ed but remained as a domestic and ever-present
evil. Freedom and enlightenment was not in thought or practice designed
for all men, but only for Greeks, and among them only in reality for a
privileged minority. The notion of a civilized world or even a civilized
Greece was, if present at all, present only in feeling or imagination,
not in clear vision or distinct thought, still less as an ideal of
practical politics. On the other hand the ideal so narrowly conceived
was not _in principle_ confined to a 'chosen people', or to one strain
of blood. It supplied a programme extensible to all who could show their
title to be regarded as members of the common race of humanity. As the
special features of Greek civilization faded, the lineaments of this
common humanity emerged more clearly into view, and the Greek, when he
was compelled to give up his parochialism and provincialism, found
himself already in spirit prepared to take his place as a citizen of the
world. He had learned his lesson, and to him the whole world went to
school, first to learn of him what civilization meant and then to better
his instructions.

This the world did, but not once for all; for every time since that
mankind, or at least European mankind, has begun to lose faith in its
dream of civilization or has again to shake itself free from the menace
of outward or inward barbarism, it has always reverted to the thought
and life of Greece and drawn inexhaustibly from it new light and new
fruit, for it is its own thought and its own life, while still there ran
in its veins the freshness and the vigour, the blitheness and
hopefulness of its immortal youth. In meditating upon the unforgotten
debt which we owe to Greece, we revive in memory what the spirit which
now lives and moves in us not only once accomplished but still in each
new generation accomplishes, accomplishing ever the better if it repeats
its former achievements with increased consciousness and more deliberate
care. We too here and now have to define what we mean by civilization,
by knowledge, by freedom. Otherwise our future will be determined for
us, and not by us. 'What is to come out of this struggle? Just anything
that may come out of it, or something we mean _shall_ come out of it?'
Assuredly, if we are not to stand bankrupt before our present problem,
we must go to school with Greece, with Rome, with Classical Antiquity,
and in the end with all History, that is to say, with our own experie