It is impossible to mistake the lamentable effects of Christian dogma, in this also. As this dogma set man's goal entirely outside his earthly being, and that goal was centred in an absolute and superhuman God: so only from the aspect of its most inevitable needs, could life remain an object of man's care; for, having once received the gift of life, it was his bounden duty to maintain it until that day when God alone should please relieve him of its burden. But in no wise should his needs awake a lust to treat with loving hand the matter given him for their satisfaction; only the abstract aim of life's bare maintenance could justify the operation of his senses. And thus we see with horror the spirit of modern Christianity embodied in a cotton-milclass="underline" to speed the rich, God has become our Industry, which only holds the wretched Christian labourer to life until the heavenly courses of the stars of commerce bring round the gracious dispensation that sends him to a better world.
The Greek knew no handicraft, rightly so described. The so-called necessaries of life,-which, strictly speaking, make up the whole concernment of our private and our public life,-he deemed unworthy to rank as objects of special and engrossing attention. His soul lived only in publicity, in the great fellowship of his nation; the needs of this public life made up the total of his care; whereas these needs were satisfied by the patriot, the statesman, and the artist, but not the handicraftsman. The Greek went forth to the delights of this publicity from a simple, unassuming home. It would have seemed to him disgraceful and degrading to revel, within the costly walls of a private palace, in the refinements of luxury and extravagance which to-day fill out the life of a hero of the Bourse; for this was the distinction that he drew between himself and the egoistic "Barbarians" of the East. He sought the culture of his body in the general public baths and gymnasia; his simple, noble clothing was for the most part the artistic care of the women; and whenever he fell upon the necessity of manual toil, it was of his very nature that he should find out its artistic side, and straightway raise it to an art. But the drudgery of household labour he thrust away-to Slaves.
This Slave thus became the fateful hinge of the whole destiny of the world. The Slave, by sheer reason of the assumed necessity of his slavery, has exposed the null and fleeting nature of all the strength and beauty of exclusive Grecian manhood, and has shown to all time that Beauty and Strength, as attributes of public life, can then alone prove lasting blessings, when they are the common gifts of all mankind
Unhappily, things have not as yet advanced beyond the mere demonstration. In fact, the Revolution of the human race, that has lasted now two thousand years, has been almost exclusively in the spirit of Reaction. It has dragged down the fair, free man to itself, to slavery; the slave has not become a freeman, but the freeman a slave.
To the Greek the fair, strong man alone was free, and this man was none other than himself; whatever lay outside the circle of Grecian manhood and Apollonian priesthood, was to him barbarian, and if he employed it,-slave. True that the man who was not Greek, was actually barbarian and slave; but he was still a man, and his barbarianism and his slavery were not his nature but his fate: the sin of history against his nature, just as to-day it is the sin of our social system, that the healthiest nations in the healthiest climates have brought forth cripples and outcasts. This historical sin, however, was destined soon to be avenged upon the free Greek himself. Where there lived among the nations no feeling of absolute human-love, the Barbarian needed only to subjugate the Greek: and all was over with Grecian freedom, strength, and beauty. Thus, in deep humiliation, two hundred million men, huddled in helpless confusion in the Roman empire, too soon found out that-when all men cannot be free alike and happy-all men must suffer alike as slaves.
Thus we are slaves until this very day, with but the sorry consolation of knowing that we are all slaves together. Slaves, to whom once the Christian Apostles and the Emperor Constantine gave counsel, to patiently submit to a suffering life below, for sake of a better world above; slaves, whom bankers and manufacturers teach nowadays to seek the goal of Being in manual toil for daily bread. Free from this slavery, in his time, felt the Emperor Constantine alone; when he enthroned himself a pleasure-seeking heathen despot, above this life which he had taught his believing subj ects to deem so useless. And free alone, to-day,-at least in the sense of freedom from open slavery,-feels he who has money; for he is thus able to employ his life to some other end than that of winning the bare means of subsistence. Thus, as the struggle for freedom from the general slavery proclaimed itself in Roman and Medieval times as the reaching after absolute dominion: so it comes to light to-day as the greed for gold. And we must not be astonished, if even Art grasps after gold; for everything strives to its freedom, towards its goda-and our god is Gold, our religion the Pursuit of Wealth.
Yet Art remains in its essence what it ever was; we have only to say, that it is not present in our modern public system. It lives, however, and has ever lived in the individual conscience, as the one fair, indivisible Art. Thus the only difference is this: with the Greeks it lived in the public conscience, whereas to.day it lives alone in the conscience of private persons, the public un-conscience recking nothing of it. Therefore in its flowering time the Grecian Art was conservative, because it was a worthy and adequate expression of the public conscience: with us, true Art is revolutionary, because its very existence is opposed to the ruling spirit of the community.
With the Greeks the perfect work of art, the Drama, was the abstract and epitome of all that was expressible in the Grecian nature. It was the nation itself-in intimate connection with its own history-that stood mirrored in its art-work, that communed with itself and, within the span of a few hours, feasted its eyes with its own noblest essence. All division of this enjoyment, all scattering of the forces concentred on one point, all diversion of the elements into separate channels, must needs have been as hurtful to this unique and noble Art-work as to the like-formed State itself; and thus it could only mature, but never change its nature. Thus Art was conservative, just as the noblest sons of this epoch of the Grecian State were themselves conservative. Æschylus is the very type of this conservatism, and his loftiest work of conservative art is the "Oresteia," with which he stands alike opposed as poet to the youthful Sophocles, as statesman to the revolutionary Pericles. The victory of Sophocles, like that of Pericles, was fully in the spirit of the advancing development of mankind; but the deposition of Æschylus was the first downward step from the height of Grecian Tragedy, the first beginning of the dissolution of Athenian Polity.