Page:Hindu Art - its Humanism and Modernism.djvu/27

 Jew may naturally fail to respond to the sentiments in the Divine Comedy or Signorelli's Scenes from Dante.

But the difficulties of appreciation by foreigners do not make an art-work necessarily "local" or racial. It may still be universal in its appeal and thoroughly humanistic. There are hardly any people who in modern times can enter into the spirit of the Ka statues which stand by the sarcophagi in the cave tombs of the Pharaohs. And yet how essentially akin to modern mankind were the Egyptians if we can depend on the evidences of their letters! Ka is described in one of the inscriptions thus: "He was an exceptional man; wise, learned, displaying true moderation of mind, distinguishing the wise man from the fool; a father to the unfortunate, a mother to the motherless,