350 The Evolution of Sculpture. 



Ionia show no free-standing figures in art. All are con- 

 nected with some building, or attached to some stone to 

 represent a building. This means that man has not yet 

 learned to stand free from his surroundings : he is part of 

 his house and follows its laws. He is a mere attachment to 

 a strong-walled edifice of institutions. It is by no mere 

 accident that in the tenth commandment a man's house is 

 mentioned before his wife. 



The struggle between cunning and force, so long main- 

 tained in Egypt and Babylonia, is taken up by Greece and 

 by her decided in favor of the former. Greece is the land 

 of the sculpturesque. Her sculpture stands to-day unri- 

 valed, nay, unapproached. And all her art, even her music 

 and poetry, was sculpturesque. 



At first her sculpture differs in no essential particular 

 from that of Egypt and Assyria. It is formal, mathematical, 

 lifeless, and attached to buildings or stones. The sitting 

 figures from Miletus, and some even from Greece proper, are 

 in no way different from those of Egypt. Greece too has 

 her sphinxes, centaurs, and other monsters. But, as Greece 

 realizes her true character, all this gradually disappears. 

 Even the monsters gradually assume a certain beauty. Let 

 any one compare the centaurs of the temple of Assos with 

 those of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, and with those on 

 the metopes of the Parthenon. Gradually, too, the figures 

 get detached from buildings and stone blocks; gradually 

 mathematical proportion gives way to a sense of life, first in 

 the limbs and then in the face. It is most interesting to 

 watch this process as it shows itself in the Cyprian statues 

 now in the New York Metropolitan Museum. In the earli- 

 est of these the heads are mere stone bullets, with features, 

 hair, and coiffure rudely indicated ; the bodies are simple 

 blocks, with the arms parallel, perpendicular, and cling- 

 ing to the body, and the legs and feet unseparated ; the 

 clothing is indicated by ridges or grooves, and shows no 

 muscular frame beneath. Gradually the faces begin to as- 

 sume the half-idiotic smile, the earliest attempt at expres- 

 sion ; the pendent arms are partially separated from the sides 

 by the cutting out of oval holes between the elbows and the 

 body, leaving a ridiculously attenuated waist. One foot be- 

 gins to advance a little ; one hand begins to rise and hold 

 something, then both hands. Then the folds of the drapery 

 begin to be marked, until at last the figures begin to show 

 signs of life. But in Cyprus sculpture never gets beyond 



