Much of what is most perplexing in the difference in this respect between Greek and western art has light thrown on it, if we think of the importance which angels have in medieval painting. Their invention, if one may call it so, was one of the very highest moment in art. Those lovely creations, so precisely drawn up to a certain point, so elusive beyond it, raised the feeling for pure beauty into a wholly ideal plane. The deepest longings of men were satisfied by the contemplation of a paradise in which we should be even as they. In that mystical portraiture of the invisible world an answer--perhaps the only answer--was found to the demand for an ideal of beauty. That remarkable saying preserved by S. Clement, of a kingdom in which "the two shall be one, and the male with the female neither male nor female,"[2] might form the text for a chapter of no small importance in human history. The Greek lucidity, which made all mysticism impossible in their art as it was alien from their life, did not do away with this imperious demand; and their cult of beauty was the issue of their attempt, imperfect indeed at best and at worst disastrous, to reunite the fragments of the human ideal.[3] In much of this poetry too we are in the conventional world of pastoral; and pastoral, it must be repeated, does not concern itself with real life. The amount of latitude in literary expression varies no doubt with the prevalent popular morality of the period. But it would lead to infinite confusion to think of the poetry as a translation of conduct. A truer picture of Greek life is happily given us in those epigrams which deal with the material that history passes over and ideal poetry, at least in Greek literature, barely touches upon, the life of simple human relations from day to day within the circle of the family. ---------- [1] {ear oroosa Nukheia}, Theocr. xiii. 42. [2] Clem. Rom. II. 12: {eperotetheis autos o Kurios upo tinos pote exei autou e basileia, eipen, otan estai ta duo en kai to exo os to eso kai to arsen meta tes theleias oute arsen oute thelu}. It is also quoted in almost the same words by Clem. Alex., Strom. xiii. 92, as from "the Gospel according to the Egyptians." [3] Cf. Plato, Sympos. 191, 192. VIII