But on turning from the forms of Greek art to the substance of Greek
literature, we find that Beauty, although everywhere an important
element, is by no means the sole or even the chief attribute of the
greatest writings, nor is the Hellenic consciousness confined within
the life of Nature, unless this term is allowed to comprehend man with
all his thoughts and aspirations. It was in this latter sense that
Hegel recognized the union of depth with brightness in Greek culture:
'If the first paradise was the paradise of nature, this is the second,
the higher paradise of the human spirit, which in its fair
naturalness, freedom, depth and brightness here comes forth like a
bride out of her chamber. The first wild majesty of the rise of
spiritual life in the East is here circumscribed by the dignity of
form, and softened into beauty. Its depth shows itself no longer in
confusion, obscurity, and inflation, but lies open before us in simple
clearness. Its brightness (Heiterkeit) is not a childish play, but
covers a sadness which knows the baldness of fate but is not by that
knowledge driven out of freedom and measure.' Hegel's Werke, vol. XVI.
p. 139 (translated by Prof. Caird). The simplicity of Herodotus, for
example, does not exclude far reaching thoughts on the political
advantages of liberty, nor such reflections on experience as are
implied in the saying of Artabanus, that the transitoriness of human
life is the least of its evils. And in what modern writing is more of
the wisdom of life condensed than in the History of Thucydides? It is
surely more true to say of Greek literature that it contains types of
all things human, stamped with the freshness, simplicity, and
directness which belong to first impressions, and to the first
impressions of genius.

Now the 'thoughts and aspirations,' which are nowhere absent from