Part 15 (1/2)

The texts of Hippocrates and Galen have now ceased to occupy a place in any medical curriculum. Yet all who know these writings, know too, not only that their spirit is still with us, but that the works themselves form the background of modern practice, and that their very phraseology is still in use at the bedside. Modern medicine may be truly described as in essence a creation of the Greeks. To realize the nature of our medical system, some knowledge of its Greek sources is essential. It would indeed be a bad day for medicine if ever this debt to the Greeks were forgotten, and the loss would be at least as much ethical as intellectual. But there is happily no fear of this, for the figure and spirit of Hippocrates are more real and living to-day than they have been since the great collapse of the Greek scientific intellect in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era.

CHARLES SINGER.

The author has to thank Mr. R. W. Livingstone, Dr. E. T.

Withington, Prof. A. Platt, and Mr. J. D. Beazley for corrections and suggestions.

LITERATURE

A man walking down Shaftesbury Avenue from Piccadilly to Charing Cross Road pa.s.ses the _Lyric Theatre_. If it is the evening, a _dramatic_ performance is probably taking place inside. It may be a _tragedy_, or some form of _comedy_. If it is a _musical comedy_ and he enters, he will see elaborate _scenery_ and a play which may open with a _prologue_ and which is partly composed of _dialogue_ between the various _characters_, partly of songs in various _metres_ sung by a _chorus_ to the accompaniment of an _orchestra_. As the words in italics indicate, our imaginary pa.s.ser-by will have seen, though he may not have suspected it, a symbol of the indelible mark which the Greeks have set on the aesthetic and intellectual life of Europe, and of the living presence of Greece in the twentieth century. An ancient Athenian might be startled at the sight of a musical comedy and its chorus, but he would be looking at his own child, a descendant, however distant, degenerate, and hard to recognize, of that chorus which with dance and song moved round the altar of Dionysus in the theatre of his home.

The same imprint, clear or faint, is on all our literary forms, except perhaps one. Epic, lyric, elegiac, dramatic, didactic, poetry, history, biography, rhetoric and oratory, the epigram, the essay, the sermon, the novel, letter writing and literary criticism are all Greek by origin, and in nearly every case their name betrays their source. Rome raises a doubtful claim to satire, but the substance of satire is present in the Old Comedy, and the form seems to have existed in writings now lost.

There are even one or two _genres_, such as the imaginary speech, which Greece invented and which are not, fortunately, found in modern literature. When the curtain rose on Homer, European literature did not exist: long before it falls on the late Byzantines, the lines were laid on which it has moved up to our own day. This is the entire work of a single people, politically weak, numerically small, materially poor--according to the economy of nature which in things of the mind and the spirit gives a germinating power to few. The Greeks are justly admired for individual poems, plays, and pieces of writing; but it was something even greater to have explored the possibilities of literature so far that posterity, while it has developed Greek _genres_, has not hitherto been able to add to them. This is one part of the Greek Legacy to literature.

Another part are the works themselves. Literature can only be judged by reading it, and certainly it cannot be characterized in a few pages. But a man ignorant of Greek and anxious to estimate its value might form some idea by inquiring the opinions of qualified judges. He would find them unanimous: I suppose it is true that no man of eminence qualified to speak has ever spoken of Greek literature in any tone but one. The first testimony is that of the Romans. It is borne by their literature, starting in translations from Greek, adopting one after another of their _genres_, permeated through and through (and most of all in the greatest writers) by imitations, reminiscences, influences of Greek, confessing and glorying in the debt. 'In learning,' says Cicero, 'and in every branch of literature, the Greeks are our masters.'[101] A Roman boy should begin his studies with Greek, Quintilian thought, 'because Latin learning is derived from Greek.'[102] The same note is repeated in the literature of the Renaissance, and re-echoed by the most various voices of our own century.

[101] _Tusc._ 1. 1. 2.

[102] _Inst. Or._ I. 1. 12.

'Though one of the Greek tragedians may seem rather greater and more complete than another, their work as a whole has a single pervading quality. It is marked by grandeur, excellence, sanity, complete humanity, a high philosophy of life, a lofty way of thinking, a powerful intuition (_Anschauung_). We find these qualities in their surviving lyric and epic poetry as well as in their drama: we find them in their philosophers, orators, and historians and, to an equally high degree, in their surviving sculpture.'[103]

[103] Goethe, _Gesprache_, 3. 387.

'Beside the great Attic poets, like Aeschylus and Sophocles, I am absolutely nothing.'[104]

[104] Ibid., 3. 443.

'He spoke with great animation of the advantage of cla.s.sical study, Greek especially. ”Where,” he said, ”would one look for a greater orator than Demosthenes; or finer dramatic poetry, next to Shakspere, than that of Aeschylus or Sophocles, not to speak of Euripides.” Herodotus he thought ”the most interesting and instructive book, next to the Bible, which had ever been written”.'[105]

[105] Wordsworth, _Table-talk_.

'The period which intervened between the birth of Pericles and the death of Aristotle is undoubtedly, whether considered in itself or with reference to the effects which it has produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilized man, the most memorable in the history of the world.... The wrecks and fragments of these subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language ... in variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other language of the western world.' Then, after some words on their sculpture, he adds: 'their poetry seems to maintain a very high, though not so disproportionate a rank, in the comparison' (with other literatures).[106]

[106] Sh.e.l.ley, _On the Manners of the Ancients_.

'The Greeks are the most remarkable people who have yet existed.... They were the beginners of nearly everything, Christianity excepted, of which the modern world makes its boast.... They were the first people who had a historical literature; as perfect of its kind (though not the highest kind) as their oratory, their sculpture, and their architecture. They were the founders of mathematics, of physics, of the inductive study of politics, of the philosophy of human nature and life. In each they made the indispensable first steps, which are the foundation of all the rest.'[107]

[107] Mill, _Dissertations_, ii. 283 f.

'I have gone back to Greek literature with a pa.s.sion quite astonis.h.i.+ng to myself.... I felt as if I had never known before what intellectual enjoyment was. Oh that wonderful people! There is not one art, not one science, about which we may not use the same expression which Lucretius has employed about the victory over superst.i.tion ”_Primum Graius h.o.m.o_”.

I think myself very fortunate in having been able to return to these great masters while still in the full vigour of life and when my taste and judgement are mature. Most people read all the Greek that they ever read before they are five-and-twenty.... A young man, whatever his genius may be, is no judge of such a writer as Thucydides. I had no high opinion of him ten years ago. I have now been reading him with a mind accustomed to historical researches and to political affairs; and I am astonished at my own former blindness, and at his greatness. I could not bear Euripides at college. I now read my recantation. He has faults undoubtedly. But what a poet!'[108]

[108] Macaulay, _Life and Letters_, i. 43.

These men--and there is no difficulty in adding to their number--are not only qualified but unprejudiced witnesses. They have no _parti pris_.

They cannot be accused, as schoolmasters and dons are sometimes accused, of holding shares in a great Trading Bank of Greece and Rome Unlimited, and having a personal motive for their enthusiasm. Nor can it be said that they admired Greece because they knew nothing better. All--Goethe no less than the others--had English literature in their hands, knew it well and appreciated its greatness. Yet this, given in their own words, is the impression which Greek made on them. _Securus iudicat orbis terrarum_; and the verdict here is plain. It is clear that we have in Greek a surviving body of poetry and prose which is of unique interest to any one who cares for literature.