ls cites Gilbert Murray's contrast between Greece's outer political history . . . filled with war and . . . cruelty and deceit. It is the inner history . . . of thought and feeling and character, that is so grand (Wells 124). The Greek example ensured that Western thought never quite relinquished what Whitehead refers to as a deep ultimate faith, that through and through the nature of things is penetrable by reason (Whitehead 108). In significant part, the West is a creature of ideas and reason as values in themselves. According to Hamilton, Greek religion was not developed by priests nor by prophets. Rather, poets and artists strove to make the visible express the invisible (174). Excellence, truth, and wisdom were their religious values, and Hamilton remarks that love of reason, life, mind, and body distinguished the Greek way. . . . Reason and feeling were not antagonistic (31). That being so, the task of life was to balance mind and spirit while shrinking from neither. Life could be a bold assertion--for example in war or when constantly pricking th
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