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Excerpt from Greek Literature 2. The rational energy of the Greeks. - The Greeks were not the first people who found out how to till the earth well, or to fashion metals, or to grow rich by war or commerce, or to build splendid houses and temples. But they were the first people who tried to make reason the guide of their social life. One proof of this is found in the very existence of the Greek cities. While other men were living in tribes or under despotic kings, the Greeks had already gathered themselves together in cities,- societies ruled, not by force, but by the persuasions of equal law. Another proof of it is found in the Greek books. There we find writers of all sorts, poets and historians and philosophers, habitually striving to get at the reasons of things. On this side, Greek literature has an interest such as belongs to no other literature. It shows us how men first set about systematic thinking. It shows us how some questions which have been solved since, and others which are being discussed still, appeared to the people who first seriously tried to answer them. 3. The bearing of Greek thought on modern life. - But the Greek books are not merely interesting as showing the methods and aims of early thinkers. They contain results, too, which have had the deepest and widest influence on the whole of modern life, in religion, in morality, in science, in politics, in literature. The thoughts of the great Greek thinkers have been bearing fruit in the world ever since they were first uttered. In some special sciences, the work done by the Greeks remains a basis of study to this day, as in Ethics and in Logic and in Geometry. It is in Greek historians and Greek orators that we read some of the political lessons most directly useful for our own time. Neither the history of Christian doctrine, nor the outer history of the Christian Church, can be fully understood without reference to the character and work of the Greek mind. About the Publish