Greek text

“ When we are called to defend the pursuit of metaphysics or the study of the classics, either as indispensable to the discipline or to the enlargement of the mind, we are not called on to defend the methods of a generation ago. The study of Greek is no longer an exercise in the study of linguistics or the inspection of specimens of an obsolete literature, but the acquaintance with historic thought, habits, and polity, with a portion of the continuous history of the human mind, which has a vital relation to our own life. ”

“ But the notion of the word is really a very noble and lofty one. To be 'without a fold,' which is the meaning of the Greek word and of its equivalent 'simplicity,' is, in one aspect, to be transparently honest and true, and in another to be out and out of a piece. ”

“ The Student should study himself his relation to Society, to Nature and to Art—and above all, in all, and through all these, he should study the relations of Himself, Society, Nature, and Art to God the Author of them all.
Greek is perhaps the most perfect instrument of Thought ever invented by Man, and its Literature [Pg 425] has never been equalled in purity of style and boldness of expression.
History is but the unrolled scroll of Prophecy. The world's history is a divine Poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. ”

“ It is perfectly absurd to speak of the humanizing effect of Latin and Greek, the grand literatures which they contain, their poetry, their philosophy, their history, the enormous influence which they have had upon the literature, poetry, philosophy, the whole tone of thought prevalent among civilized nations—I say that it is perfectly absurd to advance all these arguments, when the only condition which could make them valid is wanting. ”

“ You see how even to the prophets of the Greeks he attributes something of the truth, and is not ashamed, when discoursing for the edification of some and the shaming of others, to make use of Greek poems. ”

“ The chief aim of the enlightened Greek, his highest ambition and his greatest joy, was to be a man in the fullest sense of the word—man in the most complete development of his bodily strength and beauty, in the active exercise of the keenest senses, in the greatest because tempered enjoyment of sensual pleasure, in the free and joyous play of an intellect strong by nature, graced and guided by the most exquisite taste, and enlightened by the sublimest philosophy. ”

“ Now those are called philosophers, among us, who love Wisdom, the Creator and Teacher of all things, that is, the knowledge of the Son of God; and among the Greeks, those who undertake arguments on virtue. Philosophy, then, consists of such dogmas found in each sect (I mean those of [336] philosophy) as cannot be impugned, with a corresponding life, collected into one selection; and these, stolen from the Barbarian God-given grace, have been adorned by Greek speech. For some they have borrowed, and others they have misunderstood. ”

“ Its last outburst has been the Transcendental teaching of the nineteenth century, so curiously Greek and non-Greek in its essence.
For there is in our nature that undying longing for communion with the Divine which the mere thought of God stirs within us. Our true home is in the great world where Truth is everything, that Truth which one day we, like Plato, shall see face to face without any quailing. ”

“ It has been said that 'you cannot criticise Revelation.' 'Then how do you know what is Revelation, or that there is one at all?' is the immediate rejoinder. 'You know nothing of things in themselves.'—'Then how do you know that there are things in themselves?' In some respects the difficulty pressed harder upon the Greek than upon ourselves. For conceiving of God more under the attribute of knowledge than we do, he was more under the necessity of {159} separating the divine from the human, as two spheres which had no communication with one another. ”

“ Greek influence appears clearly in the sages' attitude toward the phenomena of life. God, they hold, is the sole creator and ruler of the world; yet man is free, autonomous—God is not responsible for men's faults (Ecclus. xv. 11-20) ; divine wisdom is visible in the works of nature and in beasts and man (Job xxxviii. f.; Pss. viii., cxxxix.) ”

“ It is surely more true to say of Greek literature that it contains types of all things human, stamped with the freshness, simplicity, and directness which belong to first impressions, and to the first impressions of genius. ”

“ The amount of latitude in literary expression varies no doubt with the prevalent popular morality of the period. But it would lead to infinite confusion to think of the poetry as a translation of conduct. A truer picture of Greek life is happily given us in those epigrams which deal with the material that history passes over and ideal poetry, at least in Greek literature, barely touches upon, the life of simple human relations from day to day within the circle of the family. ”

“ The tendency to abstract has combined with the tendency to regard matter as evil or impure, in the production of a tendency to form rather a negative than a positive conception of God. The majority of formularies define God by negative terms, and yet they have claimed for conceptions which are negative a positive value.
(2) We owe to Greek philosophy—to the hypothesis of the chasm between spirit and matter—the tendency to interpose powers between the Creator and His creation. ”

“ The mere look of the first page of the volume, with its beautifully printed Greek sentence about τά φυσικά καί τά ηθικά καί τα μαθηματικά, lifts one suddenly and with a delicious thrill of pleasure, as if from the touch of a cool, strong, youthful hand, into that serene atmosphere of large speculations and unbounded vistas which is the inheritance of the great humane tradition: the tradition, older than all the dust of modern argument, and making every other mental temper seem, in comparison, vulgar, common, bourgeois and provincial. ”

“ Passing by, also, the subjects which have been opened to our research by the discoveries of modern science, and confining our attention to the single branch of philosophy, in the old sense of the word, which has always been more or less studied and disputed upon since the days of the earliest Greeks, we shall probably find that the productions of any one modern school outnumber those of the whole body of Greek philosophers. ”

“ The Greek notion of felicity, on the other hand, is perfectly conveyed in these words of a great French moralist: "C'est le bonheur des hommes,"—when? when they abhor that which is evil?—no; when they exercise themselves in the law of the Lord day and night?—no; when they die daily?—no; when they walk about the New Jerusalem with palms in their hands?—no; but when they think aright, when their thought hits: "quand ils pensent juste." ”

“ Now the ‘thoughts and aspirations,’ which are nowhere absent from Greek literature, and make a centre of growing warmth and light in its Periclean period—when the conception of human nature for the first time takes definite shape—have no less of Religion in them than underlay the ‘creed outworn’. ”

“ The radiance of the intellect. I ought to profess Greek, the language of the mind. ”

“ Literary.—Our real knowledge of any ancient religion depends obviously on the copiousness and variety of our records. And it is likely to be more luminous, if the society in question expressed its religious life not only in surviving literature, but also in surviving art. Of both these kinds the student of Greek religion has an unusually rich material. ”

“ What race had ever a more genial appreciation of the facts of nature and of mortal life, than the Greeks? The older Greek philosophies had sprung from open and unprejudiced observation of the visible world. ”

“ Many persons who are quite prepared to admit the importance to the world of Greek poetry, Greek art, and Greek philosophy, may still feel it rather a paradox to be told that Greek religion specially repays our study at the present day. Greek religion, associated with a romantic, trivial, and not very edifying mythology, has generally seemed one of the weakest spots in the armour of those giants of the old world. ”

“ And the appeal which the old Greek thinker made was, in the first instance, from confused to unconfused sensation; with a sort of prophetic seriousness, a great claim and assumption, such as we may understand, if we anticipate in this preliminary scepticism the ulterior scope of his speculation, according to which the universal movement of all natural things is but one particular stage, or measure, of that ceaseless activity wherein the divine reason consists. ”

“ This shows, it seems to me, how hard it is for English readers of poetry, even the most accomplished, to 274feel deeply and permanently what Greek plainness of thought and Greek simplicity of expression really are: they admit the importance of these qualities in a general way, but they have no ever-present sense of them; and they easily attribute them to any poetry which has other excellent qualities, and which they very much admire. ”

“ The world has grown older in two thousand years, and has enlarged its stock of ideas and methods of reasoning. Yet the germ of modern thought is found in ancient, and we may claim ^o have inherited, notwithstanding many accidents of time and place, the spirit of Greek philosophy. ”

“ But this relation to the world of nature is only one side of man's life; more prominent and more important, at a later stage of his development, is his relation to society; and here too in Greek civilization a great part was played by religion. ”

“ Greek thinkers were now read in the original, and men, no longer scholastics, were Platonists, Peripatetics, etc.; but rather as scholars, classicists, than with any comprehensive or productive grasp of the principles which they professed. ”

“ Great poetry, whether written in Greek or in English, needs no other interpreter than a responsive heart. ”

“ To a considerable extent there prevailed, in addition to Belles Lettres and Rhetoric, a teaching of Philosophy. It was the highest element in the education of the average Greek of the period. Logic, in the form of Dialectic, was common to Philosophy and Rhetoric. Every one learnt to argue: a large number learnt, in addition, the technical terms of Philosophy and the outlines of its history. ”

“ The Greek synonyms of virtus, ἀρετή, is derived from Ἀρης, the god of war, who in the heroic days of Greece was the ideal man, the standard of human excellence, and whose name some lexicographers regard—as it seems to me, somewhat fancifully—as allied through its root to ἀνήρ, which bears about the same relation to ἄνθρωπος that vir bears to homo.7.In the languages which have inherited or adopted the Latin virtus, it retains its original signification, with one striking exception, which yet is perhaps an exception in appearance rather than in reality. ”

“ The Greek word has the same meaning, in a variety of places, both in the sacred and the profane writers, as le monde, the world, literally has in French, where it signifies, not only the system of created things, but, by metonomy, the people - every body, the mass, the populace. ”

“ The Greek poet describes these things with the same vividness and freshness, the same kind of fondness, with which other poets speak of flowers; speaking of them poetically, indeed, but with that higher sort of poetry which seems full of the lively impression of delightful things recently seen. Genuine poetry, it is true, is always naturally sympathetic with all beautiful sensible things and qualities. ”

“ How many images of the bravest men, carefully elaborated, have both the Greek and Latin writers bequeathed to us, not merely for us to look at and gaze upon, but also for our imitation! And I, always keeping them before my eyes as examples for my own public conduct, have endeavored to model my mind and views by continually thinking of those excellent men. ”

“ The happy combination of a profound sympathy with the genius of the Greek language, a strictly scientific method, and an exhaustive study of his author, has given the ‘Digest’ a unique position among works of modern scholarship. ”

“ Those who seek for the plain meaning of the word will find it here: those who wish to make out a sense, not from the Greek word, its use among the best Greek writers, and the obvious sense of the evangelist, but from their own creed, may continue to puzzle themselves and others; kindle their own fire, compass themselves with sparks, and walk in the light of their own fire, and of the sparks which they have kindled ”

“ My own essays do not for a moment claim to speak with authority on a subject which is still changing and showing new facets year by year. They only claim to represent the way of regarding certain large issues of Greek Religion which has gradually taken shape, and has proved practically helpful and consistent with facts, in the mind of a very constant, though unsystematic, reader of many various periods of Greek literature. ”

“ And, as man, in this climate, exempt from the debilitating heats of the tropics and the stunting of too severe cold, reached the ideal of bodily perfection, the human form became, not unnaturally, to the Greek, the noblest type under which he could represent the divine. The gods were humanized—stronger and more beautiful beings, to be sure, than ordinary men, but possessed of the same forms, members, and passions. ”

“ For the mass of the people, above all, save where the Greek drama was still presented to them, concrete religion was the one possible form of mental life; and for the more serious such mental life was at once a solace and a preoccupation. ”

“ The modern mind is naturally, but vulgarly and unjustly, shocked by this kind of familiarity. Rightly understood, it is not so much a sign of misunderstanding of the divine nature as of good understanding of the human. The Greek lived, in all things, a healthy, and, in a certain degree, a perfect life. ”