w of infidelity; still, the Olympic
Zeus may be taken as a sufficiently central type of a statue which was
no more supposed to _be_ Zeus, than the gold or elephants' tusks it was
made of; but in which the most splendid powers of human art were
exhausted in representing a believed and honored God to the happy and
holy imagination of a sincerely religious people.

49. (III.) The third stage of national existence follows, in which, the
imagination having now done its utmost, and being partly restrained by
the sanctities of tradition, which permit no farther change in the
conceptions previously created, begins to be superseded by logical
deduction and scientific investigation. At the same moment, the elder
artists having done all that is possible in realizing the national
conceptions of the gods, the younger ones, forbidden to change the
scheme of existing representations, and incapable of doing anything
better in that kind, betake themselves to refine and decorate the old
ideas with more attractive skill. Their aims are thus more and more
limited to manual dexterity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also in the
course of centuries, the methods of every art continually improving, and
being made subjects of popular inquiry, praise is now to be got, for
eminence in these, from the whole mob of the nation; whereas
intellectual design can never be discerned but by the few. So that in
this third era we find every kind of imitative and vulgar dexterity more
and more cultivated; while design and imagination are every day less
cared for, and less possible.

50. Meanwhile, as I have just said, the leading minds in literature and
science become continually more logical and investigative; and once that
they are established in the habit of testing facts accurately, a very
few years are enough to convince all the strongest thinkers that the old
imaginative religion is untenable, and cannot any longer be honestly
taught in its fixed traditional form, except by ignorant persons. And at
this point the fate of the people absolutely depends on the degree of
moral strength into which their hearts have been already trained. If it
be a strong, industrious, chaste, and honest race, the taking its old
gods, or at least the old forms of them, away from it, will indeed make
it deeply sorrowful and amazed; but will in no whit shake its will, nor
alter its practice. Exceptional persons, naturally disposed to become
drunkards, harlots, and cheats, but who