[Footnote *: Mosso, 'The Palaces of Crete,' p. 163.]
From their art one would, on the whole, conclude the people to
have been a somewhat attractive race, frankly enjoying the more
pleasant aspects of life, and capable of a keen delight in all the
beauties of Nature. Minoan art has little that is sombre about it;
it is redolent of the open air and the free ocean, and a people who
so rejoiced in natural beauty and delighted to surround themselves
with their own reproductions and interpretations of it can scarcely
have been bowed beneath a heavy yoke of servitude, or have lived
other than a comparatively free and independent life. How much the
Greeks of the Classic period imbibed of the spirit of this gifted
and artistic race we can only imagine. The artistic standpoint of
the Hellenic Greek is somewhat different from that of his Minoan or
Mycenaean forerunner, and he has lost that keen feeling for Nature
which is so conspicuous in the work of the earlier stock; but the
two races are at least at one in that profound love of beauty which
is the dominant characteristic of the Greek nature, and it may
well be that something of that feeling formed part of the heritage
which the conqueror took over from the conquered, and which, added
to the virility and intellectual power of the northern race, made
the historic Greek the most brilliant type of humanity that the
world has ever seen.
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