So ancient Egypt, with its temples,
sphinxes, pyramids, and symbolic decorations, seems to us as if it had
been created by one grandiose imagination; for even the lesser
craftsmen, working on the mummy case for the tomb, had much of the
mystery and solemnity in their work which is manifest in temple and
pyramid. So the city States in ancient Greece in their day were united
by ideals to a harmony of art and architecture and literature. Among
the Athenians at their highest the ideal of the State so wrought upon
the individual that its service became the overmastering passion of
life, and in that great oration of Pericles, where he told how the
Athenian ideal inspired the citizens so that they gave their bodies for
the commonwealth, it seems to have been conceived of as a kind of
oversoul, a being made up of immortal deeds and heroic spirits,
influencing the living, a life within their life, molding their spirits
to its likeness. It appears almost as if in some of these ancient
famous communities the national ideal became a kind of tribal deity,
that began first with some great hero who died and was immortalized by
the poets, and whose character, continually glorified by them, grew at
last so great in song that he could not be regarded as less than a demi-
god.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26