Gardner, Percy: The principles of Greek art (London, 1924)

CHAPTER XXI

naturalism and idealism in greek art

Greek art, like Greek poetry and philosophy and geometry,
seems constructed with extreme simplicity, when compared
with the more complicated productions of modern Europe;
herein lies its main attractiveness, and its educational value.
It exhibits the working of a race, the civilization of which was
very simple and harmonious, of a race gifted by nature with
the finest aesthetic and intellectual qualities, so that to the end
of time the Greeks will stand out against the background of
ancient history as a natural aristocracy, and always furnish
us with models which in their own way, and within the limits
which they acknowledge, will be unsurpassed. Modern life is
more ambitious and more complicated; we have learned the ways
of progress as the Greeks never learned them, so that to us in
many respects they seem to be like children. But each man
as he grows up passes through the various stages of culture
which lie behind us, and to a certain stage in growth and edu-
cation the teaching of Greece is of unequalled value. And
besides, the wonderful natural endowments of the Hellenic race
were such that the most cultivated of modern minds, a Goethe,
a Matthew Arnold, a Sainte-Beuve, will to the end find in Greek
literature and art a freshness, symmetry, and charm which
may be sought in vain elsewhere.

Matthew Arnold, with his usual insight, has observed that
it is in sense and in intellect that the Greek is supreme. The
eyes and ears of the ordinary Greek man may not have been
so acute in observing minute or distant detail as the senses
of the savage, whose whole living depends upon their efficiency.

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