The Development of the Civilized Mind in the Ancient Civilizations

Extract

The positions which are offered for consideration in this paper may be summarized in the following four points:

First, there is a civilized type of mind which may be clearly distinguished from a primitive type.

Second, the civilized mind developed from the primitive under certain economic and ethnological conditions which are to be described.

Third, this emergence of the civilized mind from the primitive took place at a fairly definite period and reached its height in the remarkable efflorescence of genius between the ninth and fourth century b.c., over an area from Egypt to China. This was the appearance in that period of a mind essentially one in character, with natural variations, in the Greek thinkers, the Hebrew prophets, the early Hindu mystical philosophers and the Buddha in India, and the ethical teachers of China of the Confucian school.

Fourth, this type of mind with its characteristic powers was achieved once for all and was never lost. In spite of the decay of most of the ancient civilizations, the civilized mind has been transmitted, chiefly through the survival of Greek and Graeco-Hebraic thought, into science, philosophy, and theology to become the modern mind for the world of culture of to-day.