 Chapter 4 Section 5 of the Greek View of Life by Goldsworthy Loes Dickinson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen. Chapter 4 Section 5 Poetry If now, as we have seen in the plastic arts, and in an art which appears to us so pure as music, the Greeks perceived and valued, along with the immediate pleasure of beauty, a definite ethical character and bent, much more was this the case with poetry, whose material is conceptions and ideas. The works of the poets, and especially of Homer, were in fact to the Greeks all that moral treatises are to us, or rather, instead of learning their lessons in abstract terms, they learnt them out of the concrete representation of life. Poetry was the basis of their education, the guide and commentary of their practice, the inspiration of their speculative thought. If they have a proposition to advance, they must back it by a citation. If they have a counsel to offer, they must prop it up with a verse. Not only for delight, but for inspiration, warning and example, they were steeped from childhood onwards in an ocean of melodious discourse. Their national epics were to them what the Bible was to the Puritans, and for every conjunction of fortune, for every issue of home or state, they found therein a text to prompt or reinforce their decision. Of this importance of poetry in the life of ancient Greece, and generally of the importance of music and art, the following passage from Plato is a striking illustration. When the boy has learnt his letters, and is beginning to understand what is written, as before he understood only what was spoken, they put into his hands the works of the great poets which he reads at school. In these are contained many admonitions, and many tales, and praises, and encomia of ancient famous men, which he is required to learn by heart, in order that he may imitate or emulate them, and desire to become like them. Then again the teachers of the liar take similar care that their young disciple is temperate and gets into no mischief, and when they have taught him the use of the liar, they introduce him to the poems of other excellent poets, who are the lyric poets, and these they set to music and make their harmonies and rhythms quite familiar to the children's souls, in order that they may learn to be more gentle and harmonious and rhythmical, and so more fitted for speech and action. For the life of man in every part has need of harmony and rhythm. From this conception of poetry as a storehouse of practical wisdom, the transition is easy to a purely ethical judgment of its value, and that transition, as has already been noted, was actually made by Plato, who even goes so far as to prescribe to poets the direct inculcation of such morals as are proper to attract. As that the good and just man is happy, even though he be poor, and the bad and unjust man miserable, even though he be rich. This didacticism no doubt is a parody, but it is a parody of the normal Greek view, that the excellence of a poem is closely bound up with the compass and depth of its whole ethical content, and is not to be measured as many moderns maintain merely by the aesthetic beauty of its form. When Strabo says, it is impossible to be a good poet unless you are first a good man, he is expressing the common opinion of the Greeks, that the poet is to be judged not merely as an artist, but as an interpreter of life. And the same presupposition underlies the remark of Aristotle, that poets may be classified according as the characters they represent are as good as, better or worse than the average man. But perhaps the most remarkable illustration of this way of regarding poetry is the passage in the frogs of Aristophanes, where the comedian has introduced a controversy between Aeschylus and Euripides as to the relative merit of their works, and has made the decision turn almost entirely on moral considerations. The question being really whether or no Euripides is to be regarded as a corrupter of his countrymen. In the course of the discussion Aeschylus is made to give expression to a view of poetry which clearly enough Aristophanes endorses himself, and which no doubt would be accepted by the majority of his audience. He appeals to all antiquity to show that poets have always been the instructors of mankind, and that it is for this that they are held in honour. Look to traditional history. Look to antiquity, primitive, early, remote. See there what a blessing illustrious poet conferred on mankind in the centuries past. Orpheus instructed mankind in religion, reclaimed them from bloodshed and barbarous rites. Museus delivered the doctrine of medicine, and warnings prophetic for ages to come. Next came old Hesiod teaching as husbandry, plowing and sowing and rural affairs, rural economy, rural astronomy, homely morality, labour and thrift. Homer himself, our adorable Homer. What was his title to praise and renown? What but the worth of the lessons he taught us? Discipline, arms and equipment of war. While then there is, as we should naturally expect, plenty of Greek poetry which is simply the spontaneous expression of passionate feeling, unrestrained by the consideration of ethical or other ends. Yet, if we take for our type, as we are fairly entitled to do from the prominent place it held in Greek life, not the lyrics but the drama of Greece, we shall find that in poetry, even us was to be expected to a higher degree than in music and the plastic arts, the beauty sought and achieved is one that lies within the limits of certain definite moral presuppositions. Let us consider this point in some detail, and first let us examine the character of Greek tragedy. End of Chapter 4 Section 5 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 4 Section 6 Part 1 of The Greek View of Life by Goldsworthy Loes Dickinson This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen. Chapter 4 Section 6 Tragedy Part 1 The character of Greek tragedy was determined from the very beginning by the fact of its connection with religion. The season at which it was performed was the festival of Dionysus, about his altar the chorus danced, and the object of the performance was the representation of scenes out of the lives of ancient heroes. The subject of the drama was thus strictly prescribed. It must be selected out of a cycle of legends familiar to the audience, and whatever freedom might be allowed to the poet in his treatment of the theme, whatever the reflections he might embroider upon it, the speculative or ethical views, the criticism of contemporary life, all must be subservient to the main object originally proposed, the setting forth for edification as well as for delight of some episodes in the lives of those heroes of the past who were considered not only to be greater than their descendants, but to be the sons of gods, and worthy themselves of worship as divine. By this fundamental condition the tragedy of the Greeks is distinguished sharply, on the one hand from the Shakespearean drama, on the other from the classical drama of the French. The tragedies of Shakespeare are devoid, one might say, or at least comparatively devoid, of all preconceptions. He was free to choose what subject he liked, and to treat it as he would, and no sense of obligation to religious or other points of view, no feeling for traditions descended from a sacred past, and not likely to be handled by those who were their trustees for the future, sobered or restrained, for evil or for good, his half barbaric genius. He flung himself upon life with the irresponsible ardour of the discoverer of a new continent, shaped and reshaped it as he chose, carved from it now the cynicism of measure for measure, now the despair of Hamlet and of Lear, now the radiant magnanimity of the tempest, and departed leaving behind him not a map or chart, but a series of mutually incompatible landscapes. What Shakespeare gave, in short, was a many-sided representation of life. What the Greek dramatist gave was an interpretation, but an interpretation not simply personal to himself, but representative of the national tradition and belief. The men whose deeds and passions he narrated were the patterns and examples on the one hand, on the other the warnings of his race, the gods who determined the fortunes they sang were working still among men, the moral laws that ruled the past ruled the present too, and the history of the Hellenic race moved under a visible providence from its divine origin onward to an end that would be prosperous or the reverse, according as later generations should continue to observe the worship and traditions of their fathers, descended from heroes and gods. And it is the fact that in this sense it was representative of the national consciousness that distinguishes the Greek tragedy from the classical drama of the French. For the latter, though it imitated the ancients in outward form, was inspired with a totally different spirit. The kings and heroes whose fortunes it narrated were not the ancestors of the French race. They had no root in its affections, no connection with its religious beliefs, no relation to its ethical conceptions. The whole ideal set forth was not that which really inspired the nation, but at best that which was supposed to inspire the court. And the whole drama, like a tree transplanted to an alien soil, withers and dies for lack of the nourishment which the tragedy of the Greeks unconsciously imbibed from its encompassing air of national tradition. Such then was the general character of the Greek tragedy, an interpretation of the national ideal. Let us now proceed to follow out some of the consequences involved in this conception. In the first place, the theme represented is the life and fate of ancient heroes, of personages that is to say greater than ordinary men, both for good and for evil, in their qualities and in their achievements, pregnant with fateful issues, makers or maras of the fortunes of the world. Tragic and terrible their destiny may be, but never contemptible or squalid. Behind all suffering, behind sin and crime must lie a redeeming magnanimity. A complete villain says Aristotle is not a tragic character, for he has no hold upon the sympathies. If he prosper, it is an outrage on common human feeling. If he fall into disaster, it is merely what he deserves. Neither is it admissible to represent the misfortunes of a thoroughly good man, for that is merely painful and distressing, and least of all is it tolerable gratuitously to introduce mere baseness or madness or other aberrations from human nature. The true tragic hero is a man of high place and birth who, having a nature not ignoble, has fallen into sin and pays in suffering the penalty of his act. Nothing could throw more light on the distinguishing characteristics of the Greek drama than these few remarks of Aristotle, and nothing could better indicate how close in the Greek mind was the connection between aesthetic and ethical judgments. The canon of Aristotle would exclude as proper themes for tragedy the character and fate say of Richard III, the absolutely bad man suffering his appropriate dessert, or of Kent and Cordelia, the absolutely good brought into unmerited affliction. And that not merely because such themes offend the moral sense, but because, by so offending, they destroy the proper pleasure of the tragic art. The whole aesthetic effect is limited by ethical presuppositions, and to outrage these is to defeat the very purpose of tragedy. Especially interesting in this connection are the strictures passed on Euripides in the passage of the frogs of Aristophanes, to which allusion has already been made. Euripides is there accused of lowering the tragic art by introducing what? Women in love. The central theme of modern tragedy. It is the boast of Aeschylus that there is not one of his plays which touches on this subject. I never allowed of your lewd, scenic boyars or filthy, detestable fidres. Not I. Indeed, I should doubt if my drama throughout exhibit an instance of woman in love. And there can be little doubt that with a Greek audience this would count to him as a merit, and that the shifting of the centre of interest by Euripides, from the sterner passions of heroes and of kings, to this tender a face of human feeling would be felt even by those whom it charmed to be a declension from the height of the older tragedy. And to this limitation of subject corresponds a limitation of treatment. The Greek tragedy is composed from a definite point of view, with the aim not merely to represent, but also to interpret the theme. Underlying the whole construction of the plot, the dialogue, the reflections, the lyric interludes, is the intention to illustrate some general moral law, some common and typical problem, some fundamental truth. Of the elder dramatists at any rate, Aeschylus and Sophocles, one may even say that it was their purpose, however imperfectly achieved, to justify the ways of God to man. To represent suffering as the punishment of sin is the constant bent of Aeschylus. To justify the law of God against the presumption of man is the central idea of Sophocles. In either case the whole tone is essentially religious. To choose such a theme as Lear, to treat it as Shakespeare has treated it, to leave it as it were bleeding from a thousand wounds, in mute and helpless entreaty for the healing that is never to be vouchsafed. This would have been repulsive, if not impossible, to a Greek tragedian. Without ever descending from concrete art to the abstractions of mere moralising, without ever attempting to substitute a verbal formula for the full and complex perception that grows out of a representation of life, the ancient dramatists were nevertheless in the whole apprehension of their theme, determined by a more or less conscious speculative bias. The world to them was not merely a splendid chaos, it was a divine plan, and even in its darkest hollows its passes most perilous and bleak, they have their hand, though doubtful perhaps and faltering, upon the clue that is to lead them up to the open sky. It is consonant with this account of the nature of Greek tragedy, that it should have laid more stress upon action than upon character. The interest was centred on the universal bearing of certain acts and situations, on the light which the experience represented through on the whole tendency and course of human life, not on the sentiments and motives of the particular personages introduced. The characters are broad and simple, not developing for the most part, but fixed, and fitted therefore to be the mediums of direct action, of simple issues and typical situations. In the Greek tragedy the general point of view predominates over the idiosyncrasies of particular persons. It is human nature that is represented in the broad, not this or that highly specialized variation, and what we have indicated as the general aim, the interpretation of life, is never obscured by the predominance of exceptional and so to speak accidental characteristics. Man is the subject of the Greek drama, the subject of the modern novel is Tom and Dick. Finally, to the realization of this general aim, the whole form of the Greek drama was admirably adapted. It consisted very largely of conversations between two persons, representing two opposed points of view, and giving occasion for an almost scientific discussion of every problem of action raised in the play. And between these conversations were inserted lyric odes in which the chorus commented on the situation, bestowed advice or warning, praise or blame, and finally summed up the moral of the whole. Through the chorus, in fact, the poet could speak in his own person, impose upon the whole tragedy any tone which he desired. Periodically he could drop the dramatist and assume the preacher, and thus ensure that his play should be what we have seen was its recognized ideal, not merely a representation, but an interpretation of life. But this without ceasing to be a work of art. In attempting to analyze in abstract terms the general character of the Greek tragedy, we have necessarily thrown into the shade what after all was its primary and most essential aspect. An aspect, however, of which a full appreciation could only be attained, not by a mere perusal of the text, but by what is, unfortunately, forever beyond our power, the witnessing of an actual representation as it was given on the Greek stage. For, from a purely aesthetic point of view, the Greek drama must be reckoned among the most perfect of art forms. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Geeson. Taking place in the open air on the sunny slope of a hill, valley and plain or islanded sea, stretching away below to meet the blazing blue of a cloudless sky, the moving pageant, thus from the first set in tune with nature, brought to a focus of splendor the rays of every separate art, more akin to an opera than to a play it had as its basis music. For the drama had developed out of the lyric ode and retained throughout what was at first its only element, the dance and song of a mimetic chorus. By this centre of rhythmic motion and pregnant melody, the burden of the tale was caught up and echoed and echoed again, as the living globe divided into spheres of answering song. The clear and precise significance of the plot never obscure to the head, being thus brought home in music to the passion of the heart. The idea embodied in lyric verse, the verse transfigured by song, and song and verse reflected as in a mirror to the eye, by the swing and beat of the limbs they stirred to consonance of motion. And while such was the character of the odes that broke the action of the play, the action itself was an appeal not less to the ear and to the eye than to the passion and the intellect. The circumstances of the representation, the huge auditorium in the open air, lent themselves less to acting in our sense of the term than to attitude and declamation. The actors raised on high boots above their natural height, their faces hidden in masks and their tones mechanically magnified, must have relied for their effects, not upon facial play or rapid and subtle variations of voice and gesture, but upon a certain statuesque beauty of pose and a chanting intonation of that majestic iambic verse whose measure would have been obscured by a rapid and conversational delivery. The representation would thus become moving sculpture to the eye and to the ear as it were a sleep of music between the intenser interludes of the chorus and the spectator without being drawn away by an imitative realism from the calm of impassioned contemplation into the fever and fret of a veritable actor on the scene received an impression based throughout on that clear intellectual foundation that almost prosaic lucidity of sentiment and plot which is preserved to us in the written text, but raised by the accompanying appeal to the sense made as it must have been made by such artists as the Greeks by the grouping of forms and colour, the recitative, the dance and the song to such a greatness and height of aesthetic significance as can hardly have been realised by any other form of art production. The nearest modern analogy to what the ancient drama must have been is to be found probably in the operas of Wagner who indeed was strongly influenced by the tragedy of the Greeks. It was his ideal, like theirs, to combine the various branches of art employing not only music but poetry, sculpture, painting and the dance for the representation of his dramatic theme and his conception also to make art the interpreter of life reflecting in a national drama the national consciousness the highest action and the deepest passion and thought of the German race. To consider how far in this attempt he falls short of or goes beyond the achievement of the Greeks and to examine the wide dissimilarities that underlie the general identity of aim would be to wander too far afield from our present theme. But the comparison may be recommended to those who are anxious to form a concrete idea of what the effect of a Greek tragedy may have been and to clothe in imagination the dead bones of the literary text with the flesh and blood of a representation to the sense. Meantime to assist the reader to realise with somewhat greater precision the bearing of the foregoing remarks it may be worthwhile to give an outline sketch of one of the most celebrated of the Greek tragedies the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. The hero of the drama belongs to that heroic house whose tragic history was among the most terrible and the most familiar to a Greek audience. Tantalus, the founder of the family, for some offence against the gods was suffering in Hades the punishment which is christened by his name. His son Pelops was stained with the blood of Myrtilus. Of the two sons of the next generation Thiestes seduced the wife of his brother Atreus and Atreus in return killed the sons of Thiestes and made the father unwittingly eat the flesh of the murdered boys. Agamemnon, son of Atreus, to propitiate Artemis sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia and in revenge was murdered by Clytemnestra, his wife and Clytemnestra was killed by Orestes, her son in atonement for the death of Agamemnon. For generations the race had been docked by crime and punishment and in choosing for his theme the murder of Agamemnon the dramatist could assume in his audience so close a familiarity with the past history of the house that he could call into existence by an elusive word that somber background of woe to enhance the terrors of his actual presentation. The figures he brought into vivid relief joined hands with menacing forms that faded away into the night of the future and the past while above them hung in toning doom the phantom host of furies. Yet at the outset of the drama all promises well the watchman on the roof of the palace in the tenth year of his watch catches sight at last of the signal fire that announces the capture of Troy and the speedy return of Agamemnon. With joy he proclaims to the house the long delayed and welcome news yet even in the moment of exultation let slip a doubtful phrase hinting at something behind which he dares not name something which may turn to despair the triumph of victory. Hereupon enter the chorus of Argyve elders chanting as they move to the measure of a stately march. They sing how ten years before Agamemnon and Menelaus had led forth the host of Greece at the bidding of the Zeus who protects hospitality to recover for Menelaus Helen his wife treacherously stolen by Paris. Then as they take their places and begin their rhythmic dance in a strain of impassioned verse that is at once a narrative and a lyric hymn they tell or rather present in a series of vivid images flashing as by illumination of lightning out of a night of veiled and somber boating the tale of the deed that darkened the starting of the host the sacrifice of Iphigenia to the goddess whose wrath was delaying the fleet at Aulis in verse, in music, in pantomime the scene lives again the struggle in the father's heart the insistence of his brother chiefs the piteous glance of the girl and at last the unutterable end while above and through it all rings like a knell of fate the refrain that is the motive of the whole drama sing woe, sing woe but may the good prevail at the conclusion of the ode enters Clytemnestra she makes a formal announcement to the chorus of the fall of Troy describes the course of the signal fire from beacon to beacon as it sped and pictures in imagination the scenes even then taking place in the doomed city on her withdrawal the chorus break once more into song and dance to the music of a solemn hymn they point the moral of the fall of Troy the certain doom of violence and fraud descended upon Paris and his house once more the vivid pictures flash from the night of woe the woman in her fatal beauty stepping lightly to her doom the widower's nights of mourning haunted by the ghost of love the horrors of the war that followed the slain abroad and the mourners at home the change of living flesh and blood for the dust and ashes of the tomb at last with a return to their original theme the doom of insolence the chorus close their ode and announce the arrival of a messenger from Troy Talcibius the herald enters as spokesman of the army and king describing the hardships they have suffered and the joy of the triumphant issue to him Clytemnestra announces in words of which the irony is patent to the audience her sufferings in the absence of her husband and her delight at the prospect of his return he will find her, she says, as he left her a faithful watcher of the home her loyalty sure honour undefiled then follows another choral ode similar in theme to the last dwelling on the woe brought by the act of Paris upon Troy the change of the bridal song to the trump of war and the dirge of death contrasting in a profusion of splendid tropes the beauty of Helen with the curse to which it is bound and insisting once more on the doom that attends insolence and pride at the conclusion of this song the measure changes to a march and the chorus turn to welcome the triumphant king Agamemnon enters and behind him the veiled and silent figure of a woman after greeting the gods of his house the king in brief and stilted phrase acknowledges the loyalty of the chorus but hints at much that is amiss which it must be his first charge to set right hereupon enters Clytemnestra and in a speech of rhetorical exaggeration tells of her anxious waiting for her lord and her inexpressible joy at his return in conclusion she directs that purple cloth be spread upon his path that he may enter the house as befits a conqueror after a show of resistance Agamemnon yields the point and the contrast at which the dramatist aims is achieved with the pomp of an eastern monarch always repellent to the Greek mind the king steps across the threshold steps as the audience knows to his death the higher the reach of his power and pride the more terrible and swift is the nemesis and Clytemnestra follows in triumph with the enigmatic cry upon her lips Zeus who art God of fulfillment fulfill my prayers as she withdraws the chorus begin a song of boding fear the more terrible that it is still indefinite something is going to happen the presentiment is sure but what? but what? they search the night in vain meantime motionless and silent waits the figure of the veiled woman it is Cassandra the prophetess daughter of Priam of Troy whom Agamemnon has carried home as his prize Clytemnestra returns to urge her to enter the house she makes no sign and utters no word the queen changes her tone from courtesy to anger and rebuke the figure neither stirs nor speaks and Clytemnestra at last with an angry threat leaves her and returns to the palace then and not till then a cry breaks from the stranger's lips a passionate cry to Apollo who gave her her fatal gift all the somber history of the house to which she has been brought the woe that has been and the woe that is to come passes in pictures across her inner sense in a series of broken ejaculations not sentences but lyric cries she evokes the scenes of the past and of the future blood drips from the palace in its chambers the Fiori's crouch the murdered sons of Thiestes wail in its haunted courts and ever among the visions of the past that one of the future floats and fades clearly discerned impossible to avert the murder of a husband by a wife and in the rear of that most pitiful of all the violent death of the seer who sees in vain and may not help between Cassandra and the chorus it is a duet of anguish and fear in the broken lyric phrases a phantom music wails till at last at what seems the breaking point the tension is relaxed and dropping into the calmer iambic recitative Cassandra tells her message in plainer speech and clearly proclaims the murder of the king then with a last appeal to the Avenger that is to come she enters the palace alone to meet her death the stage is empty suddenly a cry is heard from within again and then again while the chorus hesitate the deed is done the doors are thrown open and Clytemnestra is seen standing over the corpses of her victims all disguise is now thrown off the murderous avows and triumphs in her deed she justifies it as vengeance for the sacrifice of Iphigenia and sees in herself not a free human agent but the incarnate curse of the house of Tantalus and now for the first time appears the adulterer Aegistus who has planned the whole behind the scenes he too is an Avenger for he is the son of that Thiestes who was made to feed on his own children's flesh the murder of Agamemnon is but one more link in the long chain of hereditary guilt and with that exposition of the pitiless law of punishment and crime this chapter of the great drama comes to a close but the Agamemnon is only the first of a series of three plays closely connected and meant to be performed in succession and the problem raised in the first of them the crime that cries for punishment and the punishment that is itself a new crime is solved in the last by a reconciliation of the powers of heaven and hell and the pardon of the last offender in the person of Orestes to sketch however the plan of the other dramas of the trilogy would be to trespass too far upon our space and time it is enough to have illustrated by the example of the Agamemnon the general character of a Greek tragedy and those who care to pursue the subject further must be referred to the text of the plays themselves End of Chapter 4, Section 6 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 4, Section 7 of the Greek view of life by Goldsworthy Loes Dickinson this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Martin Giesen Chapter 4, Section 7 Comedy even more remarkable than the tragedy of the Greeks in its rendering of a didactic intention which forms of a free and spontaneous art is the older comedy known to us through the works of Aristophanes as the former dealt with the general conceptions religious and ethical that underlay the Greek view of life using as its medium of exposition the ancient national myths so the latter dealt with particular phases of contemporary life employing the machinery of a free burlesque the achievement of Aristophanes in fact is more astonishing in a sense than that of Aeschylus starting with what is always prima facie the prose of everyday life its acrid controversies vulgar and tedious types and even its particular individuals for Aristophanes does not hesitate to introduce his contemporaries in person on the stage he fits to this gross and heavy stuff the wings of imagination scatters from it the clinging mists of banality and spite and speeds it forth through the lucid heaven of art amid peels of musical laughter and snatches of lyric song for Aristophanes was a poet as well as a comedian and his genius is displayed not only in the construction of his fantastic plots not only in the inexhaustible profusion of his humane and genial wit but in bursts of pure poetry as melodious and inspired as ever sprang from the lips of the lyricists of Greece or of the world the basis of the comic as of the tragic art of the Greeks was song and dance and the chorus the original element of the play still retains in the works of Aristophanes a place important enough to make it clear that in comedy too a prominent aspect of the art must have been the aesthetic appeal to the ear and the eye in general structure in fact comedy and tragedy were alike aesthetically the motives were similar only they were set in a different key but while primarily Aristophanes like the Tragedians was a great artist he was also like them a great interpreter of life his dramas are satires as well as poems and he was and expressed himself supremely conscious of having a mission to fulfill he has scorned from the first he makes the chorus sing of himself in the peace he has scorned from the first to descend and to dip peddling and meddling in private affairs to detect and collect every petty defect of husband and wife and domestical life but intrepid and bold like alcides of old when the rest stood aloof put himself to the proof in his country's behoof his aim in fact was deliberately to instruct his countrymen in political and social issues to attack the abuses of the assembly of the law courts and the home to punish demagogues charlatans professional politicians to laugh back into their senses revolting sons and wives to defend the orthodox faith against philosophers and men of science these are the themes that he embodies in his plots and these the morals that he enforces when he speaks through the chorus in his own person and the result is an art product more strange to the modern mind in its union of poetry with prose of aesthetic with didactic significance and even that marvellous creation the Greek tragedy of the character of this comedy the reader may form an idea through the admirable and easily accessible translations of Freya and we are therefore dispensed from the obligation to attempt, as in the case of tragedy an account of some particular specimen of the art End of chapter 4, section 7 recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 4, section 8 of the Greek view of life by Goldsworthy Loes Dickinson this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Martin Giesen Chapter 4, section 8 Summary and here must conclude our survey of the character of Greek art the main point which we have endeavoured to make clear has been so often insisted upon that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it further the key to the art of the Greeks as well as to their ethics is the identification of the beautiful and the good and it therefore is as natural in treating of their art to insist on its ethical value as it was to insist on the aesthetic significance of their moral ideal but in fact any insistence on either side of the judgment is misleading the two points of view had never been dissociated and art and conduct alike proceeded from the same imperative impulse to create a harmony or order which was conceived indifferently as beautiful or good through and through the Greek ideal is unity to make the individual at one with the state the real with the ideal the inner with the outer art with morals finally to bring all phases of life under the empire of a single idea which with Goethe we may call as we will the good the beautiful or the whole this was the aim and to a great extent the achievement of their genius and of all the points of view from which we may envisage their brilliant activity none perhaps is more central and more characteristic than this of art whose essence is the comprehension of the many in the one and the perfect reflection of the inner in the outer end of chapter 4 the Greek view of art recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey chapter 5 of the Greek view of life by Goldsworthy Loes Dickinson this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Martin Giesen chapter 5 conclusion now that we have examined in some detail the most important phases of the Greek view of life it may be as well to endeavour briefly to recapitulate and bring to a point the various considerations that have been advanced but first one preliminary remark must be made throughout the preceding pages we have made no attempt to distinguish the Greek view from the Greek ideal we have interpreted their customs and institutions political, social or religious by the conceptions and ideals of philosophers and poets and have thus it may be objected made the mistake of identifying the blind work of popular instinct with the theories and aspirations of conscious thought such a procedure no doubt would be illegitimate if it were supposed to imply that Greek institutions were the result of a deliberate intention consciously adopted and approved by the average man like other social products they grew and were not made and it was only the few who realised fully all that they implied but on the other hand it is a distinguishing characteristic of the Greek age that the ideal formulated by thought was the direct outcome of the facts that absolute separation of what ought to be from what is which continues to haunt and vitiate modern life had not yet been made in ancient Greece Plato idealist though he be is yet rooted in the facts of his age his perfect republic he bases on the institutions of Sparta and Crete his perfect man he shapes on the lines of the Greek citizen that dislocation of the spirit which opposed the body to the soul heaven to earth the church to the state the man of the world to the priest was altogether alien to the consciousness of the Greeks to them the world of fact was also the world of the ideal the conceptions which inspired their highest aims were already embodied in their institutions and reflected in their life and the realisation of what ought to be involved not the destruction of what was but merely its perfecting on its own lines while then on the one hand it would be ridiculous so to idealise the civilisation of the Greeks as to imply that they had eliminated discord and confusion yet on the other it is legitimate to say that they had built on the plan of the ideal and that their life both in public and private was by the very law of its existence an effort to realise explicitly that type of good which was already implicitly embodied in its structure the ideal in a word in ancient Greece was organically related to the real and that is why it is possible to identify the Greek view with the Greek ideal bearing this in mind we may now proceed to recapitulate our conclusions as to what that view was and first let us take the side of speculation here we are concerned not with the formal systems of Greek thought but with that half unconscious working of imagination as much as of mind whose expression was their popular religion of this religion as we saw the essential feature was that belief in anthropomorphic gods by virtue of which a reconciliation was effected between man and the powers whether of nature or of his own soul behind phenomena physical or psychic beings were conceived of like nature with man beings therefore whose actions he could interpret and whose motives he could comprehend for his imagination if not for his intellect a harmony was thus induced between himself and the world that was not he a harmony and in this word we have the key to the dominant idea of the Greek civilization for turning now to the practical side we find the same impulse to reconcile divergent elements antithesis of soul and body which was emphasized in the medieval view of life and dominates still our current ethical conceptions does not appear in the normal consciousness of the Greeks their ideal for the individual life included the perfection of the body beauty no less than goodness was the object of their quest and they believed that the one implied the other but since the perfection of the body required the cooperation of external aids they made these also essential to their ideal not merely virtue of the soul not merely health and beauty of the body but noble birth sufficient wealth and a good name among men were included in their conception of the desirable life harmony in a word was the end they pursued harmony of the soul with the body and of the body with its environment and it is this that distinguishes their ethical ideal from that which in later times has insisted on the fundamental antagonism of the inner to the outer life and made the perfection of the spirit depend on the mortification of the flesh the same ideal of harmony dominates the Greek view of the relation of the individual to the state this relation it is true is often described as one in which the parts were subordinated to the whole but more accurately it may be said that they were conceived as finding in the whole their realisation the perfect individual was the individual in the state the faculties essential to his excellence had their only their opportunity of development the qualities defined as virtues had their only their significance and it was only in so far as he was a citizen that a man was properly a man at all thus that opposition between the individual and the state which perplexes our own society had hardly begun to define itself in Greece if on the one hand the state made larger claims on the liberty of the individual on the other the liberty of the individual consisted in a response to the claims so that in this department also harmony was maintained by the Greeks between elements which have developed in modern times their latent antagonism thus both in speculation and in practice in his relation to nature and in his relation to the state both internally between the divergent elements of which his own being was composed and externally between himself and the world that was not he it was the aim conscious or unconscious and in part at least the achievement of the Greeks to create and maintain an essential harmony the antithesis of which we in our own time are so painfully and increasingly aware between man as a moral being and nature as an indifferent law between the flesh and the spirit between the individual and the state do not appear as factors in that dominant consciousness of the Greeks under whose influence their religion their institutions and their customary ideals had been formed and so regarded in general under what may fairly be called its most essential aspect the Greek civilization is rightly described as that of harmony but on the other hand and this is the point to which we must now turn our attention this harmony which was the dominant feature in the consciousness of the Greeks and the distinguishing characteristic of their epoch in the history of the world was nevertheless after all but a transitory and imperfect attempt to reconcile elements whose antagonism was too strong and the solution thus proposed the factors of disruption were present from the beginning in the Greek ideal and it was as much by the development of its own internal contradictions as by the invasion of forces from without that that fabric of magical beauty was destined to fall these contradictions have already been indicated at various points in the text and it only remains to bring them together in a concluding summary on the side of speculation the religion of the Greeks was open as we saw to a double criticism on the one hand the ethical conceptions embodied in those legends of the gods which were the product of an earlier and more barbarous age had become to the contemporaries of Plato revolting or ridiculous on the other hand to metaphysical speculation not only was the existence of the gods unproved but their mutually conflicting activities their passions and their caprice were incompatible with that conception of universal law which the developing reason evolved as the form of truth the reconciliation of man with nature which had been effected by the medium of anthropomorphic gods was a harmony only to the imagination not to the mind under the action of the intellect the unstable combination was dissolved and the elements that had been thus imperfectly joined fell back into their original opposition the religion of the Greeks was destroyed by the internal evolution of their own consciousness and in the sphere of practice we are met with a similar dissolution the Greek conception of excellence included as we saw not only bodily health and strength but such a share at least of external goods as would give a man scope for his own self perfection and since these conditions were not attainable by all the sacrifice of the majority to the minority was frankly accepted and the pursuit of the ideal confined to a privileged class such a conception however was involved in internal contradictions for in the first place even for the privileged few an excellence which depended on external aids was at the best uncertain and problematical misfortune and disease were possibilities that could not be ignored old age and death were imperative certainties and no care, no art no organization of society could obfiate the inherent incompatibility of individual perfection with the course of nature harmony between the individual and his environment was perhaps more nearly achieved by and for the aristocracy of ancient Greece than by any society of any other age but such a harmony even at the best is fleeting and precarious and no perfection of life delivers from death and in the second place to secure even this imperfect realization it was necessary to restrict the universal application of the ideal excellence in Greece was made the end for some not for all but this limitation was felt in the development of consciousness to be self-contradictory and the next great system of ethics that succeeded to those of Aristotle postulated an end of action that should be at once independent of the aids of fortune and open alike to all classes of mankind the ethics of a privileged class were thus expanded into the ethics of humanity but this expansion was fatal to its essence which had depended on the very limitations by which it was destroyed with the Greek civilization beauty perished from the world never again has it been possible for man to believe that harmony is in fact the truth of all existence the intellect and the moral sense have developed imperative claims which can be satisfied by no experience known to man and as a consequence of this the goal of desire which the Greeks could place in the present has been transferred for us to a future infinitely remote which nevertheless is conceived as attainable dissatisfaction with the world in which we live and determination to realize one that shall be better are the prevailing characteristics of the modern spirit the development is one into whose meaning and end this is not the place to enter it is enough that we feel it to be inevitable that the harmony of the Greeks contained in itself the factors of its own destruction and that in spite of the fascination which constantly fixes our gaze on that fairest and happiest halting place in the secular march of man it was not there any more than here that he was destined to find the repose of that ultimate reconciliation which was but imperfectly anticipated by the Greeks End of chapter 5 Conclusion Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey End of The Greek View of Life by Goldsworthy Loes Dickinson