" ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

whereas she might never see the bronzes again at all. " I
don't care for grotesques", she answered, "I don't-
understand these things."

A characteristic difference between Eastern, and?
Western art is found in the sacred images. In Western
art, the sacred images are almost always entirely human
in form, in Eastern art they are sometimes four-handed,,
sometimes zoomorphic, sometimes grotesque. In part this-
represents in the West, the lasting influence of Hellenism
with its representations of the beautiful Olympians as-.
perfect men; and is clue to the Western temperament
which more naturally than the Eastern seeks for the-
realisation of objective perfection. In the East, it repre-
sents the fact that Eastern art traditions carry an
inheritance from Egypt and Assyria, and that common
1 Early Asiatic ' behind all Eastern art, inheritances that a
brief period of classic influence failed to affect to any
significant extent. But this distinction of images is not
essentially due to art, but rather to the centre of gravity
of religious ideas ; and yet even here the line of division
between East and West is not so sharp as it appears. The*
images of the West have been almost entirely those of the
incarnation, an avatar, or of saints ; these, of course, just
as an image of Rama or Bita would be, are altogether
human in form ; but when the Western artist has to
represent an immanent divinity, the Holy Ghost, at once-
he falls back upon an animal symbol,—the dove. To the
true mystic it is evident that a representation of the divine-
in human form carries with it a certain limitation—it is
not easy to constantly recall that the anthropomorphic
appearance is but an appearance, a manifestation of the
deity, and not the deity himself. And the anthropomorphic-
image easily degenerates, as the form of Eros degenerated'