SOME ASPECTS OF THE GREEK GENIUS

336 Pages·1904·9.398 MB·English

by  S.H.Butcher

SOME ASPECTS
OF
THE GREEK GENIUS
BY
BUTCHER
S. H.
HON. D.LITT. OXFORD HON. LITT.D. DUBLIN
HON. LL.D. GLASGOW AND EDINBURGH
LATE PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
AND OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD
THIRD EDITION
Pontoon
MACMILLAN AND
CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
:
1904
Allrightsreserved
FirstEdition 1891.
SecondEdition1893.
ThirdEdition1904.
No material changes will be found in this volume,
though some slight additions and corrections
have been made. The essay on " The Dawn of
Romanticism in Greek Poetry" was introduced
into the second edition. The same subject has
recently received interesting and independent
treatment from my friend Professor W. R. Hardie,
in a chapter entitled " The Vein of Romance in
Greek and Roman Literature," which forms .one
of his Lectures on Classical Subjects (Macmillan
and Co., 1903). It seems worth while to remind
classical readers that, though we cannot efface the
broad differences which are compendiously ex-
pressed in the terms "classical " and "romantic"
poetry, the lines of distinction are not so hard
and sharp as we are sometimes inclined to imagine.
VI SOME ASPECTS OF THE GREEK GENIUS
Stray touches of modern sentiment, and even of
what may be called " romanticism," are met with
already in the strictly classical period of Greek
literature and these anticipations of a new era
;
occur with increasing frequency in the later Greek
poets. Of the literary products of the Hellenistic
age few complete specimens survive. Yet the
comparatively scanty materials we possess, com-
bined with what we know from other sources,
enable us to draw certain general conclusions.
Nature and Love these are the two new motives
which now enter into imaginative literature : or,
if the motives themselves are not wholly new, the
mode of poetic utterance is perceptibly altered.
There is an inwardness of tone, a reflectiveness,
a heightened sensibility often indicating a vague
disquiet of the mind and betraying itself in
accents of longing or regret that may be traced
also in other regions of feeling. Some detailed
illustrations of this mood are given in the essay
itself.
September 1904.
CONTENTS
PAGE
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE
i
...
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 47
-85
SOPHOCLES
. . . . . . .
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS .133
. .
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD . . 177
THE UNITY OF LEARNING .211
. . . .
THE DAWN OF ROMANTICiISM IN GREEK POETRY 245
n

Butchers"AsfcctsoftheGreekGenius."
ERRATUM
Page 253, line 20: For "instinctive" read"indistinct."

WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE
THE question to which I would here attempt an
answer in rudest outline What do we owe to
is,
Greece? what is the secret of her power and
permanence? what of her own has she contri-
buted to the world's common store? what is her
place in history? If we find, as I think we shall,
that Hellenism has not given us enough to live
by, yet we shall also see how greatly they mis-
read the mind of Greece who think to become
Hellenic by means of eccentricity tinged with vice.
First, then, the Greeks, before any other people
of antiquity, possessed the love of knowledge for
its own sake. To see things as they really are,
to discern their meanings and adjust their relations,
was with them an instinct and a passion. Their
methods in science and philosophy might be very
faulty, and their conclusions often absurd, but they
had that fearlessness of intellect which is the first
B
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE
condition of seeing truly. Poets and philosophers
alike looked with unflinching eye on all that met
them, on man and the world, on life and death.
They interrogated Nature, and sought to wrest
her secret from her, without misgiving and with-
out afterthought. Greece, first smitten with the
passion for truth, had the courage to put faith in
reason, and in following its guidance to take no
count of consequences. "Those," says Aristotle,
" who would rightly judge the truth, must be
arbitrators and not litigants."l " Let us follow
argument whithersoever it leads,"2 may be taken
not only as the motto of the Platonic philosophy,
but as expressing one side of the Greek genius.
The Eastern nations, speaking generally, had
loved to move in a region of twilight, content with
that half-knowledge which stimulates the religious
sense. They had thought it impious to. draw
aside the veil which hides God from man. They
had shrunk in holy awe from the study of causes,
from inquiries into origin, from explainirtf^the
perplexed ways of the universe. Ignorance had
been the sacred duty of the layman. Scientific
1 Arist. de Caeloi. IO. 279b II, Set Siair^rAs dXX' oikavriSlKovs
flvcu roi>s juAXovras raXi^s Kpiveiv iKav&s.
2 Plat. Laws ii. 667 A, 6 Xoyos STTIJ fapei, ravrr] iropfvufj.e6a.
Rep. iii. 394 D, airy cti/ 6 X67os &<rirep wvevna fopy, raiVj/ iTtov.