The Greek gods have no less their origin in the spirit and the credences of the Greek people, and in the national belief; the poets were the interpreters of the general thought, of what there was most elevated in the imagination of the people. Henceforth, the artist, as we have seen above, takes a position wholly different from that which he held in the East. His inspiration is personal. His work is that of a free imagination, creating according to its own conceptions. The inspiration does not come from without; what they reveal is the ideas of the human spirit, what there is deepest in the heart of man. Also, the artists are truly poets; they fashion, according to their liking, the content and the form, in order to draw from them free and original figures. Tradition is shorn, in their hands, of all that is gross, symbolic, repulsive, and deformed; they eliminate the idea which they wish to illustrate, and individualize it under the human form. Such is the manner, free, though not arbitrary, in which the Greek artists proceed in the creation of their works. They are poets, but also prophets and diviners. They represent human actions in divine actions, and, reciprocally, without having the clear and decided distinctions. They maintain the union, the accord, of the human and the divine. Such is the significance of the greater part of the apparitions of the gods in Homer, when the gods, for example, consult the heroes, or interfere in the combats. Meanwhile, if we wish to understand the _nature of this ideal_, to determine, in a more precise manner, the character of the divinities of Greek art, the following remarks are suggested, considering them, at the same time, on the _general_, the _particular_, and the _individual_ sides. The first attribute which distinguishes them is something general, substantial. The immortal gods are strangers to the miseries and to the agitations of human existence. They enjoy an unalterable calmness and serenity, from which they derive their repose and their majesty. They are not, however, vague abstractions, universal and purely ideal existences. To this character of generality is joined individuality. Each divinity has his traits and proper physiognomy, his particular rôle, his sphere of activity, determined and limited. A just measure, moreover, is here observed: the two elements, the general and the individual, are in perfect accord. At the same time, this moral character is manifested under an external and corporeal form itself, its most perfect expression, in which appears the harmonious fusion of the external form with the internal principle animating it.