In comparison with the Renaissance sculptors, the French
academic sculptors of the present day are certainly too exclusive
devotees of Buffon's "order and movement," and too little occupied with
the thought itself--too little individual. In comparison with the
antique, this is less apparent, but I fancy not less real. We are so
accustomed to think of the antique as the pure and simple embodiment of
style, as a sublimation, so to speak of the individual into style
itself, that in this respect we are scarcely fair judges of the antique.
In any case we know very little of it; we can hardly speak of it except
by periods. But it is plain that the Greek is so superior to any
subsequent sculpture in this one respect of style that we rarely think
of its other qualities. Our judgment is inevitably a comparative one,
and inevitably a comparative judgment fixes our attention on the Greek
supremacy of style. Indeed, in looking at the antique the thought
itself is often alien to us, and the order and movement, being more
nearly universal perhaps, are all that occupy us.
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