y true witness being borne to his existence. For if the
Greeks, instead of multiplying representations of what they imagined to
be the figure of the god, had given us accurate drawings of the heroes
and battles of Marathon and Salamis, and had simply told us in plain
Greek what evidence they had of the power of Apollo, either through his
oracles, his help or chastisement, or by immediate vision, they would
have served their religion more truly than by all the vase-paintings and
fine statues that ever were buried or adored.

53. Now in this particular instance, and in many other examples of fine
Greek art, the two conditions of thought, symbolic and realistic, are
mingled; and the art is helpful, as I will hereafter show you, in one
function, and in the other so deadly, that I think no degradation of
conception of Deity has ever been quite so base as that implied by the
designs of Greek vases in the period of decline, say about 250 B. C.

[Footnote 9: I am again doubtful, here. The most important part of the
chapter is from Sec. 60 to end.]

But though among the Greeks it is thus nearly always difficult to say
what is symbolic and what realistic, in the range of Christian art the
distinction is clear. In that, a vast division of imaginative work is
occupied in the symbolism of virtues, vices, or natural powers or
passions; and in the representation of personages who, though nominally
real, become in conception symbolic. In the greater part of this work
there is no intention of implying the existence of the represented
creature; Duerer's Melencolia and Giotto's Justice are accurately
characteristic examples. Now all such art is wholly good and useful when
it is the work of good men.

54. Again, there is another division of Christian work in which the
persons represented, though nominally real, are treated as
dramatis-personae of a poem, and so presented confessedly as subjects of
imagination. All this poetic art is also good when it is the work of
good men.

55. There remains only therefore to be considered, as truly religious,
the work which definitely implies and modifies the conception of the
existence of a real person. There is hardly any great art which entirely
belongs to this class; but Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola is as
accurate a type of it as I can give you; Holbein's Madonna at Dresden,
the Madonna di San Sisto, and the Madonna of Titian's Assumption, all
belong mainly to this class, but are remo