Excerpt from The Children of Good Fortune: An Essay in Morals Faces that lack this emphasis lack interest. The too perfect faces of Greek art fail in any deep sense to move the modern world. We gaze upon the calm face of the Phoebus Apollo, or even of the great Zeus himself, with a calm that is almost equal to theirs. But it is not so when we turn to the compassionate, grief-smitten face of the Man of Sorrows. It is this emphasis, this distinguishing stamp, which determines our own attitude towards the individual. A set of curves, a trick of light and Shade, a play of color, a unique combination of dimensions, these proclaim a human quality and serve to attract or repel. Yet they are things so delicate, so elusive, that only an artist can seize them and make them permanent. Where the artist is a master, we stand in a gallery of naked souls. In Rome, it seems hardly credible that the Spirit of the first Caesar can ever have quite escaped, for his marble face so holds the imagi nation of men. Throughout Italy the devotion of Hadrian confers a this-world immortality upon the beautiful Antinous. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.