either themselves objects of worship, or have been associated with such objects,—have been designed to address religious sympathies, to teach religious doctrines, or to record religious traditions.
There is, perhaps, hardly any race, which has not at some period of its history possessed some sort of Figurative and Symbolic language for religious uses. The utterance of this language is feebler, or more emphatic; its range of expression narrower, or more varied, according to the character of the religion, and the genius of the race. Some religions are pre-eminently sensuous, such, for instance, as the Egyptian, the Greek, the Hindoo, in fact, all the great systems of polytheistic worship; in other cases, the nature of the creed warrants and requires a much narrower range of Figurative and Symbolic language, as in the case of the ancient Persian fire-worship, or interdicts the most essential part of it, as the Mahommedan interdicts all representation of animal forms.
Now, as in Philology, we lay the foundation for a general comparison of articulate languages by the study of some one example more perfect in structure, fuller and richer in compass than the rest, such a type, for instance, as the Greek or the Sanscrit; so, if we would acquaint ourselves with the Figurative and Symbolic language of Art generally, we should study it in its finest form.
When we survey the monuments of all time, we find two perfectly developed and highly cultivated forms of utterance, the language of Greek Art, and the language of the Art of Medieval Christendom; in almost all other races the expression of religious ideas in art seems, in comparison, like a rude dialect, not yet fashioned by the poet and the orator. Of the idolatrous nations of the ancient world, the Greeks were, as far as we know, the first to reduce the colossal proportions of the idol, to discard monstrous combinations of human and animal forms, and to substitute the image of beautiful humanity. The sculptor and the poet shaped and moulded the mythic legends; as the Figurative language of Art grew more perfect, as the mastery over form enabled the artist to embody thought more poetically and eloquently, the ancient hieratic Symbolism became less and less prominent.
As the Greek myth gradually absorbed into itself the
