would fain be more than the ancients of Ilissus: a disciple and an
Alexandrian."

"The never-ending dispute," Myrtilus answered his fellow-artist, with a
cordiality in which, nevertheless, there was a slight accent of pity.

"Surely you know it, Daphne. To me the ideal and its embodiment within
the limits of the natural, according to the models of Phidias,
Polycletus, and Myron is the highest goal, but he and his co-workers seek
objects nearer at hand."

"Or rather we found them," cried Hermon, interrupting his companion with
angry positiveness. "The city of Alexandria, which is growing with
unprecedented vigour, is their home. There, the place to which every
race on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is
throbbing. There, whoever does not run with the rest is run over; there,
but one thing is important--actual life. Science has undertaken to
fathom it, and the results which it gains with measures and numbers is of
a different value and more lasting than that which the idle sport of the
intellects of the older philosophers obtained. But art, her nobler
sister, must pursue the same paths. To copy life as it is, to reproduce
the real as it presents itself, not as it might or must be, is the task
which I set myself. If you would have me carve gods, whom man can not
represent to himself except in his own form, allow me also to represent
them as reality shows me mortals. I will form them after the models of
the greatest, highest, and best, and also, when the subject permits, in
powerful action in accordance with my own power, but always as real men
from head to foot. We must also cling to the old symbols which those who
order demand, because they serve as signs of recognition, and my Demeter,
too, received the bundle of wheat."