Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/107

Rh so much in their development? How did they come to lose the ideal forms that sprang in the mind of Phidias when he thought of beauty and virtue? One cannot say that idealism failed, for its triumph in the Parthenon marbles marks the highest point ever reached by the human imagination in embodying its vision. It died out, and one says in explanation that the attention given to technique at last led to a disregard of the idea; or that the mere ability to reproduce details exactly was a temptation to apply art to deceptive imitation of the seen instead of to an illusive expression of the unseen; or that the age had lost the great ideas themselves, the perception of beauty and virtue, the belief in them and honor for them, and hence necessarily declined upon the things of this world,—that is, upon what is seen by the bodily eye rather than in the realm of thought and spiritual insight: and of these explanations perhaps one is as true as another, for they are all descriptions, from different standpoints, of what actually occurred. It is impossible, however, that in view of this history, and of the similar course in the development of mediæval painting, one should not ask