3. In fact, independently of the external causes which have occasioned the _decadence_ of Greek art and precipitated its downfall, many internal causes, in the very nature of the Greek ideal, rendered that downfall inevitable. In the first place, the Greek gods, as we have seen, bear in themselves the germ of their destruction, and the defect which they conceal is unveiled by the representations of classic art itself. The plurality of the gods and their diversity makes them already accidental existences; this multiplicity cannot satisfy reason. Thought dissolves them and makes them return to a single divinity. Moreover, the gods do not remain in their eternal repose; they enter into action, take part in the interests, in the passions, and mingle in the collisions of human life. The multitude of relations in which they are engaged, as actors in this drama, destroys their divine majesty; contradicts their grandeur, their dignity, their beauty. In the true ideal itself, that of sculpture, we observe something, the inanimate, impassive, cold, a serious air of silent mournfulness, which indicates that something higher weighs them down—destiny, supreme unity, blind divinity, the immutable fate to which gods and men are alike subject. But the principal cause is, that absolute necessity making no integral part of their personality, and being foreign to them, the particular individual side is no longer restrained in its downward course; it is developed more and more without hindrance and without limit. They suffer themselves to be drawn into the external accidents of human life, and fall into all the imperfections of anthropomorphism. Hence the ruin of these beautiful divinities of art is inevitable. The moral consciousness turns away from them and rejects them. The gods, it is true, are ethical persons, but under the human and corporeal form. Now, true morality appears only in the conscience, and under a purely spiritual form. The point of view of the beautiful is neither that of religion nor that of morality. The infinite, invisible spirituality is the divine for the religious consciousness. For the moral consciousness, the good is an idea, a conception, an obligation, which commands the sacrifice of sense. It is in vain, then, to be enthusiastic over Greek art and beauty, to admire those beautiful divinities. The soul does not recognize herself wholly in the object of her contemplation or her worship. What she conceives as the true ideal is a God, spiritual, infinite, absolute, personal, endowed with moral qualities, with justice, goodness, etc. It is this whose image the gods of Greek polytheism, in spite of their beauty, do not present us.