GREEK AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS 133 



tion is the mere moraine cast upon the surface by the movement of 

 the glacier forces of national existence. 



The national type furthermore seems to vanish in the presence 

 of the individual. The student of national types, like the traveler, 

 constantly meets with individuals whose anomalies apparently 

 resist his classification under the hypothetical type; as was long ago 

 recognized by Apuleius of Madaura in his Apology (24) : " quando 

 non in omnibus gentibus varia ingenia provenere? quanquam 

 videantur quaedam stultitia vel sollertia insigniores, apud socor- 

 dissimos Scythas Anacharsis sapiens natus est, apud Athenienses 

 catos Meletides fatuus." In Greece the mass and the individual 

 stand in a certain opposition. The mass-type may be predomin- 

 ant, as among the Romans; whereas the forces making for indi- 

 viduality among the Greeks are far more marked than among the 

 Latin peoples, who have few men of the distinct individuality of 

 a Cato. So striking is the centrifugal tendency in Greece that in 

 certain respects not a few of the greatest writers present characteris- 

 tics that seem unhellenic; for example, Thucydides and Aristotle; 

 Polybius is largely Romanized. National character is the result of the 

 clashing of the mass-type and the individual-type : the insubordination 

 of the individual is compelled to moderation (as the national 

 phonetic laws restrict the tendency of the dialects to deflect from 

 the norm) ; the mass receives in exchange an indeterminate impress 

 from the individual. The national mind of the Greeks, then, while 

 it differs from the mind of each of the individuals composing the 

 nation, nevertheless exercises a controlling influence over all. Not- 

 withstanding the tendencies of Greek particularism, so pervasive 

 are the dominant qualities of the mass-type that the sum of the 

 differences between any two poets or prose writers is less than 

 the sum of their points of resemblance to two writers not 

 Hellenes. Or possibly (despite the opposition of Ionian and Dorian) , 

 we may even go so far as to make this statement of any two 

 individuals. 



The national mind of the Greeks is a product of ethnological, 

 sociological, and historical factors. Scientific proof of relative degrees 

 of national capacity is not afforded by arguments based on ethno- 

 logical considerations of the descent and racial characteristics of the 

 members of the Indo-European group, all of which we may assume 

 inherited a certain common endowment of potential capacity; 

 yet that native endowment has manifested itself in the most diverse 

 creations of literature, art, religion, language, architecture (the 

 language of form), and other products of civilization. Nations alike 

 in one respect, as intellectual character, often differ in other respects 

 and find points of resemblance with nations of a different type. We 

 may conjecture that by some subtle alchemy the fusion of the 



