But take a work of Greek art,--the Venus of Melos. That is in no sense a
symbol, a suggestion of anything beyond its own victorious fairness. The
mind begins and ends with the finite image, yet loses no part of the
spiritual motive. That motive is not lightly and loosely attached to the
sensuous form, as the meaning to the allegory, but saturates and is
identical with it. The Greek mind had advanced to a particular stage of
self-reflexion, but was careful not to pass beyond it. In oriental
thought there is a vague conception of life everywhere, but no true
appreciation of itself by the mind, no knowledge of the distinction of
man's nature: in its consciousness of itself, humanity is still confused
with the fantastic, indeterminate life of the animal and vegetable world.
In Greek thought the "lordship of the soul" is recognised; that lordship
gives authority and divinity to human eyes and hands and feet; inanimate
nature is thrown into the background. But there Greek thought finds its
happy limit; it has not yet become too inward; the mind has not begun to
boast of its independence of the flesh; the spirit has not yet absorbed
everything with its emotions, nor reflected its own colour everywhere.
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