Sculpture employs stone, wood, clay, the precious metals, to model forms, detached and independent, or raised upon a flat surface in relief.  Its domain is the whole range of human character and consciousness, in so far as these can be indicated by fixed facial expression, by physical type, and by attitude.  If we dwell for an instant on the greatest historical epoch of sculpture, we shall understand the domain of this art in its range and limitation.  At a certain point of Greek development the Hellenic Pantheon began to be translated by the sculptors into statues; and when the genius of the Greeks expired in Rome, the cycle of their psychological conceptions had been exhaustively presented through this medium.  During that long period of time, the most delicate gradations of human personality, divinised, idealised, were presented to the contemplation of the consciousness which gave them being, in appropriate types.  Strength and swiftness, massive force and airy lightness, contemplative repose and active energy, voluptuous softness and refined grace, intellectual sublimity and lascivious seductiveness—­the whole rhythm of qualities which can be typified by bodily form—­were analysed, selected, combined in various degrees, to incarnate the religious conceptions of Zeus, Aphrodite, Herakles, Dionysus, Pallas, Fauns and Satyrs, Nymphs of woods and waves, Tritons, the genius of Death, heroes and hunters, lawgivers and poets, presiding deities of minor functions, man’s lustful appetites and sensual needs.  All that men think, or do, or are, or wish for, or imagine in this world, had found exact corporeal equivalents.  Not physiognomy alone, but all the portions of the body upon which the habits of the animating soul are wont to stamp themselves, were studied and employed as symbolism.  Uranian Aphrodite was distinguished from her Pandemic sister by chastened lust-repelling loveliness.  The muscles of Herakles were more ponderous than the tense sinews of Achilles.  The Hermes of the palaestra bore a torso of majestic depth; the Hermes, who carried messages from heaven, had limbs alert for movement.  The brows of Zeus inspired awe; the breasts of Dionysus breathed delight.

A race accustomed, as the Greeks were, to read this symbolism, accustomed, as the Greeks were, to note the individuality of naked form, had no difficulty in interpreting the language of sculpture.  Nor is there now much difficulty in the task.  Our surest guide to the subject of a basrelief or statue is study of the physical type considered as symbolical of spiritual quality.  From the fragment of a torso the true critic can say whether it belongs to the athletic or the erotic species.  A limb of Bacchus differs from a limb of Poseidon.  The whole psychological conception of Aphrodite Pandemos enters into every muscle, every joint, no less than into her physiognomy, her hair, her attitude.