Hellenism, which is the principle
pre-eminently of intellectual light (our modern culture may have more
colour, the medieval spirit greater heat and profundity, but Hellenism is
pre-eminent for light), has always been most effectively conceived by
those who have crept into it out of an intellectual world in which the
sombre elements predominate. So it had been in the ages of the
Renaissance. This repression, removed at last, gave force and glow to
Winckelmann's native affinity to the Hellenic spirit. "There had been
known before him," says Madame de Stael, "learned men who might be
consulted like books; but no one had, if I may say so, made himself a
pagan for the purpose of penetrating antiquity." "One is always a poor
executant of conceptions not one's own."--On execute mal ce qu'on n'a pas
concu soi-meme*--words spoken on so high an occasion--are true in their
measure of every genuine enthusiasm. Enthusiasm--that, in the broad
Platonic sense of the Phaedrus, was the secret of his divinatory power
over the Hellenic world.
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