Was this high-strung idealism, or spiritualism, typically Greek? Were the Greeks, as we have come to know them through the overall testimony available to us in the records of history, genuine representatives of that type of personality which we are bound to associate with radical dualism?
Our answer would be a definite no. The conclusion we have been obliged to draw, after the most serious study of the topic, is that Plato must have been a rather exceptional figure in an average Greek community. And when we say the average Greek, we do not necessarily exclude the general elite element of artistic and intellectual geniuses who have done so much to form our historical image of Greek culture.
The Greeks, as a people--even from the earliest times we meet them in history--seem to be of a fairly extroverted and open-minded disposition. In fact, they appear to be exactly what Schiller calls "naive", including his good friend Goethe, but excluding himself, the "sentimental" (see our Vol. I, Part I, Ch.3).
May we call to mind here a phenomenon related to Greek culture, but much closer to our own times: the Renaissance was supposed to be simply a kind of rebirth of the deepest spirit of Greek culture, wasn"t it? But the Renaissance, as we shall point out in more detail on another occasion, was--particularly in Italy, its homeland--quite a simple, gay, and openhearted movement, and comparatively popular as well. It released in man the pent-up forces of a swelling urge to turn outwards, just as the child turns outwards with all his mind and all his physical energy.
In a few exceptional individuals, it is true, such an explosion of the natural forces of life may have developed more eccentric forms of abysmal genius. But as a general rule, it was a fairly broad movement. It was not limited to an elite of social or artistic or intellectual aristocracy.
It was a gushingly fresh middle-class community that had been awakened to the new life. Awakened to new art also, it is true. But that art included--perhaps more than anything else--just the art of life--I mean life with all its everyday fullness, excluding neither intellectual nor material enjoyments.
We believe the name "Renaissance" is fairly well justified in these respects also. Even the "temperamental" atmosphere of that movement may, to a large extent, bring us right back to the Old Greeks. In fact, it was probably just that popular broadness--or "democracy"--characterizing both movements, which actually prepared the ground for the exceptional or "aristocratic" geniuses who did appear here and there. It helped them to spring up and unfold in relative freedom. A roomy nest had been prepared for the young "cuckoos".
Here, however, one thing may have to be added right away: those exceptional geniuses--once they had arisen--could not fail to put their indelible stamp on the whole atmosphere, influencing it tremendously, sometimes even moving it considerably away from just that popular broadness and naiveté which originally belonged to it!
At this stage of our investigation we think it a matter of tremendous importance to have an idea as exact and as comprehensive as possible of what that naiveté in its undisturbed condition is really like. For that purpose we doubt that we could ever turn to a more reliable authority than Schiller. For he certainly knows the Greeks. And he also knows the dramatic battle between the "naive" and the "sentimental".