[Picture: Male costume] The Greeks had more power of thought and sense of grace than any other people have ever had.  They always had among them men seeking for truth and beauty.  The truth-seekers were called philosophers, or lovers of wisdom.  They were always trying to understand about God and man, and this world, and guessing at something great, far beyond the stories of Jupiter; and they used to gather young men round them under the pillared porches and talk over these thoughts, or write them in beautiful words.  Almost all the sciences began with the Greeks; their poems and their histories are wonderfully written; and they had such great men among them that, though most of their little states were smaller than an ordinary English county, and the whole of them together do not make a country as large as Ireland, their history is the most remarkable in the world, except that of the Jews.  The history of the Jews shows what God does for men; the history of Greece shows what man does left to himself.