Page:The Obligations of the Universities Towards Art.djvu/28

 music in mutual effort to arouse human responsiveness.

It needs but brief reference to historical examples to verify this proposition.

In the case of Egypt (from causes outside our purpose to determine), after the imitative art in early periods had reached astonishing excellence, a palsy fell upon it, which in later millenniums reduced it to servility. It might be found that this was equally so with its literature. Greece and Rome, severally, used all the arts with equal candour, to express the national spirits and humour.

Greek art was the outgrowth of desire to make the body of man the perfect image of their highest mind. The artists strove to eliminate the vanities of false taste—for there were dwarfing vanities afield even then—and to teach nobility of form accompanying heroism in gods, demi-gods, and their worshippers. In establishing an ideal of highest beauty and heroism they—as brute struggle had decided in savage life—determined upon the selection of the fittest, but they brought into count not the need of animal force alone, but the domination of mind and soul. They did this for all time and for all future nations; and thus was committed an eternal gain to the world's care.

I think the literature also may be classed as directed to the athletic training of the mind. In Rome these great traditions were accepted, but with Latin imperiousness were made to subserve more strictly human interests. Abstract idealities became themes for