In any conception of a perfect unity, like the perfected life of the Buddhist, Nirvana or Nibbana (literally “dying out” or “extinction” as of an expiring fire), there is no room for variety, for the play of life; all such fretfulness ceases, to be replaced by an all-pervading calm, beautiful, if you like, but lifeless.  There is this deadness about any conception of perfection that will always make it an unattainable ideal in life.  Those who, like the Indian fakir or the hermits of the Middle Ages, have staked their all on this ideal of perfection, have found it necessary to suppress life in every way possible, the fakirs often remaining motionless for long periods at a time, and one of the mediaeval saints going so far as to live on the top of a high column where life and movement were well-nigh impossible.

And in art it is the same; all those who have aimed at an absolute perfection have usually ended in a deadness.  The Greeks knew better than many of their imitators this vital necessity in art.  In their most ideal work there is always that variety that gives character and life.  No formula or canon of proportions or other mechanical device for the attainment of perfection was allowed by this vital people entirely to subdue their love of life and variety.  And however near they might go towards a perfect type in their ideal heads and figures, they never went so far as to kill the individual in the type.  It is the lack of this subtle distinction that, I think, has been the cause of the failure of so much art founded on so-called Greek ideals.  Much Roman sculpture, if you except their portrait busts, illustrates this.  Compared with Greek work it lacks that subtle variety in the modelling that gives vitality.  The difference can be felt instinctively in the merest fragment of a broken figure.  It is not difficult to tell Greek from Roman fragments, they pulsate with a life that it is impossible to describe but that one instinctively feels.  And this vitality depends, I think it will be found, on the greater amount of life-giving variety in the surfaces of the modelling.  In their architectural mouldings, the difference of which we are speaking can be more easily traced.  The vivacity and brilliancy of a Greek moulding makes a Roman work look heavy and dull.  And it will generally be found that the Romans used the curve of the circle in the sections of their mouldings, a curve possessing the least amount of variety, as is explained later, where the Greeks used the lines of conic sections, curves possessed of the greatest amount of variety.

But while unity must never exist without this life-giving variety, variety must always be under the moral control of unity, or it will get out of hand and become extravagant.  In fact, the most perfect work, like the most perfect engine of which we spoke in a former chapter, has the least amount of variety, as the engine has the least amount of “dither,” that is compatible with life.  One does not hear so much talk in these