Fairbanks, Arthur: Greek art: the basis of later European art (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1933)

GREEK ART

the Hermes of Praxiteles, the Aphrodite from
Melos, are the result of Greek clarity and di-
rectness of thought as applied to human ex-
perience. And it is this element of the univer-
sal expressed in concrete form, which lends to
Greek literature and art their power to touch
every succeeding age.
It remains to speak more particularly of the
method of coordination and systematization
which was natural to the Greek mind. In deal-
ing with the concrete facts of experience, mate-
rial or spiritual, it was governed by a keen
sense of order and harmony. In truth its
method was aesthetic rather than mystical or
coldly logical. In Greek thought about ethical
problems this principle is very evident. While
other peoples have found a rule of life in de-
tailed commandments of God as did the ancient
Hebrews, or in a reasoned logical system like
that of Calvin or of Kant, or in the means for
reaching some distant goal like the mediaeval
Christian heaven, the Greeks defined the good
life in terms of order and harmony in the spirit
of man. Central among the virtues was mod-
eration or temperateness (jrarfpoavviy), the
embodiment of the principle “ nothing in ex-
cess ” (prfiev ayav) which guided all ethical
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