In 1912, there was published a book by
one of the younger Oxford teachers, "The Greek Genius and Its Meaning to
Us,"(1) from which those who shrink from the serious study of Gomperz'
four volumes may learn something of the spirit of Greece. Let me quote a
few lines from his introduction:
(1) By R. W. Livingstone, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1912 (2d
ed., revised, 1915).
"Europe has nearly four million square miles; Lancashire has 1,700;
Attica has 700. Yet this tiny country has given us an art which we,
with it and all that the world has done since it for our models, have
equalled perhaps, but not surpassed. It has given us the staple of our
vocabulary in every domain of thought and knowledge. Politics, tyranny,
democracy, anarchism, philosophy, physiology, geology, history--these
are all Greek words. It has seized and up to the present day kept hold
of our higher education. It has exercised an unfailing fascination, even
on minds alien or hostile. Rome took her culture thence. Young Romans
completed their education in the Greek schools.... And so it was with
natures less akin to Greece than the Roman. St. Paul, a Hebrew of the
Hebrews, who called the wisdom of the Greeks foolishness, was drawn
to their Areopagus, and found himself accommodating his gospel to the
style, and quoting verses from the poets of this alien race.
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