The Crown of Wild Olive
to incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity in
defining it), was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble and
false phase of Idolatry, which consists in the attribution of a
spiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seeking
phase of it, to which I shall in these lectures[118] give the general
term of Imagination;--that is to say, the invention of material symbols
which may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods,
spirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least implying
the actual presence of such Beings among us, or even their possession,
in reality, of the forms we attribute to them.
67. For instance, in the ordinarily received Greek type of Athena, on
vases of the Phidian time (sufficiently represented in the opposite
woodcut), no Greek would have supposed the vase on which this was
painted to be itself Athena, nor to contain Athena inside of it, as the
Arabian fisherman's casket contained the genie; neither did he think
that this rude black painting, done at speed as the potter's fancy urged
his hand, represented anything like the form or aspect of the Goddess
herself. Nor would he have thought so, even had the image been ever so
beautifully wrought. The goddess might, indeed, visibly appear under the
form of an armed virgin, as she might under that of a hawk or a swallow,
when it pleased her to give such manifestation of her presence; but it
did not, therefore, follow that she was constantly invested with any of
these forms, or that the best which human skill could, even by her own
aid, picture of her, was, indeed, a likeness of her. The real use, at
all events, of this rude image, was only to signify to the eye and heart
the facts of the existence, in some manner, of a Spirit of wisdom,
perfect in gentleness, irresistible in anger; having also physical
dominion over the air which is the life and breadth of all creatures,
and clothed, to human eyes, with aegis of fiery cloud, and raiment of
falling dew.
68. In the yet more abstract conception of the Spirit of agriculture, in
which the wings of the chariot represent the winds of spring, and its
crested dragons are originally a mere type of the seed with its twisted
root piercing the ground, and sharp-edged leaves rising above it; we are
in still less danger of mistaking the symbol for the presumed form of an
actual Person. But I must, with persistence, beg of you to observe that
in all the noble actions of imagination in this kind, the distinction
from idolatry consists, not in the denial of the being, or presence of
the Spirit, but only in the due recognition of our human incapacity to
conceive the one, or compel the other.
69. Farther--and for this statement I claim your attention still more
earnestly. As no nation has ever attained real greatness during periods
in which it was subject to any condition of Idolatry, so no nation has
ever attained or persevered in greatness, except in reaching and
maintaining a passionate Imagination of a spiritual estate higher than
that of men; and of spiritual creatures nobler than men, having a quite
real and personal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us.
And all the arts of the present age deserving to be included under the
name of sculpture have been degraded by us, and all principles of just
policy have vanished from us,--and that totally,--for this double
reason; that we are on one side, given up to idolatries of the most
servile kind, as I showed you in the close of the last lecture,--while,
on the other hand, we have absolutely ceased from the exercise of
faithful imagination; and the only remnants of the desire of truth which
remain in us have been corrupted into a prurient itch to discover the
origin of life in the nature of the dust, and prove that the source of
the order of the universe is the accidental concurrence of its atoms.
70. Under these two calamities of our time, the art of sculpture has
perished more totally than any other, because the object of that art is
exclusively the representation of form as the exponent of life. It is
essentially concerned only with the human form, which is the exponent of
the highest life we know; and with all subordinate forms only as they
exhibit conditions of vital power which have some certain relation to
humanity. It deals with the "particula undique desecta" of the animal
nature, and itself contemplates, and brings forward for its disciples'
contemplation, all the energies of creation which transform the [Greek:
pelos], or lower still, the [Greek: borboros] of the _trivia_, by
Athena's help, into forms of power;--([Greek: to men holon architekton
autos en. syneirgazeto de toi kai e 'Athena empneousa ton pelon kai
empsycha poiousa einai ta plasmata];)[119]--but it has nothing whatever
to do with the representation of forms not living, however beautiful,
(as of clouds or waves); nor may it condescend to use its perfect skill,
except in expressing the noblest conditions of life.
These laws of sculpture, being wholly contrary to the practice of our
day, I cannot expect you to accept on my assertion, nor do I wish you to
do so. By placing definitely good and bad sculpture before you, I do not
doubt but that I shall gradually prove to you the nature of all
excelling and enduring qualities; but to-day I will only confirm my
assertions by laying before you the statement of the Greeks themselves
on the subject; given in their own noblest time, and assuredly
authoritative, in every point which it embraces, for all time to come.
71. If any of you have looked at the explanation I have given of the
myth of Athena in my _Queen of the Air_, you cannot but have been
surprised that I took scarcely any note of the story of her birth. I did
not, because that story is connected intimately with the Apolline myths;
and is told of Athena, not essentially as the goddess of the air, but as
the goddess of Art-Wisdom.
You have probably often smiled at the legend itself, or avoided thinking
of it, as revolting. It is indeed, one of the most painful and childish
of sacred myths; yet remember, ludicrous and ugly as it seems to us,
this story satisfied the fancy of the Athenian people in their highest
state; and if it did not satisfy--yet it was accepted by, all later
mythologists: you may also remember I told you to be prepared to find
that, given a certain degree of national intellect, the ruder the
symbol, the deeper would be its purpose. And this legend of the birth of
Athena is the central myth of all that the Greeks have left us
respecting the power of their arts; and in it they have expressed, as it
seemed good to them, the most important things they had to tell us on
these matters. We may read them wrongly; but we must read them here, if
anywhere.
72. There are so many threads to be gathered up in the legend, that I
cannot hope to put it before you in total clearness, but I will take
main points. Athena is born in the island of Rhodes; and that island is
raised out of the sea by Apollo, after he had been left without
inheritance among the gods. Zeus[120] would have cast the lot again, but
Apollo orders the golden-girdled Lachesis to stretch out her hands; and
not now by chance or lot, but by noble enchantment, the island rises out
of the sea.
Physically, this represents the action of heat and light on chaos,
especially on the deep sea. It is the "Fiat lux" of Genesis, the first
process in the conquest of Fate by Harmony. The island is dedicated to
the Nymph Rhodos, by whom Apollo has the seven sons who teach [Greek:
sophotata noemata]; because the rose is the most beautiful organism
existing in matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of light
on the earth, giving lovely form and colour at once; (compare the use of
it by Dante as the form of the sainted crowd in highest heaven) and
remember that, therefore, the rose is in the Greek mind, essentially a
Doric flower, expressing the worship of Light, as the Iris or Ion is an
Ionic one, expressing the worship of the Winds and Dew.
73. To understand the agency of Hephaestus at the birth of Athena, we
must again return to the founding of the arts on agriculture by the
hand. Before you can cultivate land you must clear it; and the
characteristic weapon of Hephaestus,--which is as much his attribute as
the trident is of Poseidon, and the rhabdos of Hermes, is not, as you
would have expected, the hammer, but the clearing-axe--the doubled-edged
[Greek: pelekys], the same that Calypso gives Ulysses with which to cut
down the trees for his home voyage; so that both the naval and
agricultural strength of the Athenians are expressed by this weapon,
with which they had to hew out their fortune. And you must keep in mind
this agriculturally laborious character of Hephaestus, even when he is
most distinctly the god of serviceable fire; thus Horace's perfect
epithet for him "avidus" expresses at once the devouring eagerness of
fire, and the zeal of progressive labour, for Horace gives it to him
when he is fighting against the giants. And this rude symbol of his
cleaving the forehead of Zeus with the axe, and giving birth to Athena
signifies, indeed, physically the thrilling power of heat in the
heavens, rending the clouds, and giving birth to the blue air; but far
more deeply it signifies the subduing of adverse Fate by true labour;
until, out of the chasm, cleft by resolute and industrious fortitude,
springs the Spirit of Wisdom.
74. Here (Fig. 4) is an early drawing of the myth, to which I shall have
to refer afterwards in illustration of the childishness of the Greek
mind at the time when its art-symbols were first fixed; but it is of
peculiar value, because the physical character of Vulcan, as fire, is
indicated by his wearing the [Greek: endromides] of Hermes, while the
antagonism of Zeus, as the adverse chaos, either of cloud or of fate, is
shown by his striking at Hephaestus with his thunderbolt. But Plate IV.
gives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow it to be
deciphered) a characteristic representation of the scene, as conceived
in later art.
75. I told you in a former lecture of this course that the entire Greek
intellect was in a childish phase as compared to that of modern times.
Observe, however, childishness does not necessarily imply universal
inferiority: there may be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemn childhood,
and there may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition of advanced
life; but the one is still essentially the childish, and the other the
adult phase of existence.
76. You will find, then, that the Greeks were the first people that were
born into complete humanity. All nations before them had been, and all
around them still were, partly savage, bestial, clay-encumbered,
inhuman; still semi-goat, or semi-ant, or semi-stone, or semi-cloud. But
the power of a new spirit came upon the Greeks, and the stones were
filled with breath, and the clouds clothed with flesh; and then came the
great spiritual battle between the Centaurs and Lapithae; and the living
creatures became "Children of Men." Taught, yet, by the Centaur--sown,
as they knew, in the fang--from the dappled skin of the brute, from the
leprous scale of the serpent, their flesh came again as the flesh of a
little child, and they were clean.
Fix your mind on this as the very central character of the Greek
race--the being born pure and human out of the brutal misery of the
past, and looking abroad, for the first time, with their children's
eyes, wonderingly open, on the strange and divine world.
77. Make some effort to remember, so far as may be possible to you,
either what you felt in yourselves when you were young, or what you have