Intellectual culture in the sense in which the term is commonly under stood had its origin and home in Greece. Here the characteristic features of the European continent—its chain of peninsulas, forming a deeply indented coast-line, its broken surface and diversified scenery, all the physical incentives to a free and active existence—are reproduced in miniature, in close proximity to the only part of Asia possessing similar advantages. The people that occupied the shores and islands of the rEgean Sea may well have been guided thither by some subtle instinct in its search for the surroundings best suited to its inborn capacities. Its intellect was at once the most receptive and the most original that any race has ever possessed. Whatever in the way of material, of suggestion, of rudimentary knowledge, the Greeks may have derived from others, they alone were the creators who gave life, beauty, and artistic form to all that they produced. Greek culture was the outgrowth of a conscious intellectual activity rejecting the rule of prescription and convention and embracing the service of absolute truth and ideal perfection.
The Roman nature was the opposite of the Greek, lacking all that the latter possessed and possessing all that it lacked. Not beauty, but utility, was its aim; not theory or speculation, but authority, its guide; not free dom, but law, its animating principle. The sense of duty, of obligation, of an inflexible justice as the ruling power of the universe; submission to established order and devotion to the state; laboriousness, tenacity, forti tude, implying both courage and strength, the strength that comes from courage and the courage that comes from strength,—these were pre eminently Roman qualities, and in their assemblage they constituted a moral superiority not less marked and not less fruitful than the intellectual superiority of Greece. The world-empire reared on these foundations was no mere creation of aggrandizement and conquest: it was as much in the order of nature as any tribal, civic, or national organization.
Ancient civilization was throughout its whole development exposed to two dangers—the tendency to retrogression and decay inherent in every system, and only to be counteracted by the influx of fresh energies and resources, and the constant pressure of an outside world of barbarism. The zone of that civilization was a narrow belt comprising the most fertile and attractive portions of the known world; and beyond it were vast regions occupied by migratory races, ever increasing in numbers and dashing at the barriers by which it was sought to repel them. With the overthrow of the bulwarks erected by Rome and the irruptions that followed, a new cycle of history begins. Goths and Huns, Vandals and Franks, sweep over the lands where the treasures of art and industry lie stored, their first impulse only to ravage and destroy. Hellenic culture— like so many of the rivers of the country in which it rose—sinks into sub terranean channels, and will not re-emerge until its existence has been almost forgotten. The Roman polity, though it still awes and restrains, loses its integrity and compelling force. The old order, fallen into decay, collapses wherever it is assailed, and chaos seems about to supervene.
It was not by the spent forces of antiquity, or through the mere min gling of diverse elements, old and new, that society was to be slowly renovated and a wider and more stable civilization gradually evolved. It needed a purer light than that of Greece, a higher law than that of Rome, a fuller conception of humanity than any that could have arisen from the confluence and fusion of barbarous with effete nations, to penetrate, subdue, and harmonize the discordant powers and impulses that had been thrown into confusion and conflict. The glory of Athenian culture in its full
bloom, the majestic repose that had once enfolded the nations under the sway of Rome, hid and fostered the germs of a rapid and irresistible decay. In the tumults and torpors of medieval society the vivifying and purify ing influences of Christianity, feeble and overmatched as they might seem, held the promise of a sure and lasting progress. The recognition of the human family as children of a common Father and subjects of a divine rule modified by degrees inherited tendencies and traditional customs, tempering the dominion of the strong over the weak; mitigating the ferocity of war, the cruelty of codes, and the foul excesses of licentious ness; elevating the position of woman; limiting slavery and preparing the way for its extinction; introducing standards and instilling sentiments to which the most refined nations of antiquity had been strangers. It was natural, and even necessary, that in the struggles of such a period society should lie under the control of an ecclesiastical organization, even though its functions were thus impeded and its intellect kept dormant. The awakening was long deferred, but it was all the more complete.
The close of the fifteenth century saw the European system of nations framed and in process of consolidation; the shackles by which reason and conscience had been cramped while Christendom was attaining to unity thrown off; the era of great inventions opened by that of printing, which gave wings to all the rest; literature and art scaling heights from which the whole field of life was to be surveyed and delineated; and the world itself enlarged by the discovery of an unknown hemisphere. Thus equipped and directed, modern society started on its career, in which new vistas were continually opening, new problems pressing for solution, and new ideals rising into view. Impulses from every quarter spread and kept alive a ceaseless activity. The lamps of ancient learning were relighted; the motions and relations of the heavenly bodies were revealed; migration took swifter and bolder flights than ever before, carrying with it, not bar barism, but civilization; commerce, stimulating countless industries and calling to its aid undreamed-of appliances, threw a net over the globe; old ideas and habits were discarded, old institutions abolished; science, so long a purblind, stumbling guide, restricted and contemned, pushed forward as a conqueror claiming a boundless domain. During the last three centu ries the world has seemed to be in process of remaking.
But human nature has not been transformed, nor has the course of human destiny been made smooth. In proportion as the load of evil under which society has always labored is lightened, the burden of its responsibilities is increased. In the light of a fuller consciousness it recognizes the momentous nature of the tasks imposed upon it, the obstacles and dangers that confront it, the conflicting tendencies by which it is swayed, the egotisms and illusions that distract it, and the loss of that trustful sense of dependence which was the compensation for its early weakness and lack of freedom. In the endless round of change no poise is attained, no point from which the present may be complacently regarded and the future faced without apprehension.—EDITOR.