DOI article:
Essay I: The provice, aim, and methos of the stuy of classical archaeology
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11444#0036
16 ESSAYS ON THE ART OF PHEIDIAS. [i.
to fix outer objects in our memory we make but scanty use of
impressions of eye and touch, in fact use them merely as provi-
sional means to be cast away so soon as we have translated them
into some associative thought which is really bound up with
some word. The Greek on the other hand would translate even
abstract ideas into some visible or tangible form, and would thus
strengthen his memory by an image and not by a word.
In the second place, we have to consider the causes which
underlie this distinctive characteristic of the Greek race. These
causes are twofold, physical and social.
First as regards physical causes, we must remember that
their climate held the happy mean between the tropical and
enervating and the cold and indurating. Neither of these ex-
tremes is conducive to a spirited appreciation of the forms in
nature; the tropical in not sufficiently raising man above the
vegetating impassivity of sense, the colder in calling too strongly
upon the active exertion of intellectual and physical power to
allow of any dwelling upon pleasurable impressions from with-
out. The tropical does not sufficiently stimulate the construc-
tive impulse of mind to build or to fashion what nature gives
into forms that suit man's use or fancy; the colder drives him
before all things to build himself a house, to transfer thither his
life and his interest, firmly hedged off from the outer world,
which henceforth he must subjugate to his use. The tropical
mother's eyes. He informed me that she was dead. 'But don't you remember
it?' After some attempts he found he could not. But later on he started up
with, 'they were blue.' 'How comes it that you know now and did not know
before?' I asked. 'Because I remembered that two years ago we spoke about
it.' He had no image in his eye but he remembered the words. Mr F. Gallon
(■'Statistics of Mental Imagery,' Mind, 1880, p. 301 seq.) has made some interesting
observations which bear out my generalisations. One striking result of his induction
is the fact that, of those whose power of reproducing mental images he tested, the
hundred scientific men were most deficient, while the schoolboys were far higher
in the scale. No doubt scientific men are much occupied in reflecting on the rela-
tion between larger groups of things and spend the greater part of their time in
reading books, while boys have retained their naive power of observation of the
individual things that surround them. Even if some of these scientific men were
habitually engaged in experiments and scientific observation, their sphere of interest
in the things observed was no doubt abnormally centralised in that one group of
phenomena which belonged to their scientific specialty. This specialisation is an out-
come of modern social development and was unknown to the Greeks who maintained
their all-roundness of interest.
to fix outer objects in our memory we make but scanty use of
impressions of eye and touch, in fact use them merely as provi-
sional means to be cast away so soon as we have translated them
into some associative thought which is really bound up with
some word. The Greek on the other hand would translate even
abstract ideas into some visible or tangible form, and would thus
strengthen his memory by an image and not by a word.
In the second place, we have to consider the causes which
underlie this distinctive characteristic of the Greek race. These
causes are twofold, physical and social.
First as regards physical causes, we must remember that
their climate held the happy mean between the tropical and
enervating and the cold and indurating. Neither of these ex-
tremes is conducive to a spirited appreciation of the forms in
nature; the tropical in not sufficiently raising man above the
vegetating impassivity of sense, the colder in calling too strongly
upon the active exertion of intellectual and physical power to
allow of any dwelling upon pleasurable impressions from with-
out. The tropical does not sufficiently stimulate the construc-
tive impulse of mind to build or to fashion what nature gives
into forms that suit man's use or fancy; the colder drives him
before all things to build himself a house, to transfer thither his
life and his interest, firmly hedged off from the outer world,
which henceforth he must subjugate to his use. The tropical
mother's eyes. He informed me that she was dead. 'But don't you remember
it?' After some attempts he found he could not. But later on he started up
with, 'they were blue.' 'How comes it that you know now and did not know
before?' I asked. 'Because I remembered that two years ago we spoke about
it.' He had no image in his eye but he remembered the words. Mr F. Gallon
(■'Statistics of Mental Imagery,' Mind, 1880, p. 301 seq.) has made some interesting
observations which bear out my generalisations. One striking result of his induction
is the fact that, of those whose power of reproducing mental images he tested, the
hundred scientific men were most deficient, while the schoolboys were far higher
in the scale. No doubt scientific men are much occupied in reflecting on the rela-
tion between larger groups of things and spend the greater part of their time in
reading books, while boys have retained their naive power of observation of the
individual things that surround them. Even if some of these scientific men were
habitually engaged in experiments and scientific observation, their sphere of interest
in the things observed was no doubt abnormally centralised in that one group of
phenomena which belonged to their scientific specialty. This specialisation is an out-
come of modern social development and was unknown to the Greeks who maintained
their all-roundness of interest.