Greece
The relation of religion to art has varied greatly among different peoples and at different periods. At the one extreme is the uncompromising puritan spirit, which refuses to admit any devices of human skill into the direct relations between God and man, whether it be in the b...
The relation of religion to art has varied greatly among different peoples and at different periods. At the one extreme is the uncompromising puritan spirit, which refuses to ad...
2. Chapter 2Religion, for our present purpose, may be considered as (1) popular, (2) official, (3) poetic, and (4) philosophical. These four divisions, or rather aspects, are not, of course...
3. Chapter 3The Greeks possessed, as we have seen, to an exceptionally high degree the vivid anthropomorphic imagination necessary for the expression of their conception of the gods in thei...
4. Chapter 4We have already noticed the religious conceptions and impulses which led to the substitution of images in human shape for the rude stocks and stones of primitive worship. The be...
5. Chapter 5The age which followed the great Persian Wars was the time of the highest political, literary, and intellectual development in Greece. Nor was it unfavourable to strength and de...
6. Chapter 6The great religious ideals of the fifth century were, as we have seen, closely bound up with the subordination of the individual to the State; and their expression in sculpture...
7. Chapter 7In the Hellenistic age we find the Greek types of the gods adapting themselves to new conditions and new meanings. With the conquests of Alexander, Greek language and civilisati...