern times, form the members of the third class. ”

“ But as the Greeks wallowed in the blood of Greeks, so do Europeans now in the blood of Europeans : and indeed, taken relatively, it is mostly the highly cultivated who are sacrificed, those who promise an abundant and excellent posterity ; for such stand in the front of the battle as commanders, and also expose themselves to most danger, by reason of their higher ambition. ”

“ Phœnicia, Judea, Greece, Rome, Carthage,—these have played their parts in its history. The European states trace the first impulses of their culture to Asia. But Europe borrowed nothing without assimilating it to a new principle radically different from the Oriental principle. It is the principle of individuality—of personal development, of personal achievement, of personal freedom,—that we meet upon the shores of Europe, and education assumes at once a new interest to us when we come to Greece and Rome. ”

“ I rule the Athenians; the Athenians rule the Greeks; the Greeks rule Europe, and Europe rules the world." "Though I have the arm of a woman, I have the heart of a King, and am ready to pour out my blood." ”

“ But if to Europe, next, to what part of Europe? Two great nations—great in a different sense, the one by dazzling brilliancy of intellect, the other by weight and dignity of moral grandeur—divide between them the honours of history through the centuries immediately [Pg 124] preceding the birth of Christ. To which of these, the pupil asks, am I to address myself? On the one hand, the greater refinement and earlier civilization of Greece would naturally converge all eyes upon her ”

“ They fitted well—these people—within the frame of this Eastern Sea, which was now lighted by the fiery rays of the sun. I enjoyed less the travelers upon the upper deck; here yawned the stupidity and stiffness of European society. A distinguished Englishman of the usual type, a French Governess, some Russian officers, a few emancipated Russian women, smoking their inevitable cigarettes. A stuck-up Greek who had tasted the civilization of the west, who was reading the Odyssey with a new Greek accent, and a German professor who was promenading for his health. ”

“ For three nations, remnants of the Greeks after the destruction of Troy, fled from Asia into different parts of Europe, the Romans under Æneas, the Franks under Antenor, and the Britons under Brutus; and from thence arose that courage, that nobleness of mind, that ancient dignity, that acuteness of understanding, and confidence of speech, for which these three nations are so highly distinguished. ”

“ The marbles and beautiful sculpture of ancient Greece recall the days when European civilization was still in its infancy,—when a handful of people in the south-eastern corner of Europe were carefully nursing the light of civilization which now illumines all the world. ”

“ We find a certain art in the East. We trace the different channels of communication with Europe. We find Greece touching Asia Minor, trade binding Phœnicia with every port in the Mediterranean, Etruria bringing to her own ports the manufactures of Eastern experts, colonies settling in all manner of places and coming from many sources. It has been plainly demonstrated that the lines of intercourse cross and recross in a hundred different ways and directions. ”

“ Let us pause here one moment, and follow the march of civilization into Europe. Wherever its light has once burned clearly, it has been diffused, but not extinguished. Every one knows that Rome got her civilization from Greece; that Greece again borrowed hers from Egypt, that thence she derived her earliest science and the forms of her beautiful mythology. ”

“ The whole of Europe nowadays is, in every respect, the disciple of ancient Greece, and her proper inheritor; so much so that a wise man of England had said, "Whatever nature has not created, that is the creation of the Greek mind." ”

“ The European, with his larger leisure, and generations of leisure in his brain, his interest in everything, and knowledge of many things,—above all of the world,—has reduced gallantry to a fine art. He may give his fancy, his sentiment, his passion, even his leisure, to one woman at a time, but his heart—well, unless he is very young—that remains quite intact. ”

“ We only mention the Greek nation, perhaps the greatest and most illustrious of all nations that ever failed in their political career, because we are well informed and personally acquainted with the details that brought this formerly world-wide respected and valued gem of civilization into insignificance in the eye of the scornful, and a plaything in the hands of the so-called great powers of Europe. ”

“ Sense in the school has made Europe what it is ; in the Middle Ages it was on the road to become once more a part and dependent of Asia,—forfeiting, therefore, the scientific mind which it owed to the Greeks. ”

“ The greatness of Europe has lain in the width of the stage on which she has played her part, the strength of the foundations on which she has builded, and a natural, human ability no whit greater (if as great) than that of other days and races. ”

“ To his latest hour, nevertheless, King Thasus showed his true-hearted remembrance of Europa, by ordering that a fire should always be kept burning in his palace, and a bath steaming hot, and food ready to be served up, and a bed with snow-white sheets, in case the maiden should arrive, and require immediate refreshment. And, though Europa never came, the good Thasus had the blessings of many a poor traveler, who profited by the food and lodging which were meant for the little playmate of the king's boyhood. ”

“ Modern Europe was really born on the day on which an obscure Dutch chandler made known to the world the marvellous invention which was to supersede the scribe’s pen, and to draw forth the torch of knowledge from the monk’s cell, and from the wealthy merchant’s study to the crowds in the street. ”

“ In this universal tribute of gratitude, modern Europe vies with remote antiquity, the light Frenchman with the volatile Greek, the impassioned Italian with the enthusiastic German, the sturdy Englishman with the unconquerable Roman, the aspiring Russian with the proud American. ”

“ While the Greek renaissance brought men into wholesome and stimulating intercourse with the highest achievements of [Pg 125] literature, art, and philosophy, the discovery of the New World impressed upon them, as nothing had ever done before, the feasibleness of doing things in novel ways. With the wholesale displacement of commercial relations, the European mind burst the bounds of the snug little world to which its habits and theories, its politics civil and ecclesiastical, its science and its theology, had been adapted. ”

“ Selection among European communities. Our obvious course is, first, to study the progress of that member of the European family, the eldest in point of advancement, and to endeavour to ascertain the characteristics of its mental unfolding. We may reasonably expect that the younger members of the family, more or less distinctly, will offer us illustrations of the same mode of advancement that we shall thus find for Greece; and that the whole continent, which is the sum of these different parts, will, in its secular progress, comport itself in like manner. ”

“ They rise within thirty miles of each other, [1] and each runs, not counting ins and outs, its clear three hundred miles,—the Vistula to the north-east, the Dniester to the south-west: the two of them together cut Europe straight across, at the broad neck of it,—and, more deeply looking at the thing, they divide Europe, properly so called—Europa's own, and Jove's,—the small educationable, civilizable, and more or less mentally rational fragment of the globe, from the great Siberian wilderness, Cis-Ural and Trans-Ural ”

“ If, again, we look back from a modern standing-point on the various parts played in human progress by various members of the Indo-European family, how singular do the faculties of the Greek race appear, alike in compass and in harmony! ”

“ THE CONTEXT OF PLATO If you look at a map of Europe you will observe that Greece is a skeleton-like hand stretching its crooked fingers out into the Mediterranean Sea. ”