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'ART. LXVII. Those already fixed expenditures based by the Constitution upon the powers appertaining to the Emperor and such expenditure as may have arisen by the effect of law and that appertain to the legal obligation of the Government shall neither be rejected nor reduced by the Imperial Diet without the concurrence of the Government.'

On some such lines as these it may be possible to withdraw the States from the control of the Legislative Assembly, at the same time ensuring that the British Department shall not be hampered by an adverse financial vote. The mutual interests of the States and of British India would be discussed through the medium of the Department, which would thus stand midway between the two, and occupy a position akin to that of arbitrator. The arrangement is not ideal; friction would no doubt arise, and there might be some difficulty in maintaining a small foreign department in a wholly native government. Once again the thorny question of the Army, with all its implications and complications, looms in the background. But the friction would in all probability be considerably less under such an arrangement, and the question of the Army, if no better safeguards can be devised, must be left to goodwill and harmony in practical working. The suggestion has at least this merit-that it does not confuse the ideas of autocratic and constitutional monarchy, nor does it sever the States from British India, at any rate to the degree entailed by the idea of direct access to His Majesty's Government and the King-Emperor through the Viceroy acting as sole agent. One thing is certain, that the prestige of the Princes ought to be enhanced rather than reduced. Already there are signs-insignificant perhaps in themselves but cumulative in effectthat service in the States is regarded as something hardly equal to similar service in British India, and for that the English cannot be held to be entirely blameless. All the more, therefore, is it necessary when the political position in India comes to be reviewed, to put in the forefront the prestige of the Princes and the unity of the country. STANLEY RICE.

Art. 8.-THE GREEK VIEW OF LIFE.

The Legacy of Greece. Essays by Various Writers. Oxford University Press, 1921.

THE 'legacy' or 'heritage' of Greece is a phrase which has been much repeated in recent years since the traditional supremacy of the classics has been questioned and very considerably reduced in the educational system of the large English schools. Alarmed by the sudden cracks and threatened collapse of their classic temple, English and American scholars have been at pains to make the extent and value of the legacy of Greece and Rome clear to the general public, and, at times, by the excess of their fervour and protests have, perhaps, rather increased than diminished the distrust of those whom they would convert or reassure. Their theme has been, in general, the literary, artistic, and philosophical achievement of the Greeks, evident in the still existing remains, and to a less extent the development of their political thought and practice, and their championship of liberty.

These works constitute the actual legacy of Greece. They are in one sense the positive results of the great civilisation of Greece, and their appreciation is either æsthetic or educational, under which term is understood the study of their language and thought rather than of their art, though that of course cannot be entirely excluded, used to train the mind in the habit of clear and precise thought. We may be delighted by the direct contemplation of her architecture or sculpture or by the artistic form of her literature whether prose or poetry, or we may benefit our minds-and this is her educational legacy in a secondary sense-by following out the recorded attempts of Greeks to solve the various problems that arise in the course of man's social and political development, problems presented to them in a simple and fundamental form, which they viewed without any bias or tradition from earlier and alien civilisations to complicate the method of approach.

But there is another legacy which Greece has left us, more difficult to formulate, for it is negative rather than positive in result, and has no place in the general estimates of their bequest to the modern world, nor is it directly presented in any of the concrete remains of

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that civilisation, though each fragment of literary and artistic and historical record presupposes it and assists its elucidation. It is their conception of the world and of the purpose of life in it; or more precisely the relationship of the individual to his world. And it is the failure of their conception, showing the untenability of one of two possible attitudes towards experience, which constitutes the great spiritual legacy of Greece to the modern world, in distinction from the more visible heritage of art and literature. And when we talk of the legacy of Greece, we mean very largely the legacy of Athens, for it is at Athens in the fifth century B.C. that Greek civilisation culminates and fails, and it is from the political and social life of that age that spring as from a central fire those forces of art and literature which are still active in the modern world. It is at Athens that we find the most complete and essential form of Greek civilisation, the full development of the Greek conception of the individual's relationship to the world, and it is from Athens that we draw to its full extent the legacy bequeathed to us in her failure.

In his recent book on Romanticism Mr Lascelles Abercrombie has analysed in an interesting and illuminating manner some aspects of the romantic element in literature. He has taken as his touchstone of the romantic spirit a passage from Thomas Campbell's • Pleasures of Hope':

'Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye

Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view
And robes the mountain in its azure hue '-

and from it in particular the famous line

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,' as giving with epigrammatic force the essence of the romantic temperament, which he finally defines in prose form as being 'the habit of mind. . . that in all respects life in this world is likely to be most satisfactory when the mind withdraws from outer things and turns in upon itself. Now, if we apply this definition of Romanticism to the great period of art and literature in fifth

century Athens we find that the element of Romance is almost entirely wanting. Critics and professors of Greek literature have been at pains to detect the slightest traces of such a spirit, and though they may have discovered a few expressions and thoughts-survivals perhaps from the thought of the previous century— which may lend themselves to such an interpretation, in the main the artistic expression of that great century is singularly free from anything of the kind. Yet in subsequent centuries and elsewhere in the fifth century -if Mr Abercrombie's interpretation of Empedocles is tenable-the vein of Romanticism is much more clear and rich, so that we are not justified in saying that it was incompatible with the Greek genius, but rather that the Greek character in its fullest and most individual manifestation, i.e. at Athens, found no place for the romantic attitude of mind in the development of its experience.

And, if we accept Mr Abercrombie's conception of Romanticism which, just because it does not dwell upon the infinite nature of the external world, is peculiarly appropriate to be applied to the Greek experience of the fifth century, it is not difficult to see why the Greeks of that age give so little sign of such a feeling in their artistic and literary remains. They were entirely absorbed in the act of living and organising their world. Distinctions between the adequacy or inadequacy of 'outer' and 'inner things' had not yet been made. Life here and now' was the great adventure, on which they all naturally embarked, the unconscious and harmonious unity of inner and outer experience. There was no distinction between the enchanting or compelling power of what was near or distant. The distant charmed them with the hope of bringing it near to their daily lives, and that consciousness, until the first years of the Peloponnesian War had elapsed, was free from any sense of inevitable disillusionment and failure attaching to the facts of experience. Neither the records of their own past nor the rise and fall of other nations, if they had been willing to place those nations on a level with themselves, were clearly defined enough to make them feel doubtful about the issue of their collective achievement.

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of in Plato's 'Timæus' that the Greeks always remained children is well known, and harmonises admirably with their fortunate integrity of outlook. They had the confidence in the future which children have, for the full course of experience had not yet been completed for them. They realised with supreme clearness the laws and sorrowful necessities of the individual life, and no literature has presented the facts of life, its possibilities and its realities, in clearer and more impressive form than Pindar, Herodotus, and Sophocles. But how much men might do collectively, organised in city-states and federations, and developing in the service of the state all the gifts of mind and body, this was unknown to them, and this was the great adventure of the fifth century. Before that century closed they had begun to learn in bitterness and blood that 'this world is likely to be most satisfactory when the mind withdraws from outer things and turns upon itself.' In the literature of the close of the fifth century, and still more in the fourth and following centuries, we can trace more and more easily the beginnings of the gospel of romanticism that 'things are not what they seem,' leading up to the refuge from a finite reality afforded by the vision of the distant mountain and the blue flower' and the kingdom in the heavens.

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The fortunate integrity of the Greek outlook during the greater part of the fifth century rested upon their sense of the past. How their past appeared to the Greeks may be gathered from the opening pages of Thucydides' history, which were written after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. The facts and probabilities of the past which the historian thinks worthy of admission or discussion are few, and he is quite convinced that none of the traditional legends justify the presumption that some great or extensive power existed in early times. He treats Agamemnon as a real personage, but reduces the estimate of his importance and of the heroic age in general so as to show a steady development from the insignificance of the primitive settlements to the mature power of Greece in the Periclean age. But the important moment for the Greeks themselves in their sense of the past is that they had no consciousness of social or political or artistic Vol. 249.-No. 494.

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