PERICLEAN FIGURES

SOME PERICLEAN FIGURES


Yoshio Markino (that ever-delightful Japanese) makes an
illuminating comparison between the modern western and the
ancient eastern civilizations. What he says amounts to this: the
one is of Science, the other of the Human Spirit; the one of
intellect, the other of intuition; the one has learnt rules for
carrying all things through in some shape that will serve--the
other worked its wonders by what may be called a Transcendental
Rule of Thumb. But in fact it was a reliance on the Human Spirit,
which invited the presence thereof;--and hence results were
attained quite unachievable by modern scientific methods. What
Yoshio says of the Chinese and Japanese is also true of all the
great western ages of the past. We can do a number of things,--
that is, have invented machinery to do a number of things for
us,--but with all our resources we could not build a Parthenon:
could not even reproduce it, with the model there before our eyes
to imitate.*

------
* I quote Prof. Mahaffy in his _Problems of Greek History._ He
also points out that it is beyond the powers of modern science in
naval architecture to construct a workable model of a Greek trireme.
------

It stands as a monument of the Human Spirit: as an age-long
witness to the presence and keen activity of that during the Age
of Pericles in Athens. It was built at almost break-neck speed,
yet remains a thing of permanent inimitable beauty, defying time
and the deliberate efforts of men and gunpowder to destroy it.
The work in it which no eye could see was as delicate, as
exquisite, as that which was most in evidence publicly; every
detail bore the deliberate impress of the Spirit, a direct
spiritual creation. There is no straight line in it; no two
measurements are the same; but by a divine and direct intuition,
every difference is inevitable, and an essential factor in the
perfection of the whole. As if the same creative force had made
it, as makes of the sea and mountains an inescapable perfection
of beauty.

It is one of the many mighty works wherewith Pericles and
his right-hand man Pheidias, and his architects Ictinus and
Callicrates, adorned Athens. It would serve no purpose to make a
list of the great names of the age; which you know well enough
already. The simple fact to note is this: that at a certain
period in the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. the Crest-Wave of
Evolution was, so far as we can see, flowing through a very
narrow channel. The Far Eastern seats of civilization were under
pralaya; the life-forces in West Asia were running towards
exhaustion, or already exhausted; India, it is true, is hidden
from us; we cannot judge well what was going on there; and so
was most of Europe. Any scheme of cycles that we can put forward
as yet must necessarily be tentative and hypothetical; what we
do not know is, to what we do know, as a million to one; I may
be quite wrong in giving Europe as long a period for its
manvantaras as China; possibly there were no manvantaric
activities in Europe, in that period, before the rise of Greece.
But whether or no, this particular time belongs, of all European
countries, to Greece: the genius of the world, the energy of the
human spirit, was mainly concentrated there; and of Greece, in
the single not too large city of Athens. It is true I am rather
enamored of the cycle of a hundred and thirty years; prejudiced,
if you like, in its favor; it is also true that genius was
speaking through at least one world-important Athenian voice--
that of Aeschylus--before the age of Pericles began. Still,
these dates are significant: 477, in which year Athens attained
the hegemony of Greece, and 347, in which Plato died. It was
after 477 that Aeschylus eagle-barked the grandest part of his
message from the Soul, and that the great Periclean figures
appeared; and though Athenians of genius out-lived Plato, he was
the last world-figure and great Soul-Prophet; the last Athenian
equal in standing to Aeschylus. When those thirteen decades had
passed, the Soul had little more to say through Athens.--
Aristotle?--I said, _the Soul_ had little more to say. . . .
 

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