HELLAS AND CIVILIZATION. 



399 



and its after-effects upon other nations in the 

 light of an extraordinary intervention, a special 

 miracle which occurred once only in the history 

 of the world through some supernatural visita- 

 tion, we must regard it simply as the necessary 

 and inevitable result of certain natural causes, 

 acting then and there through the combination 

 of certain physical conditions, not elsewhere so 

 occurring. Instead of explaining the peculiari- 

 ties of Hellenic life by some mysterious, inscru- 

 table, and ultimate properties of the Hellenic 

 mind, accepted as data beyond which analysis 

 cannot penetrate, we must look rather upon that 

 Hellenic mind itself as a product of the physical 

 conformation and geographical position of the 

 Hellas in which it lived. The question which we 

 have to examine may thus be resolved into the 

 more concrete shape — Why did the shores of the 

 iEgean become the first dwelling-place of a race 

 possessing that special form of culture which we 

 know emphatically as the higher civilization ? 



Three points must briefly be premised before 

 we go on to answer, so far as possible, the ques- 

 tion here presented. 



In the first place, it will be observed that I 

 accept without hesitation the distinction between 

 Hellene and barbarian. Some few nations, Mace- 

 donian and Illyrian in the ancient world, Russ 

 and Spanish-American in the modern, may hover 

 on the debatable border-land between the two ; 

 but most of us feel that a broad line can safely 

 be drawn between Egypt, Assyria, China, on the 

 one hand, and Hellas, Italy, France, on the other. 

 If any critic does not feel the difference thus im- 

 plied, then the question can have for him no par- 

 ticular interest or meaning ; but to the vast ma- 

 jority of thinking people, I believe it has a real 

 and tangible significance. 



In the second place, I take for granted the 

 general mental features of the Aryan family, as 

 distinguished from the Turanian or the Semitic. 

 Of course, the fact that Hellas was colonized by 

 a race possessing that amount of culture which 

 we know to have been a common heirloom of the 

 whole Aryan brotherhood, had an immense influ- 

 ence upon its entire history. The general knowl- 

 edge of agriculture, of the plough, of domesticated 

 grains, of boat-building, of settled habitations, 

 which the immigrants brought with them from 

 the central table-land of Asia, lies beyond the 

 scope of our present inquiry, and belongs rather 

 to an investigation of the Aryan culture itself. 

 Naturally, the actual life of the settlers on the 

 shores and islands of the Archipelago was some- 

 thing very different from what it would have been 



had they set out with no more arts or knowledge 

 than the Veddahs or the Andamanese now pos- 

 sess. But the point which we have here to settle 

 narrows down to a simpler question — " Why did 

 the inhabitants of Hellas, rather than any other 

 branch of the Aryan family, first develop a great, 

 free, and subjective civilization ? " 



In the third place, I shall follow Dr. Curtius 

 in specially understanding, by the term Hellas, the 

 coasts and islands of the iEgean. It is better 

 entirely to avoid the misleading and restricted 

 name of Greece, which has come to mean, in mod- 

 ern geographical nomenclature, the continental 

 peninsula alone. The whole western side of that 

 peninsula, as the great historian lucidly points 

 out, has little or no connection with Hellenic his- 

 tory. On the other hand, the coast of Asia Mi- 

 nor, and the islands of the Archipelago, were and 

 still remain essentially Hellenic. Mycenae, Cor- 

 inth, Athens, Thebes, the Thrace-ward colonies, 

 Mitylene, Ephesus, Miletus, Rhodes, the Cyclades, 

 these form the real historical Hellas, a mass of 

 peninsulas and islands, stretching in unbroken 

 succession from the Balkan uplands to the Cretan 

 Sea. It is the physical peculiarities of the tan- 

 gled labyrinth thus inclosed that formed the great 

 Hellenic civilization, and reacted at a later period 

 upon the whole Western world. 



Having premised the three necessary prelimi- 

 naries here briefly sketched out, let us proceed to 

 inquire what elements in the natural features of 

 Hellas were the differentiating causes of the Hel- 

 lenic character. 



Suppose a tribe of human beings to inhabit a 

 tract of plain-country, which stretches with little 

 variety of surface or productions for many miles 

 in any direction. Such a tribe might perhaps 

 progress to a certain degree of rude culture, as 

 we see in the Indians of the Mississippi Valley. 

 It might even, under favorable circumstances, 

 develop the lower forms of civilized life, as we 

 find in the plains of the Euphrates and the Nile, 

 or in the wide alluvial lowlands watered by the 

 Ganges and the Jumna, and by the great rivers 

 of the Punjaub. But it could hardly rise to that 

 higher form of culture which we discover in Hel- 

 las and in the post-Hellenic civilizations. For 

 nothing exists in the surrounding circumstances 

 of a tribe so placed which could sharpen the in- 

 telligence, widen the mental horizon, or give ori- 

 gin to those slight functional variations upon 

 which natural selection might exert its power of 

 gradual elevation in the scale of being. In Egypt 

 and in Assyria we may well believe that every 

 village formed the exact counterpart of its neigh- 



