OUR OBLIGATIONS TO GREEK THOUGHT. 245 
loving element in their own nature has received stimulus to special 
development from the contagion of Greek literature. 
But I must close this too long address. The subject 1s very 
wide, and admits of a variety of aspects. But I trust enough has 
been said to indicate, in rough outline, some of the obligations we 
are under to the Greeks for their expenditure of thought on some 
of the greatest themes that can occupy the attention of the human 
mind; and that too at a period when, in the absence of any pre- 
existing literature and unaided by the accumulated results of 
previous research, they, on behalf of themselves and all posterity, 
opened up the great lines of thought, and handed down, both in 
their conclusions and in their spirit, a treasure of which modern 
science can avail itself. We cannot but sympathize with the deep 
ineradicable yearning of those great natures after a solution of the 
profound mysteries associated with human existence; and if some 
of us, sharing in a light not then vouchsafed to them, can strike 
on a clue leading to a final solving of the momentous problems 
still before us, it is nevertheless becoming that we regard them as 
worthy of all honour for the service they rendered to the cause of 
truth. 
VOL AVE. R 
