The Historians' History of the World 04

In the department of abstract science the accumulation of material,—not only of the whole heritage of literature, but also of all that was preserved in the memory of man,—was taken in hand on a scale amazingly vast. The Ionians had already taken note of the traditions of barbarous nations; the study was prosecuted in the spirit of Alexander, and presently Hellenised barbarians, such as Manetho, Berosus, and Apollonius of Caria, took part in it. Grammar, with philology, lexicography, textual criticism, and minute exegesis, likewise becomes a genuine science, the importance of which, again, the nineteenth century has been the first to realise, when, in the pride of its own strength, it soared beyond the achievements of this early period. Towards a real science of history, however, no step had been taken, even in dealing with Homer, who constituted the centre and culminating point of these studies. Nor did the Greeks attempt to gain a scientific conception of any foreign language, not even of Latin. This one-sided view hampered their historical judgment. Not one of them tried to see from the point of view of another mind, and their philology and their science of history have therefore remained rationalistic.

The students in the sphere of language and literature were principally poets, men whose interest was æsthetic; and the poetry of the time, in so far as it has come down to us, is either actually erudite or has the airs and graces of erudition, in that it employs the art-forms of an earlier period, particularly those of the Ionic school. It displays a vast amount of taste and elegance; it twines about the stately life of the courts and the seats of learning, the quiet peristyles of the town houses and country villas by shore and stream; as rich and ornate as the grotesques of the loggias in the Vatican and the frescoes of the Farnesina, obtrusively magnificent as the allegories of the Doges’ palace and of the Luxembourg. But it no longer brought forth anything that fired the spirit of the whole nation, and spoke to all mankind. Moreover, it disdained to seek new forms, and soon prohibited the search for them. No doubt in the lower and numerically larger classes of society there continued to exist a poetry which satisfied their needs, a poetry which would probably have a powerful charm for us by reason of its popular character; but the fatal evil was that the nation was now altogether incapable of renewing its youth by the upspringing of fresh elements.

Prose was more national in character and more lucid. Our terminology is incommensurable with that of the period, and the works themselves have all fallen victims to the later tendencies of style, but when we see that the historical novel, the love-story, the roman comique, the romance of travel, and so forth, are Hellenic products, we suspect that intellectual activity was no less marked in this sphere than in others.

In the third century the bias towards mysticism seems to have been completely repressed, we find no trace of a popular religious movement that seizes upon the hearts of men and takes their senses captive. The Ionian spirit prevails throughout. The gorgeous ritual of worship, the temple-building and festivals, all bear the stamp of superficiality. Even the disciples of Plato hark back to Socratic criticism: the result being the most important scientific work of the age, though to the uninitiated it looks like pure scepticism. It has its complement, however, in Plato’s own writings and in the practical recognition of his moral idealism. The deficiency is none the less unmistakable. Even with the noblest representatives of active as of intellectual life we breathe a thin rationalistic air. In the second century mysticism begins to come slowly to the surface, frequently associated with the ancient name of Pythagoras, not seldom heralding the irruption of the barbarian element and barbarian religions. And astrology, with its vain superstitions, has already made its appearance, having tortured into its service a hideously shallow pseudo-science.