Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c9.75

c9.75

Quite apart from its purely artistic aspects there is in an art like this an ethical value which modern India seems unable to understand and utilise. It is just in this ethical principle that modern education on classical lines misconstrues the spirit of classical culture and art. Every national art is an expression of national character, and when we compare the devout and reverent outlook upon Nature shown in these Bôrôbudûr sculptures with the utter vulgarity of modern India, as we have made it, it is only too evident that in one respect our education falls immeasurably behind that of Greece and of ancient India, in the neglect of Plato’s injunction “to use the beauties of earth as steps along which we mount upwards.”