The Legacy of Greece

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by Various

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Title: The Legacy of Greece Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J.
Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W.
Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald
Blomfield
Author: Various
Editor: R.W. Livingstone
Release Date: August 6, 2007 [EBook #22259]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
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The Legacy of GREECE
Essays by GILBERT MURRAY, W. R. INGE, J. BURNET, SIR T. L.
HEATH, D'ARCY W. THOMPSON, CHARLES SINGER, R. W.
LIVINGSTON, A. TOYNBEE, A. E. ZIMMERN, PERCY
GARDNER, SIR REGINALD BLOMFIELD
Edited by
R. W. LIVINGSTONE
[Illustration]
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
BY JOHN JOHNSON PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

In spite of many differences, no age has had closer affinities with
Ancient Greece than our own; none has based its deeper life so largely
on ideals which the Greeks brought into the world. History does not
repeat itself. Yet, if the twentieth century searched through the past for
its nearest spiritual kin, it is in the fifth and following centuries before
Christ that they would be found. Again and again, as we study Greek
thought and literature, behind the veil woven by time and distance, the
face that meets us is our own, younger, with fewer lines and wrinkles
on its features and with more definite and deliberate purpose in its eyes.
For these reasons we are to-day in a position, as no other age has been,
to understand Ancient Greece, to learn the lessons it teaches, and, in
studying the ideals and fortunes of men with whom we have so much in
common, to gain a fuller power of understanding and estimating our
own. This book--the first of its kind in English--aims at giving some
idea of what the world owes to Greece in various realms of the spirit

and the intellect, and of what it can still learn from her.
THE EDITOR.
October 1921.

CONTENTS
PAGE
THE VALUE OF GREECE TO THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD. By
GILBERT MURRAY, F.B.A., Regius Professor of Greek in the
University of Oxford 1
RELIGION. By W. R. INGE, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's 25
PHILOSOPHY. By J. BURNETT, F.B.A., Professor of Greek in the
University of St. Andrews 57
MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY. By Sir T. L. HEATH, K.C.B.,
K.C.V.O., F.R.S. 97
NATURAL SCIENCE. By D'ARCY W. THOMPSON, F.R.S.,
Professor of Natural History in the University of St. Andrews 137
BIOLOGY. By CHARLES SINGER, Lecturer in the History of
Medicine in University College, London 163
MEDICINE. By CHARLES SINGER 201
LITERATURE. By R. W. LIVINGSTONE, Fellow of Corpus Christi
College, Oxford 249
HISTORY. By ARNOLD TOYNBEE, Koraés Professor of
Byzantine and Modern Greek Language, Literature, and History in the
University of London 289
POLITICAL THOUGHT. By A. E. ZIMMERN, late Wilson Professor

of International Politics, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth 321
THE LAMPS OF GREEK ART. By PERCY GARDNER, F.B.A.,
Merton Professor of Classical Archaeology in the University of Oxford
353
ARCHITECTURE. By Sir REGINALD BLOMFIELD, F.S.A., R.A.
397

THE VALUE OF GREECE TO THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD
If the value of man's life on earth is to be measured in dollars and miles
and horse-power, ancient Greece must count as a poverty-stricken and a
minute territory; its engines and implements were nearer to the spear
and bow of the savage than to our own telegraph and aeroplane. Even if
we neglect merely material things and take as our standard the actual
achievements of the race in conduct and in knowledge, the average
clerk who goes to town daily, idly glancing at his morning newspaper,
is probably a better behaved and infinitely better informed person than
the average Athenian who sat spellbound at the tragedies of Aeschylus.
It is only by the standard of the spirit, to which the thing achieved is
little and the quality of mind that achieved it much, which cares less for
the sum of knowledge attained than for the love of knowledge, less for
much good policing than for one free act of heroism, that the great age
of Greece can be judged as something extraordinary and unique in
value.
By this standard, if it is a legitimate and reasonable one to apply, we
shall be able to understand why classical