Thoroughly to comprehend, therefore, the nature and extent of that sway which the state and its institutions directly or indirectly exerted over the minds of the citizens, it is necessary briefly to inquire into the character of the plastic and mimetic arts which found encouragement in the Grecian commonwealths, and afterwards to examine for a moment the stores of thought and sentiment and passion, and piety and virtue, which the literature and religion of Greece laid open to the contemplation of those who were entering upon the career of life. We shall begin with the arts, as they were the inculcators of the principle of the beautiful, advance next to literature, the teacher of wisdom and patriotism, concluding with religion, which opened up to their view a prospect, though dim, of heaven, and directed their footsteps thitherward. It is certain that, to the generality, the vast superiority of the Greeks in the arts, which like an universal language need no translation, is more palpable and apparent than their superiority in literature; though Demosthenes be in reality as much above any orator, Thucydides above any historian, Plato above any philosopher, Homer above any epic poet, Milton perhaps excepted, who has since written, as Pheidias, or Polycletos, or Praxiteles rose above any sculptor of the north. Nor can we account for this any more than we can explain why Shakespeare was superior to Ford or Massinger. Nature infused more genius into their souls. They loved or rather worshiped the beautiful. It breathed within and around them: their minds were pregnant with it, and, when they brought forth, beauty was their offspring. Thus Aristophanes[927] insinuates, that even the gods borrowed much of their majesty and splendour from the human mind, when he says, that heaven-born peace derived her loveliness from some relationship to Pheidias. Footnote 927: Pac. 614. seq. Religion, in one sense, may be called the parent of the fine arts; but it would perhaps be more philosophical to consider religion and the arts as twin sisters, both sprung from that yearning after the ideal which constituted the most marked feature in the Hellenic mind. We must carry back our investigations very far, if we would discover them radiant with loveliness in their cradle; but when they issued thence it was to shed light over the earth, a light derived from the skies. For man does not originate his ideas of the beautiful, which fall like images from heaven on the speculum of his mind; he gives back but what he receives. The conception of beauty is an inspiration, a thing which does not come when called upon; or rather, shining on all, it is lost on the dull and opaque fancy, and is reflected only from the luminous and bright.