The supreme
artistic products of each generation thus form a series of elevated
points, taking each from each the reflexion of a strange light, the
source of which is not in the atmosphere around and above them, but in a
stage of society remote from ours. This standard takes its rise in
Greece, at a definite historical period. A tradition for all succeeding
generations, it originates in a spontaneous growth out of the influences
of Greek society. What were the conditions under which this ideal, this
standard of artistic orthodoxy, was generated? How was Greece enabled to
force its thought upon Europe?
Greek art, when we first catch sight of it, is entangled with Greek
religion. We are accustomed to think of Greek religion as the religion of
art and beauty, the religion of which the Olympian Zeus and the Athena
Polias are the idols, the poems of Homer the sacred books. Thus Cardinal
Newman speaks of "the classical polytheism which was gay and graceful, as
was natural in a civilised age." Yet such a view is only a partial one;
in it the eye is fixed on the sharp, bright edge of high Hellenic culture
but loses sight of the sombre world across which it strikes.
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