A _second_ province of sculpture is occupied by what is _human simply._ In this we have above all else the beauty of human form as we find it set before us in its elaborate power and dexterity in the sacred games. Wrestlers, discoboli, and the like are its main subject-matter. In such productions sculpture proceeds in a way that is somewhat opposed to the mere portrait, in which department the ancients, even in cases where they actually copied _real_ personages, still understood how to hold fast throughout to the principle of sculpture as we have come to know it. The _last_ field that sculpture makes its own is that of independent _animal_ figures, more particularly lions, hounds, and some others. Here, too, the ancients did not fail to grasp, make vital in its individuality, and enforce the principle of sculpture, the substantive significance of form, and indeed attained to such a perfection that, to take one example, the cow of Myron has become more famous than all his other works. Goethe, in "Kunst und Alterthum[185]," has described it with great charm of style, and pre-eminently drawn attention to the fact that, as we have already seen, such as animal function as suckling is only presented by Greek art in the entirely animal world. He entirely sets on one side poetical conceits such as we find in ancient epigrams, and with acuteness confines his attention to the _naïveté_ of the conception out of which this most familiar of artistic themes arises. (_c_) In concluding this chapter we have now to refer a little more closely to the _particular_ individuals, in the characterization and vitality of which the distinctions above mentioned are elaborated, that is to say, for the most part to the presentment of gods.