repose. . . . The contemporaries of Pericles and Plato did not require
violent and surprising effects to stimulate weary attention or to
irritate an uneasy sensibility. A blooming and healthy body, capable
of all virile and gymnastic actions, a man or woman of fine growth and
noble race, a serene form in full light, a simple and natural harmony
of lines happily commingled, was the most animated spectacle they could
dwell on. They desired to contemplate man proportioned to his organs
and to his condition and endowed with every perfection within these
limits; they demanded nothing more and nothing less; anything besides
would have struck them as extravagance, deformity, or disease. Such is
the circle within which the simplicity of their culture kept them.[6]

In other words, Greek art expressed the rare quality of Greek life; its
naturalism, its compactness, its clearness. And it did so
instinctively both to the artist and the spectator. We are not to
think that because, in order to understand ancient art, it may be
necessary for us first to obtain a conception of life and then to match
it in art, this is essential to its appreciation. On the contrary, the
object of art is not beautiful {187} until it flashes the idea upon us,
communicating an ideal unity that is not intellectually articulate at
all. This must always be the effect upon contemporaries, in whom the
idea is so assimilated as to be unconscious. But the idea is there
none the less; and the full beauty cannot exist for any one who is
incapable of discerning the idea, and rejoicing in the apprehension of
it.

The incomparable excellence of Greek sculpture is due to a type of
genius in which clearness of mind and delicacy of touch are united.
Among the Greeks the term infinite was a term of disparagement; they
thought roundly and cleanly, thus preferring ideas to vague surmises.
This was their first gift. And, adding to it a sensitiveness to form,
they were enabled to _express themselves_, without redundancy and
exaggeration, bringing whatever medium they employed into accord with
the idea. It is this felicity and luminousness that gives to the art
of the Greeks a peculiar appeal to the intelligence. For the mind
delights in definiteness and light.

But the Greek conception of life belongs to an age preceding the advent
of what has proved to be the European religion. And Christianity has
so reconstructed the experience of the average man throug