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3. What were the great Greek masterpieces of (a) Literature, (b) Sculpture, (c) Architecture, (d) Art,
(e) Philosophy?
5. What historical significance have Thermopylae, Marathon, Alexandria, Crete, and Delphi?
[1] Sergi, in his Mediterranean Race, says that they came from N. E. Africa.
Beginning about 5000 years B.C., they gradually infiltrated the whole
Mediterranean region. This is becoming the general belief among ethnologists,
archaeologists, and historians.
[2] Recent studies indicate that some of the Cretan inscriptions are prototypes of
the Greece-Phoenician alphabet. The Phoenicians evidently derived the original
characters of their alphabet from a number of sources. The Greeks adopted the
Phoenician alphabet about 800-1000 B.C.
CHAPTER XIII
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Anaximenes, born at Miletus 588 B.C., asserted that air was the first
principle of the universe; indeed, he held that on it "the very earth floats
like a broad leaf." He held that air was infinite in extent; that it touched all
things, and was the source of life of all. The human soul was nothing but
air, since life consists in inhaling and exhaling, and when this is no longer
continued death ensues. Warmth and cold arose from rarefaction and
condensation, and probably the origin of the sun and planets was caused by
the rarefaction of air; but when air underwent great condensation, snow,
water, and hail appeared, and, indeed, with sufficient condensation, the
earth itself was formed. It was only a step further to suppose that the infinite
air was the source of life, the god of the universe.
Zeno is said to have been the most remarkable of this school. He held
that if there was a distinction between being and not being, only being
existed. This led him to the final assumption that the laws of nature are
unchangeable and God remains permanent. His method of reasoning was to
reduce the opposite to absurdity.
Upon the whole, the Eleatic philosophy is one relating to knowledge and
being, which considered thought primarily as dependent upon being. It
holds closely to monism, that is, that nature and mind are of the same
substance; yet there is a slight distinction, for there is really a dualism
expressed in knowledge and being. Many other philosophers followed, who
discoursed upon nature, mind, and being, but they arrived at no definite
conclusions. The central idea in the early philosophy up to this time was to
account for the existence and substance of nature. It gave little
consideration to man in himself, and said little of the supernatural.
Everything was speculative in nature, hypothetical in proposition, and
deductive in argument. The Greek mind, departing from its dependence
upon mythology, began boldly to assert its ability to find out nature, but
ended in a scepticism as to its power to ascertain certainty. There was a
final determination as to the distinction of reality as external to mind, and
this represents the best product of the early philosophers.
The nature of the soul occupied much of the attention of the Greeks.
They began by giving material characteristics to the mind. They soon
separated it in concept from material nature and placed it as a part of God
himself, who existed apart from material form. The soul has a past life, a
present, and a future, as a final outcome of philosophical speculations. The
attributes of the soul were confused with the attributes of the Supreme
Being. These conceptions of the Divine Being and of the soul border on the
Hindu philosophy.
Perhaps the subject which caused the most discussion was the attempt to
determine a criterion of truth. Soon after the time when they broke away
from the ancient religious faith, the thinkers of Greece began to doubt the
ability of the mind to ascertain absolute truth. This arose out of the
imperfections of knowledge obtained through the senses. Sense perception
was held in much doubt. The world is full of delusions. Man thinks he sees
when he does not. The rainbow is but an illusion when we attempt to
analyze it. The eye deceives, the ear hears what does not exist; even touch
and taste frequently deceive us. What, then, can be relied upon as accurate
in determining knowledge? To this the Greek mind answers, "Nothing"; it
reaches no definite conclusion, and this is the cardinal weakness of the
philosophy. Indeed, the great weakness of the entire age of philosophy was
want of data. It was a time of intense activity of the mind, but the lack of
data led to much worthless speculation. The systematic method of scientific
observation had not yet been discovered.
1. What was the importance of Socrates' teaching? Why was he put to death?
6. What was the influence on civilization of the Greek attitudes of mind toward nature?
7. Compare the use of Greek philosophy with modern science as to their value in education.
CHAPTER XIV
The Struggle for Greek Equality and Liberty.—The greater part of the
activity of Western nations has been a struggle for social equality and for
political and religious liberty. These phases of European social life are
clearly discerned in the development of the Greek states. The Greeks were
recognized as having the highest intellectual culture and the largest mental
endowments of all the ancients, characteristics which gave them great
prestige in the development of political life and social philosophy. The
problem of how communities of people should live together, their relations
to one another, and their rights, privileges, and duties, early concerned the
philosophers of Greece; but more potent than all the philosophies that have
been uttered, than all of the theories concerning man's social relation, is the
vivid portrayal of the actual struggle of men to live together in community
life, pictured in the course of Grecian history.
In the presentation of this life, writers have differed much in many ways.
Some have eulogized the Greeks as a liberty-loving people, who sought to
grant rights and duties to every one on an altruistic basis; others have
pictured them as entirely egoistic, with a morality of a narrow nature, and
with no sublime conception of the relation of the rights of humanity as
such. Without entering into a discussion of the various views entertained by
philosophers concerning the characteristics of the Greeks, it may be said
that, with all their noble characteristics, the ideal pictures which are
presented to us by the poet, the philosopher, and the historian are too
frequently of the few, while the great mass of the people remained in a state
of ignorance, superstition, and slavery. With a due recognition of the
existence of the germs of democracy, we find that Greece, after all, was in
spirit an aristocracy. There was an aristocracy of birth, of wealth, of
learning, and of hereditary power. While we must recognize the greatness of
the Greek life in comparison with that of Oriental nations, it must still be
evident to us that the best phases of this life and the magnificent features of
Greek learning have been emphasized much by writers, while the wretched
and debasing conditions of the people of Greece have seldom been
recounted.
In the beginning this tribal chief holds unlimited sway over all of his
subjects. But to maintain his power well he must be a soldier who is able to
command the forces in war; he must be able to lead in the councils with the
chiefs and, when occasion requires, discuss matters with the people.
Gradually passing from the ancient hereditary power, he reaches a stage
when it becomes a custom to consult with all the chiefs of the tribe in the
management of the affairs. The earliest picture of Greek government
represents a king who is equal in birth with other heads of the gentes,
presiding over a group of elders deliberating upon the affairs of the state.
The influence of the nobles over whom he presided must have been great. It
appears that the king or chief must convince his associates in council before
any decision could be considered a success.
The right to free discussion of affairs in open council, the right to object
to methods of procedure, were cardinal principles in Greek politics; but
while the great mass of people were not taken into account in the affairs of
the government, there was an equality among all those called citizens which
had much to do with the establishment of the civil polity of all nations. The
whole Greek political life, then, represents the slow evolution from
aristocratic government of hereditary chiefs toward a complete democracy,
which unfortunately it failed to reach before the decline of the Greek state.
As before related, the Greeks had established a large number of
independent communities which developed into small states. These small
states were mostly isolated from one another, hence they developed an
independent social and political existence. This was of great consequence in
the establishing of the character of the Greek government. In the first place,
the kings, chiefs, and rulers were brought closely in contact with the people.
Everybody knew them, understood the character of the men, realizing that
they had passions and prejudices similar to other men, and that,
notwithstanding they were elevated to positions of power, they nevertheless
were human beings like the people themselves. This led to a democratic
feeling.
There was another phase of this Greek life worthy of notice: the fact that
it developed extreme selfishness and egoism respecting government. We
shall find in this development, in spite of the pretensions for the interests of
the many, that government existed for the few; notwithstanding the
professions of an enlarged social life, we shall find a narrowness almost
beyond belief in the treatment of Greeks by one another in the social life. It
is true that the recognition of citizenship was much wider than in the Orient,
and that the individual life of man received more marked attention than in
any ancient despotism; yet, after all, when we recognize the multitudes of
slaves, who were considered not worthy to take part in government affairs,
the numbers of the freedmen and non-citizens, and realize that the few who
had power or privilege of government looked with disdain upon all others,
it gives us no great enthusiasm for Greek democracy when compared with
the modern conception of that term.
The population of all Attica in the most flourishing times was about
500,000 people, 150,000 of whom were slaves, 45,000 settlers, or
unqualified people, while the free citizens did not exceed 90,000—so that
the equality so much spoken of in Grecian democracies belonged to only
90,000 out of 500,000, leaving 410,000 disfranchised. The district was
thickly populous for Greece, and the stock of the Athenian had little mixture
of foreign blood in it. The city itself was formed of villages or cantons,
united into one central government. These appear to be survivals of the old
village communities united under the title of city-state. It was the perfection
of this city-state that occupied the chief thought of the Athenian political
philosophers.
In this way the small proprietors had become serfs, and the masters took
from them five-sixths of the products of the soil, and would, no doubt, have
taken their lands had these not been inalienable. Sometimes the debtors
were sold into foreign countries as slaves, and at other times their children
were taken as slaves according to the law. On account of the oppression of
the poor by the nobility, there sprang up a hatred between these two classes.
A few changes were made by the laws of Draco and others, but nothing
gave decided relief to the people. The nine archons, representing the power
of the state, managed nearly all of its affairs, and retained likewise their
seats in the council of nobles. The old national council formed by the
aristocratic members of the community still retained its hold, and the
council of archons, though it divided the country into administrative
districts and sought to secure more specific management of the several
districts, failed to keep down internal disorders or to satisfy the people. The
people were formed into three classes: the wealthy nobility, or land-owners
of the plain, the peasants of the mountains districts, and the people of the