Alpha Book

[Sidenote: Greek Culture]
All races and all generations have had some kind of culture, but within
the recorded history of humanity, certain peoples and certain centuries
stand out most distinctly as influencing its evolution. Thus, the
Greeks of the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ gathered
together and handed down to us all manner of speculation about the
nature of the universe, all manner of hypothetical answers to the
eternal questions--Whence do we come, What are we doing, Where do we
go?--and this was the foundation of modern philosophy and metaphysics.
From the same Greeks came our geometry and the rudiments of our
sciences of astronomy and medicine. It was they who gave us the model
for nearly every form of literature--dramatic, epic, and lyric poetry,
dialogues, oratory, history--and in their well-proportioned temples, in
their balanced columns and elaborate friezes, in their marble
chiselings of the perfect human form, they fashioned for us forever the
classical expression of art.


Pages:
382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406