The following, just a few notions to consider, is from the quote page immediately after Caldwell’s Forward in GLORY AND THE LIGHTNING*:

“THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE—”

“The genius of a nation strikes but once in its history. It is its glory and its immortality in the annals of men. It is aristocratic, discriminating, radiant and selective, and abjures all that is mediocre, plebeian and mundane. It is regnant. It is spiritual. It is the flame emanating from the core of the Universe, which is the generation of life. It is the lightning which sets fire to the small spirits of men, and raises them above the field and the plow, the house and the hayfield, in a sudden revelation of grandeur. It is, above all, masculine, for the aristocracy of the soul is purely masculine and never feminine, which is concerned only with petty matters and insistent trivialities. It transcends the humbleness of daily living and stands even the least important of men upon Olympus for a brief hour. It is never democratic, for democracy is a destructive thing, conspired in the inferior minds of envious men.

“If that nation which would survive in glory would cultivate only the masculine principle, its name in history will be written in gold and blaze through the centuries.”

ZENO OF ELEA

A few little slaps in the face of modernity and the Enlightenment. BTW, the rest of the novel is excellent too.

*Caldwell, Taylor, Glory and the Lightning, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974.