The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1897-01-14
TILE MODERN ASPECT OF ANCIENT
GREEK CULTURE.
Paper Read Before the Chdutduquo Circle

w LII ~
Paper Read Before the Chuutduquu Circle I
The present age has received at the
hands of the students of science, of art
and of history, the pieced records of
civilizations buried in the ever. deepen
ing grave of the past. They have fol-
lowed those records through the CEN
turies with the tenacious, aggressive,
ever mighty hand of truth, and the re-
suit is, on the whole, an almost full
view of the culture that dominated and
swayed the ancient races of men; races
that lived to flourish and decay; civii-
cations that rose phGnix-like from
amid the dying embers of the destroyed
to be revivified in the destroyer. The
very dawn of history marks the ver-
dant soil of culture and refinement;
from that oasis, marked desert of time.
its sweeping wave has been traced
down the ages, through Chaldea, Baby
lon and Egypt till it broke in reful-
gent glory on the shores of Greece.
Glorious Greece! Where Homer and
4Eschylus and Sophocles and Sappho
sang their songs of War and Peace and
Love; where Aristotle, Socrates and
Plato delved deep into the finer world,
of material and spiritual thought, an
cient pioneers of the Bacons, Lewes',
Huxleys and Descartes of latter
day philosophy. Greece, who gave
the world her Phidias, Polycletus, Prax-
titles and Lysippus; their works of
mighty genius yet unfivalled; their
masterpieces scarcely known, but the
art lives on in the "Venus of Milos,' the
"Apollo Belvidere," the "Discobolus'
the "Dying Gaul," "The LAGOON" and
others of lesser note which fill hal
lowed niche in the art galleries of ev-
cry land. Greece, whose Temple of
Pallas yet stands in shattered grandeur
crowned with halo of artistic glory
that increases as the years roll on.
In the domain of science, we find
Thales and Euclid, Aristotle, Democ-
ritus, Archimedes, Anaxagoras, Anax-
amenes and host of keen, intelligent,
penetrating minds propounding scien-
titic theories whose truths the nine
teenth century has after them dem
onstrated. The poetical products of
IEschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes,
Euripides, Sappho and long list of
lesser lights remain the finest creations
of the worlds literature. The prose of
Thucydides, Plato, Herodotus, Keno
phon, Isocrates, 1Echines, Plutarch
and Lucian are masterpieces in classic
literature and the models from which
have been produced the best gems of
their pupils pens in modern days.
One other phase of Greek culture
points the high development of their
social life, their autonomy. In the
midst of a period of several thousand
years, period of bloodthirsty tyran-
nies, ferocious despotsms, absolute
monarchies, all pervaded by the same
spirit of RIGHTEOUSNESS, avariciousness
and cruelty, where personal freedom
was unknown, life the property of the
ruler, fanaticism in all lines the rule;
from this chaos of uncertainties,
this Plutonian shade of the neither
world of life, there looms the refulgent
glories of Greek civilization, the center
of that civilization their political life.
There first was born an autonomy "of
the people, for the people, by the peo-
ple;" there first appeared the hand
writing on the wall "all men are born
free and equal with inalienable rights
to life, liberty and the pursuit of hap.
piness." Truly, Greece was political
rose that bloomed and faded, but whose
fragrance was borne down the ages to
rest in all it's pristine freshness in the
immortal Declaration of Independ-
ence.
These, then, are the points in Greek
culture that you must consider as bear
ing upon our civilization, or as superior
even to it; their art, their prose and
their poetical literature; their auton-
omy and their theoretical science as
we'll. And why? you ask. Because