But in order to represent the gods in their true individuality, it does not suffice to distinguish them by certain particular attributes. Moreover, classic art does not confine itself to representing these personages as immovable and self-absorbed; it shows them also in movement and in action. The character of the gods then particularizes itself, and exhibits the special features of which the physiognomy of each god is composed. This is the accidental, positive, historic side, which figures in mythology and also in art, as an accessory but necessary element.
These materials are furnished by history or fable. They are the antecedents, the local particulars, which give to the gods their living individuality and originality. Some are borrowed from the symbolic religions, which preserve a vestige thereof in the new creation; the symbolic element is absorbed in the new myth. Others have a national origin, which, again, is connected with heroic times and foreign traditions. Others, finally, spring from local circumstances, relating to the propagation of the myths, to their formation, to the usages and ceremonies of worship, etc. All these materials fashioned by art, give to the Greek gods the appearance, the interest, and the charm, of living humanity. But this traditional side, which in its origin had a symbolic sense, loses it little by little; it is designed only to complete the individuality of the gods, to give to them a more human and more sensuous form, to add, through details frequently unworthy of divine majesty, the side of the arbitrary and accidental. Sculpture, which represents the pure ideal, ought, without wholly excluding it in fact, to allow it to appear as little as possible; it represents it as accessory in the head-dress, the arms, the ornaments, the external attributes. Another source for the more precise determination of the character of the gods is their intervention in the actions and circumstances of human life. Here the imagination of the poet expands itself as an inexhaustible source in a crowd of particular histories, of traits of character and actions, attributed to the gods. The problem of art consists in combining, in a natural and living manner, the actions of divine personages and human actions, in such a manner that the gods appear as the general cause of what man himself accomplishes. The gods, thus, are the internal principles which reside in the depths of the human soul; its own passions, in so far as they are elevated, and its personal thought; or it is the necessity of the situation, the force of circumstances, from whose fatal action man suffers. It is this which pierces through all the situations where Homer causes the gods to intervene, and through the manner in which they influence events.
But through this side, the gods of classic art abandon, more and more, the silent serenity of the ideal, to descend into the multiplicity of individual situations, of actions, and into the conflict of human passions. Classic art thus finds itself drawn to the last degree of individualization; it falls into the agreeable and the graceful. The divine is absorbed in the finite which is addressed exclusively to the sensibility and no longer satisfies thought. Imagination and art, seizing this side and exaggerating it more and more, corrupt religion itself. The severe ideal gives place to merely sensuous beauty and harmony; it removes itself more and more from the eternal ideas which form the ground of religion and art, and these are dragged down to ruin.
3. In fact, independently of the external causes which have occasioned the decadence of Greek art and precipitated its downfall, many internal causes, in the very nature of the Greek ideal, rendered that downfall inevitable. In the first place, the Greek gods, as we have seen, bear in themselves the germ of their destruction, and the defect which they conceal is unveiled by the representations of classic art itself. The plurality of the gods and their diversity makes them already accidental existences; this multiplicity cannot satisfy reason. Thought dissolves them and makes them return to a single divinity. Moreover, the gods do not remain in their eternal repose; they enter into action, take part in the interests, in the passions, and mingle in the collisions of human life. The multitude of relations in which they are engaged, as actors in this drama, destroys their divine majesty; contradicts their grandeur, their dignity, their beauty. In the true ideal itself, that of sculpture, we observe something, the inanimate, impassive, cold, a serious air of silent mournfulness, which indicates that something higher weighs them down—destiny, supreme unity, blind divinity, the immutable fate to which gods and men are alike subject.
But the principal cause is, that absolute necessity making no integral part of their personality, and being foreign to them, the particular individual side is no longer restrained in its downward course; it is developed more and more without hindrance and without limit. They suffer themselves to be drawn into the external accidents of human life, and fall into all the imperfections of anthropomorphism. Hence the ruin of these beautiful divinities of art is inevitable. The moral consciousness turns away from them and rejects them. The gods, it is true, are ethical persons, but under the human and corporeal form. Now, true morality appears only in the conscience, and under a purely spiritual form. The point of view of the beautiful is neither that of religion nor that of morality. The infinite, invisible spirituality is the divine for the religious consciousness. For the moral consciousness, the good is an idea, a conception, an obligation, which commands the sacrifice of sense. It is in vain, then, to be enthusiastic over Greek art and beauty, to admire those beautiful divinities. The soul does not recognize herself wholly in the object of her contemplation or her worship. What she conceives as the true ideal is a God, spiritual, infinite, absolute, personal, endowed with moral qualities, with justice, goodness, etc.
It is this whose image the gods of Greek polytheism, in spite of their beauty, do not present us.
As to the transition from the Greek mythology to a new religion and a new art, it could no longer be effected in the domain of the imagination. In the origin of Greek art, the transition appears under the form of a conflict between the old and the new gods, in the very domain of art and imagination. Here it is upon the more serious territory of history that this revolution is accomplished. The new idea appears, not as a revelation of art, nor under the form of myth and of fable, but in history itself, by the course of events, by the appearance of God himself upon earth, where he was born, lived, and arose from the dead. Here is a field of ideas which Art did not invent, and which it finds too high for it. The gods of classic art have existence only in the imagination; they were visible only in stone and wood; they were not both flesh and spirit. This real existence of God in flesh and spirit, Christianity, for the first time, showed in the life and actions of a God present among men. This transition cannot, then, be accomplished in the domain of art, because the God of revealed religion is the real and living God. Compared with him, his adversaries are only imaginary beings, who cannot be taken seriously and meet him on the field of history. The opposition and conflict cannot, then, present the character of a serious strife, and be represented as such by Art or Poetry. Therefore, always, whenever any one has attempted to make of this subject, among moderns, a poetic theme, he has done it in an impious and frivolous manner, as in “The War of the Gods,” by Parny.
On the other hand, it would be useless to regret, as has been frequently done in prose and in verse, the loss of the Greek ideal and pagan mythology, as being more favorable to art and poetry than the Christian faith, to which is granted a higher moral verity, while it is regarded as inferior in respect to art and the Beautiful.
Christianity has a poetry and an art of its own; an ideal essentially different from the Greek ideal and art. Here all parallel is superficial. Polytheism is anthropomorphism. The gods of Greece are beautiful divinities under the human form. As soon as reason has comprehended God as Spirit and as Infinite Being, there appear other ideas, other sentiments, other demands, which ancient art is incapable of satisfying, to which it cannot attain, which call, consequently, for a new art, a new poetry. Thus, regrets are superfluous; comparison has no more any significance, it is only a text for declamation. What one could object to seriously in Christianity, its tendencies to mysticism, to asceticism, which, in fact, are hostile to art, are only exaggerations of its principle. But the thought which constitutes the ground of Christianity, and true Christian sentiment, far from being opposed to art, are very favorable to it. Hence springs up a new art, inferior, it is true, in certain respects, to antique art—in sculpture, for example—but which is superior in other respects, as is its idea when compared with the pagan idea.
In all this, we are making but a resumé of the ideas of the author. We must do him the justice to say, that wherever he speaks of Christian art, he does it worthily, and exhibits a spirit free from all sectarian prejudice.