249 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION, 
under favourable circumstances of the theories promulgated by the 
Greeks. Spinoza had been a student of Greek literature before he 
framed his gigantic argument in proof of only One Being, and it 
would be contrary to the known laws of mind to suppose that he 
was not elaborating the old Eleatic doctrine of One and All. Hegel, 
a profound Greek student, in arriving at his conclusion that reality 
could be predicated of neither Being nor non-Being, but only of the 
relation between poles of thought, consciously or unconsciously 
produced a phase of the Eleatic and Heraclitean systems, modified 
by the metaphysical doctrine of his prototype Anaxagoras, that 
truth was a mean between affirmation and denial. And the re- 
searches of every distinguished scientist of our age into the com- 
plicate constitution of the material world have been greatly assisted 
by the hand of Democritus, which somehow has ever been seen 
pointing to an ultimate more or less atomic. The Greeks have set 
up a goal of research. They have suggested the resolution of the 
complex into the simple; they have implied in their demand for 
unity the prevalence of universal law; they have set the example 
of bold and persistent effort to trace the Kosmos from a primal 
simplicity; and others, profiting by their toils, have established 
old conclusions on a broader basis, though they appear not to have 
either set them aside or gone beyond them. 
There is, however, one other point on which it would be desirable 
to say a few words. I refer to the great questions in mental 
science, which have been raised for all time by the Greeks, and 
toward the settlement of which they have contributed not a little ; 
but space forbids.* 
And now it only remains, in conclusion, to say a word or two 
on the spirit which characterised their efforts in the sphere of 
philosophy; and here I cannot illustrate my meaning better than 
by quoting the words of Mr. Ruskin. He says, in his Aratra 
Pentelict, ‘‘ And as he strove only to teach what was true, so in 
his sculptured symbol he strove only to carve what was right. He 
rules over the arts to this day, and will for ever, because he sought 
not first for beauty, not first for passion or for invention, but for 
rightness, striving to display neither himself nor his art, but the 
thing that he dealt with in its simplicity. That is his specific 
character as Greek. . . . The essential Hellenic stamp is veracity. 
Eastern nations drew their heroes with eight legs, but the Greeks 
* This portion of the lecture is omitted for want of space. 
