* Goethe illustrates, too,
the preponderance in this marriage of the Hellenic element; and that
element, in its true essence, was made known to him by Winckelmann.
*Faust, Th. ii. Act. 3.
Breadth, centrality, with blitheness and repose, are the marks of
Hellenic culture. Is that culture a lost art? The local, accidental
colouring of its own age has passed from it; the greatness that is dead
looks greater when every link with what is slight and vulgar has been
severed; we can only see it at all in the reflected, refined light which
a high education creates for us. Can we bring down that ideal into the
gaudy, perplexed light of modern life?
Certainly, for us of the modern world, with its conflicting claims, its
entangled interests, distracted by so many sorrows, so many
preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, the problem of unity with
ourselves, in blitheness and repose, is far harder than it was for the
Greek within the simple terms of antique life. Yet, not less than ever,
the intellect demands completeness, centrality.
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