The festive gods of the "Iliad" made man a deity
to himself, and his soul the dwelling-place of Ideal Beauty. In this
Ideal they lived, and moved and had their being, and came forth thence,
bronze, marble, chryselephantine, a statuesque and naked humanity,
chaste in uncomprehended sin and glorified in antique virtue. The Beauty
of this natural Life and the Love of it was the soul of the Greek Ideal;
and the nation continually cherished and cultivated and refined this
Ideal with impulses from groves of Arcadia, vales of Tempe, and flowery
slopes of Attica, from the manliness of Olympic Games and the loveliness
of Spartan Helens. They cherished and cultivated and refined it, because
here they set up their altars to known gods and worshipped attributes
which they could understand. The Ideal was their religion, and the Art
which came from it the expression of their highest aspiration.
Lines of Beauty, produced in such a soil, were not, as might at first
be supposed, tropic growths of wanton and luxurious curves, wild,
spontaneous utterances of superabundant Life.
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