ranquil abodes,
which neither winds do shake nor clouds drench with rains, nor snow
congealed by sharp frost harms with hoary fall: an ever cloudless
ether o'ercanopies them, and they laugh with light shed largely
around. Nature, too, supplies all their wants, and nothing ever
impairs their peace of mind."

Greek art moves on through a long course of technical accomplishment, of
ever-increasing mastery over materials and methods. But this course we
need not follow. For our argument the last word is said in the figures
of these Olympians translated into stone. Born of pressing human needs
and desires, images projected by active and even anxious ritual, they
pass into the upper air and dwell aloof, spectator-like and all but
spectral.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] II, 38.

[44] _Oed. Col._ 694, trans. D.S. MacColl.

[45] IX, 10, 4.

[46] See my _Themis_, p. 438.

[47] It is now held by some and good authorities that the prehistoric
paintings of cave-dwelling man had also a ritual origin; that is, that
the representations of animals were intended to act magically, to
increase the "supply of the animal or help the hunter to catch him."
But, as this question is still pending, I prefer, tempting though they
are, not to use prehistoric paintings as material for my argument.

[48] _Laws_, 653.

[49] _Athen._ XIV, 26, p. 629.

[50] D.S. MacColl, "A Year of Post-Impressionism," _Nineteenth Century_,
p. 29. (1912.)

[51] D.S. MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, p. 20. (1902.)

[52] D.S. MacColl, _op. cit._, p. 18.

[53] II, 18.

CHAPTER VII

RITUAL, ART AND LIFE

In the preceding chapters we have seen ritual emerge from the practical
doings of life. We have noted that in ritual we have the beginning of a
detachment from practical ends; we have watched the merely emotional
dance develop from an undifferentiated chorus into a spectacle performed
by actors and watched by spectators, a spectacle cut off, not only from
real life, but also from ritual issues; a spectacle, in a word, that has
become an end in itself. We have further seen that the choral dance is
an undifferentiated whole which later divides out into three clearly
articulate parts, the artist, the work of art, the spectator or art
lover. We are now in a position to ask what is the good of all this
antiquarian enquiry? Why is it, apart from the mere delight of
scientific enquiry, important to have seen that art arose from ritual