of political life that was not realized among the Greeks at some time or place. It was this that made it possible for Aristotle to write a work on Politics which, in the words of a recent political writer, "has remained for two thousand years one of the purest sources of political wisdom."
The varied and changeful political life of the Greeks was in itself a great education. It made them aware of the principles, political and ethical, upon which society rests, and rendered necessary a faculty of clear and ready expression, which reacted most favorably upon their intellectual and æsthetic faculties. It was in the school of practical politics that the Greeks acquired their rhetoric; and Aristotle, in his treatise on Poetry, tells us that, while "the older poets made their characters talk like statesmen, the later ones made theirs talk like rhetoricians." Not only, indeed, did political life react upon the drama, but, in developing rhetoric, it drew attention to language and led to the sciences of grammar and logic, both of which were thus called into existence by real social needs (see p. 102).
(2) Greece, lying, as it did, between three continents, and in the thoroughfare of the ancient nations, could hardly fail to be visited by many different races, or, considering its beauty and commercial advantages, to be coveted by them. From this followed two consequences, (a) that the Greeks were a very mixed race, (b) that they were, from the first and at all times, in manifold contact with foreign peoples. That they were a mixed race, is attested alike by their language, their mythology, and their legends. That they were in close and continual communication with foreign peoples, is rendered evident by their alphabet, their art, and the direct statements of their historians. Although it is true that the Greeks, especially after the Persian Wars, regarded themselves as a superior and chosen people, calling all others "barbarians," and considering them as fit only to be slaves, it is not the less true that hardly one of all the arts and sciences which they ultimately carried to a high degree of perfection had its origin in Greece proper. All appear first in the colonies settled among "barbarians,"—in Egypt, Asia Minor, Thrace, Crete, Sicily, or Italy. Architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry—epic, lyric, dramatic—music, history, politics, philosophy, were all borrowed, transformed, and, with the exception perhaps of tragedy and painting, carried to a high degree of excellence in the colonies, before they were transplanted to the mother-country. It is beyond any doubt that even the Homeric legends are of "barbarian" origin, though from what people they were borrowed is uncertain. It was the plasticity and versatility of their character, due in part to their mixed blood, that, by enabling them to appropriate and assimilate the arts and sciences of their neighbors, raised the Greeks to a new plane of civilization and made them the initiators of a new epoch in history, the epoch of life according to reason. Sir Henry Sumner Maine says, "Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin."
(3) It was chiefly through commerce that the arts and sciences borrowed by the colonial Greeks found their way into Greece proper. That foreign art-objects were introduced into it at an early period, is rendered certain by the recent discoveries at Mycenæ, Sparta, and other places, as well as by statements in the Homeric poems. That these were followed later by artists, bringing with them foreign art-processes and appliances, is equally certain. The earliest sculptors whose names are known to us, Dipœnis and Scyllis, were natives of Crete, settled in Sicyon; and the earliest poetic guild of which we have any mention is that of the Homeridæ in the island of Chios. But, besides introducing art and artists into Greece, commerce tended to educate the Greeks in other ways. It made them acquainted with foreign manners and luxuries, and forced them to learn the arts of navigation, ship-building and exchange, which again rendered necessary an acquaintance with arithmetic and the art of writing. And this leads us to
(4) The Introduction of Letters. This event, the date of which is uncertain, not only exercised a most furthering influence on the arts and sciences, but gave rise to a new branch of education. Letters were probably first used for diplomatic and trade purposes, then for inscriptions, and last of all for the perpetuation of literary productions. So much of a change did they effect in Greek education that even in the best times the whole of the literary and scientific education was called simply "letters" (γράμματα). As late as the time of Plato letters seem to have been considered a part of Music, and to have been taught by the same teacher as the latter; but Aristotle already distinguishes the two. It is extremely probable that the introduction of letters was the immediate cause of the establishment of schools for youth; for we find no mention of them prior to that event.
(5) The introduction of letters was closely followed by the rise of Philosophy, or the reflective spirit. Up to about the year 600 b.c., the Greeks, like the rest of the world, lived by habit, tradition, and prescription, handed on, with little or no criticism, from generation to generation. Their ideal world was shaped by the works of Homer and Hesiod. "Hesiod is the teacher of most," says Heraclitus. About the date named, however, society having advanced to a condition of organization which made possible a leisure class, there begins to appear a new spirit, destined to revolutionize, not only Greece, but the whole world. Armed with a what? a which? a why? and a wherefore? it no longer blindly accepts the world of nature and man, but calls upon it to give an account of itself. Science, philosophy, and art are the result.
At first the new spirit turns to nature with a what?; but, gradually discovering that the answer to this brings no complete explanation of the world, it propounds its other questions. It thus arrives at a consciousness of four distinguishable elements in the constitution of things,—four causes (αἴτια, αἰτίαι), as they were termed,—(1) matter, (2) form, (3) efficiency, (4) end or aim. At the same time, and by the same process, it is forced to a recognition of the presence of reason (λόγος) and intelligence (νοῦς) in the world, since form, efficiency, and aim all presuppose both. It is thus compelled to turn from nature to man, and man's mind, as the highest known expression of reason and intelligence, and to devote itself to the consideration of spirit, as alone promising any true explanation of the world. The process is a slow and difficult one, and the history of it is the history of Greek science, philosophy, and art.
Before the rise of philosophy, the teacher of the people had been the rhapsode, or public reciter; after that event he gradually gives place to the sophist (σοφιστής, one who makes wise), or, as he later with more modesty calls himself, the philosopher (φιλόσοφος, lover of wisdom). The history of Greece for centuries is, on its inner side, a history of the struggle between what the rhapsode represents and what the philosopher represents, between popular tradition and common sense on the one hand, and individual opinion and philosophy on the other. The transition from the first to the second of these mental conditions was accomplished for the world, once for all, by the Greeks, and the turning-point in the process is marked by
(6) The Persian Wars (b.c. 490-479). The victories gained in these at Marathon, Salamis, and Platææ, victories the most brilliant that history records, exerted a most powerful influence upon the thought and life of the Greeks. The consciousness of having, with their small numbers, over and over again, both by land and by sea, discomfited and crushed the countless hosts of an empire which for generations had threatened their peace and liberty, made them at once feel the superiority of their own characters and civil institutions to those of the Persians, and draw a clear line of demarcation between Greek and barbarian. From this point on, they felt themselves to be a chosen people, a nation destined by the gods to rule all others. "The soul of Greece had conquered the bulk of Persia." Persia was bulk and body; Greece was soul and spirit. This conviction appears at once in all the departments of Greek life. In the sphere of art we may instance the Prometheia of Æschylus and the Parthenon. In the former, what does the conflict between Zeus and Prometheus mean but the conflict between Greek spirituality, intellect, and freedom, on the one hand, and barbarian materiality, instinct, and thraldom or necessity, on the other? And what is the latter but a matchless pæan in stone to Divine Wisdom, as the conqueror of brute force? In the sphere of thought, we find Parmenides, Anaxagoras and, above all, Socrates (born ten years after the second Persian War), turning consciously to the study of spirit. "To be and to think are the same thing," says the first of these: "All things were confused; then Mind came and reduced
