What is the theme in The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton?

The first of the major themes running throughout this book is the dichotomy between the East and the West and the culture of each. Hamilton characterizes the East as essentially inferior to the West because it is guided by fear of reality and religious and philosophical efforts to find meaning apart from the natural world. People, she says, look at their lives under tyrants and despots and see no hope of changing their condition or rising to a better life. Rulers in the east work in concert, she says, with the priests of established religion and propagate compliance and submission to the prevailing social order.