The Value of a Work of Art

There is a peculiarstult quality which qualifies certain human groups, not nationalities. If you wish to understand a work of art, for example, made by some ancient greek, it is certainly no use laying down timeless criteria in terms of which all works of art must be beautiful. unless you enter into the feelings of these remote, exceedingly strange peoples who are remote ouin time and place. Unless you try, by some active imagination, to reconstruct within yourself, the form of life which these people led, what they wanted, how they lived,. what their laws were, what their ethical principles were. All this is commonplace now, but was not commonplace in 17 sixties and seventies