Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/31

 lo Primitive Greece : Mvcenian Art. probability. The true end of research, the only one really open to it, if it be determined to remain true to the rigid rules of a critical method, is not race, but rather that living unity which is the people, the nation, the body whose members are bound to one another by community of name and language, religious beliefs, associations, and traditions, the various modes of ex- pressing thought, whether in art or literature ; finally, identity of manners, conduct, institutions, and political interests. Even granting that the racial concept is not open to quite as many objections and reserves as here set forth, still we fail to see of what help it can be to us in clearing the mystery which shrouds the genesis of Greek genius, and of an originality which is conspicuous from its earliest manifestations. Race, to take that word in the sense ascribed thereto by its warmest up- holders, is to the people what genus is to the species. There does not and cannot exist in the race any characteristic which, from the first, is not met among the various peoples composing it, and each one of these possesses, over and above such attributes as have served to build up the species, a number of special qualities that set it forth from among its congeners. To know a people thoroughly well, to sound its soul's very depths, the hidden sources whence springs creative force, it must be surveyed and narrowly examined in the several phases that went to the making up of its complex existence, all the wealth and variety of those peculiar features which determine its personal being. Hence what the Greeks were on the day of their spiritual awakening, the fresh matter which they brought into a world fast sinking into dotage, shall not be demanded of the specu- lations of either philologists or mythologists, respecting what they call pre-Aryan language and religion, or of those Vedas which we were bidden to regard as the first spontaneous cry, the artless gush of the youthful world dazzled by the grand spectacles of nature, whereas now we are invited to see in them the well- pondered work of learned, nay almost pedantic, poets. We shall cross-question more reliable witnesses, the Homeric poems on the one side, and the monuments of plastic art on the other. Of course these witnesses will not tell us all we should like to know ; but we may at least put entire confidence in such information as it will be in their power to furnish us with on the infancy of the Greek people. Like a beautiful tranquil lake, the clear