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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



Amber from the Baltic, and ivory from the East, 

 had even then found their way into the palaces 

 of Argolis and the citadels of Troas. Dr. Sehlie- 

 mann's excavations at Mycenae have brought to 

 light many articles of lapis lazuli or other im- 

 ported materials. More important still are the 

 evidences of Assyrian influence on the nascent 

 art of Hellas, acting apparently through the me- 

 dium of semi-Hellenic peoples in inland Asia Mi- 

 nor. Phoenician traders, too, added their stores 

 of knowledge and of wares to the growing 

 hoard of Hellas. From one side or another, the 

 inevitable action of the environing nations brought 

 itself slowly to bear on the receptive and plastic 

 raw material of the Aryan Hellenes. From the 

 union of all these influences, together with those 

 of the varying country itself which they inhabit- 

 ed, the Hellenes gradually evolved and perfected 

 their own distinctive and beautiful culture. 



Here, again, it is difficult to avoid a miscon- 

 ception in an entirely opposite direction from 

 that intended by my words. I do not mean that 

 Hellenic civilization was the direct product of 

 scraps and ends selected from the older civiliza- 

 tions of the surrounding lands — a mere patch- 

 work of Egyptian and Assyrian and Phoenician 

 arts. On the contrary, no culture was ever more 

 thoroughly home-bred and national than that of 

 the Hellenes. But what I do mean is this : that 

 the situation of Hellas, girt round by all these 

 stimulating influences, brought her sons naturally 

 and necessarily into contact with so many diverse 

 countries and modes of thought, placed them in 

 such admirable positions for calling forth all the 

 potentialities of the human brain, exercised their 

 minds in such varied combinations of commercial, 

 political, and social life, compelled them to ad- 

 just their actions perpetually to such a changeful 

 round of new and kaleidoscopic conditions, that 

 it finally resulted in the production of that ready, 

 versatile, wide-viewed, and all-embracing intelli- 

 gence which we regard as the culminating type 

 of Hellenic civilization. 



In short, the view which I would here put 

 forth is briefly this : that the Hellenic culture 

 was absolutely and unreservedly the product of 

 the geographical Hellas, acting upon the given 

 factor of the undifferentiated Aryan brain. I 

 cannot believe with Curtius that the Hellenic 

 mind itself existed independently and originally 

 as an element helping to fashion the history of 

 Hellas. Nor can I believe with Buckle that so- 

 called moral laws have presided over the develop- 

 ment of the human race — far less can I believe 

 that those laws have proved more potent in Eu- 



rope, while the physical laws have proved more 

 potent in Asia. To me it seems a self-evident 

 proposition that nothing whatsoever can differen- 

 tiate one body of men from another except the 

 physical conditions in which they are set, includ- 

 ing, of course, under the term physical conditions, 

 the relations of place and time in which they 

 stand with regard to other bodies of men. To 

 suppose otherwise is to deny the primordial law 

 of causation. To imagine that the mind can dif- 

 ferentiate itself is to imagine that it can be differ- 

 entiated without a cause. 



But it will appear to many that too great im- 

 portance has been here assigned to the commer- 

 cial element in Hellas. Most people think of the 

 Hellene as a politician, as an orator, as a poet, as 

 a philosopher, as a sculptor, as a painter, as a 

 musician, but not as a merchant. It may, in- 

 deed, seem startling to a certain class of minds 

 that the Hellenes should be treated as a nation 

 of shopkeepers. Yet I think that to dwell ex- 

 clusively upon the political, the literary, and the 

 artistic side of Hellas, to the neglect of its com- 

 mercial and industrial side, is to fasten upon a 

 remote result, while turning away one's eyes from 

 its main-spring and moving element. All these 

 higher graces, though infinitely important from 

 the point of view taken by culture-history, form 

 mere effervescing surface-bubbles upon the life 

 of the people at large. They are the final out- 

 growth and perfect fruit of a far more embracing 

 culture, which underlies and nourishes them. 

 Poets and philosophers and orators represent rare 

 and exceptional deviations from an average in- 

 telligence whose oscillations are capable from 

 time to time of reaching these greater limits. Be- 

 fore they can exist we must have a dead level of 

 general mental excellence, which can only be pro- 

 duced in the ordinary avocations of daily life. 

 Where the circumstances of a race or a nation do 

 not favor the formation of new and varied con- 

 nections of ideas during the course of common 

 pursuits, there the dead level of mentality will be 

 low, and the excursions in the direction of ex- 

 ceptional excellence will be few and small. Where 

 the circumstances do favor the formation of such 

 connections, there the dead level of mentality will 

 be high, and the occasional excursions will be 

 comparatively numerous and striking. In either 

 case, an ordinary observer will judge of the na- 

 tion or race, not by the dead level, which is wide- 

 spread and difficult to gauge, but by the excep- 

 tional eminent persons, who are relatively con- 

 spicuous and readily compared. We judge of 

 Hellas, and judge fairly, by ^Eschylus, by Aris- 



