Tlie Evolution of Sculpture. 355 



within limits, it is attended with admirable results ; but no 

 sooner does the emotion become boisterous than it goes be- 

 yond the limits of sculpture. The Hermes of Praxiteles 

 and the Niobe Group are still works of art ; so is the Apollo 

 of the Belvedere and the group it belongs to ; but we begin 

 to feel a revulsion when we come to the Laocoon, and turn 

 altogether away from the Farnese Bull. In these and other 

 works of the same ages we see the steps of decay (1) the 

 effective, (2) the harrowing, (3) the gigantic, (4) the mere- 

 tricious, (5) the meaningless, or merely pretty or curious, 

 (6) the fashionable, (7) the revolting, as so much of the 

 Pompeian sculpture is. 



Ancient civilization perished for lack of love. Ancient 

 sculpture perished because it had accomplished its task and 

 could go no further. As ancient civilization died out, Chris- 

 tianity, the religion of love, gradually took its place, and pre- 

 pared the way for a new and higher civilization. It might, 

 accordingly, have been expected that as the new civilization 

 arose, sculpture would arise with it. But this was by no 

 means the case. The Christianity of the first fifteen hun- 

 dred years shows no sculpture worthy of the name, and, in- 

 deed, in this art Christian civilization has nothing to set 

 alongside Greek sculpture. And the reason of this is by 

 no means difficult to understand. Christianity contains an 

 element indeed, its essential and characteristic element 

 which refuses to be represented in sculpture at all. The 

 just and rational naturally appear in sculpture as the beau- 

 tiful, and this we have in its utmost perfection in Greek art; 

 but love or the holy can not be made to appear in sculpture. 

 The author of the Hebrew decalogue felt all the difference 

 between the just and the holy, the beautiful and the adora- 

 ble, when he forbade his people to make graven images ; and 

 the same is true of Zoroaster. The Greek and Protestant 

 churches felt the same thing when they banished idols from 

 their places of worship. And even the Roman Church, which 

 retains them, shows that it feels their inadequacy by painting 

 them and hiding the body with clothes. 



Architecture, dancing, and sculpture are the arts of the 

 just, beautiful, and graceful, and in these the Greeks stand 

 to-day unsurpassed and unsurpassable. The arts of love and 

 holiness are painting, poetry, and music, and in these we 

 moderns as far excel the ancients as they excel us in the 

 other arts. Eaphael, Dante, Beethoven have no rivals among 

 the ancients, just as Iktinus, Theodorus, and Praxiteles have 



