Greek poetry and philosophy had the same basis of reality as their mythology. That which was asserted by the Asiatic and African law-givers to have been directly dictated by the gods, was gradually acquired by the Greeks through deductive and inductive reasoning. Soon the mythological conceptions of the poets were turned into eîdola. Aphrodite was set down as the representative of matter, out of which all things were formed. Pallas-Athene lost her individuality, and became intellect pervading humanity. Apollo was no more the ‘god-man’ or the living sun, but cosmical heat. The forms of fearful monsters that originated in Asia, with ferocious jaws, with three heads, spreading fear and awe, looking as if nothing but human flesh could satisfy their voracity, also terrified the Greeks during the mythic period of their national existence, and human flesh was accordingly sacrificed. Such sacrifices were prevalent wherever monster-gods, without human shape, without legs or arms, with fishes’ tails, dog’s or cat’s heads, with round and glaring eyes, and many arms, inspired the masses with fear and trembling. This was the case in Greece when monsters and pirates peopled the sea-coasts; when _Geryon_, the giant with three bodies, three heads, six hands, six legs, and two wings; _Echidna_, the wife of Typhon; the _Lernean_ serpent, with nine or with fifty heads; the _Chimera_, with a lion’s or goat’s head; the _Sphinx_, with a woman’s head and bust, the body of a lion, and the wings and tail of a dragon; and the fearfully howling _Skylla_, with six heads and six long necks, formed part of their pantheon. As soon, however, as poetry threw a glittering veil of beauty over the forces and phenomena of nature, no one thought of sacrificing human flesh to the gods. Who could have slaughtered a human being in the sight of the Olympian Zeus or the Pallas-Athene of Pheidias, the Venus of Alkemenes, or the Apollo of Praxiteles? The Greek mind, once on the road to progress through a correct appreciation of beauty, developed with incredible rapidity. The elements of art as well as of science are threefold. We have:-- α. The reign of _imagination_ through the emotional element, more or less regulated; β. That of _intellect_, the reflective element, more or less influenced by imagination; and γ. That of _reason_, the speculative element, discerning between imagination and intellect, and binding the two into one. The first element is the province of the unconscious artist. He trusts his own subjective imagination, and sees things only from his individual point of view. The second tries to compare the different products of art, to draw analogies between them, and to assign causes for certain forms. This is the province of the chronicler, the antiquary, and the art-historian.