The idea of Beauty, especially as it is connected with its most signal known manifestation in the human form, and again the Φθορà, or corruption of that idea, have each their separate course and history in the religion and manners, as well as in the arts, of Greece. By the idea of Beauty, I mean here the conception of it in the human mind as a pure and wonderful essence, nearly akin to the Divine; derived from heaven, and both continually and spontaneously tending to revert to its source. By the corruption of that idea, I mean the conception of it either mainly or wholly with reference to animal enjoyment; sometimes within, and sometimes beyond, the laws of Nature.

In the works of Homer, we find the first of these conceptions exceedingly prominent and powerful. It approaches almost to a worship: and yet is scarcely at all tainted with the second, scarcely presents the smallest deflection from the very loftiest type Homer, that is to say, in the Homeric descriptions of human characters and life, we never find Beauty and Vice pleasurably associated: he seems to have felt in the sanctuary of his mind as much at least as this, if not more; that a derogation from purity involved of itself a descent from the highest to a lower form of beauty : and therefore he never associates his highest descriptions of beauty with vice: differing in this not only from so many heathen, but even from many Christian authors.