These deities were the invention of a cultivated intellect, a refined
taste and polished civilization, and furnish a striking proof of man's
longing after the Infinite, unguided by the star of revelation.
The imaginative Greeks did not worship the statues of the gods _per se_,
but only admired them as the fitting representations of those mysterious
forces that hold sway over earth, air, fire, and water, or reverenced
them as the symbols of noble sentiments or sublime passions. The thing
itself, the cunning but lifeless figure, was only incidental, while the
idea thus typified was the real incentive to worship. This was also the
age that produced hero worship, and the great man who won the praise and
admiration of the people by his exalted qualities, or his prowess in
arms, was considered as a demigod, or one in favor with the tenants of
Olympus, and his statue was accordingly erected, to stand beside that,
perhaps, of Mars, Apollo, or Mercury.
Thus we trace the history of sculpture in its steady progress from its
use as a chronicler of events to its employment in the production of the
objects of idolatry, and thence to the mythological period, when it
became the medium of aesthetic expression, attaining its highest
perfection in the palmy days of Greece.
In no people of which the records of the past give any account, can we
find such an active sense of the beautiful as that which permeated the
minds of the polished Greeks.
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