The Unseen World and Other Essays [128]
over body formed no part of his theory of things. Such an idea would have been incomprehensible to a Greek in Plato's time. Their consciences were not over active. They were not burdened with a sense of sinfulness. Their aspirations were decidedly finite; and they believed in securing the maximum completeness of this terrestrial life. Consequently they never set the physical below the intellectual. To return to our author, they never, in their statues, subordinated symmetry to expression, the body to the head. They were interested not only in the prominence of the brows, the width of the forehead, and the curvature of the lips, but quite as much in the massiveness of the chest, the compactness of the thighs, and the solidity of the arms and legs. Not only the face, but the whole body, had for them its physiognomy. They left picturesqueness to the painter, and dramatic fervour to the poet; and keeping strictly before their eyes the narrow but exalted problem of representing the beauty of symmetry, they filled their sanctuaries and public places with those grand motionless people of brass, gold, ivory, copper, and marble, in whom humanity recognizes its highest artistic types. Statuary was the central art of Greece. No other art was so popular, or so completely expressed the national life. The number of statues was enormous. In later days, when Rome had spoiled the Greek world of its treasures, the Imperial City possessed a population of statues almost equal in number to its population of human beings. And at the present day, after all the destructive accidents of so many intervening centuries, it is estimated that more than sixty thousand statues have been obtained from Rome and its suburbs alone.
In citing this admirable exposition as a specimen of M. Taine's method of dealing with his subject, we have refrained from disturbing the pellucid current of thought by criticisms of our own. We think the foregoing explanation correct enough, so far as it goes, though it deals with the merest rudiments of the subject, and really does nothing toward elucidating the deeper mysteries of artistic production. For this there is needed a profounder psychology than M. Taine's. But whether his theory of art be adequate or not, there can be but one opinion as to the brilliant eloquence with which it is set forth. June, 1868.
XIV.
ATHENIAN AND AMERICAN LIFE.
IN a very interesting essay on British and Foreign Characteristics, published a few years ago, Mr. W. R. Greg quotes the famous letter of the Turkish cadi to Mr. Layard, with the comment that "it contains the germ and element of a wisdom to which our busy and bustling existence is a stranger"; and he uses it as a text for an instructive sermon on the "gospel of leisure." He urges, with justice, that the too eager and restless modern man, absorbed in problems of industrial development, may learn a wholesome lesson from the contemplation of his Oriental brother, who cares not to say, "Behold, this star spinneth round that star, and this other star with a tail cometh and goeth in so many years"; who aspires not after a "double stomach," nor hopes to attain to Paradise by "seeking with his eyes." If any one may be thought to stand in need of some such lesson, it is the American of to-day. Just as far as the Turk carries his apathy to excess, does the American carry to excess his restlessness. But just because the incurious idleness of the Turk is excessive, so as to be detrimental to completeness of living, it is unfit to supply us with the hints we need concerning the causes, character, and effects of our over-activity. A sermon of leisure, if it is to be of practical use to us, must not be a sermon of laziness. The Oriental state of mind is incompatible with progressive improvement of any sort, physical, intellectual, or moral. It is one of the phenomena attendant upon the arrival of a community at a stationary condition before it has acquired a complex civilization. And it appears serviceable rather as a background upon which to exhibit in relief our modern turmoil,
In citing this admirable exposition as a specimen of M. Taine's method of dealing with his subject, we have refrained from disturbing the pellucid current of thought by criticisms of our own. We think the foregoing explanation correct enough, so far as it goes, though it deals with the merest rudiments of the subject, and really does nothing toward elucidating the deeper mysteries of artistic production. For this there is needed a profounder psychology than M. Taine's. But whether his theory of art be adequate or not, there can be but one opinion as to the brilliant eloquence with which it is set forth. June, 1868.
XIV.
ATHENIAN AND AMERICAN LIFE.
IN a very interesting essay on British and Foreign Characteristics, published a few years ago, Mr. W. R. Greg quotes the famous letter of the Turkish cadi to Mr. Layard, with the comment that "it contains the germ and element of a wisdom to which our busy and bustling existence is a stranger"; and he uses it as a text for an instructive sermon on the "gospel of leisure." He urges, with justice, that the too eager and restless modern man, absorbed in problems of industrial development, may learn a wholesome lesson from the contemplation of his Oriental brother, who cares not to say, "Behold, this star spinneth round that star, and this other star with a tail cometh and goeth in so many years"; who aspires not after a "double stomach," nor hopes to attain to Paradise by "seeking with his eyes." If any one may be thought to stand in need of some such lesson, it is the American of to-day. Just as far as the Turk carries his apathy to excess, does the American carry to excess his restlessness. But just because the incurious idleness of the Turk is excessive, so as to be detrimental to completeness of living, it is unfit to supply us with the hints we need concerning the causes, character, and effects of our over-activity. A sermon of leisure, if it is to be of practical use to us, must not be a sermon of laziness. The Oriental state of mind is incompatible with progressive improvement of any sort, physical, intellectual, or moral. It is one of the phenomena attendant upon the arrival of a community at a stationary condition before it has acquired a complex civilization. And it appears serviceable rather as a background upon which to exhibit in relief our modern turmoil,