Editorial 



5 '9 



The sudden and apparently spontaneous outburst of genius 

 which occurred in Greece in the 6th, 5th and 4th b.c. 

 centuries, has been more or less a puzzle to those who 

 believe that all that is good comes by inheritance. We are 

 now assured that it need not be so regarded any longer. The 

 discoveries in Krete have established the fact of the splendour 

 of the court and empire of Minos. Professor Sayce assures 

 us that we may feel certain " that the art of classical Greece 

 was no self-evolved thing, but as much a renaissance as the 

 European renaissance of the fifteenth century." 



It is a little startling at the first blush to be told confidently 

 that "the Babylonia of the age of Alexander was a more 

 highly educated country than the England of George III.," 

 and, although some of us may think that this assertion is a 

 little toned down by a subsequent one, " we now know almost 

 as much, in fact, about the Babylonia of the age of Abraham 

 as we do about the Assyria of the age of Isaiah, or about the 

 Greece of the age of Perikles " ; such an effect is by no 

 means intended by the Professor. 



Referring to the discovery in 1901 of the inscribed marble 

 blocks in the ruins of Susa the Professor says : " When the 

 characters had been copied and read it was found that they 

 embodied a complete code of laws — the earliest code yet dis- 

 covered, earlier than that of Moses by eight hundred years, 

 and the foundation of the laws promulgated and obeyed 

 throughout Western Asia." Again, " centuries before Moses 

 the law had already been codified, and the Semitic popula- 

 tions had long been familiar with the conception of a code." 



These most important items of knowledge, supplanting as 

 they do the conclusions which had been arrived at by the 

 higher criticism, are claimed as the results of archaeological 

 work as distinct from philological speculation. " The spade of 

 the excavator has rudely dissipated the dreams of the higher 

 critic." The Professor is too polite to say so, but apparently 

 he believes that " chips from a German workshop " may be 

 consigned to the use which their name suggests without any 



