tradition. The official philosophy of the Roman com-
munion at the present day is largely, and quite confessedly,
drawn from Aristotle.

It was on its religious side that the culture of the
Greeks had been weakest. The rationalism developed
amongst the Greeks in the sixth century B.C. made
Greek thought a new thing in the world. It was the
beginning of that movement which has led to all the
achievements of modern science. The aesthetic feeling
of the Greeks, developing in close contact with their
rationalism, enabled them to produce works of art which
have never been surpassed and a literature which is
still to-day called "classical." But the religious tradition
of the Greek city-states remained, for the most part, at
the primitive level. Old crude stories, akin to those told
by savages, continued to form the mythology passed on
from generation to generation as the truth about the
gods. No doubt the old stories were early worked over by
Greek aesthetic feeling, so that, as stories, they became
charming and presented the mind with a succession of
beautiful images; they became the material of admirable
poetry, but, if taken seriously as an account of the Divine,
they could hardly be put higher than the mythology of
South Sea Islanders. Many actions attributed to the gods
were flagrantly immoral according to the standards of
conduct which the citizens of the Greek city-states had
come to recognise for human life. Yet it would be a
mistake to regard the old Greek religion as having no
force for morals. In the matter of sexual relations it
had indeed very little, or perhaps even told on the wrong
side. But in two important respects it did safeguard
right conduct between man and man. One of these was
in regard to the oath: whatever conception of the gods

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