of the human form—­if his medium was not quite plastic to him—­knew well what the Soul is like.—­The Greek had no feeling, as the Egyptian had, for the mystery of the Gods; at his very best (once he had begun to be artistic) he personalized them; he tried to put into his representations of them, what the Egyptian had tried to put into his representations of men; and in that sense this Athene is, after all, only a woman;—­but one in whom the Soul is quite manifest.  I have never been able to trace this statue since; and my recollections are rather hazy.  But it stands, for me, holding up a torch in the inner recesses of history.  It was the time when Pythagoras was teaching; it was that momentous time when (as hardly since) the doors of the Spiritual were flung open, and the impulse of the six Great Teachers was let loose on the world.  Hithertoo Greek carvers had been making images of the Gods, symbolic indeed—­with wings, thunderbolts and other appurtenances;—­but trivially symbolic; mere imitation of the symbolism, without the dignity or religious feeling, of the Egyptians and Babylonians; as if their gods and worship had been mere conventions, about which they had felt nothing deep;—­now, upon this urge from the God-world, a sense of the grandeur of the within comes on them; they seek a means of expressing it:  throw off the old conventions; will carve the Gods as men; do so, their aspiration leading them on to perfect mastery:  for a moment achieve Egyptian sublimity; but—­have personalized the Gods; and dear knows what that may lead to presently.

The came Pheidias, born about 496.  Nothing of his work remains for us; the Elgin Marbles themselves, from the Parthenon, are pretty certainly only the work of his pupils.  But there are two things that tell us something about his standing:  (1) all antiquity bears witness to the prevailing quality of his conceptions; their sublimity. (2) He was thrown into prison on a charge of impiety, and died there, in 442.

Here you will note the progress downward.  Aeschylus had been so charged, and tried—­but acquitted.  Pheidias, so charged, was imprisoned.  Forty-three years later Socrates, so charged, was condemned to drink the hemlock.  Of Aeschylus and Socrates we can speak with certainty:  they were the Soul’s elect men.  Was Pheidias too?  Athens certainly was turning away from the Soul; and his fate is a kind of half-way point between the fates of the others.  He appears in good company.  And that note of sublimity in his work bears witness somewhat.

We have the work of his pupils, and know that in their hands the marble—­Pheidias himself worked mostly in gold and ivory—­had become docile and obedient, to flow into whatever forms they designed for it.  We know what strength, what beauty, what tremendous energy, are in those Elgin marbles.  All the figures are real, but idealized:  beautiful men and horses, in fullest most vigorous action, suddenly