e idea of Philosophy; in all three introducing and
still more deeply implanting the ideas of Freedom as the motive and end
of civilized life and of Knowledge as its guide and ally. It may be
thought that I have dwelt too much on theory, and have not said enough
of the specific contribution of Greece as working out in practice a
certain type or types of corporate life such as the City State; but the
fact is that in Greek civilization theory continually outran practice
and that it endowed mankind much more with ideas or ideals than with
practical illustrations or models for our imitation. Yet again we must
not exaggerate or imagine these ideas as merely Utopian or such stuff as
dreams are made of. The ferment which they set up burst the fabric of
Greek social and political institutions, but it clarified and steadied
down, as the enthusiasms of youth may do, into the sober designs of
grave and energetic manhood.

The spectacle of the dissolution of the Greek civilization is not a
pleasant one. 'The glory that was Greece' fades out of the world and
leaves it grey and dull, and there was worse than this; there was also
decay and degeneracy and corruption. To dwell upon it is as the sin of
Ham. Nevertheless what took place was not a mere relapse towards
barbarism, but on the contrary the supersession of a form of
civilization which had done its work by another form less attractive,
but more sound and solid. The Romans have the airs of grown and grave
men beside the perpetual youth of Greece, (the Greeks were 'always
children') but they are well aware of how much they learned and had to
learn from their predecessors in the task of civilizing the world. So
much is this so that in many departments of civilized life they look
upon themselves as imitating the Greeks and carrying out their ideas. In
this they were less than just to themselves, for even in the world of
art they continued to create; and certainly in literature they produced
works not unworthy to stand beside their chosen models. Especially they
created a prose style, which without ceasing to be artistic served the
sober and serious purposes of political oratory and historic record. But
their peculiar genius showed itself most in the applied arts which
pressed Greek science into the ministry of life in architecture and
engineering. Their roads and bridges and aqueducts still stand to bear
witness of them. It would be a great error to deny to them fertile
advance in th