Graeco-Asiatic cities between 300 and 100 BC were in process of natural growth through the settling in them

of strangers; and the strangers came for purposes of trade, eager to make money. The kings interfered only

to regulate and to direct to their own advantage a process which they had not originated and could not have

prevented. What they did for those strangers was to give them the fullest rights in the cities where they

settled. The strangers and their descendants would have always remained aliens; but the kings made them

citizens, gave them a voice in the government and a position in the city as firm and influential as that of the

best, increased their numbers by assisting immigrants, and presented them with lands.

Even the Jews, though introduced specially by the Seleucid kings, and always most numerous in the

Seleucid colonies, were spread throughout the great cities of the Greek world, and especially in the chief

centres of trade and finance (as might be expected).

The result of that free mixture of races in the Graeco-Asiatic cities was to stimulate a rapid and precocious

development. There was great ease of intercourse and freedom of trade, a settled and sound coinage and

monetary system, much commerce on a considerable scale, much eagerness and opportunity to make money

by large financial operations. There was also a notable development on the intellectual side. Curiosity was

stimulated in the meeting of such diverse races. The Oriental came into relations with the European spirit:

each tried to understand and to outwit the other.

Thus an amalgamation of Oriental and European races and intellect, manners and law, was being worked out

practically in the collision and competition of such diverse elements. It was an experiment in a direction that

is often theorised about and discussed at the present day. Can the east take on the western character? Can

the Asiatic be made like a European? In one sense that is impossible: in another sense it was done in the

Graeco-Asiatic cities, and can be done again. It was done in them, not by Europeanising the Asiatic, but by

profoundly modifying both; each learned from the other; and that is the only treatment of the problem that

can ever be successful.

This great experiment in human development was conducted on a small scale and in a thin soil, but as all the

more precocious on that account, and also the more short -lived. It was a hot-house growth, produced in

circumstances which were evanescent; and it was unnatural and unhealthy.

The smallness of scale on which all Greek history was conducted is one of its most remarkable features. In

Greece proper, as contrasted with the big countries and the large masses of modern nations, the scale was

quite minute. In the Graeco-Asiatic States the scale seemed much greater; but development was really

confined to a number of spots here and there, showing only as dots on a map, small islets in the great sea of

stagnant, unruffled, immovable Orientalism. The Greek political and social system demanded a small city as

its scene, and broke down when the attempt was made to apply it on a larger scale. But no more stimulating

environment to the intellect could be found than was offered in the Graeco-Asiatic cities, and the s canty

glimpses which we get into the life of those cities reveal to us a very quick, restless, intelligent society,

keenly interested in a rather empty and shallow kind of philosophic speculation, and almost utterly destitute

of any vivifying and invigorating ideal.

The interest and importance to us of this moment in society lies in the fact that Pauline Christianity arose in

it and worked upon it. In every page of Paul's writings that restless, self-conceited, morbid, unhealthy

society stands out in strong relief before the reader. He knew it so well, because he was born and brought

up in its midst. He conceived that his mission was to regenerate it, and the plan which he saw to be the only

possible one was to save the Jew from sinking down to the pagan level by elevating the pagan to the true

Jewish level. The writer of the Seven Letters also, though a Jew from Palestine, had learned to know the

Asian cities by long residence.

The noblest feature of Greek city life was its zeal and provision for education. The minute carefulness with

which those Asian-Greek cities legislated and provided for education--watching over the young, keeping

them from evil, graduating their physical and mental training to suit their age, moving them on from stage to