Logic, rhetoric, and metaphysics
claimed their place in this common focus of the city's life, and were
the delight of the subtile Greeks. The Socratic reasoning and the
syllogisms of Aristotle met here on common ground. The Stoics, with
their stern fatalism, derived their name from the _stoae_, or porticos;
the Peripatetics imparted their ambulatory instructions under the
plane-trees of the Lyceum--and Plato reasoned in the Academy, which he
held with his school, and into which no ungeometrical mind was to enter.
And though some dog of a Cynic might despise the union of the ornamental
with the useful, and claim austerity as the rule of life, yet to the
great body of the social Greek people the gymnasium offered all those
attractions which _boulevards_, _cafes_, and _jardins-chantants_ do
now to the Gallic nation. There is more than one point of resemblance
between the two countries; but while the Athenian had the same mercurial
qualities, which fitted him for outdoor life, he had even a less
comfortable domestic establishment to retain him at home than the modern
Parisian.
We must turn, however, rather to the physical view of the gymnasium.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25