INFLUENCE OF THE FINE ARTS ON EDUCATION.
It behoves us now to quit the circle of studies, which, taken together, are commonly supposed to constitute the whole of education, and consider the influence exercised by other elements on the minds of the Hellenic youth. Even in these days we speak intelligibly and correctly of that experience which young men gain on their first entrance into life, from travel and fashionable society, as of a particular stage in their education, it being during that period that they learn to estimate the value of their school acquirements, how advantageously to conceal or display them according to circumstances, and to bend the neck, perchance, of their lofty theories and sublime speculations to the yoke of the world. But in Greece this was more palpably the case; for, though escaped from the formal rule of preceptors and pædagogues, the youth had still to master several departments of study, either by their own independent exertions or under the guidance of judicious friends: I mean those infinitely varied creations of art and literature, which, as they are in harmony with them or otherwise, confirm or subvert the principles and discipline of the schools.
Thoroughly to comprehend, therefore, the nature and extent of that sway which the state and its institutions directly or indirectly exerted over the minds of the citizens, it is necessary briefly to inquire into the character of the plastic and mimetic arts which found encouragement in the Grecian commonwealths, and afterwards to examine for a moment the stores of thought and sentiment and passion, and piety and virtue, which the literature and religion of Greece laid open to the contemplation of those who were entering upon the career of life. We shall begin with the arts, as they were the inculcators of the principle of the beautiful, advance next to literature, the teacher of wisdom and patriotism, concluding with religion, which opened up to their view a prospect, though dim, of heaven, and directed their footsteps thitherward.
It is certain that, to the generality, the vast superiority of the Greeks in the arts, which like an universal language need no translation, is more palpable and apparent than their superiority in literature; though Demosthenes be in reality as much above any orator, Thucydides above any historian, Plato above any philosopher, Homer above any epic poet, Milton perhaps excepted, who has since written, as Pheidias, or Polycletos, or Praxiteles rose above any sculptor of the north. Nor can we account for this any more than we can explain why Shakespeare was superior to Ford or Massinger. Nature infused more genius into their souls. They loved or rather worshiped the beautiful. It breathed within and around them: their minds were pregnant with it, and, when they brought forth, beauty was their offspring. Thus Aristophanes[[927]] insinuates, that even the gods borrowed much of their majesty and splendour from the human mind, when he says, that heaven-born peace derived her loveliness from some relationship to Pheidias.
Religion, in one sense, may be called the parent of the fine arts; but it would perhaps be more philosophical to consider religion and the arts as twin sisters, both sprung from that yearning after the ideal which constituted the most marked feature in the Hellenic mind. We must carry back our investigations very far, if we would discover them radiant with loveliness in their cradle; but when they issued thence it was to shed light over the earth, a light derived from the skies. For man does not originate his ideas of the beautiful, which fall like images from heaven on the speculum of his mind; he gives back but what he receives. The conception of beauty is an inspiration, a thing which does not come when called upon; or rather, shining on all, it is lost on the dull and opaque fancy, and is reflected only from the luminous and bright.
Man needs companionship always, and the creative and imaginative make to themselves companions of their own ideas, and clothe them in material forms to render the illusion more complete. There is an impassioned intercourse between the soul and its offspring. We love nothing like that which has sprung from ourselves, and in this we are truly the image of God, who saw all things that he had made, and, behold, they were very good. And he loved his creation; and from him we inherit, as his children, the love we bear to our creations. Hence the enthusiasm for art, hence the power and the inspiration of poetry. They are not things of earth. They are the seeds of immortality ripening prematurely here below; and therefore we should love them. They are the warrant, the proof that we are of God; that we are born to exercise an irresistible sway over the elements; that our thrones are building elsewhere; that in the passion for whatever is spiritual we exhibit instinctively indubitable tokens that spirits we are, and in a spiritual world only can find our home.
It does not belong to this work to attempt a history of Grecian art, which in a certain sense has been already written. My object, if I can accomplish it, is to describe the spirit by which that art was created and sustained, and this I should do triumphantly if love were synonymous with power; for never, since the fabled artist hung enamoured over the marble he had fashioned, did any man’s imagination cleave more earnestly to the spirit that presided over Grecian art, not the plastic merely but every form of it, from the epic in poetry and sculpture down to the signet ring and the drinking song. But the thing is an ample apology for the enthusiasm. There, if anywhere, we discover the culminating point of human intellect and human genius;—there
“The vision and the faculty divine”
meet us at every step. Even the fragments of her literature and her art are gathered up and treasured in all civilised countries, as if the fate of our race were mystically bound up in them. And so it is: for when we cease to love the beautiful, of which they are the most perfect realisation we know, our own race of glory and greatness will have been run: we shall be close on the verge, nay, within the pale of barbarism.
Socrates used to say, that whatever we know we can explain; but not so always with what we feel. There is in the ideal of beauty, which formed the vivifying principle of Greek art, a certain subtile and fugitive delicacy, a certain nameless grace, a certain volatile and fleeting essence, which defy definition, and, rejecting the aid of language, persist in presenting themselves naked to the mind. And by the mind only, and only, moreover, by the inspired mind, can they be discerned.