or the
advance of the art of sculpture is that the race should possess, in
addition to the mimetic instinct, the realistic or idolizing instinct;
the desire to see as substantial the powers that are unseen, and bring
near those that are far off, and to possess and cherish those that are
strange. To make in some way tangible and visible the nature of the
gods--to illustrate and explain it by symbols; to bring the immortals
out of the recesses of the clouds, and make them Penates; to bring back
the dead from darkness, and make them Lares.

34. Our conception of this tremendous and universal human passion has
been altogether narrowed by the current idea that Pagan religious art
consisted only, or chiefly, in giving personality to the gods. The
personality was never doubted; it was visibility, interpretation, and
possession that the hearts of men sought. Possession, first of all--the
getting hold of some hewn log of wild olive-wood that would fall on its
knees if it was pulled from its pedestal--and, afterwards, slowly
clearing manifestation; the exactly right expression is used in Lucian's
dream,--[Greek: Pheidias edeixe ton Dia]; "Showed[114] Zeus;" manifested
him, nay, in a certain sense, brought forth, or created, as you have it,
in Anacreon's ode to the Rose, of the birth of Athena herself--

[Greek: polemoklonon t' Athenen
koruphes edeiknye Zeus.]

But I will translate the passage from Lucian to you at length--it is in
every way profitable.

35. "There came to me, in the healing[115] night, a divine dream, so
clear that it missed nothing of the truth itself; yes, and still after
all this time, the shapes of what I saw remain in my sight, and the
sound of what I heard dwells in my ears"--note the lovely sense of
[Greek: enaulos]--the sound being as of a stream passing always by in
the same channel,--"so distinct was everything to me. Two women laid
hold of my hands and pulled me, each towards herself, so violently, that
I had like to have been pulled asunder; and they cried out against one
another,--the one, that she was resolved to have me to herself, being
indeed her own, and the other that it was vain for her to claim what
belonged to others;--and the one who first claimed me for her own was
like a hard worker, and had strength as a man's; and her hair was dusty,
and her hand full of horny places, and her dress fastened tight about
her, and the folds of it loaded with white marble-dust, so that she
look