Religion and Art in Ancient Greece | Page 6

statues eyes that they might see, and ears that they might hear, it was an
obvious inference that if he gave them legs they might run away and
desert their shrines and their worshippers.
We may very likely find also in a similar notion the explanation of a
peculiarity often found in early statues of the gods--the well-known
archaic smile. Many explanations, technical and otherwise, have been
given of this device; but none of them can get over the fact that it was
just as easy, or even easier, for a primitive sculptor to make the mouth
straight as to make it curve up at the ends, and that he often did make it

straight. When he does not do so, it is probably done with intention;
and it is quite in accordance with the conditions of early religious art
that he should make the image of a deity smile in order that the deity
himself might smile upon his worshippers; and a pleasant expression
might also, by a natural transfer of ideas, be supposed to be pleasing to
the god, and so attract him to his statue. We are told that at Chios there
was a head of Artemis set high up, which appeared morose to those
entering the temple, but when they left it seemed to have become
cheerful. This may have been originally due to some accident of
placing or lighting, but it seems to have acquired a religious
significance; and we can hardly deny a similar significance to the smile
which we find on so many early statues. In some cases, especially in
statues of men, it may have been intended merely as a device to give
expression and life to the face; but it cannot have been a matter of
indifference to a primitive worshipper that his deity should smile on
him through the face of its visible image. This point of view being
given, it is evidently only a question of how far it is within the power of
art to express the benignity of the god, and later on his character and
personality, in an adequate manner; and this power depends on the
gradual acquisition of mastery over form and material, of knowledge
and observation of the human body and face, and of the technical skill
requisite to express this knowledge in marble or bronze, or more
precious materials such as gold and ivory. All this development
belongs to the history of art, not to that of religion. But before we can
pursue the investigation any further, it is necessary to consider the
different sources and channels of religious influence on art with which
we have to deal.
CHAPTER II
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF RELIGION
Religion, for our present purpose, may be considered as (1) popular, (2)
official, (3) poetic, and (4) philosophical. These four divisions, or
rather aspects, are not, of course, mutually exclusive, and they act and
react extensively upon one another; but, in their relations to art, it is
convenient to observe the distinction between them.

(1) The beliefs of the people are, of course, the basis of all the others,
though they come to be affected by these others in various degrees.
There is no doubt that the people generally believed in the sanctity and
efficacy of the shapeless idols or primitive images, and this belief
would tend to support hieratic conservatism, and thus to hinder artistic
progress. But, on the other hand, the people of Greece showed
throughout their history a tendency to an intensely and vividly
anthropomorphic imagination. This tendency was doubtless realised
and encouraged by the poets, but it was not created by them, any more
than by the mythologists who defined and systematised it. The exact
relation of this anthropomorphic imagination to the primitive sacred
stocks and stones is not easy to ascertain; but it seems to have tended,
on the one hand, to the realisation of the existence of the gods apart
from such sacred objects, and thus to reduce the stocks and stones to
the position of symbols--a great advance in religious ideals; and, on the
other hand, to the transformation of the stocks and stones into human
form, not merely by giving them ears and eyes that they might hear and
see, but also by making them take the image and character of the deity
whom they represented.
It was impossible for any ordinary Greek to think of the gods in other
than human form. He had, indeed, no such definite dogma as the
Hebrew statement that "God created man in His own image"; for the
legends about the origin of the human race varied considerably and
many of them represented crude philosophical theorising rather than
religious belief. But the monstrous forms which we find in Egypt and
Mesopotamia as embodiments of divine power were