OUR OBLIGATIONS TO GREEK THOUGHT. 243 
drew them with two; Egyptians drew their deities with cats’ 
heads, but the Greeks drew them with men’s; and out of all 
fallacy, disproportion, and indefiniteness, they were, day by day, 
resolutely withdrawing and exalting themselves into restricted and 
demonstrable truth.’”?* Again, ‘‘ Distinctively from other races 
. . . this is the work of the Greek, to give health to what was 
diseased, and chastisement to what was untrue. So far as this is 
found in any school hereafter, it belongs to them by inheritance 
from the Greeks, or invests them with the brotherhood of the 
Greek.” + Finally, ‘‘ Not that a Greek never made mistakes. He 
made as many as we do ourselves nearly—he died of his mistakes 
at last, as we shall die of them; but so far as he was separated 
from the herd of more mistaken and more wretched nations, so far 
as he was Greek, it was by his rightness.” } 
Now in the sense in which these expressions may apply to Greek 
thought in art, in that same sense they may be applied to Greek 
thought in science and philosophy. It was an intense love of 
reality, a yearning to get at the foundation truth of things, that 
raised up school after school to accomplish, if possible, what others 
had left undone, or had done imperfectly. They longed above all 
things to bring their minds into correct relationship to objective 
nature, to attain to conceptions that should be the exact subjective 
counterpart of the constitution and order of the universe. Aristotle 
and Plato were dissimilar types of men, yet in their works they 
both evince a mastering passion to know exactly what is, irrespec- 
tive of profit and loss. In the Analytics, as also in the Metaphysics, 
we see a mind—keen, searching, and painful—piercing into every 
conceivable cranny of thought to clear out the false, and to set 
forth, even to an infinitesimal shade, whatever is true. Endowed 
with richer fancy, and more exquisite sensibility than his great 
rival, Plato, in his own inimitable way, reveals the same burning 
passion. ‘Thus, in the Phedo, he says: ‘‘Many a man has been 
willing to go to the world below in the hope of seeing there an 
earthly love—a wife, a son—and conversing with them. And will 
he, who is a true lover of wisdom, and is persuaded in like manner, 
that only in the world below he can worthily enjoy her, still repine 
at death? Will he not depart with joy? For he will have a firm 
conviction that there only, and nowhere else, he can find wisdom 
* “ Arat, Pent.,’’ p. 198. ft ‘‘Arat. Pent.,” p. 199, 
t Ibid, p. 203. 
