Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/97

Rh God, and not all of man. He was only so much of God as the universe, exclusive of passion, manifests; and so much of man as may be comprehended in the esthetic element. But he was enough of God and of man, that his chosen people should exhibit a rounded organization in their political and social condition, and so become a type of that future harmony of Christendom, when &quot;the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and a young child shall lead them.&quot;

With the Dorians, as we have seen, the political problem was for the whole body to become, by a path which should make each individual ; for they had such faith in the divine order as to believe these ends were correlative. Hence, by necessity, "in a Doric state, education was a subject of greater importance than government;" and, in point of fact, as long as the education was uncorrupted, the government lasted. In every Doric state where, as in Corinth and Magna Græcia, intercourse with foreign nations, and opportunity for individual accumulation of wealth, relaxed the severity of personal culture, the state declined, and such luxury and corruption ensued as has made the name of Sybarite a by-word among nations.

We will first speak of the forms and objects of this education, and then of the spirit of it; and afterwards proceed to speak of an education of Christendom as true to Christ as this was to Apollo,—out of which, therefore, should grow political forms and activity worthy the name of kingdom of heaven upon earth.

The Dorians assumed, that in a company of men guided by Apollo, inhered a power which circumscribed the liberty of the individuals that composed it to the interests of the company as such; and that this social power must legitimate itself, by discharging a duty of which they had also the intuition, viz. that of unfolding each of its members into the harmonious exercise of his powers.

Perhaps they saw proof of this priority of the social to the individual right in the fact, that the human being is socially dependant, before he is individually conscious. His growth into bodily perfection is not self-directed. It cannot take place, unless it be subjected to laws, according to an ideal of