Kosmon. Another thing we ought to remember, when judging Hellenic Art, is, but for its existence, all other kinds—­pre-Raffaelle as well—­could not have had being.  The Greeks were, by far, more inclined to worship nature as contained in themselves, than the gods,—­if the gods are not reflexes of themselves, which is most likely.  And, thus impelled, they broke through the monstrous symbolism of Egypt, and made them gods after their own hearts; that is, fashioned them out of themselves.  And herein, I think we may discern something of providence; for, suppose their natures had not been so powerfully antagonistic to the traditions and conventions of their religion, what other people in the world could or would have done their work?  Cast about a brief while in your memories, and endeavor to find whether there has ever existed a people who in their nature, nationality, and religion, have been so eminently fitted to perform such a task as the Hellenic?  You will then feel that we have reason to be thankful that they were allowed to do what else had never been done; and, which not done, all posterity would have suffered to the last throe of time.  And, if they have not made a thorough perfection—­a spiritual as well as a physical one—­forget not that, at least, they have made this physical representation a finished one.  They took it from the Egyptians, rude, clumsy, and seated; its head stony—­pinned to its chest; its hands tied to its side, and its legs joined; they shaped it, beautiful, majestic, and erect; elevated its head; breathed into it animal fire; gave movement and action to its arms and hands; opened its legs and made it walk—­made it human at all points—­the radical impersonation of physical and sensuous beauty.  And, if the god has receded into the past and become a “pale, shadowy, and shapeless vision of lust, revenge, and impotence,” the human lives on graceful, vigorous, and deathless, as at first, and excites in us admiration as unbounded as ever followed it of old in Greece or Italy.

Christian. Yes, Kosmon, yes! they are flourished all over with the rhetoric of the body; but nowhere is to be seen in them that diviner poetry, the oratory of the soul!  Truly they are a splendid casket enclosing nothing—­at least nothing now of importance to us; for what they once contained, the world, when stirred with nobler matter, disregarded, and left to perish.  But, Kosmon, we cannot discuss probabilities.  Our question is—­not whether the Greeks only could have made such masterpieces of nature and art; but whether their works are of that kind the most fitted to carry forward to a more ultimate perfection that idea which is peculiarly our’s.  All art, more or less, is a species of symbolism; and the Hellenic, notwithstanding its more universal method of typification, was fully as symbolic as the Egyptian; and hence its language is not only dead, but forgotten, and is now past recovery:  and, if it were not, what purpose would be served