Principles of western civilisation

VI THE ASCENDENCY OF THE PRESENT 183

include in its sweep the greatest architects, painters, and sculptors that the world has ever produced.’ To Aristotle the only classes worthy of respect were the citizens of a privileged and exclusive order of society in their capacity as soldiers, judges, or priests* A State with a large number of mechanics and few soldiers he considered could not be great.”

The deeper we continue to get beneath the surface the more fully do we realise how allpervading was the influence of these governing principles of the life of the ancient State, and how absolutely they controlled the expression of its energies, even in directions where their action is as yet, as a general rule, only imperfectly perceived. To many modern authorities, for instance, it still remains one of the remarkable facts of history, unexplained by the geographical and similar theories of Montesquieu,* Cousin, Freeman, and others, why the limited populations of the Greek States should have reached a standard of excellence in nearly every form of art, which has since remained not only unsurpassed, but unapproached by any other section of the race—a standard of excellence so extraordinarily high, that the deeper and more scientific tendencies of current research have, on the whole, brought with them no serious disposition to question the view that Greek genius attained

1 Cf. Bluemner, Leben und Sitten der Griechen (Eng. trans. A. Zimmern, ch. xiv.) The feeling of Greek society in this respect is unmistakable. It expresses itself in a continuous undertone in Plato’s writings. Sometimes, as in Aristotle, Polztecs, vii., it is very marked. See also Mahaffy, Soctal Life in Greece, ch. ix.

2 Politics, vii. 3 Tbid.

* Most subsequent theories have been expansions of Montesquieu’s in De Esprit des Lots, xiv.-xviii.