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complexity of the threads by which modern civilisation is interwoven with the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome. The Greek mind stands out clearly as the great originating mind of Europe; it has given us not only standards of literature, not only models of art, but ideas which have been fruitful in every field of human thought and life. As Renan says, "Progress will eternally consist in developing what Greece conceived." The positive results of antiquity in special branches of knowledge, such as medicine or natural science, have indeed been absorbed into modern books. But if we desire to study antiquity itself, to see how ideas have been evolved, to understand, in short, the earlier chapters of our own history, then we must needs go to the mental records of our European ancestors. This constitutes the historical claim of the classics. On literary grounds their claim is two-fold; first, their intrinsic beauty, and their unexhausted wealth of suggestive thought. As to the latter, let us remember what is so well said by John Stuart Mill: "The discoveries of the ancients in science have been greatly surpassed, and as much of them as is still valuable loses nothing by being incorporated in modern treatises; but what does not so well admit of being transferred bodily, and has been very imperfectly carried off even piecemeal, is the treasure which they accumulated of what may be called the wisdom of life; the rich store of experience of human nature and conduct which the acute and observing minds of those ages, aided in their