ng thing about this extraordinarily unified nature is
that it was composed of hostile worlds; a brutal materialism and serene
idealism, an infatuation with pagan strength and beauty and a Christian
mysticism; a mixture of physical violence and intellectual abstraction;
a platonic soul in an athlete's body. That indissoluble union of
opposing forces which undoubtedly caused part of his suffering was also
the cause of his unique greatness. We feel that the supreme balance of
his art is the result of a fierce struggle, and it is the sense of that
struggle which gives to the work its heroic character. All is passion
even to the abstract idea, so that idealism, which with many artists is
a cause of coldness and death, is here a hearth burning with love and
hate.[130]

There is undoubtedly a danger in that mystic faith which loses itself in
inward visions of such charm that they often leave a feeling of only
disgust and contempt for reality.

Non vider gli occhi mei cosa mortale

* * *

E se creata a Dio non fusse eguale
Altro che 'l bel di fuor, ch'a gl'occhi piace,
Piu non vorria; ma perch'e si fallace,
Tracende nella forma universale.[131]

Varchi was quite right in recognising in Michelangelo the Socratic
spirit.[132] Whether he gained these ideas from the teaching of the
great Platonists with whom he had talked as a youth in the gardens of
San Marco or whether that teaching had merely revealed to him his true
nature there is certainly a close relationship between the theories on
art of the school of Socrates and those of Michelangelo.

Parrhasius believed in representing only "the perspective, the light and
the shadow, the softness, hardness and surface of bodies." Socrates
taught him that the object of painting is to represent the soul and the
innermost being.[133] "The fields and trees can teach me nothing," he
says in the "Phaedo"; "I only find what is useful to me among men in the
towns." These very men only interested him because there was something
eternal in them. The fugitive and changing side of their physiognomy,
which for us makes the delicate charm of life and the object of
painting, seemed to him an empty and wearisome illusion. Art creates
illusions. The objects which it represents are "the dreams of the human
imagination offered to people who can see. It is an image which one
shows in the distance to little children who can not reason, in order
to create illusions for them.