Such is the highest view of man's destiny, and the way thither, that the Greeks ever reached, and it is in many ways a most attractive and inspiring one. Its defects are the defects of all that is Greek. They are two: (1) its ideal is intellectual and æsthetic,--a coördinated, harmonious whole, whereof the individual is but a part: not moral or religious--a self-surrender of the individual to the supreme will; consequently, (2) it does not provide for every human being, as such, but only for a small, select number, the fruit of the whole. Its ethics are institutional not personal, and, indeed, the Greek never arrived at a distant conception of personality, that being possible only through the moral consciousness, which is its core. It seeks to find happiness in a correlation and balancing of individual selves, not in the independent conformity of each self to a supreme self. Hence it was that, with all its marvellous grasp and manly prudence, the ideal of Aristotle proved powerless to restore the moral unity of man, until it was absorbed in a higher. BOOK IV THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD (B.C. 338-A.D. 313) CHAPTER I FROM ETHNIC TO COSMOPOLITAN LIFE 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more.--Byron. Most glorious of all the Undying, many-named, girt round with awe! Jove, author of Nature, applying to all things the rudder of law-- Hail! Hail! for it justly rejoices the races whose life is a span To lift unto Thee their voices--the Author and Framer of Man. For we are Thy sons; Thou didst give us the symbols of speech at our birth, Alone of the things that live, and mortal move upon earth. Wherefore Thou shalt find me extolling and ever singing Thy praise; Since Thee the great Universe, rolling on its path round the world, obeys:-- Obeys Thee, wherever Thou guidest, and gladly is bound in Thy bands, So great is the power Thou confidest, with strong, invincible hands, To Thy mighty, ministering servant, the bolt of the thunder, that flies, Two-edged, like a sword and fervent, that is living and never dies. All nature, in fear and dismay, doth quake in the path of its stroke, What time Thou preparest the way for the one Word Thy lips have spoke, Which blends with lights smaller and greater, which pervadeth and thrilleth all things, So great is Thy power and Thy nature--in the Universe Highest of Kings! On earth, of all deeds that are done, O God! there is none without Thee. In the holy æther not one, nor one on the face of the sea; Save the deeds that evil men, driven by their own blind folly, have planned; But things that have grown uneven are made even again by Thy hand; And things unseemly grow seemly, the unfriendly are friendly to Thee; For so good and evil supremely Thou hast blended in one by decree. For all Thy decree is one ever--a Word that endureth for aye,