Of two
groups having equal mental endowment, one may outstrip the other by
the mere dominance of incident. It is a notorious fact that the course
of human history has been largely without prevision or direction.
Things have drifted and forces have arisen. Under these conditions
an unusual incident--the emergence of a great mind or a forcible
personality, or the operation of influences as subtle as those which
determine fashions in dress--may establish social habits and duties
which will give a distinct character to the modes of attention
and mental life of the group. The most significant fact for Aryan
development is the emergence among the Greeks of a number of eminent
men who developed logic, the experimental method, and philosophic
interest, and fixed in their group the habit of looking behind the
incident for the general law. Mediaeval attention was diverted from
these lines by a religious movement, and the race lost for a time the
key to progress and got clean away from the Greek copies; but it found
them again and took a fresh start with the revival of Greek learning.
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