by Paul J Croce
the artistry of ancients and moderns. He said of Rietschel’s work, treating it
as a representative of the modern type, “as I glanced around it at the Greek
things I saw instantly that one effect of the difference was that if the Ma-
donna’s nose were knocked off or her face gnawed away by the weather and
if the Christ were mutilated . . . the essence of the thing would be gone.”
Noting just such common deterioration among surviving ancient works, he
observed that by comparison, “in the Greek things, . . . it makes hardly any
difference. ”27
Rietschel himself declared admiration for the skill of the Greeks in so
“master[ing] nature” that it could be said they “almost copied”; but his goals
were diff er ent: he “never simply imitated nature” because his “aim [was] to
perfect a subject, to make it what it ought to be.” James noticed the differ-
ence between Rietschel’s self- conscious efforts and the ancient works de-
The Ancient Art of Natu ral Grace 149
picting nature “without a point” for what ought to be. He used this insight
to explain the appeal of ruins to so many travelers. For the ancients, with-
out Rietschel’s attempts to perfect, “the cause of their existence (I mean the
idea of the artist) lies all through them and can bear any amount of loss of
small details and continue to smile as freely as ever.” By contrast, Rietschel’s
work, the fruit of diligent construction, requires the intact whole to convey
its messages. In par tic u lar, the German artist’s points were infused with an
eagerness to “represent Christian subjects,” as he put it; by contrast, he felt
“contempt for the antique.” His own sculpting “came from the heart.” The
par tic u lar work of Christ and Mary that caught James’s eye was likely first
commissioned by a mother who had also lost her son; even when the com-
mission fell through, he had become so taken with the subject that “he
resolved to execute it without an order.” While working on the poignant
scene, Rietschel was himself losing his wife to illness.28 The artist poured
these emotional intensities into his religious figures, contributing to the
pointed messages that James noticed.
James’s refers to harmony as the expression of one idea throughout a
work; by contrast, in unity, an artist arranges many parts together. Harmony
pervades a work, whereas unity is orchestrated or even imposed on a sub-
ject. The ancient works with harmony convey their meaning, he main-
tained, simply and naturally, but a unified work labors for meaning through
many details and the artificial strain of making a point. James summarized
the lessons he took from his museum excursions: “[T]heir things are simple—
ours are at best simplified.” Ancient art has the simplicity of natu ral harmony
uncomplicated by philosophical or religious messages, whereas modern art,
such as Rietschel’s with “its laboriously attained simplicity,” must become
so. R. W. B. Lewis finds “remarkable prescience” in these pithy phrases;
James “contrasted this sublime simplicity with the mordant skepticism and
the addiction to irony and ambiguity of the modern temper,” just as prag-
matism would offer an alternative to skeptical relativism without relying on
contrasting absolutist references. These artistic commentaries also antici-
pate his radical empiricism with its focus on the prereflective character of
“original . . . experience” before the mental work of sorting and categorizing
would form “differentiated” conceptions from thinking about experience.
Just as philosophies serve as verbal stand- ins for robust abundant experi-
ence, the artificially constructed harmonies of works with “unity” are like
the attempts of conceptions, as he would explain in 1905, to “restore the
fluent sense of life again, and let redemption take the place of innocence. ”29
150 Young William James Thinking
In his reference to redemption, James retrieved his youthful attention to
the poignancy of human efforts to achieve profound experiences, in ancient
times through fluent relations with natu ral life, then with the Christian
promise of another and better world.
Many modern artistic creations, James observed, try eagerly to make delib-
erate points. Even artists who replicated classical styles generally presented
Greek divinities, such as the beautiful Venus, with modern- style earnest ef-
forts: the popu lar goddess depicted unclothed to excite sexual interest or
cloaked to promote beauty displayed in modesty. With the exception of
Thomas Eakins, whose painting William Rush and His Model shows neither
arousal nor shyness about the nude model, few captured the Greek spirit of
sheer comfort with the mature naked human body. In much ancient art,
clothing actually represented the material body whereas nudity expressed
incorporeal ideals. The British classicist Richard Jenkyns offers a wry ex-
pression of changing views since ancient times: modern “nudes looked as
if they had taken their clothes off, Greek ones as if they had never thought
of clothes.” 30 In the same way, young James admired the unselfconscious
gracefulness of Greek art.
James’s evaluations of harmony and unity emerging from his artistic
commentary pulled him to still broader observations. He pointed to this
theme in his diary reflections on the Re nais sance greats “Raphael and M.
Angelo” who created work “to make us feel the ineffable beyond the art”—
even when not “consciously to the author executed.” By contrast, the art of
the Greeks was “executed by the artist with no such thought.” Even with all
the extravagant genius of art in recent centuries, he observed, that simple,
calm relation with the world has been lost: the Greek “natu ral taste for
mere harmony . . . is lacking in us.” The difference, he surmised, was the
modern search for ultimate answers, and this realization prodded his artis-
tic observations into religious commentary. In par tic u lar, he attributed the
ancient ac cep tance of fate and display of harmony to “the same root,” namely
“their polytheism.” Other con temporary commentators observed this reli-
gious source of ancient harmony and gracefulness but generally assumed its
anticipation of modern scientific materialism. For example, con temporary
En glish writer Matthew Arnold maintained that the Greeks saw things as
they naturally and objectively were— ancients already with the spectator
objectivity of modern science; in contrast, the Hebrews, and by extension
the Christians who followed in their mono the istic tradition, Arnold main-
tained, had their views clouded by somber consciences and stark obedience
The Ancient Art of Natu ral Grace 151
to the divine. 31 This admiration for the ancient pagans set them up as secu-
lar models for an unfinished emancipation from religious beliefs to be ful-
filled especially with more fidelity to scientific thinking. By contrast, James
admired the ancients who avoided the modern longing for ultimate answers
through reliance on the certainties first of religion and then of science. To
James, then, the enthusiasm for science was not part of the solution to the
issues he had been observing, but part of the prob lem.
A World without Unquenchable Longing
While still in Dresden in the spring of 1868, James’s museum visits contin-
ued to inspire evaluation of the religious leanings of ancient and modern
times. “The difference of the conceptions” between the eras, he declared
vehemently, “consists in the too violent craving after unity” of the moderns
“as opposed to the polytheistic conception” of the ancients; and the craving
for unity emerged from mono the ism, the belief in one transcendent God.
Before the advent of Chris tian ity, the ancient Greeks embraced a diverse
and worldly polytheism. The unity of mono the ism since the decline of
paganism has encouraged an expectation for absolute answers; by contrast,
polytheism, without a single divinity, promoted harmony with a serene
ac cep tance of the natu ral world without that riveting focus. As James wit-
nessed in the cast museums, the ancients had a spirit of “ac cep tance . . . of a
positive and definite universe, whose parts fit” without a need for outside
forces or ultimate absolutes to give them meaning or purpose. This outlook
provided both spiritual orientation and moral guidance, because ac cep tance
of natu ral conditions encouraged motivation to challenge the vicissitudes of
fate and even to face death heroically. And so James observed that the an-
cient Greeks thrived “without any of the unquenchable longing that charac-
terizes” the world that emerged in their wake. 32 He admired their view that
the natu ral world was robust, often difficult, and sometimes glorious, but
always enough.
James’s attention to the premodern, pre- Christian polytheism animat-
ing the Greek art on museum display went beyond didactic admiration for
Greek refinement popu lar in his day, and even beyond views of the Greeks
as model scientific seculars. James’s path of thought from sculpture to reli-
gion and views of nature would not have surprised the ancients. The Greeks
hardly separated these realms of life and did not consider disciplinary dis-
tinctions in their production and use. Most sculptures were made for public
display, especially for cult sites and temples. The images were designed to
152 Young William James Thinking
foster citizen piety and facilitate worship; the beliefs reinforced loyalty and
explained one’s place in the cosmos; and the understanding of nature influ-
enced the craftsmanship and pre sen ta tion. Art, religion, and views of nature
all blended in graceful, exquisitely sculpted images.
The overlap of religion with nature extended still further. Ancient
sculpted images were often set up at natu ral sites such as a spring, special
tree, or grove rather than inside a temple. The sacral setting within nature
was a numinous realm, as Rudolf Otto identifies spiritual places marked off
from the mundane parts of everyday practical life. At these special sites, the
depictions of the gods were not just repre sen ta tions but their literal, ani-
mate presence. People would bring gifts in hopes of winning the god’s favor
in their confrontations with fate, have feasts with such wastefulness that
they would hope to gain still greater abundance, or bring their illnesses for
hours and even days of purification with the god sending remedies in a
dream. The gods were not the all- powerful causes of prob lems or of their
solutions; however, getting into right relations with them, or really with the
natu ral forces that they embodied, would enable better conditions to emerge.
Even the Hippocratics, honored in the modern world for their medical in-
novations and dedication, treated diseases as natu ral prob lems containing
such spiritual dimensions.33 Similarly, James and his peers went to water
cures with expectations that the immaterial would mingle with the bodily
conditions to enable better management of illnesses and other trou bles. The
modern sectarians did not make reference to local deities, but like the elder
Henry James, they did similarly emphasize nature’s powers beyond its ma-
terial components, as would the young James in both his vocational work
and his avocational studies and medical practices.
Many Victorians were also attracted to Greek art for offering the first
work by human hands portraying individual likenesses. In their portraits,
they brought the mute material of stone and metal to life, soberly displaying
individual traits and personal character in naturalistic pre sen ta tion that
would continue to ring true across the ages— stunning craftsmanship and
beautiful art. Most admirers of the Greeks in the nineteenth century had a
general awareness of the pagan roots of these works but preferred to em-
phasize their secular refinement, beauty, and dignity; neutrality on religion
was more appealing than highlighting a distinctly diff er ent spirituality. The
Greeks’ own motivation in their artwork, however, was not just aesthetic;
they needed the presence of these images of gods and legendary heroes in
their midst. Although they assumed that all of nature was permeated with
The Ancient Art of Natu ral Grace 153
the divine, the images provided sacred points of contact with those higher
powers, on which their lives depended. The polis was in a sense a religious
association, and its shrines, with its sculpted images, were central to the
city’s identity. 34
The natu ral and divine worlds intersected in fundamental ways. The
Greeks were downright intimate with their gods, who were not easy to ap-
proach, but their help and support was vital for a thriving life. They could
be best experienced and understood in the working pro cesses of nature.
Most of what we now call natu ral was known in ancient times as divine: dif-
fer ent gods were identified with diff er ent forces in the universe, yet all of
them together formed the cosmology; the gods were identified more for their
power than their personality. For example, an ancient Greek would say dur-
ing a thunder storm that “Zeus thunders.” In fact, the historian Mott Greene
has even assessed the stories of Greek my thol ogy for their information on
actual ancient natu ral events, such as volcanic eruptions, conveyed in story
form. By personifying natu ral forces, the myth transmitted information
about the natu ral world and let the con temporary hearer assimilate the dis-
ruptive facts into a more familiar narrative of gods in action. Visits to the
temple offered yet more ways to feel at home with the gods and natu ral
forces, since it was more than a place of worship; the ritual of charis or ex-
change of gifts and favors between mortals and gods sustained relations,
keeping gods satisfied, even in a sense “chained” to their places.35 Cosmic
orientations provided by myths and temples have been factors in the cul-
tural work of religions and other worldviews throughout history; James
studied modern science for its empirical information about the natu ral
world, and similarly searched for ways to feel at home in a cosmos defi
ned
in such terms.
Even the Greek phi los o phers did not question the prevailing pantheon
conveyed in my thol ogy and art. Most Greeks trusted their traditions, with
the myths as respectable authorities. Moreover, they did not generally ask
empirical questions about their historical truth. The phi los o phers, how-
ever, did not take the stories as seriously or as literally as did the average
citizen; by accepting the myths as allegories, their stance parallels the out-
look of modern religious intellectuals who have sought to purify religion of
speculative extravagances while retaining the essential messages. For ex-
ample, British writer James Anthony Froude in 1849 explic itly identified
with the stance of the most illustrious Greek phi los o phers, declaring “What
Plato says of the myths of the Greeks, I say of that of the Hebrews.” 36 His
154 Young William James Thinking
Christian faith endured, even as he distanced himself from the institutional
church; and, like his ancient intellectual peers, he retained re spect for the
ancient revered stories of his culture but as mythologies rather than as fac-
tual accounts.
The Greeks did not feel a transcendental separation from their gods, and
there was, in a similar way, a close identification between sculpture and
person depicted, generally quite literally for the materials involved. The
Greeks lived on a stony landscape, and they used hard metal tools in farm-
ing, building, and warfare. They regarded themselves as made of similar
stuff. So, when they depicted their heroes and gods in life- size sculptures
made out of bronze or stone, they did not even think of these objects as
external repre sen ta tions of persons. The body was an assemblage of raw
materials similar to those of the natu ral world, ranging from its watery flu-
ids, to its stonelike bones, with the feelings expressed in the humid breath,
and even the consciousness embodying a fragment of the spirit pervading
nature. And in their art, the very being of the person, not just a symbolic
repre sen ta tion, was expressed in the material of the statue; they not only
worshiped in natu ral settings but also regarded themselves as made of
natu ral stuff themselves. 37 When James identified the Greek polytheism