Fang Yun continued, "Among the foreign races I have heard of, one people called the Greeks is the most peculiar. This people also appears in Political Science. At the beginning, they had neither Sainthood nor Saint Ancestors, yet like the previous people, they created many Saint Ancestors and many holders of Sainthood in the form of stories. Unlike the previous people, their saints were exactly like themselves—some greedy for wealth, some lustful, some jealous, some vicious, some vain, some proud. Of course, alongside these evils, there were virtues as well. They believed that whether Saint Ancestors or holders of Sainthood, they were merely powerful people, not perfect beings."
"This great Greek people, precisely because they could mock and even vilify the Saint Ancestors in their hearts—because they could 'belittle' those Saint Ancestors—gave birth to a powerful force within their people: eternal freedom from restraint! They could fail, but nothing could imprison a soul that pursued freedom!"
"Indeed, such an idea would make their society relatively chaotic and difficult to stabilize, and in the end, they were defeated by foreign peoples. Yet it was precisely because this idea existed that they shared something with our Chinese civilization: even after defeat, they could in turn influence and even assimilate their victors. This is one of the marks by which a civilization may be called great."
"In truth, this Greek people that belittled gods underwent changes in bloodline, but their spirit was never extinguished and continued to be passed down. They did not completely submit to false Saint Ancestors, nor did they allow themselves to become slaves of Saint Ancestors—humble, yet never base. Under the influence of this spirit, even if their descendants were conquered, they could still break through the blockade of powerful peoples and make the mighty civilizations of later ages