tion, war. Perpetual warfare is only passion carried into the field of politics; it is sustained by instability, disorder, the renascence of desire, the impossibility of yielding before the visible victim, the impossibility of carrying it on to its conclusion because of the miseries and sacrifices it involves. Apollonianism is its fruit—all the more splendid, it must be said, because the more terrible drama forms certain superior men to master it. It is the ideal order established by the spirit in the chaos of hostile interests and opinions; the savage rivalry of parties; the fanatic need, checked at every moment, of seizing a material good which unbridled covetousness gives the appearance of a will-o'-the-wisp; the continued irruption in the over-excited imagination of an intelligent, turbulent, insatiable multitude of precise, clear images all of which seem capable of realization. The social expression of this spirit is the great gymnastic which maintains in the tumult the imperious desire to impose on all a discipline which will assure the very continuity of intellectual effort. The great man, artist or warrior, is like a nerve stretched between the points of an always vibrant arc, sullied by blood and mire. Thanks to such a spirit, and to such great men, this vile race, impassioned and ravaged by the thirst for power, is nevertheless a great race—which proves once more that civilization and morality do not always coincide. The Greek was morally no more worthy in the age of Pericles or even of Peisistratus than in the less heroic time of Philip or Sulla. But he had not lost, under Pericles or Peisistratus, the terrible vital energy which made it possible for him to traverse the stage from end to end and to bequeath to some men the task of giving form to the play. Immortality begins only when power dwindles.
So we see why there is not, even in the highest manifestations of Greek genius, any higher illusion. It is simply a question of attaining absolute form. It is the pure, perfect, but limited intelligence. Mystic intoxication is forbidden to the too subtle philosopher who sees naked before him the motives always consciously self-interested, of every action—as to a too clairvoyant sculptor a too orderly and harmonious nature might present no striking contrast with the subject, no abyss to explore, no plastic contradiction to resolve. Their energy working within limits prescribes simple solutions because the gestures of man and the aspects of nature are simple. The universal mystery escapes the spirit of the Greeks because they tried to confine it within the limitations of Reason.
