I The Relationship between Ancient Greek and Modern Western Civilization

Ancient Greek society perished at least as long ago as the seventh century A. D. Many historians would date its death a good many centuries earlier, and all would agree that even if there are symptoms that life still lingered in the body down to this time, its mental and physical energies had long failed, and that the change from lethargy to death was hardly perceptible when it came. Thus even on the most cautious reckoning, there is an interval of thirteen centuries between the close of Greek history and our own times, and the great age of Greek history—the time when Ancient Greek society was in its prime, when it was shaping its own destiny and deflecting the destiny of its neighbours—is separated from our generation by more than two thousand years. What legacy has come down, through these great periods of time, from Ancient Greek society to the contemporary world? Before trying to answer this big question, let us consider a smaller one: What is the legacy of Ancient Greek History to our own society? That portion of contemporary humanity which inhabits Western Europe and America constitutes a specific society, for which the most convenient name is ‘Western Civilization’, and this society has a relationship with Ancient Greek society which other contemporary societies—for instance, those of Islam, India, and China—have not. It is its child.

This description of the relationship between Ancient Greece and the modern Western world may be something more than a metaphor, for societies like individuals are living creatures, and may therefore be expected to exhibit the same phenomena. At any rate the metaphor illustrates the facts. To begin with, the histories of the two societies overlap. The origins of modern Western society may be traced back a century or two before the Christian era, when the lands and races of Western Europe came into contact with the Levant, where Greek society had grown up and was then in its maturity. The germ of Western society first developed in the body of Greek society, like a child in the womb. The Roman Empire was the period of pregnancy during which the new life was sheltered and nurtured by the old. The ‘Dark Age’ was the crisis of birth, in which the child broke away from its parent and emerged as a separate, though naked and helpless, individual. The Middle Ages were the period of childhood, in which the new creature, though immature, found itself able to live and grow independently. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with their marked characteristics of transition, may stand for puberty, and the centuries since the year 1500 for our prime. The metaphor works out sufficiently well to throw light on our particular problem: the legacy bequeathed to the Modern West by Ancient Greece.

Children ‘inherit’ from their parents in several senses of the word. There are features and instincts physically transmitted from the one to the other. There are imitations in early childhood of the parent’s speech and gesture which are not perhaps strictly predetermined by the relationship, but which are yet performed subconsciously and are in fact so inevitable that the child is never aware that it is exercising choice in the matter. And there is deliberate and conscious imitation at a later stage when the child is sufficiently mature to appreciate its parent’s character. These several forms of ‘legacy’ from parent to child differ primarily in the extent to which the acceptance and use of them depends upon the child’s own will, and it will probably be admitted that the legacies which are the less certain to be transmitted are also the more important if the transmission happens to take place. For example, a child’s life and character are more affected by deliberate imitation of its parent at a relatively advanced age than by the unchosen inheritance of some particular colour of hair and eye or shape of chin or pitch of temperament. On the other hand, while the inheritance of these latter characteristics from one among a limited number of ancestral strains is inevitable, the voluntary legacy may never be transmitted at all. The child will not claim it unless he knows his parent and admires or respects him. The parent’s premature death or removal or the lack of sufficient sympathy between the parent and the child can in this case inhibit the transmission, and the potential legacy, with its momentous possibilities of influence upon the child’s career, will never in fact be bequeathed.

These considerations may guide us in an analysis of the legacy which we have received from our parent society—the civilization of Ancient Greece. First, has Ancient Greece transmitted to us anything comparable to the physical and psychological legacy of an individual human parent to her child? This is a difficult question for us to answer, just as it is difficult for members of the same family to appreciate the ‘family likeness’ between them. A Moslem or Hindu or Chinaman could judge better than we. But it is certainly possible that the comparative similarity of climatic conditions and the comparative unity of racial stock has created a closer relationship between these two societies than between either one of them and any other. The poetry and philosophy and social life and political institutions of Ancient Greece and the Modern West may conceivably constitute a single species when contrasted with the institutions of other civilizations. A modern West European or American may have a greater innate appreciation for Homer than for the Old Testament or for Sokrates than for Buddha or Confucius. The parallel which historians so often draw, or imply, between the conflict of Ancient Greece with the Ancient East and that of the Modern West with the Modern East may rest on a real kinship between the two Occidental civilizations as contrasted with their respective Oriental neighbours. But this is uncertain and on the whole unprofitable ground. When we come to the ‘subconsciously chosen’ type of legacy, the analogy with the relationship between parent and child becomes more evident.

Legacies of this type from Ancient Greek society are prominent in the Middle Ages—the childhood of modern Western civilization which followed the ‘Dark Age’ crisis of birth. One of the first needs of our young Western society as it struggled to its feet was a symbol of its unity—something corresponding to the attainment of self-consciousness by the individual human being—and for this it borrowed the last constructive idea of the Ancient Greek world. The mediaeval ‘Holy Roman Empire’ had quite a different purpose and function, in the childhood of modern Western civilization, from the purpose and function of the Roman Empire in the old age of Ancient Greece. But the young civilization did not think of inventing a new institution for its individual needs. In its subconscious pursuit of its own development it conceived itself to be reviving one of the customs of its venerable parent. The political thinkers of Charlemagne’s day never imagined that the idea of world unity could be embodied in any other form.

Again, a century or so later, certain portions of Western society, especially the populations of North and Central Italy and the Low Countries, had outdistanced the rest in economic development and needed institutions of local self-government to give their economic vitality free play. In this case, again, Western civilization reverted to an Ancient Greek institution and revived the ‘city-state’. A little later still, the rapidly growing and differentiating body of Western civilization was impelled towards territorial expansion, and sought it, like Ancient Greece in a similar period, round the shores of the Mediterranean. This mediaeval movement of expansion, which is commonly called the Crusades, but which made itself felt in Spain and Sicily and the Aegean as well as in the ‘Holy Land’, is a remarkable parallel to the propagation of Ancient Greek city-states round the same shores between about 750 and 600 B. C. In drifting back upon the Mediterranean, the mediaeval West was searching for new realms to conquer, but it was really captured by the romance of its ancestral home.

Here, then, are three prominent features in mediaeval Western history—the Holy Roman Empire, the Flemish and Italian communes, and the Crusades—which were legacies from Ancient Greek history in the sense of being subconscious reversions to the habits of the parent society. But have these mediaeval legacies from Ancient Greece been really important constituents in our history viewed as a whole? Have they not rather been false growths which led to little or nothing? The Holy Roman Empire was never more than a mirage. The sense of unity in the modern Western world is derived not from this but from a really original institution, the early Papal Church, in which any legacy from Ancient Greece would be hard to discern. The national states of modern Europe and America are derived not from mediaeval Ghent or Bruges or Florence or Venice but from the new, though clumsy, feudal communities of mediaeval England and France. And the expansion of Western society has not followed the direction indicated by the Crusades. The false trail of the Mediterranean was practically abandoned after less than three centuries’ trial. The true domain of modern Western civilization has been found in regions which Ancient Greece hardly explored: Northern Germany and Scandinavia and the British Isles, the North Sea and the Baltic, the Atlantic and the continent of America. Thus our mediaeval legacies from Ancient Greece—the subconscious reversions of childhood—are historical curiosities rather than vital links between the two civilizations. Our really important legacy from Ancient Greece was adopted with full consciousness and deliberation when we stood on the threshold of our own maturity.

The legacy of this third type which we have received from Ancient Greece has been given the general name of the Renaissance. It was a determined and successful attempt, on the part of our society, to learn everything that the literary and artistic remains of our great predecessor could teach us. It lay within our choice to study these remains or to pass them by, and the fact that we chose to study them has been one of the greatest and the most fortunate decisions in the career of our civilization. The several aspects of this acceptance of what Ancient Greece had to offer have been treated already in the other chapters in this volume. Here it is merely necessary to point out that the Renaissance was a study and assimilation not only of Ancient Greek literature and art, but of architecture, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, political ideas, and all the other higher expressions of a great society. The absorption of this vast current of life largely accounts for the wonderful impetus which has revealed itself in Western civilization during the last four centuries.

Has the current now spent its force? Has the legacy adopted four centuries ago been used up and exhausted? Under the inspiration of Ancient Greece, has the modern West now created a literature, art, architecture, science, mathematics, philosophy, and political thought which equal or surpass the Ancient patterns and turn them from an inspiration into an encumbrance? That seems to be the fundamental question behind the controversy about the study of Ancient Greek life in England to-day. Perhaps the answer may be found—if we may go back to our metaphor—in the uniqueness of the individual personality.

If one considers the relations of a parent and child, or indeed of any two human beings, it is evident that the one could never exhaust all that could be learnt from the personality of the other. The one might acquire every physical, mental, and moral attainment that the other could display, and yet the other’s unique individuality would remain—an inexhaustible subject of study, throwing perpetual new light upon the life of the observer himself and of his fellow human beings. This is true of any two human beings, but if the two happen to be people of commanding character and genius it becomes a truism which it would be almost ludicrous to question. Let us apply this to the study not of one individual but of one society by another, and let us take the case in point, in which the two societies happen to be great civilizations. The study of a great civilization has a unique value, not merely for members of another civilization which stands to it in the relation of child to parent, but for every seeker after knowledge who has a civilization of his own. This ultimate and most precious legacy of Ancient Greece is at the disposal of Moslems, Hindus, and Chinese, as well as Westerners. For receiving it there are two qualifications: a good understanding and an open mind.