Christianity and Greek Philosophy / or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought / in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His / Apostles

The offspring of man must always bear his image, and always exhibit the same fundamental characteristics, not only in his corporeal nature, but also in his mental constitution.

There are unquestionably fundamental powers and laws in human nature which have their development in the course of history. There are certain primitive ideas, imbedded in the constitution of each individual mind, which are revealed in the universal consciousness of our race, under the conditions of experience--the exterior conditions of physical nature and human society. Such are the ideas of cause and substance; of unity and infinity, which govern all the processes of discursive thought, and lead us to the recognition of Being in se;--such the ideas of right, of duty, of accountability, and of retribution, which regulate all the conceptions we form of our relations to all other moral beings, and constitute morality;--such the ideas of order, of proportion, and of harmony, which preside in the realms of art, and constitute the beau-ideal of esthetics;--such the ideas of God, the soul, and immortality, which rule in the domains of religion, and determine man a religious being. These constitute the identity of human nature under all circumstances; these characterize humanity in all conditions.

And in cases where physical and moral causes are blended, and reciprocally conditioned and modified in their operation;--where primary results undergo endless modifications from the influence of surrounding circumstances, and the reaction of social and political institutions;--and where each individual of the great aggregate wields a causal power that obeys no specific law, and by his own inherent power sets in motion new trains of causes which can not be reduced to statistics, we grant that we are in possession of no instrument of exact analysis by which the complex phenomena of national character may be reduced to primitive elements. All that we can hope is, to ascertain, by psychological analysis, what are the fundamental ideas and laws of humanity; to grasp the exterior conditions which are, on all hands, recognized as exerting a powerful influence upon national character; to watch, under these lights, the manifestations of human nature on the theatre of history, and then apply the principles of a sound historic criticism to the recorded opinions of contemporaneous historians and their immediate successors. In this manner we may expect, at least, to approximate to a true judgment of history.

It will be readily perceived that, in attempting to estimate the influence which exterior conditions exert in the determination of national character, we encounter peculiar difficulties. We can not in these studies expect the precision and accuracy which is attained in the mathematical, or the purely physical sciences. We possess no control over the "materiel" of our inquiry; we have no power of placing it in new conditions, and submitting it to the test of new experiments, as in the physical sciences. National character is a complex result--a product of the action and reaction of primary and secondary causes. It is a conjoint effect of the action of the primitive elements and laws originally implanted in humanity by the Creator, of the free causality and self-determining power of man, and of all the conditions, permanent and accidental, within which the national life has been developed.

God has created both man and the universe, and he has established between them a striking harmony. The earth was made for man; not simply to supply his physical wants, but also to minister to his intellectual and moral development

The other method is that of Carl Ritter, Arnold Guyot, and Cousin. 4 These take account of the freedom of the human will, and the power of man to control and modify the forces of nature. They also take account of the original constitution of man, and the primitive type of nations; and they allow for results arising from the mutual conflict of geographical conditions. And they, especially, recognize the agency of a Divine Providence controlling those forces in nature by which the configuration of the earth's surface is determined, and the distribution of its oceans, continents, and islands is secured; and a providence, also, directing the dispersions and migrations of nations--determining the times of each nation's existence, and fixing the geographical bounds of their habitation, all in view of the moral history and spiritual development of the race,--"that they may feel after, and find the living God." The relation of man and nature is not, in their estimation, a relation of cause and effect. It is a relation of adjustment, of harmony, and of reciprocal action and reaction. "Man is not"--says Cousin--"an effect, and nature the cause, but there is between man and nature a manifest harmony of general laws."... "Man and nature are two great effects which, coming from the same cause, bear the same characteristics; so that the earth, and he who inhabits it, man and nature, are in perfect harmony." 5

One method is that pursued by Buckle in his "History of Civilization in England." The tendency of his work is the assertion of the supremacy of material conditions over the development of human history, and indeed of every individual mind. Here man is purely passive in the hands of nature.

"History does not stand outside of nature, but in her very heart, so that the historian only grasps a people's character with true precision when he keeps in full view its geographical position, and the influences which its surroundings have wrought upon it

The people of the entire province of Attica were called Athenians (Αθηναίοι) in their relation to the state, and Attics (Αττικοί) in regard to their manners, customs, and dialect

Here we see the Apostle Paul standing on the Areopagus at Athens, surrounded by the temples, statues, and altars, which Grecian art had consecrated to Pagan worship, and proclaiming to the inquisitive Athenians, "the strangers" who had come to Athens for business or for pleasure, and the philosophers and students of the Lyceum, the Academy, the Stoa, and the Garden, "the unknown God."