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GREEK
ETHICAL THOUGHT
FROM HOMER TO THE STOICS
BY
HILDA D. OAKELEY, ., OXON.
READER IN PmLosoVHTSfTCiNG's COLLEGE
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
"
(Author of History and Progress and
Other Essays and Addresses ")
1925
LONDON fcf TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON y CO.
A II rights reserved
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
INTRODUCTION
WE are accustomed to think of the ethical ideas of the
Greeks as determined by a standpoint which can be definitely
contrasted with the modern. It is thought to involve a
different attitude to life and death, the questions of man's
relation to the world, the meaning of duty, if not the mean-
ing of good. The Greek ideal has, for instance, been con-
"
trasted as affirmation of the world," with the Christian, as
"
denial of the world." Or, if it is recognised that the Greek
in to the
views regard a worthy life, most fitting way of
" "
meeting alike the best gifts, and the slings and arrows
of fortune, had much mon with our own, it is never-
theless felt probably by most of us, that there is a subtle,
all-pervasive contrast due perhaps to the difference of the
medium, the environment of thought, knowledge, experi-
ence in which these views prevailed. A certain circle or
as it be in
ideas, may said, connection with practical life,
must arise whenever a people reaches that stage of culture at
which man desires in some sense, in some measure, to shape
himself his history. These ideas emerge when individuals
no longer feel themselves fast bound to some one mode of
existence whose form is rigidly determined by tradition and
custom, but seem capable of freely reflecting upon their life
and directing it to ends which they desire. But the Greek
ways of interpreting the chief problems which beset human
existence, and those conceptions which return from age to
age, as to what gives it value, and how