an_, this energy of the soul, what is it but the
energy of the infinite within the finite, of the eternal within time?
Art in whatever perfection it attains is but an illustration,
imperfect, of the spirit of man. The greatest books that ever were
written, the most exquisite sculptures that ever were carved, the most
delicate temples that ever were reared, the richest paintings that ever
came from Titian are all in themselves ultimately but the dust of the
soul of him who composes them, builds them, carves them. The
unrevealed and the unrevealable is the soul itself that in such works
is dimly adumbrated. The most perfect statue is but an imperfect
semblance of the beauty which the sculptor beheld, though intensifying
and reacting upon, and even in a sense consummating, that inward
vision; and the sublimest energy of imperial Rome derives its tragic
height from the degree to which it realizes the energy of the race.

In the Islam of Omar this law displays itself supremely, and with a
flame-like vividness. There the divine origin of the State which in
the Athens of Pericles is hidden or revealed in the myriad forms of
art, plastic or poetic, in the Rome of Sulla or Caesar in tragic
action, displays itself in naked purity and in majesty unadorned. If
artistic loveliness marks the age of Sophocles, tragic grandeur the
Rome of Augustus, mystic sublimity is the feature of the Islam of Omar.
The thought and the deed, +logos kai poiesis+, here are one.

Sec. 3. THE FALL OF EMPIRES: THE THEORY OF RETRIBUTION

We have now reached the final stage of our inquiry. Is there any law
by which the vicissitudes of the States, whose origin has been traced
through the individual to a remoter and more awful source, are fixed
and directed? And can the decay of empires, those supreme forms in the
development of States, be resolved into its determining causes, or do
we here confront a movement which is beyond the sphere ruled by cause
and effect?

In Western Europe a broken arch and some fragments of stone are often
all that mark the place where stood some perfect achievement of
mediaeval architecture, a feudal stronghold or an abbey. But on the
lower plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, a ruin hardly more
conspicuous may denote the seat of an empire. Such a region, fronting
the desert, formed a fit theatre for man's first speculations upon his
own destiny and that of the nations. Those two inquiries have
proceeded together.