GREEK AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS 149 



coldness, astonishment, etc., and of the utilization or rejection of 

 opportunities to set forth these emotions. How far is the Greek 

 naive, how far does he restrain himself from baring his soul, how 

 far does he express gradations of his psychic state? 



The emotional faculties of the Greeks were keenly sensitive. Ex- 

 citability, intensity, passion, mark their personality. The driving 

 impulses of pleasure and pain express themselves in a surprising 

 wealth of interjections. The Roman, whose boast is "et facere et 

 pati fortia" (Mucius Scaevola in Livy 2, 12, 10), borrows most of his 

 exclamations of joy from the Greek (io, evoe, eu, euge, eia), while 

 his exclamations of sorrow are his own. Greek abounds in words 

 for joy; witness only \aipuv (with the incomparable salutation x a </> c )> 



In common with the Roman, the Greek refuses in general to delin- 

 eate his mental state with the nicety of discrimination and accuracy 

 of psychological detail characterizing all languages that bear the 

 impress of romanticism; and in restricting the delineation of emo- 

 tion to the larger outlines of human feelings, the classical languages 

 seem pallid in contrast to the many-colored richness of modern lit- 

 erature. It can be shown, I believe, that the Greeks affect a certain 

 undifferentiated intensity of expression: thus a-riveiv is less than 

 "groan," Sa/cpveiv is "to be moved to tears"; al^aroev pe'0os is Deia- 

 neira's "flushed cheek." But this stress of emotional effect is much 

 less pervasive among the Greeks than the Latins, who employ ex- 

 pressions indicative of great strength of feeling, expressions which 

 do not admit (without qualification) of alternatives of lesser pathos. 

 The Roman constantly says "flentes, " " lacrimantes," "multis cum 

 lacrimis." When once moved, he had no hesitation in using the 

 strongest words at his command. Hence the vogue of the superlative 

 in Latin is more marked than in Greek. Pliny (Epist. 2, 9, 3) uses 

 four superlatives in immediate succession. 



I have singled out a study of the expression of the emotions as an 

 approach to the characteristics of the national mind of the Hellenes. 

 But there are innumerable others of the same sort. Take, for example, 

 the expressions of the idea of duty: duty to God, to one's self, to our 

 neighbors, to our friends and foes. Only by these and similar studies 

 can we gain an approach to the psychology of that people whose 

 combination of intellect, imagination, fancy, and artistic sense we 

 rank so high; and this, methinks, is infinite riches, in comparison 

 to which much of the output of our dissertation-factories is poverty 

 indeed. 



The student of Hellenic thought has here stretched out before 

 him fresh fields that are well-nigh untrodden: the olives of Athens 

 have not yet all been gleaned. 



