It cannot be done by studying their history only. Their history must be full of battles, in which they were only moderately great, and petty quarrels, to which they were immoderately prone. Their literature, which presents the greatest bulk of varied excellence of any literature in the world, must be considered. But as it can only reach us through the watery medium of translation we must supplement it by studying also their statues and temples, their coins, vases, and pictures. Even that will not be sufficient for people who are not artists, because the sensible Philistine part of the world knows, as the Greeks knew, that a man may draw and fiddle and be a scoundrel. Therefore we must look also at their laws and governments, their ceremonies and amusements, their philosophy and religion, to see whether they knew how to live like gentlemen and freemen. If we can keep our eyes open to all these sides of their activity and watch them in the germ and bud, we ought to get near to understanding their power as a living source of inspiration to artists and thinkers. Lovers of the classics are very apt to remind us of the Renaissance as testifying the power of Greek thought to awaken and inspire men’s minds. Historically they are right, for it is a fact which ought to be emphasised. But when they go on to argue that if we forget the classics we ourselves shall need a fresh Renaissance they are making a prophecy which seems to me to be very doubtful. I believe that our art and literature has by this time absorbed and assimilated what Greece had to teach, and that our roots are so entwined with the soil of Greek culture that we can never lose the taste of it as long as books are read and pictures painted. We are, in fact, living on the legacy of Greece, and we may, if we please, forget the testatrix. My claim for the study of Hellenism would not be founded on history. I would urge the need of constant reference to some fixed canon in matters of taste, some standard of the beautiful which shall be beyond question or criticism; all the more because we are living in eager, restless times of constant experiment and veering fashions. Whatever may be the philosophical basis of æsthetics, it is undeniable that a large part of our idea of beauty rests upon habit. Hellas provides a thousand objects which seventy-five generations of people have agreed to call beautiful and which no person outside a madhouse has ever thought ugly. The proper use of true classics is not to regard them as fetishes which must be slavishly worshipped, as the French dramatists worshipped the imaginary unities of Aristotle, but to keep them for a compass in the cross-currents of fashion. By them you may know what is permanent and essential from what is showy and exciting.