of their faith, and they would be forced to confess that there was much
to be said against their interpretation. There is to be acknowledged
first the apparent want of internal unity in the Greek world, split up
as it was into small and mutually hostile civic groups; and secondly,
the loose coherence of each of these groups within itself (for each, we
might almost say normally, was torn by intestine faction). It is a
commonplace also that Greek civilization rested upon slavery, so that
barbarism was not expelled 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