This life was throughout the duration of Greek thought too narrowly
conceived. It was frequently thought and spoken of as the life of a
spectator or bystander or onlooker, as a life withdrawn or isolated, cut
off from what we should call ordinary human business and concerns, a
life into which we, or at least a few of us, could escape or be
transported at rare intervals and under exceptionally favourable
circumstances. Yet in principle it was open to all, and certainly not
confined to those privileged by birth or wealth or social position. It
was not the reward of magical favour or ascetic exercises, it was
reached by the beaten path of the loyal citizen and the resolute
student. There was about it no esoteric mystery or other-worldliness.
And if to reach it was a high privilege its attainment brought with it
the imperative duty of a descent into the ordinary world to instruct, to
enlighten, to comfort and help and console, to play a part in the great
business and work of human civilization. In a sense this was, and is,
the most permanent and fruitful gift of Greece to the European world.
These then were the three ideas or ideals which the Greeks wrought into
the very texture and substance of the modern mind, the idea of Art, the
idea of Science, the idea of Philosophy; in all three introducing and
still more deeply implanting the ideas of Freedom as the motive and end
of civilized life and of Knowledge as its guide and ally. It may be
thought that I have dwelt too much on theory, and have not said enough
of the specific contribution of Greece as working out in practice a
certain type or types of corporate life such as the City State; but the
fact is that in Greek civilization theory continually outran practice
and that it endowed mankind much more with ideas or ideals than with
practical illustrations or models for our imitation. Yet again we must
not exaggerate or imagine these ideas as merely Utopian or such stuff as
dreams are made of. The ferment which they set up burst the fabric of
Greek social and political institutions, but it clarified and steadied
down, as the enthusiasms of youth may do, into the sober designs of
grave and energetic manhood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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