It is quite plain, I think, that the practice was not one congenial or familiar to the mind of Homer. Had it been so, he surely must have made large poetic use of it. Whereas on the contrary it is by inference alone, though certainly by unavoidable inference, from language which he uses without that intention, that we become assured even of their existence in his time. He speaks, indeed, more than once of placing ἀγάλματα in temples, or of suspending them in honour of the gods[360]: but our title to construe this of statues appears to be wholly conjectural. [360] Od. iii. 438. xii. 347. It would seem inexplicable that a poet, who enlarges with so much power, not only on the Shield of Agamemnon and the Arms of Achilles, but on the ideal Ægis of Minerva, the chariot of Juno, the bow of Apollo, and the metallic handmaids of Vulcan, should entirely avoid description of the statues of the Olympian gods, if they were habitually before his eyes. I have argued elsewhere that we see in Homer the Hellenic, not the Pelasgian, mind. And if it be so, then I think we are justified in associating with his Hellenism, as one among many signs, this remarkable silence. The ritual and external development of Pelasgian religion would delight in statues as visible signs: the Hellenic idealism would not improbably eschew them. Hence we may treat this practice of the period as belonging to Pelasgian peculiarities. If this be so, then I think we may pass on to the conclusion, that the original tendency to produce visible forms of the Divinity was not owing to, and formed no part of, the efforts of the human imagination, so largely developed in Homer, to idealize religion, and to beautify the world by its imagery. But, on the contrary, so far as we can judge from Homer, it first prevailed among a race inclined to material and earthy conceptions in theology, and from them it spread to others of higher intelligence. It was a crutch for the lameness of man, and not a wing for his upward aspirations. And indeed, as it appears to me, this proposition is sustained even by the past experience and present state of Christendom. When faith was strongest, images were unknown to the faithful. Nor is it art, which produces them: it is merely a kind of corporal and mechanical imitation. No considerable work of art is at this moment, I believe, in any Christian country, an object of religious worship. The sentiment which craves for material representations of such objects in order to worship them, appears also commonly to exact that they should be somewhat materialized. The higher office of art, in connection with devout affection, seems to be that it should point our veneration onwards, not arrest it. It holds out the finger which we are to follow, not the hand which we are to kiss. ~_As to Seers or Diviners._~