106 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS n 



And in the ninth, eighth and seventh centuries, the 

 Assyrian, the depositary of Chaldsean civilization, as 

 the Macedonian and the Roman, at a later date, were 

 the depositaries of Greek culture, had added irre 

 sistible force to the other agencies for the wide dis 

 tribution of Chaldsean literature, art, and science. 



I confess that I find it difficult to imagine that the 

 Greek immigrants who stood in somewhat the same 

 relation to the Babylonians and the Egyptians as the 

 later Germanic barbarians to the Romans 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 magni 

 tude of this influence in certain spheres. I 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 indebtedness 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 



