Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/61

40 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. Euphrates basin for example, in which simplicity of construction, uniformity of lines bounding their horizon, have ruled the regu- larity of the seasons which succeed each other like the beats of the pendulum throughout the extent of those vast territories. Wherever climate and soil are so constituted, points of difference between one man and another must necessarily be of a trifling character ; the minds and dispositions are pretty much alike, in that they all do the same thing at the same time and in the same way. Per contra, in lands where, as in Hellas, the soil so to speak wears a hundred faces and the sky has many moods, where a descent of 2,000 metres, easily performed in one day, takes one from the hoary summits of Parnassus and Taygetus to the flowery meads of regions turned to the south, where, too (on the same spot), a sudden blast causes the thermometer to fall fifteen or twenty degrees in two or three days, constant calls are made on bodies and minds alike, for inuring and adapting themselves to these unlooked-for changes of level and bounds of the thermometer, to complex and mobile conditions of surroundings, so rapid in their changes as often to set at naught well-pondered previsions.^ Within a very narrow space, men of the same stock and speech, dwelling close to one another, lead very different lives, according as they inhabit mountain ranges or lowlands, elevated pastures or slopes proper for cultivation, or strips of land along the sea-shore. As soon as a man leaves one of these zones and enters another, he is obliged to forego some of his former habits, to add to or take somewhat from his dress and mode of living ; and again, under the stimulus of necessity, he has to lend himself to the exigencies of his new surroundings, whether of things or men, amongst which the ups and downs of life have thrown him, learning and practising a handicraft other than that by which he had hitherto earned his living. All these facts stimulate the organs of the body and give elasticity to the mind, which finds itself compelled by hard reality to find on the spot the means of action, such as the circumstances of the case may dictate. These are not uniform for all, and their play gives rise to divergencies which leave their marks on the individuals, no less than those already put there by Nature itself; they tend to 1 The thermometer has been known to go up at Athens, in the month of March, from nine to twenty degrees in four days (Vidal de Lablache, Des rapports entre Us populations et ie climat sur les bords europiens de la Mkdiierranke),