Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/869



N literature as in art we must reverently translate virtues into graces. Inflexible firmness, uprightness or directness, suggests straight lines, such as are shown in no course of wind or stream or star, nor in the shape or motion of any living thing.

The culture of Christendom is Indo-European. For the purposes of art and literature as well as for the development of thought the ancient Hebraic ideal was sterile. Its course was so contrary to the natural desires of the human heart, to every intellectual aspiration, and to the free development of the imagination that its singularity, taken in connection with its endurance for centuries—even though it was the survival of but a "remnant"—seems miraculous, as if it were a destiny folded up in some deep implication of the divine Will. Its paths were straight. To the Hebrews hesitation, the even poise of an act of choice, was a peril. The prophet's "Thus saith the Lord" laid open a direct way, which must instantly be taken, and none might halt therein. Dwellers in tents, inveterate nomads, with a moving tabernacle, their every rite was expeditious as if it were the incident of a journey. They could make no image and, save for their rude music, they had no art; such institutions as they had were theirs by adoption rather than by development; even their language was kept down to its radical elements. It was the completest divestiture ever witnessed in the course of human history. How much more natural and human seems the Indo-European scheme of life, as developed under the inspiration of the Hellenic ideal! The Hellenic genius developed the race consciousness spontaneously in its myth-making period, as later, with equal spontaneity, it developed the individual consciousness. It personified the varied aspects of divinity, in its infinitely diversified manifestations to the human soul. Without hindrance, imagination, in religion, art, and philosophy, followed the lines of life, seeking harmony with the divine nature, joyously and with enthusiasm, and knowing only such restraints as that harmony imposed—a rare reserve! The harmony, though dimly understood, was humanly seen in a vision which found its limited but magnificent consummation in the Platonic Dialogues.

Hellenism with a fine courage confronted life in all its variety, its good and its evil, cherishing the choice of Virtue, though the goal was not, in its scheme, to be reached by the short cut of obedience or by any charted path. It was a human virtue, to be attained by all the resources of the human heart and will, not through the destruction of life's graces or the avoidance of its wiles and entanglements, but despite these, as in Ulysses's devious journey. Such lofty heights of thought as Hellenism reached were gained by questioning at every point of the progress, by that tentation which the Hebrew shunned. It is this trait of Hellenic aspiration which makes it the rational model of all human progress. Christianity, which Matthew Arnold has truly called the transformation of Hebraism, bringing to the foreground a perfect human ideal as the inspiration of human life, was accepted by the pagans rather than by the Jews, and has fulfilled its destiny through the alliance of this exalted ideal (the spiritual flower and consummation of all that Hebraism meant for the world) with that ideal of human perfection which Hellenism suggested but failed to maturely develop.

For our present purpose we wish to fix the reader's attention upon the Indo-European tendency, so signally exemplified in Hellenism, toward the manifold investiture of life, following lines forever deflecting from a straightforward course, vibrant, faltering, and tracing patterns of dædalian intricacy. This tendency in art and in all outward and visible manifestations of the human spirit is obvious; but it is apt to escape our notice, at least our adequate recognition, as a trait of Indo-European thought and of the expression of thought. It is not merely an æsthetic trait like the tendency to rhythmic expression or to the grace of a trope. It indicates an attitude of the human spirit toward the living truth.