SEE
the variety of the sources of our information in respect to the
Greek genius. Thus at first we have the civil history of that
people, as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch have given it-
a very sufficient account of what manner of persons they were, and
what they did. Then we have the same soul expressed for us again in
their literature; in poems, drama and philosophy: a very complete
form. Then we have it once more in their architecture - the purest
sensuous beauty- the perfect medium never overstepping the limit of
charming propriety and grace. Then we have it once more in sculpture
- "the tongue on the balance of expression," those forms in every
action, at every age of life, ranging through all the scale of
condition, from God to beast, and never transgressing the ideal
serenity, but in convulsive exertion the liege of order and of law.
Thus, of the genius of one remarkable people, we have a fourfold
representation- the most various expression of one moral thing: and
to the senses what more unlike than an ode of Pindar, a marble
Centaur, the Peristyle of the Parthenon, and the last actions of
Phocion? Yet do these various external expressions proceed from one
national mind.
Emerson, Infinite variety, unity of cause
