The first element is the province of the unconscious artist. He trusts his own subjective imagination, and sees things only from his individual point of view.
The second tries to compare the different products of art, to draw analogies between them, and to assign causes for certain forms. This is the province of the chronicler, the antiquary, and the art-historian.
The third reaches the sphere of philosophical consciousness. In it the esthetical writer combines a correct appreciation of art as a grand total, with all its essential details. He sees distinctly its inner element based on immutable general laws, and comprehends the necessary organism, without which an artistic work cannot exist.
Poetry and philosophy, like art, passed through these developments in Greece. First we have the epic and lyric poets: Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Alkæus, and Pindar; next the dramatic poets: Æschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides. At last the philosophers and historians: Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Thukydides, and Xenophon.
In analogy with these purely mental phases we have in art: the architect, who constructs a small world of organic coherence out of inorganic matter by means of his imagination; the sculptor, who reproduces with discernment the organic world around him in inorganic matter, but endows it with individual expression and feeling; the painter at last, who creates with his colours a union of spirit and matter, of idea and form.
Beauty was in all Greek products the vital element. ‘True beauty, the companion of the gods, must be sought for,’ says Pausanias, and makes no advances; it is too elevated to communicate itself,’ And Plato propounds: ‘The Supreme has no image; he converses only with the wise; with the vulgar he shows himself proud and forbidding; always equal, he expresses the emotion of the souls, he wraps himself in the delicious calm of that divine nature of which the great masters in the arts, according to ancient writers, endeavoured to seize the type.’ This delicious calm may be traced everywhere in Greek art, and forms its essential element.
The temples of the Greeks were national and public buildings. They were not mere shrines destined as exclusive dwelling-places for some visible or invisible, concrete or abstract, theocratic monster. They were the central spots for their national assemblies, their gatherings, and for the celebration of their public festivities.
The Olympian, Pythian, Nemæan, and Isthmian games attracted visitors to these temples. These games did not consist of mere exhibitions of athletic prowess; but poets like Pindar—tragedians like Æschylus and Sophokles—historians like Herodotus—read to enraptured audiences the masterly products of their intellectual powers. Wrestlers and runners, sculptors and poets, and tragic and comic writers vied with one another to be crowned with a laurel wreath, or to receive a palm-twig, some a crown, or a tripod. No sordid feeling of gain mingled with their yet unalloyed pleasure in being distinguished for mere distinction’s sake; the commercial question was unregarded. The prizes, given away in the sight of the delighted masses, were for everything—for bodily as well as for intellectual excellence—even for proficiency in the art of kissing. At the festival of the Philesian Apollo a prize for the most exquisite kiss was conferred upon a young lady. At Sparta and at Lesbos, in the temple of Here, and also among the citizens of Parrhasia, women contended for the prizes with men. How much we try to imitate Greek customs may be judged from the fact, that we also give prizes for exquisite dogs, cats out of proportion, and fat babies; but we are sorry to say, that this is done with a keen eye to business—to advertise a baby-food or a dog-or cat-fancier. That art is not altogether Greek with us need astonish no one. We are trained for practical purposes, but the Greeks were trained to appreciate beauty, symmetry, and harmony, not in verses only, but also in the human frame and in every product of art. Architecture with them was thoroughly plastic; it was never subservient to some metaphysical subtlety; it was finished in itself; a total of which every part formed, as in the human body, a completing element—without which the whole conception of a temple would be as incomplete as a man without arms, legs, or toes. The Greek temple entirely differed from the gloomy buildings of Egypt or India, which were constructed as symbols of hell, earth, and heaven; hell was for the sinners, the outcasts and the poor; earth for the respectable middle-classes; and heaven for the priests, the kings and their high officials. The constructions never made any attempt at symmetrical beauty, but aimed only at gorgeous pomp, in order to overawe the credulous mob—mystery was their essence. Sudden turnings placed the terrified worshipper, unawares, face to face with some colossal idol, looking to the excited and surprised imagination twice as large as it was, and ascending and descending staircases visibly divided the temple into abodes of splendour and horror. With the ancient Greeks in constructing a temple, the first question was the aim of the building; to whom was it to be dedicated—to Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, Minerva or Venus? This question once decided, the most convenient spot, in accordance with the character of the god to whose worship the temple was to be dedicated, was chosen. The building to be erected was always to be in harmony with the surrounding scenery.
The temple with the Greeks generally stood on a terrace-like base of several steps.
The Doric, Ionic, and Korinthian orders, as architectural subdivisions, are most usual. So far as the different styles are concerned, a fourth must be added, which modern art-historians call the Attic. The Greeks were undoubtedly the first people who succeeded in producing architectural works of art; they were also the first:—