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Updated: May 2, 2025
The higher mind of the Greeks and Romans, in which the distinctive notes were clear intelligence, love of beauty, and practical force, gradually broke away altogether from the popular mythology, and sought to find in reason an explanation of the universe and a sufficient rule of life. The Greek-Roman mythology made only an indirect and slight contribution to modern religion.
THE GREEK-ROMAN PERIOD. In 327 B.C., Alexander the Great advanced in his victorious career as far as India, entered the Punjab, which was then divided among petty kingdoms, and defeated one of the kings, Porus, who disputed the passage of the river Jhelum.
To the Jew of the New Testament period, to Paul as much as to the fishermen of Galilee, the world was directly administered by a personal being who habitually set aside for his own purposes the ordinary course of events. The higher minds of the Greek-Roman world had reached a different conception.
In the vast tract of Greek-Roman history, we have looked at only a few of the highest mountain peaks the noblest contributions. But since the Christian church still treats the Old Testament as one of its charter documents, we need to enlarge a little upon the general outline and color of Jewish history, and we must recognize the shadows as well as the lights.
We shall pass with a few brief glances over a tract of many centuries. Our special concern in this work is with the birth-periods of the vital and lasting principles of man's higher life. One such phase was the Greek-Roman philosophy of which the best outcome was Stoicism. Another critical era was the birth of Christianity from its immediate lineage of Judaism.
From Judaism he took the familiar idea of one all-powerful and holy God; a moral ideal which was chiefly distinguished from that of the Greek-Roman world by its greater emphasis on chastity; and also the belief in a constant divine interposition in human affairs, which soon was to culminate in the establishment of a divine kingdom on earth.
In the more feminine nature of Marcus Aurelius the same ideas yield a beautiful fidelity along with a habitual sadness. Stoicism was the noblest attainment of the Greek-Roman world. It was a clear and fearless application of reason to human life, with little attempt to solve the mystery of the universe. It gave an ideal and rule to thoughtful, robust, and masculine natures.
Nothing vital shall be staked on far-away history or debatable metaphysics. In the fivefold division of the book, "Our Spiritual Ancestry" is a bird's-eye view of the main line of advance, which culminates in "The Ideal of To-Day." The ideas and sentiments which underlie the higher life of our time may be largely traced back to two roots, the one Greek-Roman, the other Hebrew.
It vanquished and destroyed the Greek-Roman mythology, already half dead. Philosophy strove with it in vain, there was no real meeting-ground between the two systems. The final appeal of the Stoic was to reason. The Christian theologians thought they reasoned, but their argumentation was feeble save at one point. But that was the vital point, experience.
Did he felicitate himself like a simple Teuton, on the wonderful learning and eloquence of his Greek-Roman secretary? Or did he laugh a royal laugh at the whole letter, and crack a royal joke at Cassiodorus and all quill-driving schoolmasters and lawyers the two classes of men whom the Goths hated especially, and at the end to which they by their pedantries had brought imperial Rome?
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