1) Introduction

Through out history, as man progressed from a primitive animal to a

"human being" capable of thought and reason, mankind has had to throw

questions about the meaning of our own existence to ourselves. Out of those

trail of thoughts appeared religion, art, and philosophy, the fundamental

process of questioning about existence. Who we are, how we came to be,

where we are going, what the most ideal state is....... All these questions had

to be asked and if not given a definite answer, then at least given some idea

as to how to begin to search for, as humans probed deeper and deeper into

the riddle that we were all born into.

As time passed, the works of many thinkers and artists added up and it

became inevitable for the people who wanted to find some answers to the

ancient question, the question of existence, to trace back to the times of

the older thinkers to get an idea as to what we have been thinking about as

an important source for reaching the goal. Also, for the people who want to

study the ways of the people back in history, it is equally important to make

a study of the thinkers and artists of that time in order to define the

characteristics and personality of that age. So, as the goal of this report is

to find out what the people of ancient western world thought in view of the

concept and relationship between the human and the divine, it is inevitable

for us to also look into the thoughts and arts of that time.

2) Cicero and Virgil

In the works of Cicero, we see him asking questions about social

responsibility, about what it is that gives value to a human life. Cicero

conveys to us his belief that it is most natural for a person to show the

most defined characteristics such as magnanimity, and loftiness of the soul,

and courtesy, etc. , and that because of this, it is only true for a person to

take on the responsibilities of this world with this kind of attitude in tact.

He tells us why we must not live only for our own advantage; because it is

against our nature as humans to do so, because without the basis of this

human characteristics, the whole human society would fall apart. The qualities

we value most in our fellow human beings are the most natural to us because

they were endowed to us from the gods so that the race of human beings

and the human society could go on existing. We can know this from his words;

"People who argue like this subvert the whole basis of humans community

itself - and when that is gone, kind actions, generosity, goodness, and justice

are annihilated. And their annihilation is a sin against the immortal gods. For

it was they who established the society which such men are undermining."

Cicero's belief in the natural goodness of the human race was stead-fast

because he believed that it was endowed to us from the gods.

In Virgil's "Pollio", which christians believed to have prophesied the birth of

Christ, we can see what he thought of the conditions of the human race of

his time and also of what he thought the coming of god will do for the good

of his people. Virgil percieved the humans race as being in the "Iron Age" (In

Ovid's "Metamorphoses", we see the concept of humans becoming more and

more dirtied as they moved though time from the "Golden, Silver Ages", to the

" Bronze, Iron Ages"), the age of corruption which the coming of "Pollio" will

disinfect for us. He writes, "Time has concieved and the great sequences of

the Ages starts afresh. ...... With him, the Iron Age shall end and the golden

Man inherit all the world. ..... And it is in your consulship, yours, Pollio, that

this glorious Age will dawn and the Procession of the of the great months

begin. Under your leadership all traces that remain in our iniquity will be

effaced and, as they vanish, free the world from its long night of horror."

Through this, we can know that Virgil believed in the power of "Pollio" to

restore and to guide the human race to its rightious state.

In both Cicero and Virgil, it is obvious that they thought the highest

qualities of humans to be our most natural state because it was endowed by

the gods to be so, and that if there was corruption in the human world, the

divine powers would restore them because it is the will of the gods to form

and maintain the human race and society. Their belief in the human race came

from their faith in god.

3) Egyptian and Greek Art

When we look at Egyptian paintings, we see that the drawings do not quite

describe objects as they actually are. When a man is drawn, his face is

turned sideways but his shoulders and body are facing the front while the

foot is turned sideways. This strange way of drawing is called the "Á¤¸é¼ºÀÇ

¿ø¸®( I'm sorry, I don't know what that is in English)". What the Egyptians

were trying to achieve through the use of this method was to present the

parts of the object which most clearly shows its characteristics. For

instance, the characteristics of a man's face is most distinctly shown when it

is turned sideways, and the body's when it is turned towards the front, and

so forth. The Egyptians don't seem to have been interested in drawing

objects as they actually were. When they drew, they analized the visual

information of the object so that they could present its most distinct

characteristics in the form of visual generalization. For them, the important

thing was to catch the essence of the object. In this sense, it can be said

that for them, art was a form of abstract vision.

On the other hand, the Greek arts had a very different personality. Their

starting point was to realize actual beauty in art. That was why they

searched out the "golden proportion", in order to achieve the most beautiful

in art. They weren't just trying to describe how things looked like; they were

trying to present gods' greatness that went far beyond the limits of

humanity. In other words, while their art was earthly, it was only so because

they were trying to realize the best in the earthly things so that they could

be more close to the intentions of the divine powers.

4) Christian Thoughts; The Hymn to Charity, and The Good Samaritan

The "Hymn to Charity" stresses on the importance of love. It tells us the

personality of love and why it is so important that we all cherish this in our

ways of living. Love is what brings out the most superior characteristics of

human beings because it is what brings us closer to the design of the Divine

One. The intentions of God is always good and honorable. If we bring

ourselves to follow that intention, then it is inevitable for us to act out the

spirit of love always.

The "Good Samaritan" stresses on social responsibility and the need of

love, justice and magnanimity for the social responsibility to be realized. When

God made humans and the human society, it was not in his purpose to let it

go corrupt as it did. His intention was the realization of the Good and the

Truth. If the humans are to follow him, then we must make the best human

characteristics come out and let it aid us in making society as it was willed

to be. The good in us was put there by God to realize what He thought to

be ideal and therefore, it is out duty to use that goodness in us in order to

follow his ideal.

These two examples taken from the Bible show us clearly what the early

christians thought as the relationship between the human and the divine.

5) Conclusion

As we have seen from the examples of Roman thinkers, Egyptian and Greek

art, and early christian thoughts, the early western thoughts and arts, which

became the founding steps of the western world, had its own particular way

of seeing the connection between the Divine and the Human. For them, the

qualities we most value in a human being was put in us by the divine powers

so that humans could live in accordance with God's original design. Therefore,

the good in us are perfectly natural and it is only right that we have it

within us. And also therefore, it is our duty to act out our goodness in the

form of "love" so that we can live in harmony with God's will.

6) References

Bibliography

1. ÁøÁß±Ç, ¹ÌÇÐ ¿Àµð¼¼ÀÌ1, »õ±æ, 1994

2, Anthony, Classical and Biblical Backgrounds to Western Literature, Sogang

University Press, 1996

Word Count: 1475