DEBT TO ANCIENT WORLD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 January 1939, Page 9

DEBT TO ANCIENT WORLD

The influences of Greece, of Rome, and of the East still remain today, writes Mr J. M. Todd in his book, “The Ancient World.” They still flow as a living stream through modern civilisation. To Greece we owe the scientific temper of thought, the desire of man to use his reason to the uttermost to search out the problems of the world around him, the problems of his own being, and of the meaning and purpose of the universe in which he is set. It is a quest which he cannot avoid, but it is endless and hopeless; all any man can achieve is to advance a little farther on the way; there is always a point where pure reason can do no more, and the truth lies beyond his reach. But it is to Greece that we owe this search for truth; and mean while the influence of Rome is with us to provide a practical way of life; the law. the politics, even the architecture and the constructive engineering works of modern life, all borrow something from the practical genius of Rome. Finally, through and through the systems on which modern civilisa tion has been built up, there has persisted the tradition of Palestine and the East, that there is a spiritual reality to be grasped by faith, and that love is more powerful than reason or than practical genius for the transformation of the world. New inventions and new difficulties may mould society to different forms; but the ideals of Greece, of Rome and of Palestine remain to make their appeal to the fundamental desires of the human heart; and the crown of all is the Palestinian ideal of the brotherhood of man and the majesty of human kindliness.