manity. Indeed I have sometimes thought that if he had had some touch
of the quality, he might have given a different bias to the faith; his
application of the method which he had inherited from the Jewish school
of theology, coupled with his own fervid rhetoric, was the first step,
I have often thought, in disengaging the Christian development from the
simplicity and emotion of the first unclouded message, in transferring
the faith from the region of pure conduct and sweet tolerance into a
province of fierce definition and intellectual interpretation.

I think it was Goethe who said that Greek was the sheath into which
the dagger of the human mind fitted best; and it is true that one finds
among the Greeks the brightest efflorescence of the human mind. Who
shall account for that extraordinary and fragrant flower, the flower of
Greek culture, so perfect in curve and colour, in proportion and scent,
opening so suddenly, in such a strange isolation, so long ago, upon the
human stock? The Greeks had the wonderful combination of childish zest
side by side with mature taste; charis, as they called it--a perfect
charm, an instinctive grace--was the mark of their spirit. And we should
naturally expect to find, in their literature, the same sublimation of
humour that we find in their other qualities. Unfortunately the greater
number of their comedies are lost. Of Menander we have but a few tiny
fragments, as it were, of a delectable vase; but in Aristophanes there
is a delicious levity, an incomparable prodigality of laughter-moving
absurdities, which has possibly never been equalled. Side by side
with that is the tender and charming irony of Plato, who is even more
humorous, if less witty, than Aristophanes. But the Greeks seem to have
been alone in their application of humour to literature. In the older
world literature tended to be rather a serious, pensive, stately thing,
concerned with human destiny and artistic beauty. One searches in vain
for humour in the energetic and ardent Roman mind. Their very comedies
were mostly adaptations from the Greek. I have never myself been able to
discern the humour of Terence or Plautus to any great extent. The humour
of the latter is of a brutal and harsh kind; and it has always been a
marvel to me that Luther said that the two books he would take to be his
companions on a desert island would be Plautus and the Bible. Horace and
Martial have a certain deft appreciation of human weakness,