They receive
all this, together with the worship of Aphrodite, by way of Cyprus,
from Phoenicia, from the older, decrepit Eastern civilisation, itself
long since surfeited with that splendour; and they receive it in
frugal quantity, so frugal that their thoughts always go back to the
East, where there is the fulness of it, as to a wonder-land of art.
Received thus in frugal quantity, through many generations, that
world of Asiatic tectonics stimulates the sensuous capacity in them,
accustoms the hand to produce and the eye to appreciate the more
delicately enjoyable qualities of material things. But nowhere in
all this various and exquisite world of design is there as yet any
adequate sense of man himself, nowhere is there an insight into or
power over human form as the expression of human soul. Yet those
arts of design in which that younger people delights [221] have in
them already, as designed work, that spirit of reasonable order, that
expressive congruity in the adaptation of means to ends, of which the
fully developed admirableness of human form is but the consummation--
a consummation already anticipated in the grand and animated figures
of epic poetry, their power of thought, their laughter and tears.
Pages:
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260