What Have the Greeks Done for Modern Civilisation?

The Lowell Lectures of 1908-09 By John Pentland Mahaffy C.V.O., D.C.L. (Oxon.), etc. Of Trinity College, Dublin G. P. Putnam’s Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press

Copyright, 1909 BY J. P. MAHAFFY
Printed in the United States of America
SANCTÆ MEMORIÆ UXORIS CARISSIMÆ CUJUS DULCI CONSORTIO INGENII SUI PRIMITIAS ABHINC JAM ANNOS XL DEDICAVIT NUNC SERUM LABOREM CONSECRAT AUCTOR


THESE lectures, delivered in Boston at the invitation of the Curator of the Lowell Institute, in December and January, 1908-9, are now published owing to many requests both from those that heard them and from those that did not. They are an attempt to cover the whole field of Greek influence, not only in the various arts in which such influence is generally realised, but also in those departments of thinking in which moderns arrogate to themselves an unquestioned superiority. Yet it will be found, even in the following necessarily brief and popular sketch, that, as regards thinking , the Greeks were as supreme in science as in other departments, and, though they did not discover the powers of steam or electricity, they nevertheless carried out in mechanics works that no modern builder, with all his vaunted control of nature, has yet equalled, and so in other pursuits, not only Greek form, but Greek thought, has been the greatest and the clearest that the world has yet seen.
And yet I believed that the high honour in which Greek studies were long held had been exchanged for indifference, or even contempt, especially in America, where a hurried education planned for “practical life” was said to be taking the place of the old liberal education intended to breed gentlemen. But I found, during my actual visit to America, that I had been misled as to the completeness of this degradation of Greek. As is usual, the stranger begins by getting false impressions of the country he visits, and can only correct these gradually by detailed experience. There were many symptoms that public opinion in the States is by no means satisfied with the thought of an absolute reign of modern science, or of specialising education at the fancy of the ignorant youth or the more ignorant parent. Even employers in factories are beginning to find out, with that plain good sense which marks the solid core of American society, that young men who receive a liberal education are more intelligent and useful as tradesmen or mechanics than those who have mastered only one subject. The intellectual outlook tells even upon the handicraft of the apprentice.