may be in us. It may be that we are
so accustomed to the materialism of the English critics that
we fail, at first, to apprehend the spirituality of this most
refined and refining of Frenchmen. No English critic could have
written his "Art in Greece," because no English critic could put
himself in his place. We know what the English think of Greek
Art, or may, with a little reading: what Taine thinks of it
is--that it is what it is, simply because the Greeks were what
they were. Before he tells us what Greek Art is, he tells us what
the Greeks were. Nor does he stop here, but goes on to tell us,
or rather begins by telling us, what kind of a country it was
in which they dwelt, what skies shone over them, what mountains
looked down upon them, in the shadow of what trees they walked
within sight of the wine-dark sea. He begins at the beginning,
as the children say. Whether he succeeds in convincing us that
it was Greece alone which made the Greeks what they were, depends
somewhat upon the cast of our minds, and somewhat upon our power
to resist his eloquence. We think, ourselves, that he lays too
much stress upon the mere outward environment of the Grecian
people. The influence exercised over their lives, by the
Institutions which grew up out of these lives--the influence, in
short, of their purely physical culture--is admirably described,
as is also the difference between this culture and ours:

"Modern people are Christian, and Christianity is a
religion of second growth which opposes natural instinct.
We may liken it to a violent contraction which has
inflected the primitive attitude of the human mind. It
proclaims, in effect, that the world is sinful, and that
man is depraved--which certainly is indisputable in the
century in which it was born. According to it, man must
change his ways. Life here below is simply an exile;
let us turn our eyes upward to our celestial home. Our
natural character is vicious; let us stifle natural
desires and mortify the flesh. The experience of our
senses and the knowledge of the wise are inadequate and
delusive; let us accept the light of revelation, faith
and divine illumination. Through penitence, renunciation
and meditation let us develop within ourselves the
spiritual man; let our life be an ardent awaiting of
deliverance, a constant sacrifice of will, an undying
yearning for God, a revery of sublime love,