I must not send it out without thanking my many American friends for their sympathy and encouragement. During my visit, everybody seemed ready to hear what I had to say, and in some of the discussions which were the result, notably at Philadelphia, there seemed to be quite a body of opinion in my favour. Two observations are worth making here before I conclude: The American professors of Greek and Latin have exactly the same experience that we have in Ireland regarding the abandonment of Greek while professing to retain Latin. Neither there nor in Ireland have we failed to note the deterioration of Latin teaching, and the conviction grows upon us that a teacher who knows no Greek cannot be a Latin scholar in any real sense. So much for the boasted retaining of Latin while sacrificing Greek. The next observation concerns the now fashionable attending of courses in English Literature. In no case during my visit did I hear a literary conversation spring up among these students of English. They have no doubt admirable professors in great numbers, specialists on every English poet and prose writer worth naming. But apparently poetry learnt without labour in the mother tongue is not assimilated or appreciated as is the poetry of classical languages, and from them the delight in literature as such spreads into kindred studies. Wherever I cited the poets, or indeed great prose such as the Bible, among the young people who had studied English as a subject for graduation, I found a strange ignorance of what ought to have been most familiar. I was almost driven to believe the paradox that without a classical education even the proper appreciation of English literature is unusual. J. P. M. On board S. S. _Celtic_, January 20, 1909. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE ii I. INTRODUCTORY 1 II. GREEK POETRY 31 III. GREEK PROSE 65 IV. GREEK ART--I: ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE 98 V. GREEK ART--II: PAINTING AND MUSIC 125 VI. SCIENCE: GRAMMAR--LOGIC--MATHEMATICS--MEDICINE 147 VII. POLITICS--SOCIOLOGY--LAW 181 VIII. HIGHER THINKING, PHILOSOPHY, SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL THEOLOGY 213 What Have the Greeks Done for Modern Civilisation? I INTRODUCTORY