suits man, and is required by man, though Nature may spurn and
over-ride it. The earthquake, the hurricane, and the angry ocean are
not in the golden mean, not at least from a human point of view. If
man chooses to personify and body forth the powers of nature, he
creates some monstrous uncouth figure, like the Assyrian and Egyptian
idols; but if man makes a study of man, and brings genius and patient
elaboration to bear on his work, there emerges the symmetry and
perfect proportion of the Greek statue. No people ever made so much of
the beauty of the human form as the ancient Greeks: they made it the
object of a passion that marked their religion, their institutions,
their literature, and their art. Their virtues and their vices turned
upon it. Hence the golden mean is eminently a Greek conception, a
leading idea of the Hellenic race. The Greek hated a thing overdone, a
gaudy ornament, a proud title, a fulsome compliment, a high-flown
speech, a wordy peroration. _Nothing too much_ was the inscription
over the lintel of the national sanctuary at Delphi. It is the
surpassing grace of Greek art of the best period, that in it there
shines out the highest power, with _nothing too much_ of straining
after effect. The study of Greek literary models operates as a
corrective to redundancy, and to what ill-conditioned minds take to be
fine writing. The Greek artist knew just how far to go, and when to
stop. That point he called, in his own unsurpassed tongue, the [Greek:
kairos]. "The right measure (_kairos_) is at the head of all," says
Pindar. "Booby, not to have understood by how much the half is more
than the whole," is the quaint cry of Hesiod. Aeschylus puts these
verses in the mouth of his _Furies_;

The golden mean is God's delight:
Extremes are hateful in His sight.
Hold by the mean, and glorify