“What! Are we to think,” said Thespesion, “that the Pheidiases and Praxiteleses went up to heaven and took impressions of the forms of the Gods, and so made an art of them, or was it something else that set them a-modelling?” “Yes, something else,” said Apollonius, “something pregnant with wisdom.” “What was that? Surely you cannot say it was anything else but imitation?” “Imagination wrought them--a workman wiser far than imitation; for imitation only makes what it has seen, whereas imagination makes what it has never seen, conceiving it with reference to the thing it really is.” Imagination, says Apollonius, is one of the most potent faculties, for it enables us to reach nearer to realities. It is generally supposed that Greek sculpture was merely a glorification of physical beauty, in itself quite unspiritual. It was an idealisation of form and features, limbs and muscles, an empty glorification of the physical with nothing of course really corresponding to it in the nature of things. But Apollonius declared it brings us nearer to the real, as Pythagoras and Plato declared before him, and as all the wiser teach. He meant this literally, not vaguely and fantastically. He asserted that the types and ideas of things are the only realities. He meant that between the imperfection of the earth and the highest divine type of all things, were grades of increasing perfection. He meant that within each man was a form of perfection, though of course not yet absolutely perfect. That the angel in man, his dæmon, was of God-like beauty, the summation of all the finest features he had ever worn in his many lives on earth. The Gods, too, belonged to the world of types, of models, of perfections, the heaven-world. The Greek sculptors had succeeded in getting in contact with this world, and the faculty they used was imagination. This idealisation of form was a worthy way to represent the Gods; but, says Apollonius, if you set up a hawk or owl or dog in your temples, to represent Hermes or Athena or Apollo, you may dignify the animals, but you make the Gods lose dignity. To this Thespesion replies that the Egyptians dare not give any precise form to the Gods; they give them merely symbols to which an occult meaning is attached. Yes, answers Apollonius, but the danger is that the common people worship these symbols and get unbeautiful ideas of the Gods. The best thing would be to have no representations at all. For the mind of the worshipper can form and fashion for himself an image of the object of his worship better than any art. Quite so, retorted Thespesion, and then added mischievously: There was an old Athenian, by-the-by--no fool--called Socrates, who swore by the dog and goose as though they were Gods. Yes, replied Apollonius, he was no fool. He swore by them not as being Gods, but in order that he might not swear by the Gods (iv. 19).