How could such an
one ever again endure the greyness of the ideal or spiritual world? The
spiritualist is satisfied in seeing the sensuous elements escape from his
conceptions; his interest grows, as the dyed garment bleaches in the
keener air. But the artist steeps his thought again and again into the
fire of colour. To the Greek this immersion in the sensuous was
indifferent. Greek sensuousness, therefore, does not fever the blood; it
is shameless and childlike. Christian asceticism, on the other hand,
discrediting the slightest touch of sense, has from time to time provoked
into strong emphasis the contrast or antagonism to itself, of the
artistic life, with its inevitable sensuousness.--I did but taste a
little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, and lo, I
must die!--It has sometimes seemed hard to pursue that life without
something of conscious disavowal of a spiritual world; and this imparts
to genuine artistic interests a kind of intoxication. From this
intoxication Winckelmann is free; he fingers those pagan marbles with
unsinged hands, with no sense of shame or loss.
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