The Need for Art in Life; A Lecture Delivered at the University of Manchester (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915. Excerpt: ... PART III HELLAS AND THE COMPLETE MAN Now, if we probe a little deeper we shall find that this stress upon beauty in its relation to character was not an isolated, unrelated phenomenon, but was inseparably connected with the Greek conception of life as a whole. On the ends of the great temple at Delphi, which in some respects may be considered the centre of Greek religion, were two mottoes which may be taken as the mottoes of Greek life. At the one end yva6i aeavrov (gnothi seauton) know thyself; at the other end firjSev ayav (meden agan) nothing in excess. Tvs)6l aeavTov: know thyself--if ever there was a people who made it their aim to understand the nature of man it was the Greeks. They were humanists in the highest sense. Know thyself, find out what it is to be a man, find out all that marks him out and distingushes him from the lower creation, that lifts him above the mere physical nature which he shares with them and then endeavour to the utmost of thine ability to develop all these essentials and to be a man. It is the fundamental spirit of humanism, the spirit that realises the glory and significance of man. It is the spirit that neither with boasting nor self-depreciation declares that "the proper study of mankind is man." After all, man is put here upon earth to perform his own proper function; whatever may be the animal state from which he has risen or the future state to which he may rise. It is a plain neglect of his duty to dally with the one or idly sigh in vain aspiration after the other. Every thing has its proper function to perform, man or angel, clod or precious stone; it is, as Marcus Aurelius phrases it: --"as though the emerald should say, --'whatever happens I must be an emerald.'" Humanism is opposed to sensationalism, materialism a...