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
But the interest of Greek philosophy is not only historical; it is full
of instruction for the future too. Since the time of Locke, philosophy
has been apt to limit itself to discussions about the nature of
knowledge, and to leave questions about the nature of the world to
specialists. The history of Greek philosophy shows the danger of this
unnatural division of the province of thought, and the more we study it,
the more we shall feel the need of a more comprehensive view. The
'philosophy of things human', as the Greeks called it, is only one
department among others, and the theory of knowledge is only one
department of that. If studied in isolation from the whole, it must
inevitably become one-sided. From Greek philosophy we can also learn
that it is fatal to divorce speculation from the service of mankind. The
notion that philosophy could be so isolated would have been wholly
unintelligible to any of the great Greek thinkers, and most of all
perhaps to the Platonists who are often charged with this very heresy.
Above all, we can learn from Greek philosophy the paramount importance
of what we call the personality and they called the soul. It was just
because the Greeks realized this that the genuinely Hellenic idea of
conversion played so great a part in their thinking and in their lives.
That, above all, is the lesson they have to teach, and that is why the
writings of their great philosophers have still the power to convert the
souls of all that will receive their teaching with humility.
J. BURNET.
MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY
It has been well said that, if we would study any subject properly, we
must study it as something that is alive and growing and consider it
with reference to its growth in the past. As most of the vital forces
and movements in modern civilization had their origin in Greece, this
means that, to study them properly, we must get back to Greece. So it is
with the literature of modern countries, or their philosophy, or their
art; we cannot study them with the determination to get to the bottom
and understand them without the way pointing eventually back to Greece.
When we think of the debt which mankind owes to the Greeks, we are apt
to think too exclusively of the masterpieces in literature and art which
they have left us. But the Greek genius was many-sided; the Greek, with
his insatiable love of knowledge, his determination to see things as
they are and to see them whole, his burning desire to be able to give a
rational explanation of everything in heaven and earth, was just as
irresistibly driven to natural science, mathematics, and exact reasoning
in general, or logic.
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