“Well, all I can say is that if you tell that, I’ll never speak to you again.” Ogi answers meekly, “Excuse me.” And then: “What do you think of my thesis?” “Well,” says Mrs. Ogi, “I see, of course--you are trying to irritate and shock people as much as possible. Are you going to say that Greek art is propaganda?” “I can’t possibly help saying it.” “You know that this art is always cited as the perfect type of pure art, the expression of joy and love of beauty.” “The Greeks were a beauty-loving race and a joy-seeking race, and they embodied their ideals in the figures of gods and goddesses--extremely lovely figures. No one can do better with the human body than they did; but if you take those divinities on their good looks, you’ll simply be repeating the bitter mistake of the Greeks--and without their excuse of inexperience.” Says Mrs. Ogi: “We’re to have a Christian sermon on naked marble idols?” “We are going to understand the total art product of the Greeks, to draw out of it what they put into it. These people constituted themselves an experiment station to try out beauty-loving--that is, trust in Nature--as a basis of civilization; and they found it didn’t work. It led them into pain and failure and despair, and the record is written all over their art. There is a book, Mackail’s ‘Greek Anthology,’ a collection of various kinds of inscriptions, brief verses and sentiments from all sources; and you search the pages and hardly find one happy word. You discover that their art was to put sadness into beautiful and melodious language. ‘Of all things,’ says Theognis, ‘it is best for men not to be born.’ And Anacreon, poet of the joy-lovers, compares life to a chariot wheel that ‘runs fast away.’” “Well, but so it does!”