The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Philosophy
The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Greece -- Civilization
between 'humanists' and 'scientists'. The issue is between people who do
not appreciate the value of the pursuit of knowledge as an end in
itself, and those who do appreciate it and who therefore understand what
education means. True lovers of knowledge and true believers in
education will be found on the same side in this controversy, whether
the subject of their study happens to be the spirit of man or the laws
of its environment. But apart from that crude utilitarianism, which is
as unscientific as it is un-humane, a serious argument for studying
modern rather than ancient history can also be stated from the humane
and the scientific point of view. It may be argued that the direct
experience we have of our own civilization makes it possible for us to
have a deeper, and therefore a more humane and scientific, understanding
of it than we can ever have of Ancient Greece. And one might go on to
argue, on grounds of humanism alone, that such a comprehension of the
character and origins of our civilization would have a more profound
humanizing influence upon its development than a less intimate study of
a different civilization could produce. This argument is bound to appeal
to the generation which has experienced the war. The war is obviously
one of the great crises of our civilization. It is like a conflagration
lighting up the dim past and throwing it into perspective. The war makes
it impossible for us to take our own history for granted. We are bound
to inquire into the causes of such an astonishing catastrophe, and as
soon as we do that we find ourselves inquiring into the evolution of
Western Civilization since it emerged from the Dark Age. The shock of
the Peloponnesian War gave just the same intellectual stimulus to
Thucydides, and made him preface his history of that war with a critical
analysis, brief but unsurpassed, of the origins of Hellenic
civilization--the famous introductory chapters of Book I. May not these
chapters point the road for us and counsel us to concentrate upon the
study of our own history?
This question deserves very serious consideration, not merely from the
utilitarian, but from the scientific and humane point of view. But the
answer is not a foregone conclusion. There is a case for studying the
civilization of Ancient Greece which can be summed up in four points, as
follows:
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