NOTES 51 



Babylonians and the Egyptians, as the later Germanic barbarians 

 to the Eonians of the Empire should not have been immensely 

 influenced by the new life with which they became acquainted. 

 But there is abundant direct evidence of the magnitude of this 

 induence in certain (spheres. 1 suppose it is not doubted that 

 the Greek went to school with the Oriental for his primary 

 instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic : and that Semitic 

 theology supplied him with some of his mythological lore. Nor 

 does there now seem to be any question about the large in- 

 debtedness of Greek art to that of Chaldsea and that of Egypt. 



But the manner of that indebtedness is very instructive. The 

 obligation is clear, but its limits are no less definite. Nothing 

 better exemplifies the indomitable originality of the Greeks than 

 the relations of their art to that of the Orientals. Far from 

 being subdued into mere imitators by the technical excellence of 

 their teachers, they lost no time in bettering the instruction 

 they received, using their models as mere stepping stones on 

 the way to those unsurpassed and unsurpassable achievements 

 which are all their own. The shibboleth of Art is the human 

 figure. The ancient Chaldseans and Egyptians, like the modern 

 Japanese, did wonders in the representation of birds and 

 quadrupeds they even attained to something more than respect- 

 ability in human portraiture. But their utmost efforts never 

 brought them within range of the best Greek embodiments of 

 the grace of womanhood, or of the severer beauty of manhood. 



It is worth while to consider the probable effect upon the acute 

 and critical Greek mind of the conflict of ideas, social, political 

 and theological, which arose out of the conditions of life in the 

 Asiatic colonies. The Ionian polities had passed through the 

 whole gamut of social and political changes, from patriarchal and 

 occasionally oppressive kingship to rowdy and still more burden- 

 some mobship no doubt with infinitely eloquent and copious 

 argumentation, on both sides, at every stage of their progress 

 towards that arbitrament of force which settles most political ques- 

 tions. The marvellous speculative faculty, latent in the Ionian, 

 had come in contact with Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Phoenician 

 theologies and cosmogonies ; with the illuminati of Orphism 

 and the fanatics and dreamers of the Mysteries ; possibly with 

 Buddhism and Zoroasterism ; possibly even with Judaism. And 

 it has been observed that the mutual contradictions of antagon- 



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