Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/206

 communal morality we may discover at least a partial explanation of one strange fact in Athenian literary development—the sudden burst and rapid decay of Attic genius.

After the rule of the tyrants and the successful resistance to Persian invasion had given to Athens social unity and the hegemony of states greatly her superiors in civilised refinement, the communal morality of old Athenian life was suddenly exposed to an influx of new ideas unknown to the early poverty and isolation of Attica. Hence a conflict set in between old Athenian sentiments and the individualism which had long before been developed in other parts of Greece, especially among the East-Ionians; and the material progress of Athens in wealth, which followed the Persian war and showed itself so notably during the administration of Pericles, allowed greater personal independence and far more leisure for debate than the early Athenians had possessed. It is in this conflict between things old and new that we find the chief source of Athenian genius; and if we are asked why that sunburst of creative power was so ephemeral, and why it was so soon obscured by clouds of verbal trifling and pedantic logomachy, we shall reply that the rapid destruction of old communal morality, when once the full force of Greek individualism had been let in on it, put an end to that duel of egoistic with altruistic thinking in which throughout the world's history the brightest sparks of genius have been struck out, and by completely individualising Athenian intellect and imagination made one-sided the later culture of Attic genius. As Müller observes, the traditional maxims of Athenian morality were, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, subjected to a scrutinising examination by a foreign race of teachers, chiefly from the colonies of the East and West; and we