debt of gratitude to our forerunners as it is justly due. There would
seem to be much of fallacy and of the injustice of a shallow judgment
in the contrast as popularly drawn between 'Hellenism' and 'Hebraism,'
according to which the former is spoken of as exclusively proclaiming
to the world the value of Beauty, the latter the value of
Righteousness. In this there is surely much injustice done to Hellas.
Because she taught the one, she did not therefore leave the other
untaught. It may have been for a short time, as her other greatness
was for a short time, though its effects are eternal, but for that
short time the national life, of Athens at any rate, is at least as
full of high moral feeling as that of any other people in the world.
Will not the names of Solon, of Aristeides, of Kallikratidas, of
Epameinondas, of Timoleon and many more, remind us that life could be
to the Hellene something of deeper moral import than a brilliant game,
or a garden of vivid and sweet sights and sounds where Beauty and
Knowledge entered, but Goodness was forgotten and shut out? For it
is not merely that these men, and very many more endowed with ample
portion of their spirit, were produced and reared among the race; they
were honoured and valued in a way that surely postulated the existence
of high ethical feeling in their countrymen. And even when the days
of unselfish statesmen and magnanimous cities were over, there were
philosophers whose schools were not the less filled because they
claimed a high place for righteousness in human life. To Solon and
Aristeides succeeded Socrates and Plato, to Epameinondas and Timoleon
succeeded Zeno and Epictetus. That the morality of the Hellenes was
complete on all sides, it would of course be irrational to maintain.
They had not, for instance, any more than the Hebrews, or any other
nation of antiquity, learnt to abhor slavery, though probably it
existed in a milder form at Athens than anywhere else in the old or
new world: they were more implacable in revenge and laxer in sexual