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From, A. Zimmern, Political Thought,
in R.W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece, Oxford University Press, 1921.
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Page 10
Yet turn to the opening chapters of Thucydides' book. You will find most of the sciences on which long modern treatises are written: but you will find something more: you will find them blended into a unity. Let those who deny that Thucydides was a sociologist, who continue to claim that Herbert Spencer, inventor of the horrid word, invented also the science, re-read Thucydides' account of the evolution (for it was as an evolution that he saw and depicted it) of Greek society from the earliest times to his own day. Let those who cry up anthropology examine into his treatment of legend and custom and his power, untrained in Seminar or institute, to use it as sociological evidence. Let the geographers, too forgetful sometimes that man is not the creature of environment alone, refresh their minds by recalling those brilliant sallies in geographical thinking in which he explains some of the features of early Greek settlement and city-building. It is not only orthodox history, of the school of Ranke, of which Thucydides is the father and inspirer: there is not one of the many movements which have sought to broaden out historical study in recent years, from Buckle and Leplay and Vidal de la Blache down to the psycho-analysts of our own day and of to-morrow who will not find in Thucydides some gleaming anticipation along the path of their own thought.
Here we touch upon what is perhaps the cardinal merit of the Greek political thinkers, as it is of the Greek contribution as a whole. They saw all the problems: but saw each in its place within the larger whole. They 'saw life steadily and saw it whole'. Matthew Arnold's line is hackneyed enough; but it cannot be bettered. To put the same thought in another way, the Greeks were natural Catholics, while we of to-day, especially on the political field, are constantly relapsing into an unhelpful Protestantism. By Catholicism I mean nothing doctrinal, or indeed religious at all, but simply the habit of mind which insists on looking at the whole before the parts, at setting the common before the sectional interest, and in sweetening and harmonizing the inevitable contrarieties and antagonisms of life by remaining steadily conscious of its major and reconciling interests. A Catholic is one whose intellect, to use the words of Newman, himself, despite his religious label, one of the greatest of the tribe, 'cannot be partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous, cannot be at a loss, cannot but be patient, collected and majestically calm, because it discerns the end in every beginning, the origin in each end, the law in every interruption, the limit in each delay, because it ever knows where it stands and how its path lies from one point to another'. Protestantism, on the other hand, is the attitude of protest, of revolt, of indignation: the spirit which is conscious only of what it is against, and is too ignorant, or too angry, to survey the whole field of problems involved in its protest or to think out an alternative scheme. If the Greeks can render us no other service in our discontents they can at least lift us, by the example of their wide and fearless vision, out of our petty Protestant rebelliousness and recrimination and plant our feet solidly on the rock of steady Catholic thinking.
Cf. Ancient Greek History and the West * Greek is the higher life of man * Greek History Resources
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome
A History of Greek Philosophy * Plato Home Page
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/political-theory.asp?pg=10
