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And like that order is the order of the figure of man, an order most
beautiful and most secure when it is put to the proof. That perpetual
proof by perpetual inflection is the very condition of life. Symmetry is
a profound, if disregarded because perpetually inflected, condition of
human life.
The nimble art of Japan is unessential; it may come and go, may settle or
be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it has an obvious
life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides the obvious law and
the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as the symmetry of the form
of man, and life occult like his unequal heart. And this seems to be the
nobler and the more perdurable relation.
THE ILLUSION OF HISTORIC TIME
He who has survived his childhood intelligently must become conscious of
something more than a change in his sense of the present and in his
apprehension of the future. He must be aware of no less a thing than the
destruction of the past. Its events and empires stand where they did,
and the mere relation of time is as it was. But that which has fallen
together, has fallen in, has fallen close, and lies in a little heap, is
the past itself--time--the fact of antiquity.
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