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[Source:] Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
Would someone please explain the history behind Baron Acton's quote above? For instance, Greek belonged to only one of the many language families.
Baron Acton lived in a "world" completely dominated by what we'd now call "Western Culture". He wasn't trying to talk about linguistics or genetics here, but about culture: Literature, The Arts, Science, Math, etc. Moreoever, as a royalist, one would expect the man to be even more dismissive than the typical person of both non-european and popular culture.
Still, change "this world" with "Western Civilization", and perhaps insert the word "Culture" after "Greek", and you'd have a statement many people would be quite willing to defend today. All the things I listed above, while much more advanced today, came down to Western culture with at least a large influence from the Ancient Greeks.
I think that it is not Acton, although it expresses sentiments he might have uttered. The quote is, I think, with insignificant modifications, from Sir Henry Maine, in his ‘Village Communities’ (3rd ed., 1876) p. 238. In this lecture, Maine’s proposition is that the idea of progress has been received by the British from the Greeks and passed on to the Indians.
Sir Henry Maine, ‘Village Communities’ (3rd ed., 1876) p. 238.
“Whatever be the nature and value of that bundle of influences which we call Progress, nothing can be more certain than that, when a society is once touched by it, it spreads like a contagion. Yet, so far as our knowledge extends, there was only one society in which it was endemic; and putting that aside, no race or nationality, left entirely to itself, appears to have developed any very great intellectual result, except perhaps Poetry. Not one of those intellectual excellencies which we regard as characteristic of the great progressive races of the world — not the law of the Romans, not the philosophy and sagacity of the Germans, not the luminous order of the French, not the political aptitude of the English, not that insight into physical nature to which all races have contributed — would apparently have come into existence if those races had been left to themselves. To one small people, covering in its original seat no more than a handsbreadth of territory, it was given to create the principle of Progress, of movement onwards and not backwards or downwards, of destruction tending to construction. That people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin. A ferment spreading from that source has vitalised all the great progressive races of mankind, penetrating from one to another, and producing results accordant with its hidden and latent genius, and results of course often far greater than any exhibited in Greece itself. It is this principle of progress which we Englishmen are communicating to India. We did not create it. We deserve no special credit for it. It came to us filtered through many different media. But we have received it; and as we have received it, so we pass it on. There is no reason why, if it has time to work, it should not develop in India effects as wonderful as in any other of the societies of mankind."
(emphasis added)
