Sua cuique deu fit dira
cupido. 'Each man's fearful passion becomes his god.' Yes,
and not passions only, but every impulse, every aspiration,
every humour, every virtue, every whim. In each of his
activities the Greek found something wonderful, and called
it God: the hearth at which he warmed himself and cooked his
food, the street in which his house stood, the horse he
rode, the cattle he pastured, the wife he married, the child
that was born to him, the plague of which he died or from
which he recovered, each suggested a deity, and he made one
to preside over each. So too with qualities and powers more
abstract." R.W. Livingstone: The Greek Genius and Its
Meaning to Us, pp. 51-52.
Livingstone discusses the Greek Genius as displayed to us in certain
"notes"--the Note of Beauty--the Desire for Freedom--the Note
of Directness--the Note of Humanism--the Note of Sanity and of
Many-sidedness. Upon some of these characteristics we shall have
occasion to dwell in the brief sketch of the rise of scientific medicine
among this wonderful people.
We have seen that the primitive man and in the great civilizations of
Egypt and Babylonia, the physician evolved from the priest--in Greece
he had a dual origin, philosophy and religion.
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