Part 21 (1/2)
'Then do you think any less of our argument because we cannot prove that it is possible to found a state of the kind we have described?'
'Surely not,' he said....
'Then do not compel me to show that what we have decided in our argument could in all respects be reproduced in experience. If we manage to discover how a state could be organized in any close correspondence to our description, then you must allow that we have discovered that your commands could be realized. Will you not be content with that? I certainly should be.'
'Yes, I will,' he said.
'Then next apparently we must try to discover ... what is the smallest change by which a state might arrive at this manner of const.i.tution....'
'Most certainly,' he said.
'Well, there is one change,' I said, 'which I think we could certainly prove would bring about the revolution. It is certainly neither a small nor an easy change, but it is possible.'
'What is it?' he said.
'Now,' I said, 'I am at the very topic which we likened to the greatest wave. Spoken, however, it shall be, even though it is likely to deluge me with laughter and ridicule.... Consider then what I am about to say.'
'Say on,' he said.
'Unless,' I said, 'lovers of wisdom bear sovereign rule in states, or those who are now called sovereigns and governors become sincere and capable lovers of wisdom, and government and love of wisdom be brought together, and unless the numerous natures who at present pursue either government or wisdom, the one to the exclusion of the other, be forcibly debarred from this behaviour, there will be no respite from evil, my dear Glaucon, for states, nor, I fancy, for humanity; nor will this const.i.tution, which we have just described in our argument, come to that realization which is possible for it and see the light of day. It is this which has for so long made me hesitate to speak. I saw how paradoxical it would sound. For it is given to few to perceive that no other const.i.tution could ever bring happiness either to states or individuals.'
Thus far the philosopher of antiquity. His words are sometimes interpreted as a cry for some philosopher-genius to take the task of government out of our too feeble grasp. But that is not his message for us. The age in which philosopher-emperors were possible has pa.s.sed beyond recall. To us Plato's words are an appeal to become, each and all of us, in our own sphere, lovers of wisdom according to the measure of our ability. If we would amend the world around us--and it is in sore need of amendment--our first duty is to eschew falsehood and to follow truth in our own lives, in our thoughts and actions. Revolutions spring not from without inwards but from within outwards; and it is often when the external world seems most sick and sorrowful, when selfishness and irresponsibility sit enthroned in the world's seats of government, that the power of truth is most active in the silent region of the soul, strengthening it in order that it may issue forth once again to impress man's unconquerable purpose of order, justice and freedom upon the recalcitrant material which forms the stuff of men's common problems on this small globe of ours.
A. E. ZIMMERN.
THE LAMPS OF GREEK ART
Amid the superficialities and struggles of the world around us, it is refres.h.i.+ng to turn back for a moment to the mellow wisdom of Matthew Arnold; and I will start with a quotation from _Literature and Dogma_: 'As well imagine a man with a sense for sculpture not cultivating it by the help of the remains of Greek art, or a man with a sense for poetry not cultivating it by the help of Homer and Shakespeare, as a man with a sense for conduct not cultivating it by the help of the Bible.' To Arnold the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, Greek art, are the great and eternal cla.s.sics, which for all time must be the stimulus and the models for the greatest of human achievements. Beyond doubt in the fifty years since Arnold wrote there has been a marked drift away from cla.s.sics of every kind. To acknowledge cla.s.sics at all seems a survival of the spirit of aristocracy. We are convinced that we are better than our fathers, and must break away from their tutelage. In some degree this arises out of the unrest and nervous strain produced by the great war.
But it does not come only from nervous tension. It is a definite tendency of society, which has to be considered on its merits by all who feel called on to take a share in the world movement. We cannot ignore those who are drifting away from the settled anchorages, or we run the risk of being ignored ourselves.
The task has fallen to me to try to give reasons why Greek art has still a claim on our attention. Among Englishmen the appreciation of art never has been and never can be as keen as the appreciation of poetry and philosophy. But on the other hand I think it can be shown that in the field of art our debt to Greece is even greater than in the field of philosophy and poetry. For in these latter we have a certain national genius, and have produced cla.s.sics recognized through Europe. But in art our achievements have been but moderate; and at the present time a living sense of art is probably rarer among us than in any highly civilized country except America.
I will begin with a bold a.s.sertion, which I hope to justify as we proceed. But for ancient Greece, the art of Europe would to-day be on much the same level as the fantastic and degraded art of India. And but for the continued influence of Greek art, that of Europe would continually be in danger of drifting into chaotic extravagance.
In the century before the Persian wars of 500-480 B. C., Greece, both Ionian and Dorian, was throwing out fresh shoots of life in every direction, breaking through the crust of archaic convention, producing a new standard of excellence, in poetry, in philosophy, in history, and in art. In every province, morals, intellect, imagination, Greece was striking out, to the right and the left. And in the century after the Persian wars, she reaped the full harvest of her splendid sowing, and produced the masterpieces which have remained ever since memorable, to the study of which each generation recurs, and whence it learns of what human nature is capable.
After 400 B. C. there was not, as many suppose, a sudden decline in the quality of artistic production. Many of the works of the later centuries were in their way almost unsurpa.s.sable. The philosophy of Aristotle, the poetry of Theocritus, such statues as the Aphrodite of Melos and the Victory of Samothrace, are great lights for all time. But the works of maturity have seldom the charm which marks those which are full of the optimism and promise of youth.
Ruskin has written an admirable work on the Seven Lamps of Architecture, a work which, though it sometimes pa.s.ses into extravagance, is full of suggestion and even inspiration. It seems to me strange that while the economic views of Ruskin, full of generosity, but also wanting in measure and any basis of fact, should still be current among us, his writings on art, in which his genius had full course, should be comparatively neglected. However that may be, as one who has been greatly stimulated by those writings, I propose to try to produce a faint echo of one of them by speaking successively of the lamps of Greek art, lamps which give us light and serve to show our way. I find in Greek art eight notable features: (1) Humanism, (2) Simplicity, (3) Balance and Measure, (4) Naturalism, (5) Idealism, (6) Patience, (7) Joy, (8) Fellows.h.i.+p.
As my s.p.a.ce is closely limited I cannot attempt to develop the subject of Greek art in all its provinces and in all its bearings. I must limit myself to the art of sculpture, the most characteristic branch, and the only branch which has left us sufficient materials for the formation of a satisfactory notion. And I must limit myself further to such of the sculpture as represents the human form. In the representation of some animals, such as the horse, the later Greeks produced some wonderful examples, but in the depiction of animals other peoples have rivalled them, whereas in the depiction of men and women they stand alone.
I
_Humanism._ Three great discoveries lay open to the awakened spirit of man, when he began to realize and reflect upon his surroundings. The first was the discovery of G.o.d, which was mainly the work of the Prophets of Israel, though no doubt Greece added much on the intellectual side; and the religions both of Judaea and Greece were carried to a higher point by Christianity. The second was the discovery of man himself, which was in all essentials the great work of Greek thinkers and writers. The third, begun in Greece, has been carried very much farther in modern times, the discovery of nature and her laws. I think that reflection will show that of the three discoveries the last is the least important, for though it has vastly changed the habits and the surroundings of mankind, and has offered him long vistas of material progress, yet it has not changed his nature much, nor added greatly to his happiness. We know how the delights of thought, of art, of poetry and music have overcome barbarism and given to mult.i.tudes a new pleasure in existence. But the results of scientific progress have not as yet done all that we might have hoped for mankind. Every great discovery in physical science has been turned, primarily, not to the welfare but to the destruction of mankind. The ocean-going s.h.i.+p is tracked by the submarine; air-s.h.i.+ps are used to drop bombs on defenceless cities, some of the most notable achievements of chemistry are poison-gases. We may of course hope that this is but a pa.s.sing phase, and that brighter times are before us. But I venture to suggest that the true road to progress cannot be found unless we preserve the Jewish and the Greek points of view. We must not lose sight of the ethical and religious bearing of science, and not be content with merely regarding it as a means of exploiting the material world. Instead of harnessing the forces of nature to true human ends, to happiness, we have allowed them to be used for any purpose, moral or immoral, by any one who by cunning or pus.h.i.+ng has gained control of them. We have dehumanized the world, and allowed it to ride rough shod over human life.
The discovery of man and his capacities, then, is the great gift of Greece to the world. There were epics before the _Iliad_, but no epic full of charm, of tragedy, of tears and laughter. There were philosophers before Socrates; but they were busied in trying to find the physical const.i.tuents of the world. Socrates took up the motto of Delphi 'Know thyself', and became the progenitor of all who study the nature of duty and of happiness. In the same way there was much art in the world before the rise of Greece, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in Crete. But it was not a humanist art. It represented the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds, battles, and sieges, the life of the fields. But the human figures in these scenes were conventional: there was nothing in them to stir the finer feelings, to produce a love of beauty, to raise man above the ordinary daily level. The Greeks knew of earlier works of art; but they declined to be seduced, as the Phoenicians and Etruscans were seduced, into a facile imitation of them. They realized, no doubt subconsciously rather than consciously, that they were called to set forth a new and human art, and had in them powers which could produce it. They began a process which developed with astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity, and which cannot cease, unless, as seems now not impossible, barbarism reinvades a weary world.
'Man is the measure of all things' is the doctrine ascribed to Protagoras of Abdera, which shocked the people of Athens and is attacked by Plato in his more constructive mood. It is a doctrine lending itself to abuse, and still more to caricature; but it is really the teaching of Socrates no less than of Protagoras; and it has held its own from his times to those of the Utilitarians and Pragmatists. Certainly it is at the basis of the Greek view of life, in which man with his feelings, his faculties, and his endeavours, stands in the foreground, and all else appears as a vague background.