Aeschylus we have an ever-memorable assertion of the
supreme claims of human morality to human allegiance, of the eternal
truth that humanity can know no object of reverence and worship except
itself idealised, its own virtues victorious over its own vices, and
existing in the greatest perfection which it can at any given time
conceive. Somewhat the same lesson as that of the Oresteia is taught
later, with more of sweetness and harmony, but not with more force,
in the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophokles. And in Pindar we see the same
tendencies inchoate. Like Aeschylus he does by implication subordinate
to morality both politics and religion. He ignores or flatly denies
tales that bring discredit on the gods; he will only bow down to them
when they have the virtues he respects in man. Yet he, like Aeschylus
and Sophokles, does so bow down, sincerely and without hesitation, and
that poets of their temper could do so was well indeed for poetry.
By rare and happy fortune they were inspired at once by the rich and
varied presences of mythology, 'the fair humanities of old religion,'
and also by the highest aspirations of an age of moral and
intellectual advance. We do not of course always, or even often, find
the moral principles clearly and consciously expressed or consistently
supported, but we cannot but feel that they are present in the shape
of instincts, and those instincts pervading and architectonic.

And if we allow so much of ethical enlightenment to these great
spokesmen of the Hellenic people, we cannot deny something of like
honour to the race among whom they were reared. Let us apportion our
debt of gratitude to our forerunners as it is justly due. There would
seem to be much of fallacy and of the injustice of a shallow judgment
in the contrast as popularly drawn between 'Hellenism' and 'Hebraism,'
according to which the former is spoken of as exclusively proclaiming
to the world the value of Beauty, the latter the value of
Righteousness. In this there is surely much injustice done to Hellas.
Because she taught the one, she did not therefore leave the other
untaught. It may have been for a short time, as her other greatness
was for a short time, though its effects are eternal, but for that
short time the national life, of Athens at any rate, is at least as
full of high moral feeling as that of any other people in the world.
Will not the names of Solon, of Aristeides, of Kallikratidas, of
Epameinondas, of Timoleon an