Note (return) — Chapter I

The geographical position of Greece was favorable to the freest commercial and maritime intercourse with the great historic nations--those nations most advanced in science, literature, and art. Bounded on the west by the Adriatic and Ionian seas, by the Mediterranean on the south, and on the east by the Ægean Sea, her populations enjoyed a free intercommunication with the Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians, Phœnicians, Romans, and Carthaginians. This peculiarity in the geographical position of the Grecian peninsula could not fail to awaken in its people a taste for navigation, and lead them to active commercial intercourse with foreign nations. 15 The boundless oceans on the south and east, the almost impassable mountains on the west and north of Asia, presented insurmountable obstacles to commercial intercourse. But the extended border-lands and narrow inland seas of Southern Europe allured man, in presence of their opposite shores, to the perpetual exchange of his productions. An arm of the sea is not a barrier, but rather a tie between the nations. Appearing to separate, it in reality draws them together without confounding them. 16 On such a theatre we may expect that commerce will be developed on an extensive scale. 17 And, along with commerce, there will be increased activity in all departments of productive industry, and an enlarged diffusion of knowledge. "Commerce," says Ritter, "is the great mover and combiner of the world's activities." And it also furnishes the channels through which flow the world's ideas. Commerce, both in a material and moral point of view, is the life of nations. Along with the ivory and ebony, the fabrics and purple dyes, the wines and spices of the Syrian merchant, there flowed into Greece the science of numbers and of navigation, and the art of alphabetical writing from Phœnicia. Along with the fine wheat, and embroidered linen, and riches of the farther Indias which came from Egypt, there came, also, into Greece some knowledge of the sciences of astronomy and geometry, of architecture and mechanics, of medicine and chemistry; together with the mystic wisdom of the distant Orient. The scattered rays of light which gleamed in the eastern skies were thus converged in Greece, as on a focal point, to be rendered more brilliant by contact with the powerful Grecian intellect, and then diffused throughout the western world. Thus intercourse with surrounding nations, by commerce and travel, contact therewith by immigrations and colonizations, even collisions and invasions also, became, in the hands of a presiding Providence, the means of diffusing knowledge, of quickening and enlarging the active powers of man, and thus, ultimately, of a higher civilization.