Our Debt to Rome, Greece, and Judea 201
we can best do that by taking the ancient Roman as our
model. Before we can have international peace, we must
have national fellow feeling, and this can only be obtained
by respect for law and loyalty to the constitution.
But we need other virtues besides that of loyalty, im-
portant and indispensable as the latter quality undoubtedly
is. There is, it is true, the majesty of the law, but there
is also the law of majesty, the law of beauty, the law of
congeniality. It would be a sorry world if we went through
life pratinjg of nothing but duty and loyalty. We wish
occasionally to turn to the brighter and lighter sides of
human nature and for this we must turn to the Greeks.
The Greeks have endowed us with taste, culture, refne-
ment. They have presented us to nature. They have
reproduced the work of God’s hand in marble and stone.
They have introduced to an astonished world the marvelous
resources of the tongue and the pen. Perhaps the most
important contribution of all, they have clearly demon-
strated the priceless value of a healthy body. And it is as
Hillis says : “It was when the gymnasium had made each
Athenian youth an Apollo in health and strength that the
feet of the Greek race ran most swiftly along the paths of
art and literature and philosophy”.
Only think what we can learn from the Greek about the
employment of our leisure time. The twin American vices
are hurry and worry, and it is the hurry which is responsible
for the worry. How many plain folks would to-day listen
to Bergson if he discoursed on his philosophy on Fifth
Avenue? Yet we know Socrates never lacked his follow-
ing in Athens. The exquisite literary style of the Greek
historians, poets, and philosophers is due to the fact that
they could afford to take time over their compositions.
And these Greeks were on the whole all-round men. Their