Excerpt from The Historians' History of the World, Vol. 3 of 25: A Comprehensive Narrative of the Rise and Development of Nations as Recorded by Over Two Thousand of the Great Writers of All Ages; Greece to the Peloponnesian War When the Persian kingdom was founded the Hellenes had developed from a group Of linguistically related tribes into a nation possessing a completely independent culture whose equal the world had never yet seen, a culture whose mainspring was that very political and intellectual freedom of the individual which was completely lacking in the East. Hence its character was purely human, its aim the complete and barmo nious development of man; and if for that very reason it always strove to be moderate and to adapt itself to the moral and cosmical forces that gov ern human life, nevertheless it could accomplish this Only in free subordina tion, by absorbing the moral commandment into its own will. Therefore it did not permit the Opposing theological tendencies to gain control, strong as was their development in considerable districts Of Greece in the sixth century. At that very period, on the other hand, it was stretching out to grasp the apples on the tree of knowledge in the most advanced regions of Hellas science and philosophy were opposing theology. National as it was, this culture lacked but one thing: the political unity Of the nation, the co-ordination of all its powers in the Vigorous organism of a great state. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.