And if to reach it was a high privilege its attainment brought with it
the imperative duty of a descent into the ordinary world to instruct, to
enlighten, to comfort and help and console, to play a part in the great
business and work of human civilization. In a sense this was, and is,
the most permanent and fruitful gift of Greece to the European world.

These then were the three ideas or ideals which the Greeks wrought into
the very texture and substance of the modern mind, the idea of Art, the
idea of Science, the idea of Philosophy; in all three introducing and
still more deeply implanting the ideas of Freedom as the motive and end
of civilized life and of Knowledge as its guide and ally. It may be
thought that I have dwelt too much on theory, and have not said enough
of the specific contribution of Greece as working out in practice a
certain type or types of corporate life such as the City State; but the
fact is that in Greek civilization theory continually outran practice
and that it endowed mankind much more with ideas or ideals than with
practical illustrations or models for our imitation. Yet again we must
not exaggerate or imagine these ideas as merely Utopian or such stuff as
dreams are made of. The ferment which they set up burst the fabric of
Greek social and political institutions, but it clarified and steadied
down, as the enthusiasms of youth may do, into the sober designs of
grave and energetic manhood.

The spectacle of the dissolution of the Greek civilization is not a
pleasant one. 'The glory that was Greece' fades out of the world and
leaves it grey and dull, and there was worse than this; there was also
decay and degeneracy and corruption. To dwell upon it is as the sin of
Ham. Nevertheless what took place was not a mere relapse towards
barbarism, but on the contrary the supersession of a form of
civilization which had done its work by another form less attractive,