lost in despair at an all-encircling mystery. Not so the Greek Childe
Roland who set the slug-horn to his lips and blew a challenge. Neither
Shakespeare nor Browning tells us what happened, and the old legend,
Childe Roland, is the incarnation of the Greek spirit, the young,
light-hearted master of the modern world, at whose trumpet blast the
dark towers of ignorance, superstition and deceit have vanished into
thin air, as the baseless fabric of a dream. Not that the jeering
phantoms have flown! They still beset, in varied form, the path of each
generation; but the Achaian Childe Roland gave to man self-confidence,
and taught him the lesson that nature's mysteries, to be solved, must
be challenged. On a portal of one of the temples of Isis in Egypt was
carved: "I am whatever hath been, is, or ever will be, and my veil no
man has yet lifted."
The veil of nature the Greek lifted and herein lies his value to us.
What of this Genius? How did it arise among the peoples of the AEgean
Sea? Those who wish to know the rock whence science was hewn may read
the story told in vivid language by Professor Gomperz in his "Greek
Thinkers," the fourth volume of which has recently been published
(Murray, 1912; Scribner, 1912).
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