III
Yet it must be owned that during the last few centuries doubts have
arisen about the justice of this Christian ideal. The simple
conception of a world of spirit and a world of nature arrayed against
each other, the one of them exactly what the other is not, the world
of spirit the superior, the world of nature to be frowned on, used
possibly, but always in subordination to spiritual purposes,--this
view, dominant as it was in the Middle Ages, and still largely
influential, has been steadily falling into disrepute. There is even a
tendency in present estimates to reverse the ancient valuation and
allow superiority to nature. Such a transformation is strikingly
evident in those sensitive recorders of human ideals, the Fine Arts.
Let us see what at different times they have judged best worthy of
record.
Early painting dealt with man alone, or rather with persons; for
personality in its transcendent forms--saints, angels, God himself--
was usually preferred above little man. Except the spiritual, nothing
was regarded as of consequence. The principle of early painting might
be summed in the proud saying, "On earth there is nothing great but
man; in man there is nothing great but mind." It is true when man is
thus detached from nature he hardly appears to advantage or in his
appropriate setting.
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