THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREEK MIND ON MODERN LIFE[1].
The very name of this noble Hall, in which your Lordship's courtesy permits us to meet to-day, recalls a part of that prehistoric background against which the Greek genius first shone forth. The immemorial civilisation on the banks of the Nile had gradually passed under the bondage of stereotyped formulas, as despotism of another kind overshadowed the lands of the Tigris and the Euphrates, when the Greek spirit, in the first glow of a youth which has proved immortal was beginning to clear the path of mankind to political liberty, to the recognition of natural beauty, and to the fearless pursuit of knowledge. If, again, we look back from a modern standing-point on the various parts played in human progress by various members of the Indo-European family, how singular do the faculties of the Greek race appear, alike in compass and in harmony! This might be illustrated from the history of modern art, when some felicity of invention or achievement
- ↑ Address to the Students of the London Branch of the University Extension Movement, delivered in the Egyptian Hall at the Mansion House, by permission and under the presidency of the Lord Mayor: March, 1893.
