GREEK GENIUS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1645, 11 January 1913, Page 9

GREEK GENIUS.

"TOO TREMENDOUS TO LIVE UP TO." ANI) YET WE CANNOT LIVE • WITHOUT IT; —ry ' . Tho tragedy if to-day ifl that we have not yet attained to tlio ideals set up by those long dead. We look to tho future and forget the past, Tlio progress of civi-. lisation has not exceeded in essentials tho ideals of ancient' days. Wo do not lack ideals, but tho power to realise thoin. Every day our papers are filled with the names of historic cities whoso famo lies in the buried past. Wo read of Greece and its cities, and of the victories of the Greeks of to-day. But if wo turn to the latest interpretation, of tho Greek Genius, tho spent, which mado Greece to live for ever, we read (in 1912): "Continually laid aside—it is too tremendous and fatiguing for the world to livo up to; continually rediscovered—for the world cannot lire without it: that is the history of tho Creek genius." ■ ■ ■ ■■ This well is deep: have wo aught wherewith to draw from it?. Mr.,R, W.. Livingstone is the; latest to draw "from, tho wells of Greek genius its meaning for us, and -it is good to drink thereof. In his new book, "The Greek Genlu9 and its Meaning-to "Us" (Clarendon Press), ho shows iis what was tho nature of this genius and our great need of its inspiration to-day. Why Did.lt,Attract? "What, qualities," ho asks, "mado it great and give itrpermanence? Why.did it attract men so various as Cicero, b. Paul, Pico della Mirandola. Nietzsche? iW.hv does it attract us? How.does its literature stand to ours? What were tho .secrets of its success? Aro they secrets, of value to us, or have wo far outstripped it? What viow of life; if any,- does Greece represent? '. Is Hellenism identical with, or, antagonistic, .or .complementary '._' to Christianity?. Are any of us Hellenists now, and what is Hellenism? Has -it a genuino messago for us, or are its ideals as- dead as its language? What relation., has it to modern thought; and m particular to that' spirit of scieuco which.' wo regard as peculiarly the child'of. but own times?.-. ~■'-.'.■,'.' ■"•.'.' ..•■'' ■■-!I.V. I ',' ■-'~, This Tiny Country. ;

"Europe has nearly four millian square miles; Lancashire has 1700; AHica has 700. Yet this tiny country has gvon u» an art which woV Nvith,it and all that' tho world has done- since it -lor; our, models, have equalled perhaps, but .not, surpassed. It has Riven us the b' aplo ot our vocabulary in every domain ■ ot thought and knowledge, .Politics, tyranny, democracy, anarchism, philosophy, .physiology, geology, history-theso are a 11 <$*£} words. It has seized, and up to the prosent day kept hold of, our higher educa- . tion. It has exercised an unfailing iasoin- i ation, even oh minds alien and hostile.. "With Winckeltnann the . race starts anew, and has run unbroken to our own day; Ho handed the torch of Hellenism to Goethe,'and it becaino tho law of life and tho standard of beaut? to the pro- . foundest poet of the modern world. Goethe passed it on to-Nicteche,.and,the. groat rebel nud'prophet of our ago found in, pre-Soeratio Greece the,nearest likenesses -.- to his 'ideal humanity. :,'■ •:■;■;;;.

What is the Greek .'Genius?',;,. '■;;■■.■ ', ;';y' "By the Greek genius wo shall mean , "a spirit which manifested itself in cor- . tain peoples inhabiting lands washed by > the Aegean sea. It appears to havo been oiily partly determined by, race. Athens , was at its heart, and little or nothing of.' it is to be seen, at Sparta; but.Pindar, possessed it though ho was • a Theban, 1 Aristotle' though ho came from Stagira,..-, Tholes though ho'was bom and ( lived in Asia, and Homer though his place 1 is not known. , Perhaps this dolinitiori evades tho difficulty; but' ' it. eerms to sv'iit tho factsl.' ■■ ; -:-:.' ~•..' "Ill'denning this spirit,' wo 6hall keep our-.eyes fixed on what is admitted to: have "been its most brilliant:■. season ot flower,!tho rears between Goo'and : «K) n.G;y ; . without forgetting that a .hundred, years passed before tho most influential Phil-, osophies of Greece caino to; birth and its far-reaching perlueation of'tho world begaii.; '■'■•'•'.. ';'•;;'■: : ; '":^'- ; ''; '■,".;'.', ; ,i ; '.:

The Saints of Grocco.;. :," ;J/ ■■;.=■,'.'■;',.'-,.' ."If wo were trying to understand; tho. •, genius of Christianity, wo .should not ' consider all thoso who professed it, and ■ 'in' their generation served GodNind Mam- ; men-, and before the, eyes of a lenient ; world-were entitled to'claim its promises , and share its Kingdom; wo should study- , the lives of its saints. It is the «amo with, Hellenism. -To understand its genius, wo ■ must look, not at the'men in whom some faint tincture of it was mixed with alien or indifferent, things,'but at'those, in : , whom it was most fully realised, at its 'saints!; and in these'must fix our eyes, not Jon their .'weakness, but on . their, ■ strength; not on what,, they were, but on ;■ what they- wcro tending to, h0.,:, -~- , "The saints of Christianity have been ~ drawn from all classes! yet of the Recording Angel would probably shtSv . that most of them were I 'fools of the world,' and had led "P«JV A | dull, illiterate lira. The saints of. H ~-, llenism were drawn from; another ola s , They ore Pindar and Perices, ] Thucydidesand Socrates, and those,, m«n >..<. befo o whose minds -W; Pfß«4, ywwjj, ■.. of art or, the conception of science ot the dream of a race o beings 1 vmg a beautiful, complete, and. human Wo. - " 'Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalhno, son. ..-. ~, Of thought and its eternity.; ■ -. ■• , •'Greek bought is «•«.:.. own; Greek freedom could havo taught lus lessons of toleration up ,to, and even "n. the nineteenth. century. Greek sanity ; "'a reducing medicine, suitable to purge some of the humours of .modern .lucra., turn, Greek dircctness.wiU. train us.to Xr fy our thoughts and yen ? our emotill ' Greek human km s. tho dearest and simplest form of religion of ■• tho earth against which St. Paul and so' manv preachers.' since him havo. declaim- : cd. In Plato,we hear their.voice[already raised, and havo ,a" forecast-of tho cony ing of • Christianity. .. ■ .-' • ■ , i ' . • "One of tho reasons why Greek- haj such high educational value' 15 that it coutinuallv poses fundamental problems, forces,them on our attention, and so is . ah introduction: to literature and thought, J, .

How Man Should Live. , : "These aro tho reasons of our approxi" matUu to Greoco. Pirat, ia Greek'humanirnn. Grecco stands for humanity, simnlo and unashamed, with all the variety . of its nature freo to play. Tho Greek act, himself to answer tho question how, with ■ no revelation* from God to guido him, with no overhearing, necessity_to■ .cramp .. or intimidate him, man should live. It has btcn a tendency with our bvfn ago cither to deny that heaven has revealed to" ua'in any wo; ■ ought to ' behave, or to find-such a rovelatlon m.■.:.. human nature' itself.. In either caßo> wo aro thrown back on ourselvos and obliged to Bcek our. guido;there.. That is why the influonco of Grceco hai grown so much. Tho Greeks' aw ; tho only peoplo who have' conceived the problem similarly; their anawor it tho only ono which has yet been made. So wc aro turning back to: Greece and ""•' beginning ,to understand what tho Greeks meant; wo are beginning lo canvass their ' views and in solne cases to accept them. In Germany, Professor von WilamowiteMocllendorfi, in England, Professor Murray, havo entered-into tho Greek mind to a degreo impossible to previous goner- - ations. ""*.". ~»""; "Secondly—and it is this which ties ns so closely to tho fifth contury-tho only thinking civilisation in the world before our own is that of Greece. Greece tried to base life on reason. J ;', .... "... ~' .. Why Greek Llteraturo Is Immortal.' . "Wo happen at'the present-timo-in-soino ways to have taken the same atti-: tudo to lifo as tho .Greeks of a esrtain age. and so they seouV to us living and ; modern. But- there is another reason, far more important, which gives Hellas life, and will krep it alive even in asts which ore far away from its mind. 'Wo must not forget this, nor rest the permanence of Hellenism on a temporary relation between its thought and ours. Greek literal lire has a stronger fountain . of life in 'the .immortality which; nil- 1 thought nnd utterance earn wh?n it Is. truly and rightly devised; it has the . ' immortality of what, in tho widest senso of tho word, is'art."—"Public Opinion.*'.'.'