The endless struggle between the flesh and the spirit found an end in Greek art. The Greek artists were unaware of it. They were spiritual materialists, never denying the importance of the body and ever seeing in the body a spiritual significance. Mysticism on the whole was alien to the Greeks, thinkers as they were. Thought and mysticism never go well together and there is little symbolism in Greek art. Athena was not a symbol of wisdom, but an embodiment of life and her statues were beautiful grave women, whose seriousness might mark them as wise, but who were marked in no other way. The Apollo Belvedere is not a symbol of the sun, nor the Versailles Artemis of the moon. There could be nothing less akin to the ways of symbolism than their beautiful, normal humanity. Nor did decoration really interest the Greeks. In all their art they were preoccupied with what they wanted to express, not with ways of expressing it, and lovely expression, merely as lovely expression, did not appeal to them at all.
Greek art is intellectual art, the art of men who were clear and lucid thinkers, and it is therefore plain art. Artists than whom the world has never seen greater, men endowed with the spirit’s best gift, found their natural method of expression in the simplicity and clarity which are the endowment of the uncloaked soul. ”Nothing is excess; everything is regular,” said the dictum of men who knew how to express. Structure belongs in an especial degree to the province of the mind in art, and architecture resides here, as Greek architects would say, “unmistakably.” These great men made a unified whole of the trilogy of Greek tragedy, by a pure line, the surest, precise, decisive scheme of the Greek statue, from its finest conception into expression in Greek architecture. The Greek temple is the clearest example, and it shows courage and religious spirituality in architecture.
AHindu temple is a complex expression of adornment. The lines of building are completely hidden by the architectural sculptural figures and ornaments, visible to no one but the temple-maker in thick masses, break it up into a bewildering series of irregular figures. It is not a unity but a collection, rich, refined. It continues in unexpected forms as painters build this way and that as the ornament required. The conclusion indefinitely is not planned but built this way and that as the creator who has the mystical meaning to give. Greek architecture was not particularly a means for the artist to inscribe the theory symbols of the truth.
Again, the gigantic temples of Egypt, those massive immensities of granite which look as if they power through the firmament were mighty enough to bring them into existence, are something other than the creation of generous humanity based in beauty. The science and the spirit are there, but what is there is a stiff, uncouth force, a form that becomes monumental, overwhelming. It leads to nothingness at all that belongs to man. It is a great idea. The Egyptian architects were possessed by the consciousness of the willful, irresistible domination of the ways of nature; they had no thought to give the insignificant details that would.
Greek architecture of the great age is the expression of men who were, first of all, intellectual artists, kept firmly within the visible world by their mind, but, secondly to that, lovers of the human world. The Greeks possessed the world of the pure intellect limited by the spirit. No other great builders touched anything as simple as this simplicity in the Parthenon straight columns rise to gain capitals, a gradient is sculptured in bold relief; there is nothing more. And yet —here is the Greek machine — this absolute simplicity of structure is akin to massive beauty and grand yet subtle mass. The architects and place would follow. Majestic but modern, truly Greek. No superhuman force as in Egypt; no strange supernatural shapes as in India; the Parthenon is the home of humanity at ease, calm, created of itself and high in its eyes.
The Greek’s final challenge to nature lies in the fullness of their joyous strength. They set their temples with such a small of all overlooking the whole sky, untied against the circle of the sky. They would build where no war has happened, raise and ask any grander than all these. It matters not at all if the temple is larger or small; one never thinks of the size. It matters how much it is in ruins. A few will still need to recover for their individual work. However, for Greeks, they would have let stand their stones for centuries for happiness.