EAST AND WEST 143 



more centuries, human progress would have been considerably 

 accelerated and the course of civilization would have been very 

 different. What befell it? It is impossible to answer such a ques- 

 tion; one can only guess, and even our guesses are necessarily 

 very timid. What would we answer in the case of a single man if 

 his best work was done when he was twenty, and the rest of his 

 life spent in sterile idleness? We would say simply: His genius 

 failed him. That would not be a complete explanation, but it 

 would satisfy us. But can such an explanation hold for a whole 

 nation? Why not? If we speak of the Greek genius at all, as a sort 

 of natural integration, we may conceive the possibility of its 

 gradual corruption and disappearance. If it could emerge, why 

 could it not be submerged again and fail altogether? 



What happened to Greece is that the intellectual activities of 

 its people were hopelessly out of proportion to their political 

 wisdom and their morality. A house divided against itself must 

 necessarily fall, a body rent by internal strife is foredoomed to 

 destruction, above all such a body is soon incapable of any kind 

 of creation.* It was not simply Greek science that disappeared, 

 but Greek art and literature as well. One might speculate as to 

 what would have happened if the Greek and Hebrew ideals had 

 been nursed together instead of separately, or at any rate, if they 

 had not grown for so long in complete isolation. Such speculations 

 are vain of course, and yet they force themselves upon us. The 

 fact is, the Greek and the Hebrew spirits were incompatible; they 

 could not have grown together and corrected one another; rather 

 they would have destroyed each other. After all, it was perhaps 

 necessary that each be built as solidly as possible on its own basis. 

 It is likely that any premature synthesis would have stunted the 

 development of both. When studying the records of the past, one 



* The following quotation from Euripides is typical, for it betrays political indifference as 

 well as scientific interest. The Greeks carried their political sluggishness and immorality 

 so far that they ceased to exist as a nation, and jeopardized not only their political but also 

 their intellectual life. ''Blessed is he who has attained scientific knowledge, who seeks 

 neither the troubles of citizenship nor rushes into unjust deeds, but contemplates the ageless 

 order of immortal nature, how it is constituted and when and why. . . ." 



