The next step is towards an even more vivid realisation of the personality of the gods; but by bringing them nearer to human level it made the worship of their images less easy to accept in a literal sense to the more thoughtful, while such worship tended, with the common people, to enter upon a more material and less exalted phase.

The result was a tendency towards symbolism in which the symbol itself was regarded as a mere convention, and the inspiration and actual communion with men, vouchsafed by the gods through their ideal images, was no longer sought after.

When any means of communion between god and man, whether by means of a solemn service or by means of an image which the god himself accepts as his earthly representative, ceases to be felt as anything more than a human device, its religious power must fail.

When, on the other hand, we find a union of religion and art to provide a means for this divine intercourse, we may recognise idolatry in its highest form, the use of images not merely as accessories of religious service, but as providing in themselves a channel of worship and inspiration.
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net_ "Original research of great importance."-- _Times_ CRETE, THE FORERUNNER OF GREECE BY C.H.Hawes, M.A.