occupation
is with the latter; we see the physical grown beautiful under
the illumination of the Soul; not the Soul that illumines it.
The men of the Egyptian sculptors had been Gods. The Gods of
these Greek sculptors were men. Perfect, glorious, beautiful men
--so far as externals were concerned. But men--to excite personal
feeling, not to quell it into nothingness and awe. The perfection,
even at that early stage and in the work of the disciples of
Pheidias, was a quality of the personality.

It was indeed marvelously near the point of equilibrium: the
moment when Spirit enters conquered matter, and stands there
enthroned. In Pheidias himself I cannot but think we should have
found that moment as we find it in Aeschylus. But you see, it is
when that has occurred: when Spirit has entered matter, and
made the form, the body, supremely beautiful; it is precisely
then that the moment of peril comes--if there is not the
wisdom present that knows how to avoid the peril. The next and
threatening step downward is preoccupation with, then worship of,
the body.

The Age of Pericles came to worship the body: that was the
danger into which it fell; that was what brought about the ruin
of Greece. That huge revelation of material beauty; and that
absence of control from above; the lost adequacy of the
Mysteries, and the failure of the Pythagorean Movement;--the
impatience of spiritual criticism, heedlessness of spiritual
warning;--well, we can see what a turning-point the time was in
history. On the side of politics, selfishness and ambition were
growing; on the side of personal life, vice. . . . It is a thing
to be pondered on, that what has kept Greece sterile these last
two thousand years or so is, I believe, the malaria; which is a
thing that depends for its efficacy on mosquitos. Great men
simply will not incarnate in malarial territory; because
they would have no chance whatever of doing anything, with
that oppression and enervation sapping them. Greece has been
malarial; Rome, too, to some extent; the Roman Campagna
terribly; as if the disease were (as no doubt it is) a Karma
fallen on the sites of old-time tremendous cultural energies;
where the energies were presently wrecked, drowned and sodden in
vice. Here then is a pretty little problem in the workings of
Karma: on what plane, through what superphysical links or
channels, do the vices of an effete civilization transform
themselves into that poor familiar s