Greek Historical Writing and Apollo: Two Lectures Delivered Before the University of Oxford, June 3 and 4, 1908 (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Greek Historical Writing and Apollo: Two Lectures Delivered Before the University of Oxford, June 3 and 4, 1908But there is another element in the case which reaches even deeper into the nature of the Hellenic genius. The history of the past can be understood by no man who cannot transport himself into the souls of men passed away. That idea never came near to the Greeks, they never tried to think on the model of foreign peoples. In general they Show themselves little sensitive to the individuality of others. The psychology of the Socratic school, and above all that of the Stoa and of Epicurus, begins and ends with the normal man. Woman and child are to them merely imperfect man. Even the keen observation of Theophrastus discovers no characteristics of individuals, only of types. What enormous advan tages that conferred upon their philosophy and their plastic art I need not say but the light was not without its shadow. Their biographicalwrifings _began with ideal figures - with Heracles and Pythagoras, and they never even attempted to show the development of a human soul. How we modems admire those of their poets who succeed in the delineation of individual men! How we exult that we have a glimpse of it again in Menander! But how rare such poets are, and how keenly one must look in order to seize the individual quality in their creations! Here also no one has done higher service than Plato, and yet his most ardent admirer will not deny that by the laws of his whole being he was bound to take an alien, nay, a hostile attitude towards real historical research - as, for instance, he never read Thucvdides.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.