Note 355 — Chapter XXI · FREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Thus far Christian bigotry seems to have held its own in what once was Hellas. On the surface, Greece shows little trace of instructed freethought; while in Bulgaria, by Greek testimony, school teachers openly proclaim their rationalism, and call for the exclusion of religious teaching from the schools.355 Despite the political freedom of the Christian State, there has thus far occurred there no such general fertilization by the culture of the rest of Europe as is needed to produce a new intellectual evolution of any importance. The mere geographical isolation of modern Greece from the main currents of European thought and commerce is probably the most retardative of her conditions; and it is hard to see how it can be countervailed. Italy, in comparison, is pulsating with original life, industrial and intellectual. But, given either a renascence of Mohammedan civilization or a great political reconstruction such as is latterly on foot, the whole life of the nearer East may take a new departure; and in such an evolution Greece would be likely to share.