{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_17087/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_17087","id":"gutenberg_17087","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17087","summary":null,"tags":["Aesthetics","Anthropology","Art, Primitive","Category: Art","Category: History - Ancient","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Ritual"],"text":"Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Louise\nPryor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at\nhttps://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n{Transcriber's Note:\n This e-text contains a number of unusual characters which are\n represented as follows:\n    {-a}  a-macron\n    {-e}  e-macron\n    {)e}  e-caron\n    {-i}  i-macron\n oe ligatures have been unpacked.}\n\n\n\n\n_Ancient Art and Ritual_\n\nJANE ELLEN HARRISON\n\n\n\n\n_Geoffrey Cumberlege_\nOXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS\nLONDON NEW YORK TORONTO\n\n\n\n\n_First published in 1913, and reprinted in 1918 (revised), 1919, 1927,\n1935 and 1948_\n\nPRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN\n\n\n\n\nPREFATORY NOTE\n\n\nIt may be well at the outset to say clearly what is the aim of the\npresent volume. The title is _Ancient Art and Ritual_, but the reader\nwill find in it no general summary or even outline of the facts of\neither ancient art or ancient ritual. These facts are easily accessible\nin handbooks. The point of my title and the real gist of my argument lie\nperhaps in the word \"_and_\"--that is, in the intimate connection which I\nhave tried to show exists between ritual and art. This connection has, I\nbelieve, an important bearing on questions vital to-day, as, for\nexample, the question of the place of art in our modern civilization,\nits relation to and its difference from religion and morality; in a\nword, on the whole enquiry as to what the nature of art is and how it\ncan help or hinder spiritual life.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have taken Greek drama as a typical instance, because in it we have\nthe clear historical case of a great art, which arose out of a very\nprimitive and almost world-wide ritual. The rise of the Indian drama, or\nthe medi\u00e6val and from it the modern stage, would have told us the same\ntale and served the like purpose. But Greece is nearer to us to-day than\neither India or the Middle Ages.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nGreece and the Greek drama remind me that I should like to offer my\nthanks to Professor Gilbert Murray, for help and criticism which has far\noutrun the limits of editorial duty.\n\nJ.E.H.\n\n_Newnham College,\nCambridge, June 1913._\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNOTE TO THE FIFTH IMPRESSION\n\nThe original text has been reprinted without change except for the\ncorrection of misprints. A few additions (enclosed in square brackets)\nhave been made to the Bibliography.\n\n1947\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nCHAP.                                            PAGE\n\n  I ART AND RITUAL                                 9\n\n II PRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES           29\n\nIII PERIODIC CEREMONIES: THE SPRING FESTIVAL      49\n\n IV THE PRIMITIVE SPRING DANCE OR DITHYRAMB,\n    IN GREECE                                     75\n\n  V THE TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE\n    _DROMENON_ AND THE DRAMA                     119\n\n VI GREEK SCULPTURE: THE PANATHENAIC FRIEZE\n    AND THE APOLLO BELVEDERE                     170\n\nVII RITUAL, ART AND LIFE                         204\n\n    BIBLIOGRAPHY                                 253\n\n    INDEX                                        255\n\n\n\n\nANCIENT ART AND RITUAL\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nART AND RITUAL\n\n\nThe title of this book may strike the reader as strange and even\ndissonant. What have art and ritual to do together? The ritualist is, to\nthe modern mind, a man concerned perhaps unduly with fixed forms and\nceremonies, with carrying out the rigidly prescribed ordinances of a\nchurch or sect. The artist, on the other hand, we think of as free in\nthought and untrammelled by convention in practice; his tendency is\ntowards licence. Art and ritual, it is quite true, have diverged to-day;\nbut the title of this book is chosen advisedly. Its object is to show\nthat these two divergent developments have a common root, and that\nneither can be understood without the other. It is at the outset one\nand the same impulse that sends a man to church and to the theatre.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSuch a statement may sound to-day paradoxical, even irreverent. But to\nthe Greek of the sixth, fifth, and even fourth century B.C., it would\nhave been a simple truism. We shall see this best by following an\nAthenian to his theatre, on the day of the great Spring Festival of\nDionysos.\n\nPassing through the entrance-gate to the theatre on the south side of\nthe Acropolis, our Athenian citizen will find himself at once on holy\nground. He is within a _temenos_ or precinct, a place \"cut off\" from the\ncommon land and dedicated to a god. He will pass to the left (Fig. 2, p.\n144) two temples standing near to each other, one of earlier, the other\nof later date, for a temple, once built, was so sacred that it would\nonly be reluctantly destroyed. As he enters the actual theatre he will\npay nothing for his seat; his attendance is an act of worship, and from\nthe social point of view obligatory; the entrance fee is therefore paid\nfor him by the State.\n\nThe theatre is open to all Athenian citizens, but the ordinary man will\nnot venture to seat himself in the front row. In the front row, and\nthat only, the seats have backs, and the central seat of this row is an\narmchair; the whole of the front row is permanently reserved, not for\nindividual rich men who can afford to hire \"boxes,\" but for certain\nState officials, and these officials are all priests. On each seat the\nname of the owner is inscribed; the central seat is \"of the priest of\nDionysos Eleuthereus,\" the god of the precinct. Near him is the seat \"of\nthe priest of Apollo the Laurel-Bearer,\" and again \"of the priest of\nAsklepios,\" and \"of the priest of Olympian Zeus,\" and so on round the\nwhole front semicircle. It is as though at His Majesty's the front row\nof stalls was occupied by the whole bench of bishops, with the\nArchbishop of Canterbury enthroned in the central stall.\n\nThe theatre at Athens is not open night by night, nor even day by day.\nDramatic performances take place only at certain high festivals of\nDionysos in winter and spring. It is, again, as though the modern\ntheatre was open only at the festivals of the Epiphany and of Easter.\nOur modern, at least our Protestant, custom is in direct contrast. We\ntend on great religious festivals rather to close than to open our\ntheatres. Another point of contrast is in the time allotted to the\nperformance. We give to the theatre our after-dinner hours, when work is\ndone, or at best a couple of hours in the afternoon. The theatre is for\nus a recreation. The Greek theatre opened at sunrise, and the whole day\nwas consecrated to high and strenuous religious attention. During the\nfive or six days of the great _Dionysia_, the whole city was in a state\nof unwonted sanctity, under a _taboo_. To distrain a debtor was illegal;\nany personal assault, however trifling, was sacrilege.\n\nMost impressive and convincing of all is the ceremony that took place on\nthe eve of the performance. By torchlight, accompanied by a great\nprocession, the image of the god Dionysos himself was brought to the\ntheatre and placed in the orchestra. Moreover, he came not only in human\nbut in animal form. Chosen young men of the Athenians in the flower of\ntheir youth--_epheboi_--escorted to the precinct a splendid bull. It was\nexpressly ordained that the bull should be \"worthy of the god\"; he was,\nin fact, as we shall presently see, the primitive incarnation of the\ngod. It is, again, as though in our modern theatre there stood,\n\"sanctifying all things to our use and us to His service,\" the human\nfigure of the Saviour, and beside him the Paschal Lamb.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut now we come to a strange thing. A god presides over the theatre, to\ngo to the theatre is an act of worship to the god Dionysos, and yet,\nwhen the play begins, three times out of four of Dionysos we hear\nnothing. We see, it may be, Agamemnon returning from Troy, Clytemnestra\nwaiting to slay him, the vengeance of Orestes, the love of Ph\u00e6dra for\nHippolytos, the hate of Medea and the slaying of her children: stories\nbeautiful, tragic, morally instructive it may be, but scarcely, we feel,\nreligious. The orthodox Greeks themselves sometimes complained that in\nthe plays enacted before them there was \"nothing to do with Dionysos.\"\n\nIf drama be at the outset divine, with its roots in ritual, why does it\nissue in an art profoundly solemn, tragic, yet purely human? The actors\nwear ritual vestments like those of the celebrants at the Eleusinian\nmysteries. Why, then, do we find them, not executing a religious\nservice or even a drama of gods and goddesses, but rather impersonating\nmere Homeric heroes and heroines? Greek drama, which seemed at first to\ngive us our clue, to show us a real link between ritual and art, breaks\ndown, betrays us, it would seem, just at the crucial moment, and leaves\nus with our problem on our hands.\n\nHad we only Greek ritual and art we might well despair. The Greeks are a\npeople of such swift constructive imagination that they almost always\nobscure any problem of origins. So fair and magical are their\ncloud-capp'd towers that they distract our minds from the task of\ndigging for foundations. There is scarcely a problem in the origins of\nGreek mythology and religion that has been solved within the domain of\nGreek thinking only. Ritual with them was, in the case of drama, so\nswiftly and completely transmuted into art that, had we had Greek\nmaterial only to hand, we might never have marked the transition.\nHappily, however, we are not confined within the Greek paradise. Wider\nfields are open to us; our subject is not only Greek, but ancient art\nand ritual. We can turn at once to the Egyptians, a people\nslower-witted than the Greeks, and watch their sluggish but more\ninstructive operations. To one who is studying the development of the\nhuman mind the average or even stupid child is often more illuminating\nthan the abnormally brilliant. Greece is often too near to us, too\nadvanced, too modern, to be for comparative purposes instructive.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOf all Egyptian, perhaps of all ancient deities, no god has lived so\nlong or had so wide and deep an influence as Osiris. He stands as the\nprototype of the great class of resurrection-gods who die that they may\nlive again. His sufferings, his death, and his resurrection were enacted\nyear by year in a great mystery-play at Abydos. In that mystery-play was\nset forth, first, what the Greeks call his _agon_, his contest with his\nenemy Set; then his _pathos_, his suffering, or downfall and defeat, his\nwounding, his death, and his burial; finally, his resurrection and\n\"recognition,\" his _anagnorisis_ either as himself or as his only\nbegotten son Horus. Now the meaning of this thrice-told tale we shall\nconsider later: for the moment we are concerned only with the fact that\nit is set forth both in art and ritual.\n\nAt the festival of Osiris small images of the god were made of sand and\nvegetable earth, his cheek bones were painted green and his face yellow.\nThe images were cast in a mould of pure gold, representing the god as a\nmummy. After sunset on the 24th day of the month Choiak, the effigy of\nOsiris was laid in a grave and the image of the previous year was\nremoved. The intent of all this was made transparently clear by other\nrites. At the beginning of the festival there was a ceremony of\nploughing and sowing. One end of the field was sown with barley, the\nother with spelt; another part with flax. While this was going on the\nchief priest recited the ritual of the \"sowing of the fields.\" Into the\n\"garden\" of the god, which seems to have been a large pot, were put sand\nand barley, then fresh living water from the inundation of the Nile was\npoured out of a golden vase over the \"garden\" and the barley was allowed\nto grow up. It was the symbol of the resurrection of the god after his\nburial, \"for the growth of the garden is the growth of the divine\nsubstance.\"\n\nThe death and resurrection of the gods, and _pari passu_ of the life and\nfruits of the earth, was thus set forth in ritual, but--and this is our\nimmediate point--it was also set forth in definite, unmistakable art. In\nthe great temple of Isis at Phil\u00e6 there is a chamber dedicated to\nOsiris. Here is represented the dead Osiris. Out of his body spring ears\nof corn, and a priest waters the growing stalk from a pitcher. The\ninscription to the picture reads: _This is the form of him whom one may\nnot name, Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning\nwaters._ It is but another presentation of the ritual of the month\nChoiak, in which effigies of the god made of earth and corn were buried.\nWhen these effigies were taken up it would be found that the corn had\nsprouted actually from the body of the god, and this sprouting of the\ngrain would, as Dr. Frazer says, be \"hailed as an omen, or rather as the\ncause of the growth of the crops.\"[1]\n\nEven more vividly is the resurrection set forth in the bas-reliefs that\naccompany the great Osiris inscription at Denderah. Here the god is\nrepresented at first as a mummy swathed and lying flat on his bier. Bit\nby bit he is seen raising himself up in a series of gymnastically\nimpossible positions, till at last he rises from a bowl--perhaps his\n\"garden\"--all but erect, between the outspread wings of Isis, while\nbefore him a male figure holds the _crux ansata_, the \"cross with a\nhandle,\" the Egyptian symbol of life. In ritual, the thing desired,\n_i.e._ the resurrection, is acted, in art it is represented.\n\nNo one will refuse to these bas-reliefs the title of art. In Egypt,\nthen, we have clearly an instance--only one out of many--where art and\nritual go hand in hand. Countless bas-reliefs that decorate Egyptian\ntombs and temples are but ritual practices translated into stone. This,\nas we shall later see, is an important step in our argument. Ancient art\nand ritual are not only closely connected, not only do they mutually\nexplain and illustrate each other, but, as we shall presently find, they\nactually arise out of a common human impulse.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe god who died and rose again is not of course confined to Egypt; he\nis world-wide. When Ezekiel (viii. 14) \"came to the gate of the Lord's\nhouse which was toward the north\" he beheld there the \"women weeping for\nTammuz.\" This \"abomination\" the house of Judah had brought with them\nfrom Babylon. Tammuz is _Dumuzi_, \"the true son,\" or more fully,\n_Dumuzi-absu_, \"true son of the waters.\" He too, like Osiris, is a god\nof the life that springs from inundation and that dies down in the heat\nof the summer. In Milton's procession of false gods,\n\n          \"Thammuz came next behind,\n    Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured\n    The Syrian damsels to lament his fate\n    In amorous ditties all a summer's day.\"\n\nTammuz in Babylon was the young love of Ishtar. Each year he died and\npassed below the earth to the place of dust and death, \"the land from\nwhich there is no returning, the house of darkness, where dust lies on\ndoor and bolt.\" And the goddess went after him, and while she was below,\nlife ceased in the earth, no flower blossomed and no child of animal or\nman was born.\n\nWe know Tammuz, \"the true son,\" best by one of his titles, Adonis, the\nLord or King. The Rites of Adonis were celebrated at midsummer. That is\ncertain and memorable; for, just as the Athenian fleet was setting sail\non its ill-omened voyage to Syracuse, the streets of Athens were\nthronged with funeral processions, everywhere was seen the image of the\ndead god, and the air was full of the lamentations of weeping women.\nThucydides does not so much as mention the coincidence, but Plutarch[2]\ntells us those who took account of omens were full of concern for the\nfate of their countrymen. To start an expedition on the day of the\nfuneral rites of Adonis, the Canaanitish \"Lord,\" was no luckier than to\nset sail on a Friday, the death-day of the \"Lord\" of Christendom.\n\nThe rites of Tammuz and of Adonis, celebrated in the summer, were rites\nof death rather than of resurrection. The emphasis is on the fading and\ndying down of vegetation rather than on its upspringing. The reason of\nthis is simple and will soon become manifest. For the moment we have\nonly to note that while in Egypt the rites of Osiris are represented as\nmuch by art as by ritual, in Babylon and Palestine in the feasts of\nTammuz and Adonis it is ritual rather than art that obtains.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have now to pass to another enquiry. We have seen that art and\nritual, not only in Greece but in Egypt and Palestine, are closely\nlinked. So closely, indeed, are they linked that we even begin to\nsuspect they may have a common origin. We have now to ask, what is it\nthat links art and ritual so closely together, what have they in common?\nDo they start from the same impulse, and if so why do they, as they\ndevelop, fall so widely asunder?\n\nIt will clear the air if we consider for a moment what we mean by art,\nand also in somewhat greater detail what we mean by ritual.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nArt, Plato[3] tells us in a famous passage of the _Republic_, is\nimitation; the artist imitates natural objects, which are themselves in\nhis philosophy but copies of higher realities. All the artist can do is\nto make a copy of a copy, to hold up a mirror to Nature in which, as he\nturns it whither he will, \"are reflected sun and heavens and earth and\nman,\" anything and everything. Never did a statement so false, so\nwrong-headed, contain so much suggestion of truth--truth which, by the\nhelp of analysing ritual, we may perhaps be able to disentangle. But\nfirst its falsehood must be grasped, and this is the more important as\nPlato's misconception in modified form lives on to-day. A painter not\nlong ago thus defined his own art: \"The art of painting is the art of\nimitating solid objects upon a flat surface by means of pigments.\" A\nsorry life-work! Few people to-day, perhaps, regard art as the close and\nrealistic copy of Nature; photography has at least scotched, if not\nslain, that error; but many people still regard art as a sort of\nimprovement on or an \"idealization\" of Nature. It is the part of the\nartist, they think, to take suggestions and materials from Nature, and\nfrom these to build up, as it were, a revised version. It is, perhaps,\nonly by studying those rudimentary forms of art that are closely akin to\nritual that we come to see how utterly wrong-headed is this conception.\n\nTake the representations of Osiris that we have just described--the\nmummy rising bit by bit from his bier. Can any one maintain that art is\nhere a copy or imitation of reality? However \"realistic\" the painting,\nit represents a thing imagined not actual. There never was any such\nperson as Osiris, and if there had been, he would certainly never, once\nmummified, have risen from his tomb. There is no question of fact, and\nthe copy of fact, in the matter. Moreover, had there been, why should\nanyone desire to make a copy of natural fact? The whole \"imitation\"\ntheory, to which, and to the element of truth it contains, we shall\nlater have occasion to return, errs, in fact, through supplying no\nadequate motive for a widespread human energy. It is probably this lack\nof motive that has led other theorizers to adopt the view that art is\nidealization. Man with pardonable optimism desires, it is thought, to\nimprove on Nature.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nModern science, confronted with a problem like that of the rise of art,\nno longer casts about to conjecture how art _might_ have arisen, she\nexamines how it actually _did_ arise. Abundant material has now been\ncollected from among savage peoples of an art so primitive that we\nhesitate to call it art at all, and it is in these inchoate efforts\nthat we are able to track the secret motive springs that move the artist\nnow as then.\n\nAmong the Huichol Indians,[4] if the people fear a drought from the\nextreme heat of the sun, they take a clay disk, and on one side of it\nthey paint the \"face\" of Father Sun, a circular space surrounded by rays\nof red and blue and yellow which are called his \"arrows,\" for the\nHuichol sun, like Phoebus Apollo, has arrows for rays. On the reverse\nside they will paint the progress of the sun through the four quarters\nof the sky. The journey is symbolized by a large cross-like figure with\na central circle for midday. Round the edge are beehive-shaped mounds;\nthese represent the hills of earth. The red and yellow dots that\nsurround the hills are cornfields. The crosses on the hills are signs of\nwealth and money. On some of the disks birds and scorpions are painted,\nand on one are curving lines which mean rain. These disks are deposited\non the altar of the god-house and left, and then all is well. The\nintention might be to us obscure, but a Huichol Indian would read it\nthus: \"Father Sun with his broad shield (or 'face') and his arrows rises\nin the east, bringing money and wealth to the Huichols. His heat and the\nlight from his rays make the corn to grow, but he is asked not to\ninterfere with the clouds that are gathering on the hills.\"\n\nNow is this art or ritual? It is both and neither. _We_ distinguish\nbetween a form of prayer and a work of art and count them in no danger\nof confusion; but the Huichol goes back to that earlier thing, a\n_presentation_. He utters, expresses his thought about the sun and his\nemotion about the sun and his relation to the sun, and if \"prayer is the\nsoul's sincere desire\" he has painted a prayer. It is not a little\ncurious that the same notion comes out in the old Greek word for\n\"prayer,\" _euch\u00e8_. The Greek, when he wanted help in trouble from the\n\"Saviours,\" the Dioscuri, carved a picture of them, and, if he was a\nsailor, added a ship. Underneath he inscribed the word _euch\u00e8_. It was\nnot to begin with a \"vow\" paid, it was a presentation of his strong\ninner desire, it was a sculptured prayer.\n\nRitual then involves _imitation_; but does not arise out of it. It\ndesires to recreate an emotion, not to reproduce an object. A rite is,\nindeed, we shall later see (p. 42), a sort of stereotyped action, not\nreally practical, but yet not wholly cut loose from practice, a\nreminiscence or an anticipation of actual practical doing; it is fitly,\nthough not quite correctly, called by the Greeks a _dromenon_, \"a thing\ndone.\"\n\nAt the bottom of art, as its motive power and its mainspring, lies, not\nthe wish to copy Nature or even improve on her--the Huichol Indian does\nnot vainly expend his energies on an effort so fruitless--but rather an\nimpulse shared by art with ritual, the desire, that is, to utter, to\ngive out a strongly felt emotion or desire by representing, by making or\ndoing or enriching the object or act desired. The common source of the\nart and ritual of Osiris is the intense, world-wide desire that the life\nof Nature which seemed dead should live again. This common _emotional_\nfactor it is that makes art and ritual in their beginnings well-nigh\nindistinguishable. Both, to begin with, copy an act, but not at first\nfor the sake of the copy. Only when the emotion dies down and is\nforgotten does the copy become an end in itself, a mere mimicry.\n\nIt is this downward path, this sinking of making to mimicry, that makes\nus now-a-days think of ritual as a dull and formal thing. Because a rite\nhas ceased to be believed in, it does not in the least follow that it\nwill cease to be _done_. We have to reckon with all the huge forces of\nhabit. The motor nerves, once set in one direction, given the slightest\nimpulse tend always to repeat the same reaction. We mimic not only\nothers but ourselves mechanically, even after all emotion proper to the\nact is dead; and then because mimicry has a certain ingenious charm, it\nbecomes an end in itself for ritual, even for art.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is not easy, as we saw, to classify the Huichol prayer-disks. As\nprayers they are ritual, as surfaces decorated they are specimens of\nprimitive art. In the next chapter we shall have to consider a kind of\nceremony very instructive for our point, but again not very easy to\nclassify--the pantomimic dances which are, almost all over the world, so\nstriking a feature in savage social and religious life. Are they to be\nclassed as ritual or art?\n\nThese pantomime dances lie, indeed, at the very heart and root of our\nwhole subject, and it is of the first importance that before going\nfurther in our analysis of art and ritual, we should have some\nfamiliarity with their general character and gist, the more so as they\nare a class of ceremonies now practically extinct. We shall find in\nthese dances the meeting-point between art and ritual, or rather we\nshall find in them the rude, inchoate material out of which both ritual\nand art, at least in one of its forms, developed. Moreover, we shall\nfind in pantomimic dancing a ritual bridge, as it were, between actual\nlife and those representations of life which we call art.\n\nIn our next chapter, therefore, we shall study the ritual dance in\ngeneral, and try to understand its psychological origin; in the\nfollowing chapter (III) we shall take a particular dance of special\nimportance, the Spring Dance as practised among various primitive\npeoples. We shall then be prepared to approach the study of the Spring\nDance among the Greeks, which developed into their drama, and thereby\nto, we hope, throw light on the relation between ritual and art.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_,^2 p. 324.\n\n[2] _Vit. Nik._, 13.\n\n[3] _Rep._ X, 596-9.\n\n[4] C.H. Lumholtz, _Symbolism of the Huichol Indians_, in _Mem. of the\nAm. Mus. of Nat. Hist._, Vol. III, \"Anthropology.\" (1900.)\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nPRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES\n\n\nIn books and hymns of bygone days, which dealt with the religion of \"the\nheathen in his blindness,\" he was pictured as a being of strange\nperversity, apt to bow down to \"gods of wood and stone.\" The question\n_why_ he acted thus foolishly was never raised. It was just his\n\"blindness\"; the light of the gospel had not yet reached him. Now-a-days\nthe savage has become material not only for conversion and hymn-writing\nbut for scientific observation. We want to understand his psychology,\n_i.e._ how he behaves, not merely for his sake, that we may abruptly\nand despotically convert or reform him, but for our own sakes; partly,\nof course, for sheer love of knowing, but also,--since we realize that\nour own behaviour is based on instincts kindred to his,--in order that,\nby understanding his behaviour, we may understand, and it may be better,\nour own.\n\nAnthropologists who study the primitive peoples of to-day find that the\nworship of false gods, bowing \"down to wood and stone,\" bulks larger in\nthe mind of the hymn-writer than in the mind of the savage. We look for\ntemples to heathen idols; we find dancing-places and ritual dances. The\nsavage is a man of action. Instead of asking a god to do what he wants\ndone, he does it or tries to do it himself; instead of prayers he utters\nspells. In a word, he practises magic, and above all he is strenuously\nand frequently engaged in dancing magical dances. When a savage wants\nsun or wind or rain, he does not go to church and prostrate himself\nbefore a false god; he summons his tribe and dances a sun dance or a\nwind dance or a rain dance. When he would hunt and catch a bear, he does\nnot pray to his god for strength to outwit and outmatch the bear, he\nrehearses his hunt in a bear dance.\n\nHere, again, we have some modern prejudice and misunderstanding to\novercome. Dancing is to us a light form of recreation practised by the\nquite young from sheer _joie de vivre_, and essentially inappropriate to\nthe mature. But among the Tarahumares of Mexico the word _nol\u00e1voa_\nmeans both \"to work\" and \"to dance.\" An old man will reproach a young\nman saying, \"Why do you not go and work?\" (_nol\u00e1voa_). He means \"Why do\nyou not dance instead of looking on?\" It is strange to us to learn that\namong savages, as a man passes from childhood to youth, from youth to\nmature manhood, so the number of his \"dances\" increase, and the number\nof these \"dances\" is the measure _pari passu_ of his social importance.\nFinally, in extreme old age he falls out, he ceases to exist, _because\nhe cannot dance_; his dance, and with it his social status, passes to\nanother and a younger.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMagical dancing still goes on in Europe to-day. In Swabia and among the\nTransylvanian Saxons it is a common custom, says Dr. Frazer,[5] for a\nman who has some hemp to leap high in the field in the belief that this\nwill make the hemp grow tall. In many parts of Germany and Austria the\npeasant thinks he can make the flax grow tall by dancing or leaping high\nor by jumping backwards from a table; the higher the leap the taller\nwill be the flax that year. There is happily little possible doubt as\nto the practical reason of this mimic dancing. When Macedonian farmers\nhave done digging their fields they throw their spades up into the air\nand, catching them again, exclaim, \"May the crop grow as high as the\nspade has gone.\" In some parts of Eastern Russia the girls dance one by\none in a large hoop at midnight on Shrove Tuesday. The hoop is decked\nwith leaves, flowers and ribbons, and attached to it are a small bell\nand some flax. While dancing within the hoop each girl has to wave her\narms vigorously and cry, \"Flax, grow,\" or words to that effect. When she\nhas done she leaps out of the hoop or is lifted out of it by her\npartner.\n\nIs this art? We shall unhesitatingly answer \"No.\" Is it ritual? With\nsome hesitation we shall probably again answer \"No.\" It is, we think,\nnot a rite, but merely a superstitious practice of ignorant men and\nwomen. But take another instance. Among the Omaha Indians of North\nAmerica, when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the\nsacred Buffalo Society fill a large vessel with water and dance four\ntimes round it. One of them drinks some of the water and spirts it into\nthe air, making a fine spray in imitation of mist or drizzling rain.\nThen he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon\nthe dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over their\nfaces. This saves the corn. Now probably any dispassionate person would\ndescribe such a ceremonial as \"an interesting instance of primitive\n_ritual_.\" The sole difference between the two types is that, in the one\nthe practice is carried on privately, or at least unofficially, in the\nother it is done publicly by a collective authorized body, officially\nfor the public good.\n\nThe distinction is one of high importance, but for the moment what\nconcerns us is, to see the common factor in the two sets of acts, what\nis indeed their source and mainspring. In the case of the girl dancing\nin the hoop and leaping out of it there is no doubt. The words she says,\n\"Flax, grow,\" prove the point. She _does_ what she _wants done_. Her\nintense desire finds utterance in an act. She obeys the simplest\npossible impulse. Let anyone watch an exciting game of tennis, or better\nstill perhaps a game of billiards, he will find himself _doing_ in\nsheer sympathy the thing he wants done, reaching out a tense arm where\nthe billiard cue should go, raising an unoccupied leg to help the\nsuspended ball over the net. Sympathetic magic is, modern psychology\nteaches us, in the main and at the outset, not the outcome of\nintellectual illusion, not even the exercise of a \"mimetic instinct,\"\nbut simply, in its ultimate analysis, an utterance, a discharge of\nemotion and longing.\n\nBut though the utterance of emotion is the prime and moving, it is not\nthe sole, factor. We may utter emotion in a prolonged howl, we may even\nutter it in a collective prolonged howl, yet we should scarcely call\nthis ritual, still less art. It is true that a prolonged _collective_\nhowl will probably, because it is collective, develop a rhythm, a\nregular recurrence, and hence probably issue in a kind of ritual music;\nbut for the further stage of development into art another step is\nnecessary. We must not only _utter_ emotion, we must _represent_ it,\nthat is, we must in some way reproduce or imitate or express the thought\nwhich is causing us emotion. Art is not imitation, but art and also\nritual frequently and legitimately _contain an element of imitation_.\nPlato was so far right. What exactly is imitated we shall see when we\ncome to discuss the precise difference between art and ritual.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Greek word for a _rite_ as already noted is _dromenon_, \"a thing\ndone\"--and the word is full of instruction. The Greek had realized that\nto perform a rite you must _do_ something, that is, you must not only\nfeel something but express it in action, or, to put it psychologically,\nyou must not only receive an impulse, you must react to it. The word for\nrite, _dromenon_, \"thing done,\" arose, of course, not from any\npsychological analysis, but from the simple fact that rites among the\nprimitive Greeks were _things done_, mimetic dances and the like. It is\na fact of cardinal importance that their word for theatrical\nrepresentation, _drama_, is own cousin to their word for rite,\n_dromenon_; _drama_ also means \"thing done.\" Greek linguistic instinct\npointed plainly to the fact that art and ritual are near relations. To\nthis fact of crucial importance for our argument we shall return later.\nBut from the outset it should be borne in mind that in these two Greek\nwords, _dromenon_ and _drama_, in their exact meaning, their relation\nand their distinction, we have the keynote and clue to our whole\ndiscussion.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFor the moment we have to note that the Greek word for rite, _dromenon_,\n\"thing done,\" is not strictly adequate. It omits a factor of prime\nimportance; it includes too much and not enough. All \"things done\" are\nnot rites. You may shrink back from a blow; that is the expression of an\nemotion, that is a reaction to a stimulus, but that is not a rite. You\nmay digest your dinner; that is a thing done, and a thing of high\nimportance, but it is not a rite.\n\nOne element in the rite we have already observed, and that is, that it\nbe done collectively, by a number of persons feeling the same emotion. A\nmeal digested alone is certainly no rite; a meal eaten in common, under\nthe influence of a common emotion, may, and often does, _tend_ to become\na rite.\n\nCollectivity and emotional tension, two elements that tend to turn the\nsimple reaction into a rite, are--specially among primitive\npeoples--closely associated, indeed scarcely separable. The individual\namong savages has but a thin and meagre personality; high emotional\ntension is to him only caused and maintained by a thing felt socially;\nit is what the tribe feels that is sacred, that is matter for ritual. He\nmay make by himself excited movements, he may leap for joy, for fear;\nbut unless these movements are made by the tribe together they will not\nbecome rhythmical; they will probably lack intensity, and certainly\npermanence. Intensity, then, and collectivity go together, and both are\nnecessary for ritual, but both may be present without constituting art;\nwe have not yet touched the dividing line between art and ritual. When\nand how does the _dromenon_, the _rite done_, pass over into the\n_drama_?\n\nThe genius of the Greek language _felt_, before it consciously _knew_,\nthe difference. This feeling ahead for distinctions is characteristic of\nall languages, as has been well shown by Mr. Pearsall Smith[6] in\nanother manual of our series. It is an instinctive process arising\nindependently of reason, though afterwards justified by it. What, then,\nis the distinction between art and ritual which the genius of the Greek\nlanguage felt after, when it used the two words _dromenon_ and _drama_\nfor two different sorts of \"things done\"? To answer our question we must\nturn for a brief moment to psychology, the science of human behaviour.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe are accustomed for practical convenience to divide up our human\nnature into partitions--intellect, will, the emotions, the\npassions--with further subdivisions, _e.g._ of the intellect into\nreason, imagination, and the like. These partitions we are apt to\narrange into a sort of order of merit or as it is called a hierarchy,\nwith Reason as head and crown, and under her sway the emotions and\npassions. The result of establishing this hierarchy is that the\nimpulsive side of our nature comes off badly, the passions and even the\nemotions lying under a certain ban. This popular psychology is really a\nconvenient and perhaps indispensable mythology. Reason, the emotions,\nand the will have no more separate existences than Jupiter, Juno, and\nMinerva.\n\nA more fruitful way of looking at our human constitution is to see it,\nnot as a bundle of separate faculties, but as a sort of continuous\ncycle of activities. What really happens is, putting it very roughly,\nsomething of this sort. To each one of us the world is, or seems to be,\neternally divided into two halves. On the one side is ourself, on the\nother all the rest of things. All our action, our behaviour, our life,\nis a relation between these two halves, and that behaviour seems to have\nthree, not divisions, but stages. The outside world, the other half, the\nobject if we like so to call it, acts upon us, gets at us through our\nsenses. We hear or see or taste or feel something; to put it roughly, we\nperceive something, and as we perceive it, so, instantly, we feel about\nit, towards it, we have emotion. And, instantly again, that emotion\nbecomes a motive-power, we _re_-act towards the object that got at us,\nwe want to alter it or our relation to it. If we did not perceive we\nshould not feel, if we did not feel we should not act. When we talk--as\nwe almost must talk--of Reason, the Emotions, or the Passions and the\nWill leading to action, we think of the three stages or aspects of our\nbehaviour as separable and even perhaps hostile; we want, perhaps, to\npurge the intellect from all infection of the emotions. But in reality,\nthough at a given moment one or the other element, knowing, feeling, or\nacting, may be dominant in our consciousness, the rest are always\nimmanent.\n\nWhen we think of the three elements or stages, knowing, feeling,\nstriving, as all being necessary factors in any complete bit of human\nbehaviour, we no longer try to arrange them in a hierarchy with knowing\nor reason at the head. Knowing--that is, receiving and recognizing a\nstimulus from without--would seem to come first; we must be acted on\nbefore we can _re_-act; but priority confers no supremacy. We can look\nat it another way. Perceiving is the first rung on the ladder that leads\nto action, feeling is the second, action is the topmost rung, the\nprimary goal, as it were, of all the climbing. For the purpose of our\ndiscussion this is perhaps the simplest way of looking at human\nbehaviour.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMovement, then, action, is, as it were, the goal and the end of thought.\nPerception finds its natural outlet and completion in doing. But here\ncomes in a curious consideration important for our purpose. In animals,\nin so far as they act by \"instinct,\" as we say, perception, knowing, is\nusually followed immediately and inevitably by doing, by such doing as\nis calculated to conserve the animal and his species; but in some of the\nhigher animals, and especially in man, where the nervous system is more\ncomplex, perception is not instantly transformed into action; there is\nan interval for choice between several possible actions. Perception is\npent up and becomes, helped by emotion, conscious _representation_. Now\nit is, psychologists tell us, just in this interval, this space between\nperception and reaction, this momentary halt, that all our mental life,\nour images, our ideas, our consciousness, and assuredly our religion and\nour art, is built up. If the cycle of knowing, feeling, acting, were\ninstantly fulfilled, that is, if we were a mass of well-contrived\ninstincts, we should hardly have _dromena_, and we should certainly\nnever pass from _dromena_ to _drama_. Art and religion, though perhaps\nnot wholly ritual, spring from the incomplete cycle, from unsatisfied\ndesire, from perception and emotion that have somehow not found\nimmediate outlet in practical action. When we come later to establish\nthe dividing line between art and ritual we shall find this fact to be\ncardinal.\n\nWe have next to watch how out of _representation repeated_ there grows\nup a kind of _abstraction_ which helps the transition from ritual to\nart. When the men of a tribe return from a hunt, a journey, a battle, or\nany event that has caused them keen and pleasant emotion, they will\noften re-act their doings round the camp-fire at night to an attentive\naudience of women and young boys. The cause of this world-wide custom is\nno doubt in great part the desire to repeat a pleasant experience; the\nbattle or the hunt will not be re-enacted unless it has been successful.\nTogether with this must be reckoned a motive seldom absent from human\nendeavour, the desire for self-exhibition, self-enhancement. But in this\nre-enactment, we see at once, lies the germ of history and of\ncommemorative ceremonial, and also, oddly enough, an impulse emotional\nin itself begets a process we think of as characteristically and\nexclusively intellectual, the process of abstraction. The savage begins\nwith the particular battle that actually _did_ happen; but, it is easy\nto see that if he re-enacts it again and again the _particular_ battle\nor hunt will be forgotten, the representation cuts itself loose from\nthe particular action from which it arose, and becomes generalized, as\nit were abstracted. Like children he plays not at a funeral, but at\n\"funerals,\" not at a battle, but at battles; and so arises the\nwar-dance, or the death-dance, or the hunt-dance. This will serve to\nshow how inextricably the elements of knowing and feeling are\nintertwined.\n\nSo, too, with the element of action. If we consider the occasions when a\nsavage dances, it will soon appear that it is not only after a battle or\na hunt that he dances in order to commemorate it, but before. Once the\ncommemorative dance has got abstracted or generalized it becomes\nmaterial for the magical dance, the dance pre-done. A tribe about to go\nto war will work itself up by a war dance; about to start out hunting\nthey will catch their game in pantomime. Here clearly the main emphasis\nis on the practical, the active, doing-element in the cycle. The dance\nis, as it were, a sort of precipitated desire, a discharge of pent-up\nemotion into action.\n\nIn both these kinds of dances, the dance that commemorates by\n_re_-presenting and the dance that anticipates by _pre_-presenting,\nPlato would have seen the element of imitation, what the Greeks called\n_mimesis_, which we saw he believed to be the very source and essence of\nall art. In a sense he would have been right. The commemorative dance\ndoes especially _re_-present; it reproduces the past hunt or battle; but\nif we analyse a little more closely we see it is not for the sake of\ncopying the actual battle itself, but for the _emotion felt about the\nbattle_. This they desire to re-live. The emotional element is seen\nstill more clearly in the dance _fore_-done for magical purposes.\nSuccess in war or in the hunt is keenly, intensely desired. The hunt or\nthe battle cannot take place at the moment, so the cycle cannot complete\nitself. The desire cannot find utterance in the actual act; it grows and\naccumulates by inhibition, till at last the exasperated nerves and\nmuscles can bear it no longer; it breaks out into mimetic anticipatory\naction. But, and this is the important point, the action is mimetic, not\nof what you see done by another; but of what you desire to do yourself.\nThe habit of this _mimesis_ of the thing desired, is set up, and ritual\nbegins. Ritual, then, does imitate, but for an emotional, not an\naltogether practical, end.\n\nPlato never saw a savage war-dance or a hunt-dance or a rain-dance, and\nit is not likely that, if he had seen one, he would have allowed it to\nbe art at all. But he must often have seen a class of performances very\nsimilar, to which unquestionably he would give the name of art. He must\nhave seen plays like those of Aristophanes, with the chorus dressed up\nas Birds or Clouds or Frogs or Wasps, and he might undoubtedly have\nclaimed such plays as evidence of the rightness of his definition. Here\nwere men _imitating_ birds and beasts, dressed in their skins and\nfeathers, mimicking their gestures. For his own days his judgment would\nhave been unquestionably right; but again, if we look at the beginning\nof things, we find an origin and an impulse much deeper, vaguer, and\nmore emotional.\n\nThe beast dances found widespread over the savage world took their rise\nwhen men really believed, what St. Francis tried to preach: that beasts\nand birds and fishes were his \"little brothers.\" Or rather, perhaps,\nmore strictly, he felt them to be his great brothers and his fathers,\nfor the attitude of the Australian towards the kangaroo, the North\nAmerican towards the grizzly bear, is one of affection tempered by deep\nreligious awe. The beast dances look back to that early phase of\ncivilization which survives in crystallized form in what we call\n_totemism_. \"Totem\" means tribe, but the tribe was of animals as well as\nmen. In the Kangaroo tribe there were real leaping kangaroos as well as\nmen-kangaroos. The men-kangaroos when they danced and leapt did it, not\nto _imitate_ kangaroos--you cannot imitate yourself--but just for\nnatural joy of heart because they _were_ kangaroos; they belonged to the\nKangaroo tribe, they bore the tribal marks and delighted to assert their\ntribal unity. What they felt was not _mimesis_ but \"participation,\"\nunity, and community. Later, when man begins to distinguish between\nhimself and his strange fellow-tribesmen, to realize that he is _not_ a\nkangaroo like other kangaroos, he will try to revive his old faith, his\nold sense of participation and oneness, by conscious imitation. Thus\nthough imitation is not the object of these dances, it grows up in and\nthrough them. It is the same with art. The origin of art is not\n_mimesis_, but _mimesis_ springs up out of art, out of emotional\nexpression, and constantly and closely neighbours it. Art and ritual\nare at the outset alike in this, that they do not seek to copy a fact,\nbut to reproduce, to re-enact an emotion.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe shall see this more clearly if we examine for a moment this Greek\nword _mimesis_. We translate m{-i}m{-e}sis by \"imitation,\" and we do very\nwrongly. The word _mimesis_ means the action or doing of a person called\na _mime_. Now a _mime_ was simply a person who dressed up and acted in a\npantomime or primitive drama. He was roughly what we should call an\n_actor_, and it is significant that in the word _actor_ we stress not\nimitating but acting, doing, just what the Greek stressed in his words\n_dromenon_ and _drama_. The actor dresses up, puts on a mask, wears the\nskin of a beast or the feathers of a bird, not, as we have seen, to copy\nsomething or some one who is not himself, but to emphasize, enlarge,\nenhance, his own personality; he masquerades, he does not mimic.\n\nThe celebrants in the very primitive ritual of the Mountain-Mother in\nThrace were, we know, called _mimes_. In the fragment of his lost play,\n\u00c6schylus, after describing the din made by the \"mountain gear\" of the\nMother, the maddening hum of the _bombykes_, a sort of spinning-top,\nthe clash of the brazen cymbals and the twang of the strings, thus goes\non:\n\n     \"And bull-voices roar thereto from somewhere out of the unseen,\n     fearful _mimes_, and from a drum an image, as it were, of thunder\n     underground is borne on the air heavy with dread.\"\n\nHere we have undoubtedly some sort of \"bull-roaring,\" thunder-and\nwind-making ceremony, like those that go on in Australia to-day. The\n_mimes_ are not mimicking thunder out of curiosity, they are making it\nand enacting and uttering it for magical purposes. When a sailor wants a\nwind he makes it, or, as he later says, he whistles _for_ it; when a\nsavage or a Greek wants thunder to bring rain he makes it, becomes it.\nBut it is easy to see that as the belief in magic declines, what was\nonce intense desire, issuing in the making of or the being of a thing,\nbecomes mere copying of it; the mime, the maker, sinks to be in our\nmodern sense the mimic; as faith declines, folly and futility set in;\nthe earnest, zealous _act_ sinks into a frivolous mimicry, a sort of\nchild's-play.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n[5] These instances are all taken from _The Golden Bough,^3 The Magic\nArt_, I, 139 _ff._\n\n[6] \"The English Language,\" _Home University Library_, p. 28.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nSEASONAL RITES: THE SPRING FESTIVAL\n\n\nWe have seen in the last chapter that whatever interests primitive man,\nwhatever makes him feel strongly, he tends to re-enact. Any one of his\nmanifold occupations, hunting, fighting, later ploughing and sowing,\nprovided it be of sufficient interest and importance, is material for a\n_dromenon_ or rite. We have also seen that, weak as he is in\nindividuality, it is not his private and personal emotions that tend to\nbecome ritual, but those that are public, felt and expressed officially,\nthat is, by the whole tribe or community. It is further obvious that\nsuch dances, when they develop into actual rites, tend to be performed\nat fixed times. We have now to consider when and why. The element of\nfixity and regular repetition in rites cannot be too strongly\nemphasized. It is a factor of paramount importance, essential to the\ndevelopment from ritual to art, from _dromenon_ to drama.\n\nThe two great interests of primitive man are food and children. As Dr.\nFrazer has well said, if man the individual is to live he must have\nfood; if his race is to persist he must have children. \"To live and to\ncause to live, to eat food and to beget children, these were the primary\nwants of man in the past, and they will be the primary wants of men in\nthe future so long as the world lasts.\" Other things may be added to\nenrich and beautify human life, but, unless these wants are first\nsatisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things,\ntherefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to procure by\nthe performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons. They\nare the very foundation-stones of that ritual from which art, if we are\nright, took its rise. From this need for food sprang seasonal, periodic\nfestivals. The fact that festivals are seasonal, constantly recurrent,\nsolidifies, makes permanent, and as already explained (p. 42), in a\nsense intellectualizes and abstracts the emotion that prompts them.\n\nThe seasons are indeed only of value to primitive man because they are\nrelated, as he swiftly and necessarily finds out, to his food supply.\nHe has, it would seem, little sensitiveness to the \u00e6sthetic impulse of\nthe beauty of a spring morning, to the pathos of autumn. What he\nrealizes first and foremost is, that at certain times the animals, and\nstill more the plants, which form his food, appear, at certain others\nthey disappear. It is these times that become the central points, the\nfocuses of his interest, and the dates of his religious festivals. These\ndates will vary, of course, in different countries and in different\nclimates. It is, therefore, idle to attempt a study of the ritual of a\npeople without knowing the facts of their climate and surroundings. In\nEgypt the food supply will depend on the rise and fall of the Nile, and\non this rise and fall will depend the ritual and calendar of Osiris. And\nyet treatises on Egyptian religion are still to be found which begin by\nrecounting the rites and mythology of Osiris, as though these were\nprimary, and then end with a corollary to the effect that these rites\nand this calendar were \"associated\" with the worship of Osiris, or, even\nworse still, \"instituted by\" the religion of Osiris. The Nile regulates\nthe food supply of Egypt, the monsoon that of certain South Pacific\nislands; the calendar of Egypt depends on the Nile, of the South\nPacific islands on the monsoon.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn his recent _Introduction to Mathematics_[7] Dr. Whitehead has pointed\nout how the \"whole life of Nature is dominated by the existence of\nperiodic events.\" The rotation of the earth produces successive days;\nthe path of the earth round the sun leads to the yearly recurrence of\nthe seasons; the phases of the moon are recurrent, and though artificial\nlight has made these phases pass almost unnoticed to-day, in climates\nwhere the skies are clear, human life was largely influenced by\nmoonlight. Even our own bodily life, with its recurrent heart-beats and\nbreathings, is essentially periodic.[8] The presupposition of\nperiodicity is indeed fundamental to our very conception of life, and\nbut for periodicity the very means of measuring time as a quantity would\nbe absent.\n\nPeriodicity is fundamental to certain departments of mathematics, that\nis evident; it is perhaps less evident that periodicity is a factor that\nhas gone to the making of ritual, and hence, as we shall see, of art.\nAnd yet this is manifestly the case. All primitive calendars are ritual\ncalendars, successions of feast-days, a patchwork of days of different\nquality and character recurring; pattern at least is based on\nperiodicity. But there is another and perhaps more important way in\nwhich periodicity affects and in a sense causes ritual. We have seen\nalready that out of the space between an impulse and a reaction there\narises an idea or \"presentation.\" A \"presentation\" is, indeed, it would\nseem, in its final analysis, only a delayed, intensified desire--a\ndesire of which the active satisfaction is blocked, and which runs over\ninto a \"presentation.\" An image conceived \"presented,\" what we call an\n_idea_ is, as it were, an act prefigured.\n\nRitual acts, then, which depend on the periodicity of the seasons are\nacts necessarily delayed. The thing delayed, expected, waited for, is\nmore and more a source of value, more and more apt to precipitate into\nwhat we call an idea, which is in reality but the projected shadow of an\nunaccomplished action. More beautiful it may be, but comparatively\nbloodless, yet capable in its turn of acting as an initial motor impulse\nin the cycle of activity. It will later (p. 70) be seen that these\nperiodic festivals are the stuff of which those faded, unaccomplished\nactions and desires which we call gods--Attis, Osiris, Dionysos--are\nmade.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTo primitive man, as we have seen, beast and bird and plant and himself\nwere not sharply divided, and the periodicity of the seasons was for\nall. It will depend on man's social and geographical conditions whether\nhe notices periodicity most in plants or animals. If he is nomadic he\nwill note the recurrent births of other animals and of human children,\nand will connect them with the lunar year. But it is at once evident\nthat, at least in Mediterranean lands, and probably everywhere, it is\nthe periodicity of plants and vegetation generally which depends on\nmoisture, that is most striking. Plants die down in the heat of summer,\ntrees shed their leaves in autumn, all Nature sleeps or dies in winter,\nand awakes in spring.\n\nSometimes it is the dying down that attracts most attention. This is\nvery clear in the rites of Adonis, which are, though he rises again,\nessentially rites of lamentation. The details of the ritual show this\nclearly, and specially as already seen in the cult of Osiris. For the\n\"gardens\" of Adonis the women took baskets or pots filled with earth,\nand in them, as children sow cress now-a-days, they planted wheat,\nfennel, lettuce, and various kinds of flowers, which they watered and\ntended for eight days. In hot countries the seeds sprang up rapidly, but\nas the plants had no roots they withered quickly away. At the end of the\neight days they were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis and\nthrown with them into the sea or into springs. The \"gardens\" of Adonis\nbecame the type of transient loveliness and swift decay.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"What waste would it be,\" says Plutarch,[9] \"what inconceivable waste,\nfor God to create man, had he not an immortal soul. He would be like the\nwomen who make little gardens, not less pleasant than the gardens of\nAdonis in earthen pots and pans; so would our souls blossom and flourish\nbut for a day in a soft and tender body of flesh without any firm and\nsolid root of life, and then be blasted and put out in a moment.\"\n\nCelebrated at midsummer as they were, and as the \"gardens\" were thrown\ninto water, it is probable that the rites of Adonis may have been, at\nleast in part, a rain-charm. In the long summer droughts of Palestine\nand Babylonia the longing for rain must often have been intense enough\nto provoke expression, and we remember (p. 19) that the Sumerian Tammuz\nwas originally _Dumuzi-absu_, \"True Son of the Waters.\" Water is the\nfirst need for vegetation. Gardens of Adonis are still in use in the\nMadras Presidency.[10] At the marriage of a Brahman \"seeds of five or\nnine sorts are mixed and sown in earthen pots which are made specially\nfor the purpose, and are filled with earth. Bride and bridegroom water\nthe seeds both morning and evening for four days; and on the fifth day\nthe seedlings are thrown, like the real gardens of Adonis, into a tank\nor river.\"\n\nSeasonal festivals with one and the same intent--the promotion of\nfertility in plants, animals and man--may occur at almost any time of\nthe year. At midsummer, as we have seen, we may have rain-charms; in\nautumn we shall have harvest festivals; in late autumn and early winter\namong pastoral peoples we shall have festivals, like that of Martinmas,\nfor the blessing and purification of flocks and herds when they come in\nfrom their summer pasture. In midwinter there will be a Christmas\nfestival to promote and protect the sun's heat at the winter solstice.\nBut in Southern Europe, to which we mainly owe our drama and our art,\nthe festival most widely celebrated, and that of which we know most, is\nthe Spring Festival, and to that we must turn. The spring is to the\nGreek of to-day the \"\u00e1noixis,\" \"the Opening,\" and it was in spring and\nwith rites of spring that both Greek and Roman originally began their\nyear. It was this spring festival that gave to the Greek their god\nDionysos and in part his drama.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn Cambridge on May Day two or three puzzled and weary little boys and\ngirls are still to be sometimes seen dragging round a perambulator with\na doll on it bedecked with ribbons and a flower or two. That is all that\nis left in most parts of England of the Queen of the May and\nJack-in-the-Green, though here and there a maypole survives and is\nresuscitated by enthusiasts about folk-dances. But in the days of \"Good\nQueen Bess\" merry England, it would seem, was lustier. The Puritan\nStubbs, in his _Anatomie of Abuses_,[11] thus describes the festival:\n\n     \"They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe havyng a\n     sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and\n     these oxen draw home this Maiepoole (this stinckying idoll rather),\n     which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound round\n     aboute with stringes from the top to the bottome, and sometyme\n     painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men,\n     women, and children, following it with great devotion. And thus\n     beyng reared up, with handkerchiefes and flagges streaming on the\n     toppe, they strewe the ground about, binde greene boughs about it,\n     set up summer haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it. And then fall\n     they to banquet and feast, to leap and daunce aboute it, as the\n     heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles, whereof this\n     is a perfect patterne or rather the thyng itself.\"\n\nThe stern old Puritan was right, the maypole was the perfect pattern of\na heathen \"idoll, or rather the thyng itself.\" He would have\nexterminated it root and branch, but other and perhaps wiser divines\ntook the maypole into the service of the Christian Church, and still[12]\non May Day in Saffron Walden the spring song is heard with its Christian\nmoral--\n\n    \"A branch of May we have brought you,\n      And at your door it stands;\n    It is a sprout that is well budded out,\n      The work of our Lord's hands.\"\n\nThe maypole was of course at first no pole cut down and dried. The gist\nof it was that it should be a \"sprout, well budded out.\" The object of\ncarrying in the May was to bring the very spirit of life and greenery\ninto the village. When this was forgotten, idleness or economy would\nprompt the villagers to use the same tree or branch year after year. In\nthe villages of Upper Bavaria Dr. Frazer[13] tells us the maypole is\nrenewed once every three, four, or five years. It is a fir-tree fetched\nfrom the forest, and amid all the wreaths, flags, and inscriptions with\nwhich it is bedecked, an essential part is the bunch of dark green\nfoliage left at the top, \"as a memento that in it we have to do, not\nwith a dead pole, but with a living tree from the greenwood.\"\n\nAt the ritual of May Day not only was the fresh green bough or tree\ncarried into the village, but with it came a girl or a boy, the Queen or\nKing of the May. Sometimes the tree itself, as in Russia, is dressed up\nin woman's clothes; more often a real man or maid, covered with flowers\nand greenery, walks with the tree or carries the bough. Thus in\nThuringia,[14] as soon as the trees begin to be green in spring, the\nchildren assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they\nchoose one of their playmates to be Little Leaf Man. They break branches\nfrom the trees and twine them about the child, till only his shoes are\nleft peeping out. Two of the other children lead him for fear he should\nstumble. They take him singing and dancing from house to house, asking\nfor gifts of food, such as eggs, cream, sausages, cakes. Finally, they\nsprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food. Such a Leaf Man\nis our English Jack-in-the-Green, a chimney-sweeper who, as late as\n1892, was seen by Dr. Rouse walking about at Cheltenham encased in a\nwooden framework covered with greenery.\n\nThe bringing in of the new leafage in the form of a tree or flowers is\none, and perhaps the simplest, form of spring festival. It takes little\nnotice of death and winter, uttering and emphasizing only the desire for\nthe joy in life and spring. But in other and severer climates the\nemotion is fiercer and more complex; it takes the form of a struggle or\ncontest, what the Greeks called an _agon_. Thus on May Day in the Isle\nof Man a Queen of the May was chosen, and with her twenty maids of\nhonour, together with a troop of young men for escort. But there was not\nonly a Queen of the May, but a Queen of Winter, a man dressed as a\nwoman, loaded with warm clothes and wearing a woollen hood and fur\ntippet. Winter, too, had attendants like the Queen of the May. The two\ntroops met and fought; and whichever Queen was taken prisoner had to pay\nthe expenses of the feast.\n\nIn the Isle of Man the real gist of the ceremony is quite forgotten, it\nhas become a mere play. But among the Esquimaux[15] there is still\ncarried on a similar rite, and its magical intent is clearly understood.\nIn autumn, when the storms begin and the long and dismal Arctic winter\nis at hand, the central Esquimaux divide themselves into two parties\ncalled the Ptarmigans and the Ducks. The ptarmigans are the people born\nin winter, the ducks those born in summer. They stretch out a long rope\nof sealskin. The ducks take hold of one end, the ptarmigans of the\nother, then comes a tug-of-war. If the ducks win there will be fine\nweather through the winter; if the ptarmigans, bad. This autumn festival\nmight, of course, with equal magical intent be performed in the spring,\nbut probably autumn is chosen because, with the dread of the Arctic ice\nand snow upon them, the fear of winter is stronger than the hope of\nspring.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe intense emotion towards the weather, which breaks out into these\nmagical _agones_, or \"contests,\" is not very easy to realize. The\nweather to us now-a-days for the most part damps a day's pleasuring or\nraises the price of fruit and vegetables. But our main supplies come to\nus from other lands and other weathers, and we find it hard to think\nourselves back into the state when a bad harvest meant starvation. The\nintensely practical attitude of man towards the seasons, the way that\nmany of these magical dramatic ceremonies rose straight out of the\nemotion towards the food-supply, would perhaps never have been fully\nrealized but for the study of the food-producing ceremonies of the\nCentral Australians.\n\nThe Central Australian spring is not the shift from winter to summer,\nfrom cold to heat, but from a long, arid, and barren season to a season\nshort and often irregular in recurrence of torrential rain and sudden\nfertility. The dry steppes of Central Australia are the scene of a\nmarvellous transformation. In the dry season all is hot and desolate,\nthe ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched\nacacia tree, all is stones and sand; there is no sign of animal life\nsave for the thousand ant-hills. Then suddenly the rainy season sets in.\nTorrents fill the rivers, and the sandy plain is a sheet of water.\nAlmost as suddenly the rain ceases, the streams dry up, sucked in by the\nthirsty ground, and as though literally by magic a luxuriant vegetation\nbursts forth, the desert blossoms as a rose. Insects, lizards, frogs,\nbirds, chirp, frisk and chatter. No plant or animal can live unless it\nlive quickly. The struggle for existence is keen and short.\n\nIt seems as though the change came and life was born by magic, and the\nprimitive Australian takes care that magic should not be wanting, and\nmagic of the most instructive kind. As soon as the season of fertility\napproaches he begins his rites with the avowed object of making and\nmultiplying the plants, and chiefly the animals, by which he lives; he\npaints the figure of the emu on the sand with vermilion drawn from his\nown blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him vacantly in\nstupid fashion like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the\nchrysalis of a Witchetty grub--his favourite food, and drags his body\nthrough it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth.\nHere, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain\nin meaning as many of the details must probably always remain, the main\nemotional gist is clear. It is not that the Australian wonders at and\nadmires the miracle of his spring, the bursting of the flowers and the\nsinging of birds; it is not that his heart goes out in gratitude to an\nAll-Father who is the Giver of all good things; it is that, obedient to\nthe push of life within him, his impulse is towards food. He must eat\nthat he and his tribe may grow and multiply. It is this, his will to\nlive, that he _utters and represents_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe savage utters his will to live, his intense desire for food; but it\nshould be noted, it is desire and will and longing, not certainty and\nsatisfaction that he utters. In this respect it is interesting to note\nthat his rites and ceremonies, when periodic, are of fairly long\nperiods. Winter and summer are not the only natural periodic cycles;\nthere is the cycle of day and night, and yet among primitive peoples but\nlittle ritual centres round day and night. The reason is simple. The\ncycle of day and night is so short, it recurs so frequently, that man\nnaturally counted upon it and had no cause to be anxious. The emotional\ntension necessary to ritual was absent. A few peoples, _e.g._ the\nEgyptians, have practised daily incantations to bring back the sun.\nProbably they had at first felt a real tension of anxiety, and\nthen--being a people hidebound by custom--had gone on from mere\nconservatism. Where the sun returns at a longer interval, and is even,\nas among the Esquimaux, hidden for the long space of six months, ritual\ninevitably arises. They play at cat's-cradle to catch the ball of the\nsun lest it should sink and be lost for ever.\n\nRound the moon, whose cycle is long, but not too long, ritual very early\ncentred, but probably only when its supposed influence on vegetation was\nfirst surmised. The moon, as it were, practises magic herself; she waxes\nand wanes, and with her, man thinks, all the vegetable kingdom waxes and\nwanes too, all but the lawless onion. The moon, Plutarch[16] tells us,\nis fertile in its light and contains moisture, it is kindly to the young\nof animals and to the new shoots of plants. Even Bacon[17] held that\nobservations of the moon with a view to planting and sowing and the\ngrafting of trees were \"not altogether frivolous.\" It cannot too often\nbe remembered that primitive man has but little, if any, interest in sun\nand moon and heavenly bodies for their inherent beauty or wonder; he\ncares for them, he holds them sacred, he performs rites in relation to\nthem mainly when he notes that they bring the seasons, and he cares for\nthe seasons mainly because they bring him food. A season is to him as a\n_Hora_ was at first to the Greeks, _the fruits of a season_, what our\nfarmers would call \"a good _year_.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe sun, then, had no ritual till it was seen that he led in the\nseasons; but long before that was known, it was seen that the seasons\nwere annual, that they went round in a _ring_; and because that annual\nring was long in revolving, great was man's hope and fear in the winter,\ngreat his relief and joy in the spring. It was literally a matter of\ndeath and life, and it was as death and life that he sometimes\nrepresented it, as we have seen in the figures of Adonis and Osiris.\n\nAdonis and Osiris have their modern parallels, who leave us in no doubt\nas to the meaning of their figures. Thus on the 1st of March in\nTh\u00fcringen a ceremony is performed called \"Driving out the Death.\" The\nyoung people make up a figure of straw, dress it in old clothes, carry\nit out and throw it into the river. Then they come back, tell the good\nnews to the village, and are given eggs and food as a reward. In Bohemia\nthe children carry out a straw puppet and burn it. While they are\nburning it they sing--\n\n    \"Now carry we Death out of the village,\n    The new Summer into the village,\n    Welcome, dear Summer,\n    Green little corn.\"\n\nIn other parts of Bohemia the song varies; it is not Summer that comes\nback but Life.\n\n    \"We have carried away Death,\n    And brought back Life.\"\n\nIn both these cases it is interesting to note that though Death is\ndramatically carried out, the coming back of Life is only announced, not\nenacted.\n\nOften, and it would seem quite naturally, the puppet representing Death\nor Winter is reviled and roughly handled, or pelted with stones, and\ntreated in some way as a sort of scapegoat. But in not a few cases, and\nthese are of special interest, it seems to be the seat of a sort of\nmagical potency which can be and is transferred to the figure of Summer\nor Life, thus causing, as it were, a sort of Resurrection. In Lusatia\nthe women only carry out the Death. They are dressed in black themselves\nas mourners, but the puppet of straw which they dress up as the Death\nwears a white shirt. They carry it to the village boundary, followed by\nboys throwing stones, and there tear it to pieces. Then they cut down a\ntree and dress it in the white shirt of the Death and carry it home\nsinging.\n\nSo at the Feast of the Ascension in Transylvania. After morning service\nthe girls of the village dress up the Death; they tie a threshed-out\nsheaf of corn into a rough copy of a head and body, and stick a\nbroomstick through the body for arms. Then they dress the figure up in\nthe ordinary holiday clothes of a peasant girl--a red hood, silver\nbrooches, and ribbons galore. They put the Death at an open window that\nall the people when they go to vespers may see it. Vespers over, two\ngirls take the Death by the arms and walk in front; the rest follow.\nThey sing an ordinary church hymn. Having wound through the village they\ngo to another house, shut out the boys, strip the Death of its clothes,\nand throw the straw body out of the window to the boys, who fling it\ninto a river. Then one of the girls is dressed in the Death's discarded\nclothes, and the procession again winds through the village. The same\nhymn is sung. Thus it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated\nDeath. This resurrection aspect, this passing of the old into the new,\nwill be seen to be of great ritual importance when we come to Dionysos\nand the Dithyramb.\n\nThese ceremonies of Death and Life are more complex than the simple\ncarrying in of green boughs or even the dancing round maypoles. When we\nhave these figures, these \"impersonations,\" we are getting away from the\nmerely emotional dance, from the domain of simple psychological motor\ndischarge to something that is very like rude art, at all events to\npersonification. On this question of personification, in which so much\nof art and religion has its roots, it is all-important to be clear.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn discussions on such primitive rites as \"Carrying out the Death,\"\n\"Bringing in Summer,\" we are often told that the puppet of the girl is\ncarried round, buried, burnt; brought back, because it \"personifies the\nSpirit of Vegetation,\" or it \"embodies the Spirit of Summer.\" The\nSpirit of Vegetation is \"incarnate in the puppet.\" We are led, by this\nway of speaking, to suppose that the savage or the villager first forms\nan idea or conception of a Spirit of Vegetation and then later\n\"embodies\" it. We naturally wonder that he should perform a mental act\nso high and difficult as abstraction.\n\nA very little consideration shows that he performs at first no\nabstraction at all; abstraction is foreign to his mental habit. He\nbegins with a vague excited dance to relieve his emotion. That dance\nhas, probably almost from the first, a leader; the dancers choose an\nactual _person_, and he is the root and ground of _personification_.\nThere is nothing mysterious about the process; the leader does not\n\"embody\" a previously conceived idea, rather he begets it. From his\npersonality springs the personification. The abstract idea arises from\nthe only thing it possibly can arise from, the concrete fact. Without\n_per_ception there is no _con_ception. We noted in speaking of dances\n(p. 43) how the dance got generalized; how from many commemorations of\nactual hunts and battles there arose the hunt dance and the war dance.\nSo, from many actual living personal May Queens and Deaths, from many\nactual men and women decked with leaves, or trees dressed up as men and\nwomen, arises _the_ Tree Spirit, _the_ Vegetation Spirit, _the_ Death.\n\nAt the back, then, of the fact of personification lies the fact that the\nemotion is felt collectively, the rite is performed by a band or chorus\nwho dance together _with a common leader_. Round that leader the emotion\ncentres. When there is an act of Carrying-out or Bringing-in he either\nis himself the puppet or he carries it. Emotion is of the whole band;\ndrama--doing--tends to focus on the leader. This leader, this focus, is\nthen remembered, thought of, imaged; from being _per_ceived year by\nyear, he is finally _con_ceived; but his basis is always in actual fact\nof which he is but the reflection.\n\nHad there been no periodic festivals, personification might long have\nhalted. But it is easy to see that a recurrent _per_ception helps to\nform a permanent abstract _con_ception. The different actual recurrent\nMay Kings and \"Deaths,\" _because they recur_, get a sort of permanent\nlife of their own and become beings apart. In this way a conception, a\nkind of _daimon_, or spirit, is fashioned, who dies and lives again in a\nperpetual cycle. The periodic festival begets a kind of not immortal,\nbut perennial, god.\n\nYet the faculty of conception is but dim and feeble in the mind even of\nthe peasant to-day; his function is to perceive the actual fact year by\nyear, and to feel about it. Perhaps a simple instance best makes this\nclear. The Greek Church does not gladly suffer images in the round,\nthough she delights in picture-images, _eikons_. But at her great spring\nfestival of Easter she makes, in the remote villages, concession to a\nstrong, perhaps imperative, popular need; she allows an image, an actual\nidol, of the dead Christ to be laid in the tomb that it may rise again.\nA traveller in Euboea[18] during Holy Week had been struck by the genuine\ngrief shown at the Good Friday services. On Easter Eve there was the\nsame general gloom and despondency, and he asked an old woman why it\nwas. She answered: \"Of course I am anxious; for if Christ does not rise\nto-morrow, we shall have no corn this year.\"\n\nThe old woman's state of mind is fairly clear. Her emotion is the old\nemotion, not sorrow for the Christ the Son of Mary, but fear, imminent\nfear for the failure of food. The Christ again is not the historical\nChrist of Jud\u00e6a, still less the incarnation of the Godhead proceeding\nfrom the Father; he is the actual figure fashioned by his village chorus\nand laid by the priests, the leaders of that chorus, in the local\nsepulchre.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo far, then, we have seen that the vague emotional dance tends to\nbecome a periodic rite, performed at regular intervals. The periodic\nrite may occur at any date of importance to the food-supply of the\ncommunity, in summer, in winter, at the coming of the annual rains, or\nthe regular rising of a river. Among Mediterranean peoples, both in\nancient days and at the present time, the Spring Festival arrests\nattention. Having learnt the general characteristics of this Spring\nFestival, we have now to turn to one particular case, the Spring\nFestival of the Greeks. This is all-important to us because, as will be\nseen, from the ritual of this and kindred festivals arose, we believe, a\ngreat form of Art, the Greek drama.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[7] Chapter XII: \"Periodicity in Nature.\"\n\n[8] _Ibid._\n\n[9] _De Ser. Num._ 17.\n\n[10] Frazer, _Adonis, Attis, and Osiris_,^3 p. 200.\n\n[11] Quoted by Dr. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 203.\n\n[12] E.K. Chambers, _The Medi\u00e6val Stage_, I, p. 169.\n\n[13] _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 205.\n\n[14] _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 213.\n\n[15] Resumed from Dr. Frazer, _Golden Bough_,^2 II, p. 104.\n\n[16] _De Is. et Os._, p. 367.\n\n[17] _De Aug. Scient._, III, 4.\n\n[18] J.C. Lawson, _Modern Greek Folk-lore and Ancient Religion_, p. 573.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE SPRING FESTIVAL IN GREECE\n\n\nThe tragedies of \u00c6schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were performed at\nAthens at a festival known as the Great Dionysia. This took place early\nin April, so that the time itself makes us suspect that its ceremonies\nwere connected with the spring. But we have more certain evidence.\nAristotle, in his treatise on the Art of Poetry, raises the question of\nthe origin of the drama. He was not specially interested in primitive\nritual; beast dances and spring mummeries might even have seemed to him\nmere savagery, the lowest form of \"imitation;\" but he divined that a\nstructure so complex as Greek tragedy must have arisen out of a simpler\nform; he saw, or felt, in fact, that art had in some way risen out of\nritual, and he has left us a memorable statement.\n\nIn describing the \"Carrying-out of Summer\" we saw that the element of\nreal _drama_, real impersonation, began with the leaders of the band,\nwith the Queen of the May, and with the \"Death\" or the \"Winter.\" Great\nis our delight when we find that for Greek drama Aristotle[19] divined a\nlike beginning. He says:\n\n     \"Tragedy--as also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation--the one\n     (tragedy) _originated with the leaders of the Dithyramb_.\"\n\nThe further question faces us: What was the Dithyramb? We shall find to\nour joy that this obscure-sounding Dithyramb, though before Aristotle's\ntime it had taken literary form, was in origin a festival closely akin\nto those we have just been discussing. The Dithyramb was, to begin with,\na spring ritual; and when Aristotle tells us tragedy arose out of the\nDithyramb, he gives us, though perhaps half unconsciously, a clear\ninstance of a splendid art that arose from the simplest of rites; he\nplants our theory of the connection of art with ritual firmly with its\nfeet on historical ground.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen we use the word \"dithyrambic\" we certainly do not ordinarily think\nof spring. We say a style is \"dithyrambic\" when it is unmeasured, too\nornate, impassioned, flowery. The Greeks themselves had forgotten that\nthe word _Dithyramb_ meant a leaping, inspired dance. But they had not\nforgotten on what occasion that dance was danced. Pindar wrote a\nDithyramb for the Dionysiac festival at Athens, and his song is full of\nspringtime and flowers. He bids all the gods come to Athens to dance\nflower-crowned.\n\n     \"Look upon the dance, Olympians; send us the grace of Victory, ye\n     gods who come to the heart of our city, where many feet are\n     treading and incense steams: in sacred Athens come to the holy\n     centre-stone. Take your portion of garlands pansy-twined, libations\n     poured from the culling of spring....\n\n     \"Come hither to the god with ivy bound. Bromios we mortals name\n     Him, and Him of the mighty Voice.... The clear signs of his\n     Fulfilment are not hidden, whensoever the chamber of the\n     purple-robed Hours is opened, and nectarous flowers lead in the\n     fragrant spring. Then, then, are flung over the immortal Earth,\n     lovely petals of pansies, and roses are amid our hair; and voices\n     of song are loud among the pipes, the dancing-floors are loud with\n     the calling of crowned Semele.\"\n\nBromios, \"He of the loud cry,\" is a title of Dionysos. Semele is his\nmother, the Earth; we keep her name in Nova _Zembla_, \"New Earth.\" The\nsong might have been sung at a \"Carrying-in of Summer.\" The Hor\u00e6, the\nSeasons, a chorus of maidens, lead in the figure of Spring, the Queen of\nthe May, and they call to Mother Earth to wake, to rise up from the\nearth, flower-crowned.\n\nYou may _bring back_ the life of the Spring in the form of a tree or a\nmaiden, or you may summon her to rise from the sleeping Earth. In Greek\nmythology we are most familiar with the Rising-up form. Persephone, the\ndaughter of Demeter, is carried below the Earth, and rises up again year\nby year. On Greek vase-paintings[20] the scene occurs again and again. A\nmound of earth is represented, sometimes surmounted by a tree; out of\nthe mound a woman's figure rises; and all about the mound are figures of\ndancing d\u00e6mons waiting to welcome her.\n\nAll this is not mere late poetry and art. It is the primitive art and\npoetry that come straight out of ritual, out of actual \"things done,\"\n_dromena_. In the village of Megara, near Athens, the very place where\nto-day on Easter Tuesday the hills are covered with throngs of dancing\nmen, and specially women, Pausanias[21] saw near the City Hearth a rock\ncalled \"_Anaklethra_, 'Place of Calling-up,' because, if any one will\nbelieve it, when she was wandering in search of her daughter, Demeter\ncalled her up there\"; and he adds: \"The women to this day perform rites\nanalogous to the story told.\"\n\nThese rites of \"Calling up\" must have been spring rites, in which, in\nsome pantomimic dance, the uprising of the Earth Spirit was enacted.\n\nAnother festival of Uprising is perhaps more primitive and instructive,\nbecause it is near akin to the \"Carrying out of Winter,\" and also\nbecause it shows clearly the close connection of these rites with the\nfood-supply. Plutarch[22] tells us of a festival held every nine years\nat Delphi. It was called from the name of the puppet used _Charila_, a\nword which originally meant Spring-Maiden, and is connected with the\nRussian word _yaro_, \"Spring,\" and is also akin to the Greek _Charis_,\n\"grace,\" in the sense of increase, \"Give us all _grace_.\" The rites of\n_Charila_, the Gracious One, the Spring-Maiden, were as follows:\n\n     \"The king presided and made a distribution in public of grain and\n     pulse to all, both citizens and strangers. And the child-image of\n     _Charila_ is brought in. When they had all received their share,\n     the king struck the image with his sandal, the leader of the\n     Thyiades lifted the image and took it away to a precipitous place,\n     and there tied a rope round the neck of the image and buried it.\"\n\nMr. Calderon has shown that very similar rites go on to-day in Bulgaria\nin honour of _Yarilo_, the Spring God.\n\nThe image is beaten, insulted, let down into some cleft or cave. It is\nclearly a \"Carrying out the Death,\" though we do not know the exact date\nat which it was celebrated. It had its sequel in another festival at\nDelphi called _Herois_, or the \"Heroine.\" Plutarch[23] says it was too\nmystical and secret to describe, but he lets us know the main gist.\n\n     \"Most of the ceremonies of the _Herois_ have a mystical reason\n     which is known to the Thyiades, but from the rites that are done in\n     public, one may conjecture it to be a 'Bringing up of Semele.'\"\n\nSome one or something, a real woman, or more likely the buried puppet\n_Charila_, the Spring-Maiden, was brought up from the ground to enact\nand magically induce the coming of Spring.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThese ceremonies of beating, driving out, burying, have all, with the\nGreeks, as with the savage and the modern peasant, but one real object:\nto get rid of the season that is bad for food, to bring in and revive\nthe new supply. This comes out very clearly in a ceremony that went on\ndown to Plutarch's time, and he tells us[24] it was \"ancestral.\" It was\ncalled \"the Driving out of Ox-hunger.\" By Ox-hunger was meant any great\nravenous hunger, and the very intensity and monstrosity of the word\ntakes us back to days when famine was a grim reality. When Plutarch was\n_archon_ he had, as chief official, to perform the ceremony at the\nPrytaneion, or Common Hearth. A slave was taken, beaten with rods of a\nmagical plant, and driven out of doors to the words: \"Out with\nOx-hunger! In with Wealth and Health!\" Here we see the actual sensation,\nor emotion, of ravenous hunger gets a name, and thereby a personality,\nthough a less completely abstracted one than Death or Summer. We do not\nknow that the ceremony of Driving out Ox-hunger was performed in the\nspring, it is only instanced here because, more plainly even than the\nCharila, when the king distributes pulse and peas, it shows the relation\nof ancient mimic ritual to food-supply.\n\nIf we keep clearly in mind the _object_ rather than the exact _date_ of\nthe Spring Song we shall avoid many difficulties. A Dithyramb was sung\nat Delphi through the winter months, which at first seems odd. But we\nmust remember that among agricultural peoples the performance of magical\nceremonies to promote fertility and the food supply may begin at any\nmoment after the earth is ploughed and the seed sown. The sowing of the\nseed is its death and burial; \"that which thou sowest is not quickened\nexcept it die.\" When the death and burial are once accomplished the hope\nof resurrection and new birth begins, and with the hope the magical\nceremonies that may help to fulfil that hope. The Sun is new-born in\nmidwinter, at the solstice, and our \"New\" year follows, yet it is in the\nspring that, to this day, we keep our great resurrection festival.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe return to our argument, holding steadily in our minds this\nconnection. The Dithyramb is a Spring Song at a Spring Festival, and the\nimportance of the Spring Festival is that it magically promotes the\nfood-supply.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nDo we know any more about the Dithyramb? Happily yes, and the next point\nis as curious as significant.\n\nPindar, in one of his Odes, asks a strange question:\n\n    \"Whence did appear the Graces of Dionysos,\n    With the Bull-driving Dithyramb?\"\n\nScholars have broken their own heads and one another's to find a meaning\nand an answer to the odd query. It is only quite lately that they have\ncome at all to see that the Dithyramb was a Spring Song, a primitive\nrite. Formerly it was considered to be a rather elaborate form of lyric\npoetry invented comparatively late. But, even allowing it is the Spring\nSong, are we much further? Why should the Dithyramb be bull-driving? How\ncan driving a Bull help the spring to come? And, above all, what are the\n\"slender-ankled\" Graces doing, helping to drive the great unwieldy Bull?\n\nThe difficulty about the Graces, or Charites, as the Greeks called them,\nis soon settled. They are the Seasons, or \"Hours,\" and the chief Season,\nor Hour, was Spring herself. They are called Charites, or Graces,\nbecause they are, in the words of the Collect, the \"Givers of all\ngrace,\" that is, of all increase physical and spiritual. But why do they\nwant to come driving in a Bull? It is easy to see why the Givers of all\ngrace lead the Dithyramb, the Spring Song; their coming, with their\n\"fruits in due season\" is the very gist of the Dithyramb; but why is the\nDithyramb \"bull-driving\"? Is this a mere \"poetical\" epithet? If it is,\nit is not particularly poetical.\n\nBut Pindar is not, we now know, merely being \"poetical,\" which amounts,\naccording to some scholars, to meaning anything or nothing. He is\ndescribing, alluding to, an actual rite or _dromenon_ in which a Bull is\nsummoned and driven to come in spring. About that we must be clear.\nPlutarch, the first anthropologist, wrote a little treatise called\n_Greek Questions_, in which he tells us all the strange out-of-the-way\nrites and customs he saw in Greece, and then asks himself what they\nmeant. In his 36th _Question_ he asks: \"Why do the women of Elis summon\nDionysos in their hymns to be present with them with his bull-foot?\" And\nthen, by a piece of luck that almost makes one's heart stand still, he\ngives us the very words of the little ritual hymn the women sang, our\nearliest \"Bull-driving\" Spring Song:\n\n    \"In Spring-time,[25] O Dionysos,\n      To thy holy temple come;\n    To Elis with thy Graces,\n      Rushing with thy bull-foot, come,\n          Noble Bull, Noble Bull.\"\n\nIt is a strange primitive picture--the holy women standing in springtime\nin front of the temple, summoning the Bull; and the Bull, garlanded and\nfilleted, rushing towards them, driven by the Graces, probably three\nreal women, three Queens of the May, wreathed and flower-bedecked. But\nwhat does it mean?\n\nPlutarch tries to answer his own question, and half, in a dim, confused\nfashion, succeeds. \"Is it,\" he suggests, \"that some entitle the god as\n'Born of a Bull' and as a 'Bull' himself? ... or is it that many hold\nthe god is the beginner of sowing and ploughing?\" We have seen how a\nkind of _daimon_, or spirit, of Winter or Summer arose from an actual\ntree or maid or man disguised year by year as a tree. Did the god\nDionysos take his rise in like fashion from the driving and summoning\nyear by year of some holy Bull?\n\nFirst, we must notice that it was not only at Elis that a holy Bull\nappears at the Spring Festival. Plutarch asks another instructive\n_Question_:[26] \"Who among the Delphians is the Sanctifier?\" And we find\nto our amazement that the sanctifier is a Bull. A Bull who not only is\nholy himself, but is so holy that he has power to make others holy, he\nis the Sanctifier; and, most important for us, he sanctifies by his\ndeath in the month Bysios, the month that fell, Plutarch tells us, \"at\nthe beginning of spring, the time of the blossoming of many plants.\"\n\nWe do not hear that the \"Sanctifier\" at Delphi was \"driven,\" but in all\nprobability he was led from house to house, that every one might partake\nin the sanctity that simply exuded from him. At Magnesia,[27] a city of\nAsia Minor, we have more particulars. There, at the annual fair year by\nyear the stewards of the city bought a Bull, \"the finest that could be\ngot,\" and at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seedtime they\ndedicated it, for the city's welfare. The Bull's sanctified life began\nwith the opening of the agricultural year, whether with the spring or\nthe autumn ploughing we do not know. The dedication of the Bull was a\nhigh solemnity. He was led in procession, at the head of which went the\nchief priest and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and the\nsacrificer, and two bands of youths and maidens. So holy was the Bull\nthat nothing unlucky might come near him; the youths and maidens must\nhave both their parents alive, they must not have been under the\n_taboo_, the infection, of death. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer\nfor \"the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the\nwomen and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of\ngrain and of all the other fruits, and of cattle.\" All this longing for\nfertility, for food and children, focuses round the holy Bull, whose\nholiness is his strength and fruitfulness.\n\nThe Bull thus solemnly set apart, charged as it were with the luck of\nthe whole people, is fed at the public cost. The official charged with\nhis keep has to drive him into the market-place, and \"it is good for\nthose corn-merchants who give the Bull grain as a gift,\" good for them\nbecause they are feeding, nurturing, the luck of the State, which is\ntheir own luck. So through autumn and winter the Bull lives on, but\nearly in April the end comes. Again a great procession is led forth, the\nsenate and the priests walk in it, and with them come representatives of\neach class of the State--children and young boys, and youths just come\nto manhood, _epheboi_, as the Greeks called them. The Bull is\nsacrificed, and why? Why must a thing so holy die? Why not live out the\nterm of his life? He dies because he _is_ so holy, that he may give his\nholiness, his strength, his life, just at the moment it is holiest, to\nhis people.\n\n     \"When they shall have sacrificed the Bull, let them divide it up\n     among those who took part in the procession.\"\n\nThe mandate is clear. The procession included representatives of the\nwhole State. The holy flesh is not offered to a god, it is eaten--to\nevery man his portion--by each and every citizen, that he may get his\nshare of the strength of the Bull, of the luck of the State.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNow at Magnesia, after the holy civic communion, the meal shared, we\nhear no more. Next year a fresh Bull will be chosen, and the cycle begin\nagain. But at Athens at the annual \"Ox-murder,\" the _Bouphonia_, as it\nwas called, the scene did not so close. The ox was slain with all\nsolemnity, and all those present partook of the flesh, and then--the\nhide was stuffed with straw and sewed up, and next the stuffed animal\nwas set on its feet and yoked to a plough as though it were ploughing.\nThe Death is followed by a Resurrection. Now this is all-important. We\nare so accustomed to think of sacrifice as the death, the giving up, the\nrenouncing of something. But _sacrifice_ does not mean \"death\" at all.\nIt means making holy, sanctifying; and holiness was to primitive man\njust special strength and life. What they wanted from the Bull was just\nthat special life and strength which all the year long they had put into\nhim, and nourished and fostered. That life was in his blood. They could\nnot eat that flesh nor drink that blood unless they killed him. So he\nmust die. But it was not to give him up to the gods that they killed\nhim, not to \"sacrifice\" him in our sense, but to have him, keep him, eat\nhim, live _by_ him and through him, by his grace.\n\nAnd so this killing of the sacred beast was always a terrible thing, a\nthing they fain would have shirked. They fled away after the deed, not\nlooking backwards; they publicly tried and condemned the axe that struck\nthe blow. But their best hope, their strongest desire, was that he had\nnot, could not, really have died. So this intense desire uttered itself\nin the _dromenon_ of his resurrection. If he did not rise again, how\ncould they plough and sow again next year? He must live again, he\nshould, he _did_.\n\nThe Athenians were a little ashamed of their \"Ox-murder,\" with its\ngrotesque pantomime of the stuffed, resurrected beast. Just so some of\nus now-a-days are getting a little shy of deliberately cursing our\nneighbours on Ash Wednesday. They probably did not feel very keenly\nabout their food-supply, they thought their daily dinner was secure.\nAnyhow the emotion that had issued in the pantomime was dead, though\nfrom sheer habit the pantomime went on. Probably some of the less\neducated among them thought there \"might be something in it,\" and anyhow\nit was \"as well to be on the safe side.\" The queer ceremony had got\nassociated with the worship of Olympian Zeus, and with him you must\nreckon. Then perhaps your brother-in-law was the Ox-striker, and anyhow\nit was desirable that the women should go; some of the well-born girls\nhad to act as water-carriers.\n\nThe Ox-murder was obsolete at Athens, but the spirit of the rite is\nalive to-day among the Ainos in the remote island of Saghalien. Among\nthe Ainos the Bear is what psychologists rather oddly call the main\n\"food focus,\" the chief \"value centre.\" And well he may be. Bear's flesh\nis the Ainos' staple food; they eat it both fresh and salted; bearskins\nare their principal clothing; part of their taxes are paid in bear's\nfat. The Aino men spend the autumn, winter and spring in hunting the\nBear. Yet we are told the Ainos \"worship the Bear\"; they apply to it the\nname _Kamui_, which has been translated god; but it is a word applied to\nall strangers, and so only means what catches attention, and hence is\nformidable. In the religion of the Ainos \"the Bear plays a chief part,\"\nsays one writer. The Bear \"receives idolatrous veneration,\" says\nanother. They \"worship it after their fashion,\" says a third. Have we\nanother case of \"the heathen in his blindness\"? Only here he \"bows down\"\nnot to \"gods of wood and stone,\" but to a live thing, uncouth, shambling\nbut gracious--a Bear.\n\nInstead of theorizing as to what the Aino thinks and imagines, let us\nobserve his _doings_, his _dromena_, his rites; and most of all his\ngreat spring and autumn rite, the _dromenon_ of the Bear. We shall find\nthat, detail for detail, it strangely resembles the Greek _dromenon_ of\nthe Bull.\n\nAs winter draws to a close among the Ainos, a young Bear is trapped and\nbrought into the village. At first an Aino woman suckles him at her\nbreast, then later he is fed on his favourite food, fish--his tastes are\nsemi-polar. When he is at his full strength, that is, when he threatens\nto break the cage in which he lives, the feast is held. This is usually\nin September, or October, that is when the season of bear-hunting\nbegins.\n\nBefore the feast begins the Ainos apologize profusely, saying that they\nhave been good to the Bear, they can feed him no longer, they must kill\nhim. Then the man who gives the Bear-feast invites his relations and\nfriends, and if the community be small nearly the whole village attends.\nOn the occasion described by Dr. Scheube about thirty Ainos were\npresent, men, women, and children, all dressed in their best clothes.\nThe woman of the house who had suckled the Bear sat by herself, sad and\nsilent, only now and then she burst into helpless tears. The ceremony\nbegan with libations made to the fire-god and to the house-god set up in\na corner of the house. Next the master and some of the guests left the\nhut and offered libations in front of the Bear's cage. A few drops were\npresented to him in a saucer, which he promptly upset. Then the women\nand girls danced round the cage, rising and hopping on their toes, and\nas they danced they clapped their hands and chanted a monotonous chant.\nThe mother and some of the old women cried as they danced and stretched\nout their arms to the Bear, calling him loving names. The young women\nwho had nursed no Bears laughed, after the manner of the young. The Bear\nbegan to get upset, and rushed round his cage, howling lamentably.\n\nNext came a ceremony of special significance which is never omitted at\nthe sacrifice of a Bear. Libations were offered to the _inabos_, sacred\nwands which stand outside the Aino hut. These wands are about two feet\nhigh and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings. _Five new wands\nwith bamboo leaves attached to them_ are set up for the festival; the\nleaves according to the Ainos mean _that the Bear may come to life\nagain_. These wands are specially interesting. The chief focus of\nattention is of course the Bear, because his flesh is for the Aino his\nstaple food. But vegetation is not quite forgotten. The animal life of\nthe Bear and the vegetable life of the bamboo-leaves are thought of\ntogether.\n\nThen comes the actual sacrifice. The Bear is led out of his cage, a rope\nis thrown round his neck, and he is perambulated round the neighbourhood\nof the hut. We do not hear that among the Ainos he goes in procession\nround the village, but among the Gilyaks, not far away in Eastern\nSiberia, the Bear is led about the villages, and it is held to be\nspecially important that he should be dragged down to the river, for\nthis will ensure the village a plentiful supply of fish. He is then,\namong the Gilyaks, taken to each hut in the village, and fish, brandy,\nand other delicacies are offered to him. Some of the people prostrate\nthemselves in front of him and his coming into a house brings a\nblessing, and if he snuffs at the food, that brings a blessing too.\n\nTo return to the Aino Bear. While he is being led about the hut the men,\nheaded by a chief, shoot at the Bear with arrows tipped with buttons.\nBut the object of the shooting is not to kill, only apparently to\nirritate him. He is killed at last without shedding of his sacred blood,\nand we hope without much pain. He is taken in front of the sacred wands,\na stick placed in his mouth, and nine men press his neck against a beam;\nhe dies without a sound. Meantime the women and girls, who stand behind\nthe men, dance, lament, and beat the men who are killing their Bear. The\nbody of the dead Bear is then laid on a mat before the sacred wands. A\nsword and quiver, taken from the wands, are hung about the Bear. If it\nis a She-Bear it is also bedecked with a necklace and rings. Food and\ndrink, millet broth and millet cakes are offered to it. It is decked as\nan Aino, it is fed as an Aino. It is clear that the Bear is in some\nsense a human Bear, an Aino. The men sit down on mats in front of the\nBear and offer libations, and themselves drink deep.\n\nNow that the death is fairly over the mourning ends, and all is feasting\nand merriment. Even the old women lament no more. Cakes of millet are\nscrambled for. The bear is skinned and disembowelled, the trunk is\nsevered from the head, to which the skin is left hanging. The blood,\nwhich might not be shed before, is now carefully collected in cups and\neagerly drunk by the men, for the blood is the life. The liver is cut up\nand eaten raw. The flesh and the rest of the vitals are kept for the day\nnext but one, when it is divided among all persons present at the feast.\nIt is what the Greeks call a _dais_, a meal divided or distributed.\nWhile the Bear is being dismembered the girls dance, in front of the\nsacred wands, and the old women again lament. The Bear's brain is\nextracted from his head and eaten, and the skull, severed from the skin,\nis hung on a pole near the sacred wands. Thus it would seem the life and\nstrength of the bear is brought near to the living growth of the leaves.\nThe stick with which the Bear was gagged is also hung on the pole, and\nwith it the sword and quiver he had worn after his death. The whole\ncongregation, men and women, dance about this strange maypole, and a\ngreat drinking bout, in which all men and women alike join, ends the\nfeast.\n\nThe rite varies as to detail in different places. Among the Gilyaks the\nBear is dressed after death in full Gilyak costume and seated on a\nbench of honour. In one part the bones and skull are carried out by the\noldest people to a place in the forest not far from the village. There\nall the bones except the skull are buried. After that a young tree is\nfelled a few inches above the ground, its stump is cleft, and the skull\nwedged into the cleft. When the grass grows over the spot the skull\ndisappears and there is an end of the Bear. Sometimes the Bear's flesh\nis eaten in special vessels prepared for this festival and only used at\nit. These vessels, which include bowls, platters, spoons, are\nelaborately carved with figures of bears and other devices.\n\nThrough all varieties in detail the main intent is the same, and it is\nidentical with that of the rite of the holy Bull in Greece and the\nmaypole of our forefathers. Great is the sanctity of the Bear or the\nBull or the Tree; the Bear for a hunting people; the Bull for nomads,\nlater for agriculturists; the Tree for a forest folk. On the Bear and\nthe Bull and the Tree are focussed the desire of the whole people. Bear\nand Bull and Tree are sacred, that is, set apart, because full of a\nspecial life and strength intensely desired. They are led and carried\nabout from house to house that their sanctity may touch all, and avail\nfor all; the animal dies that he may be eaten; the Tree is torn to\npieces that all may have a fragment; and, above all, Bear and Bull and\nTree die only that they may live again.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have seen (p. 71) that, out of the puppet or the May Queen, actually\n_per_ceived year after year there arose a remembrance, a mental image,\nan imagined Tree Spirit, or \"Summer,\" or Death, a thing never actually\nseen but _con_ceived. Just so with the Bull. Year by year in the various\nvillages of Greece was seen an actual holy Bull, and bit by bit from the\nremembrance of these various holy Bulls, who only died to live again\neach year, there arose the image of a Bull-Spirit, or Bull-Daimon, and\nfinally, if we like to call him so, a Bull-God. The growth of this idea,\nthis _con_ception, must have been much helped by the fact that in some\nplaces the dancers attendant on the holy Bull dressed up as bulls and\ncows. The women worshippers of Dionysos, we are told, wore bulls' horns\nin imitation of the god, for they represented him in pictures as having\na bull's head. _We_ know that a man does not turn into a bull, or a\nbull into a man, the line of demarcation is clearly drawn; but the\nrustic has no such conviction even to-day. That crone, his aged aunt,\nmay any day come in at the window in the shape of a black cat; why\nshould she not? It is not, then, that a god 'takes upon him the form of\na bull,' or is 'incarnate in a bull,' but that the real Bull and the\nworshipper dressed as a bull are seen and remembered and give rise to an\nimagined Bull-God; but, it should be observed, only among gifted,\nimaginative, that is, image-making, peoples. The Ainos have their actual\nholy Bear, as the Greeks had their holy Bull; but with them out of the\nsuccession of holy Bears there arises, alas! no Bear-God.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have dwelt long on the Bull-driving Dithyramb, because it was not\nobvious on the face of it how driving a bull could help the coming of\nspring. We understand now why, on the day before the tragedies were\nperformed at Athens, the young men (_epheboi_) brought in not only the\nhuman figure of the god, but also a Bull \"worthy\" of the God. We\nunderstand, too, why in addition to the tragedies performed at the\ngreat festival, Dithyrambs were also sung--\"Bull-driving Dithyrambs.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe come next to a third aspect of the Dithyramb, and one perhaps the\nmost important of all for the understanding of art, and especially the\ndrama. _The Dithyramb was the Song and Dance of the New Birth._\n\nPlato is discussing various sorts of odes or songs. \"Some,\" he says,\n\"are prayers to the gods--these are called _hymns_; others of an\nopposite sort might best be called _dirges_; another sort are _p\u00e6ans_,\nand another--the birth of Dionysos, I suppose--is called _Dithyramb_.\"\nPlato is not much interested in Dithyrambs. To him they are just a\nparticular kind of choral song; it is doubtful if he even knew that they\nwere Spring Songs; but this he did know, though he throws out the\ninformation carelessly--the Dithyramb had for its proper subject the\nbirth or coming to be, the _genesis_ of Dionysos.\n\nThe common usage of Greek poetry bears out Plato's statement. When a\npoet is going to describe the birth of Dionysos he calls the god by the\ntitle _Dithyrambos_. Thus an inscribed hymn found at Delphi[28] opens\nthus:\n\n    \"Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come.\n    ...\n    Bromios, come, and coming with thee bring\n    Holy hours of thine own holy spring.\n    ...\n    All the stars danced for joy. Mirth\n    Of mortals hailed thee, Bacchos, at thy birth.\"\n\nThe Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in\nthe spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd now we come to a curious thing. We have seen how a spirit, a d\u00e6mon,\nand perhaps ultimately a god, develops out of an actual rite. Dionysos\nthe Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once\n_per_ceived, then remembered and _con_ceived. Dionysos, the Bull-God, is\nbut the actual holy Bull himself, or rather the succession of annual\nholy Bulls once perceived, then remembered, generalized, conceived. But\nthe god conceived will surely always be made in the image, the mental\nimage, of the fact perceived. If, then, we have a song and dance of the\n_birth_ of Dionysos, shall we not, as in the Christian religion, have a\nchild-god, a holy babe, a Saviour in the manger; at first in original\nform as a calf, then as a human child? Now it is quite true that in\nGreek religion there is a babe Dionysos called _Liknites_, \"Him of the\nCradle.\"[29] The rite of waking up, or bringing to light, the child\nLiknites was performed each year at Delphi by the holy women.\n\nBut it is equally clear and certain that _the_ Dionysos of Greek worship\nand of the drama was not a babe in the cradle. He was a goodly youth in\nthe first bloom of manhood, with the down upon his cheek, the time when,\nHomer says, \"youth is most gracious.\" This is the Dionysos that we know\nin statuary, the fair, dreamy youth sunk in reverie; this is the\nDionysos whom Pentheus despised and insulted because of his young beauty\nlike a woman's. But how could such a Dionysos arise out of a rite of\nbirth? He could not, and he did not. The Dithyramb is also the song of\nthe second or new birth, the Dithyrambos is the twice-born.\n\nThis the Greeks themselves knew. By a false etymology they explained the\nword _Dithyrambos_ as meaning \"He of the double door,\" their word\n_thyra_ being the same as our _door_. They were quite mistaken;\n_Dithyrambos_, modern philology tells us, is the Divine Leaper, Dancer,\nand Lifegiver. But their false etymology is important to us, because it\nshows that they believed the Dithyrambos was the twice-born. Dionysos\nwas born, they fabled, once of his mother, like all men, once of his\nfather's thigh, like no man.\n\nBut if the Dithyrambos, the young Dionysos, like the Bull-God, the\nTree-God, arises from a _dromenon_, a rite, what is the rite of second\nbirth from which it arises?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe look in vain among our village customs. If ever rite of second birth\nexisted, it is dead and buried. We turn to anthropology for help, and\nfind this, the rite of the second birth, widespread, universal, over\nhalf the savage world.\n\nWith the savage, to be twice born is the rule, not the exception. By his\nfirst birth he comes into the world, by his second he is born into his\ntribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk;\nat his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society\nof the warriors of his tribe. This second birth is a little difficult\nfor us to realize. A boy with us passes very gradually from childhood to\nmanhood, there is no definite moment when he suddenly emerges as a man.\nLittle by little as his education advances he is admitted to the social\nprivileges of the circle in which he is born. He goes to school, enters\na workshop or a university, and finally adopts a trade or a profession.\nIn the case of girls, in whose upbringing primitive savagery is apt to\nlinger, there is still, in certain social strata a ceremony known as\nComing Out. A girl's dress is suddenly lengthened, her hair is put up,\nshe is allowed to wear jewels, she kisses her sovereign's hand, a dance\nis given in her honour; abruptly, from her seclusion in the cocoon state\nof the schoolroom, she emerges full-blown into society. But the custom,\nwith its half-realized savagery, is already dying, and with boys it does\nnot obtain at all. Both sexes share, of course, the religious rite of\nConfirmation.\n\nTo avoid harsh distinctions, to bridge over abrupt transitions, is\nalways a mark of advancing civilization; but the savage, in his\nignorance and fear, lamentably over-stresses distinctions and\ntransitions. The long process of education, of passing from child to\nman, is with him condensed into a few days, weeks, or sometimes months\nof tremendous educational emphasis--of what is called \"initiation,\"\n\"going in,\" that is, entering the tribe. The ceremonies vary, but the\ngist is always substantially the same. The boy is to put away childish\nthings, and become a grown and competent tribesman. Above all he is to\ncease to be a woman-thing and become a man. His initiation prepares him\nfor his two chief functions as a tribesman--to be a warrior, to be a\nfather. That to the savage is the main if not the whole Duty of Man.\n\nThis \"initiation\" is of tremendous importance, and we should expect,\nwhat in fact we find, that all this emotion that centres about it issues\nin _dromena_, \"rites done.\" These rites are very various, but they all\npoint one moral, that the former things are passed away and that the\nnew-born man has entered on a new life.\n\nSimplest perhaps of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by\nthe Kikuyu of British East Africa,[30] who require that every boy, just\nbefore circumcision, must be born again. \"The mother stands up with the\nboy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour\npains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed.\"\n\nMore often the new birth is simulated, or imagined, as a death and a\nresurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their\npresence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east\nAustralia,[31] when the boys are assembled an old man dressed in stringy\nbark fibre lies down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks\nand earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man holds in his\nhand a small bush which seems to be growing from the ground, and other\nbushes are stuck in the ground round about. The novices are then brought\nto the edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the song goes\non, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver. It moves more and\nmore and bit by bit the man himself starts up from the grave.\n\nThe Fijians have a drastic and repulsive way of simulating death. The\nboys are shown a row of seemingly dead men, their bodies covered with\nblood and entrails, which are really those of a dead pig. The first\ngives a sudden yell. Up start the men, and then run to the river to\ncleanse themselves.\n\nHere the death is vicarious. Another goes through the simulated death\nthat the initiated boy may have new life. But often the mimicry is\npractised on the boys themselves. Thus in West Ceram[32] boys at puberty\nare admitted to the Kakian association. The boys are taken blindfold,\nfollowed by their relations, to an oblong wooden shed under the darkest\ntrees in the depths of the forest. When all are assembled the high\npriest calls aloud on the devils, and immediately a hideous uproar is\nheard from the shed. It is really made by men in the shed with bamboo\ntrumpets, but the women and children think it is the devils. Then the\npriest enters the shed with the boys, one at a time. A dull thud of\nchopping is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword dripping with\nblood is thrust out through the roof. This is the token that the boy's\nhead has been cut off, and that the devil has taken him away to the\nother world, whence he will return born again. In a day or two the men\nwho act as sponsors to the boys return daubed with mud, and in a\nhalf-fainting state like messengers from another world. They bring the\ngood news that the devil has restored the boys to life. The boys\nthemselves appear, but when they return they totter as they walk; they\ngo into the house backwards. If food is given them they upset the plate.\nThey sit dumb and only make signs. The sponsors have to teach them the\nsimplest daily acts as though they were new-born children. At the end of\ntwenty to thirty days, during which their mothers and sisters may not\ncomb their hair, the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the\nforest and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their\nheads. At the close of these rites the boys are men and may marry.\n\nSometimes the new birth is not simulated but merely suggested. A new\nname is given, a new language taught, a new dress worn, new dances are\ndanced. Almost always it is accompanied by moral teaching. Thus in the\nKakian ceremony already described the boys have to sit in a row\ncross-legged, without moving a muscle, with their hands stretched out.\nThe chief takes a trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hand of\neach lad, he speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of\nspirits. He warns the boys on pain of death to observe the rules of the\nsociety, and never to reveal what they have seen in the Kakian house.\nThe priests also instruct the boys on their duty to their blood\nrelations, and teach them the secrets of the tribe.\n\nSometimes it is not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or\nrepresented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it\nis generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called\nKatajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings\nthem up again initiated; but whether there is or is not a _dromenon_ or\nrite of swallowing we are not told.\n\nIn totemistic societies, and in the animal secret societies that seem to\ngrow out of them, the novice is born again as the sacred animal. Thus\namong the Carrier Indians[33] when a man wants to become a _Lulem_, or\nBear, however cold the season, he tears off his clothes, puts on a\nbearskin and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or four\ndays. Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to\nfind him. They cry out _Yi! Kelulem_ (\"Come on, Bear\") and he answers\nwith angry growls. Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at\nlast himself. He is met and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and\nthere, in company with the rest of the Bears, dances solemnly his first\nappearance. Disappearance and reappearance is as common a rite in\ninitiation as simulated killing and resurrection, and has the same\nobject. Both are rites of transition, of passing from one state to\nanother. It has often been remarked, by students of ancient Greek and\nother ceremonies, that the rites of birth, marriage, and death, which\nseem to us so different, are to primitive man oddly similar. This is\nexplained if we see that in intent they _are_ all the same, all a\npassing from one social state to another. There are but two factors in\nevery rite, the putting off of the old, the putting on of the new; you\ncarry out Winter or Death, you bring in Summer or Life. Between them is\na midway state when you are neither here nor there, you are secluded,\nunder a _taboo_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTo the Greeks and to many primitive peoples the rites of birth,\nmarriage, and death were for the most part family rites needing little\nor no social emphasis. But _the_ rite which concerned the whole tribe,\nthe essence of which was entrance into the tribe, was the rite of\ninitiation at puberty. This all-important fact is oddly and\nsignificantly enshrined in the Greek language. The general Greek word\nfor rite was _t{)e}l{)e}t{-e}_. It was applied to all mysteries, and\nsometimes to marriages and funerals. But it has nothing to do with\ndeath. It comes from a root meaning \"to grow up.\" The word\n_t{)e}l{)e}t{-e}_ means _rite of growing up_, becoming complete. It\nmeant at first maturity, then rite of maturity, then by a natural\nextension any rite of initiation that was mysterious. The rites of\npuberty were in their essence mysterious, because they consisted in\ninitiation into the sanctities of the tribe, the things which society\nsanctioned and protected, excluding the uninitiated, whether they were\nyoung boys, women, or members of other tribes. Then, by contagion, the\nmystery notion spread to other rites.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe understand now who and what was the god who arose out of the rite,\nthe _dromenon_ of tribal initiation, the rite of the new, the second\nbirth. He was Dionysos. His name, according to recent philology, tells\nus--Dio_nysos_, \"Divine Young Man.\"\n\nWhen once we see that out of the emotion of the rite and the facts of\nthe rite arises that remembrance and shadow of the rite, that _image_\nwhich is the god, we realize instantly that the god of the spring rite\n_must_ be a young god, and in primitive societies, where young women are\nbut of secondary account, he will necessarily be a young _man_. Where\nemotion centres round tribal initiation he will be a young man just\ninitiated, what the Greeks called a _kouros_, or _ephebos_, a youth of\nquite different social status from a mere _pais_ or boy. Such a youth\nsurvives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women\nare for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most of\nall the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity.\n\nAnd because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a\nblossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in\nspring and autumn alike \"they carry out the _Eiresione_, a branch of\nolive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits,\n_that scarcity may cease_, and they sing over it:\n\n    \"Eiresione brings\n    Figs and fat cakes,\n    And a pot of honey and oil to mix,\n    And a wine-cup strong and deep,\n    That she may drink and sleep.\"\n\nThe Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was called\n_Korythalia_,[34] \"Branch of blooming youth.\" The young men, says a\nGreek orator, are \"the Spring of the people.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a\nDithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a\nyoung man-song. The god here invoked is what the Greeks call a\n_kouros_, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors:\n\n     \"Ho! Kouros, most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet\n     and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daimones. To Dikt\u00e8\n     for the Year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song.\"\n\nThe leader of the band of _kouroi_, of young men, the real actual\nleader, has become by remembrance and abstraction, as we noted, a\ndaimon, or spirit, at the head of a band of spirits, and he brings in\nthe new year at spring. The real leader, the \"first kouros\" as the\nGreeks called him, is there in the body, but from the succession of\nleaders year by year they have imaged a spirit leader greatest of all.\nHe is \"lord of all that is wet and gleaming,\" for the May bough, we\nremember, is drenched with dew and water that it may burgeon and\nblossom. Then they chant the tale of how of old a child was taken away\nfrom its mother, taken by armed men to be initiated, armed men dancing\ntheir tribal dance. The stone is unhappily broken here, but enough\nremains to make the meaning clear.\n\nAnd because this boy grew up and was initiated into manhood:\n\n     \"The Hor\u00e6 (Seasons) began to be fruitful year by year and Dik\u00e8 to\n     possess mankind, and all wild living things were held about by\n     wealth-loving Peace.\"\n\nWe know the Seasons, the fruit and food bringers, but Dik\u00e8 is strange.\nWe translate the word \"Justice,\" but Dik\u00e8 means, not Justice as between\nman and man, but the order of the world, the _way_ of life. It is\nthrough this way, this order, that the seasons go round. As long as the\nseasons observe this order there is fruitfulness and peace. If once that\norder were overstepped then would be disorder, strife, confusion,\nbarrenness. And next comes a mandate, strange to our modern ears:\n\n     \"To us also leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and\n     leap for fields of fruit and for hives to bring increase.\"\n\nAnd yet not strange if we remember the Macedonian farmer (p. 32), who\nthrows his spade into the air that the wheat may be tall, or the Russian\npeasant girls who leap high in the air crying, \"Flax, grow.\" The\nleaping of the youths of the Cretan hymn is just the utterance of their\ntense desire. They have grown up, and with them all live things must\ngrow. By their magic year by year the fruits of the earth come to their\nannual new birth. And that there be no mistake they end:\n\n     \"Leap for our cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships, _and for\n     our young citizens_, and for goodly Themis.\"\n\nThey are now young citizens of a fenc\u00e8d city instead of young tribesmen\nof the bush, but their magic is the same, and the strength that holds\nthem together is the bond of social custom, social structure, \"goodly\nThemis.\" No man liveth to himself.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nCrete is not Athens, but at Athens in the theatre of Dionysos, if the\npriest of Dionysos, seated at the great Spring Festival in his beautiful\ncarved central seat, looked across the orchestra, he would see facing\nhim a stone frieze on which was sculptured the Cretan ritual, the armed\ndancing youths and the child to be year by year reborn.\n\nWe have seen what the Dithyramb, from which sprang the Drama, was. A\nSpring song, a song of Bull-driving, a song and dance of Second Birth;\nbut all this seems, perhaps, not to bring us nearer to Greek drama,\nrather to put us farther away. What have the Spring and the Bull and the\nBirth Rite to do with the stately tragedies we know--with Agamemnon and\nIphigenia and Orestes and Hippolytos? That is the question before us,\nand the answer will lead us to the very heart of our subject. So far we\nhave seen that ritual arose from the presentation and emphasis of\nemotion--emotion felt mainly about food. We have further seen that\nritual develops out of and by means of periodic festivals. One of the\nchief periodic festivals at Athens was the Spring Festival of the\nDithyramb. Out of this Dithyramb arose, Aristotle says, tragedy--that\nis, out of Ritual arose Art. How and Why? That is the question before\nus.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[19] _Poetics_, IV, 12.\n\n[20] See my _Themis_, p. 419. (1912.)\n\n[21] I, 43. 2.\n\n[22] _Quaest. Gr\u00e6c._ XII.\n\n[23] _Op. cit._\n\n[24] _Qu\u00e6st. Symp._, 693 f.\n\n[25] The words \"in Spring-time\" depend on an emendation to me\nconvincing. See my _Themis_, p. 205, note 1.\n\n[26] IX.\n\n[27] See my _Themis_, p. 151.\n\n[28] See my _Prolegomena_, p. 439.\n\n[29] _Prolegomena_, p. 402.\n\n[30] Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. I, p. 228.\n\n[31] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 424.\n\n[32] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 442.\n\n[33] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, p. 438.\n\n[34] See my _Themis_, p. 503.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE DROMENON (\"THING DONE\") AND THE DRAMA\n\n\nProbably most people when they go to a Greek play for the first time\nthink it a strange performance. According, perhaps, more to their\ntemperament than to their training, they are either very much excited or\nvery much bored. In many minds there will be left a feeling that,\nwhether they have enjoyed the play or not, they are puzzled: there are\nodd effects, conventions, suggestions.\n\nFor example, the main deed of the Tragedy, the slaying of hero or\nheroine, is not done on the stage. That disappoints some modern minds\nunconsciously avid of realism to the point of horror. Instead of a fine\nthrilling murder or suicide before his very eyes, the spectator is put\noff with an account of the murder done off the stage. This account is\nregularly given, and usually at considerable length, in a \"messenger's\nspeech.\" The messenger's speech is a regular item in a Greek play, and\nthough actually it gives scope not only for fine elocution, but for real\ndramatic effect, in theory we feel it undramatic, and a modern actor has\nsometimes much ado to make it acceptable. The spectator is told that all\nthese, to him, odd conventions are due to Greek restraint, moderation,\ngood taste, and yet for all their supposed restraint and reserve, he\nfinds when he reads his Homer that Greek heroes frequently burst into\nfloods of tears when a self-respecting Englishman would have suffered in\nsilence.\n\nThen again, specially if the play be by Euripides, it ends not with a\n\"curtain,\" not with a great decisive moment, but with the appearance of\na god who says a few lines of either exhortation or consolation or\nreconciliation, which, after the strain and stress of the action itself,\nstrikes some people as rather stilted and formal, or as rather flat and\nsomehow unsatisfying. Worse still, there are in many of the scenes long\ndialogues, in which the actors wrangle with each other, and in which the\naction does not advance so quickly as we wish. Or again, instead of\nbeginning with the action, and having our curiosity excited bit by bit\nabout the plot, at the outset some one comes in and tells us the whole\nthing in the prologue. Prologues we feel, are out of date, and the\nGreeks ought to have known better. Or again, of course we admit that\ntragedy must be tragic, and we are prepared for a decent amount of\nlamentation, but when an antiphonal lament goes on for pages, we weary\nand wish that the chorus would stop lamenting and _do_ something.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAt the back of our modern discontent there is lurking always this queer\nanomaly of the chorus. We have in our modern theatre no chorus, and\nwhen, in the opera, something of the nature of a chorus appears in the\nballet, it is a chorus that really dances to amuse and excite us in the\nintervals of operatic action; it is not a chorus of doddering and\npottering old men, moralizing on an action in which they are too feeble\nto join. Of course if we are classical scholars we do not cavil at the\nchoral songs; the extreme difficulty of scanning and construing them\nalone commands a traditional respect; but if we are merely modern\nspectators, we may be respectful, we may even feel strangely excited,\nbut we are certainly puzzled. The reason of our bewilderment is simple\nenough. These prologues and messengers' speeches and ever-present\nchoruses that trouble us are ritual forms still surviving at a time when\nthe _drama_ has fully developed out of the _dromenon_. We cannot here\nexamine all these ritual forms in detail;[35] one, however, the chorus,\nstrangest and most beautiful of all, it is essential we should\nunderstand.\n\nSuppose that these choral songs have been put into English that in any\nway represents the beauty of the Greek; then certainly there will be\nsome among the spectators who get a thrill from the chorus quite unknown\nto any modern stage effect, a feeling of emotion heightened yet\nrestrained, a sense of entering into higher places, filled with a larger\nand a purer air--a sense of beauty born clean out of conflict and\ndisaster.\n\nA suspicion dawns upon the spectator that, great though the tragedies in\nthemselves are, they owe their peculiar, their incommunicable beauty\nlargely to this element of the chorus which seemed at first so strange.\n\nNow by examining this chorus and understanding its function--nay, more,\nby considering the actual _orchestra_, the space on which the chorus\ndanced, and the relation of that space to the rest of the theatre, to\nthe stage and the place where the spectators sat--we shall get light at\nlast on our main central problem: How did art arise out of ritual, and\nwhat is the relation of both to that actual life from which both art and\nritual sprang?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe dramas of \u00c6schylus certainly, and perhaps also those of Sophocles\nand Euripides, were played not upon the stage, and not in the _theatre_,\nbut, strange though it sounds to us, in the _orchestra_. The _theatre_\nto the Greeks was simply \"the place of seeing,\" the place where the\nspectators sat; what they called the sk{-e}n{-e} or _scene_, was the\ntent or hut in which the actors dressed. But the kernel and centre of\nthe whole was the _orchestra_, the circular _dancing-place_ of the\nchorus; and, as the orchestra was the kernel and centre of the theatre,\nso the chorus, the band of dancing and singing men--this chorus that\nseems to us so odd and even superfluous--was the centre and kernel and\nstarting-point of the drama. The chorus danced and sang that Dithyramb\nwe know so well, and from the leaders of that Dithyramb we remember\ntragedy arose, and the chorus were at first, as an ancient writer tells\nus, just men and boys, tillers of the earth, who danced when they rested\nfrom sowing and ploughing.\n\nNow it is in the relation between the _orchestra_ or dancing-place of\nthe chorus, and the _theatre_ or place of the spectators, a relation\nthat shifted as time went on, that we see mirrored the whole development\nfrom ritual to art--from _dromenon_ to drama.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe orchestra on which the Dithyramb was danced was just a circular\ndancing-place beaten flat for the convenience of the dancers, and\nsometimes edged by a stone basement to mark the circle. This circular\norchestra is very well seen in the theatre of Epidaurus, of which a\nsketch is given in Fig. 1. The orchestra here is surrounded by a\nsplendid _theatron_, or spectator place, with seats rising tier above\ntier. If we want to realize the primitive Greek orchestra or\ndancing-place, we must think these stone seats away. Threshing-floors\nare used in Greece to-day as convenient dancing-places. The dance\ntends to be circular because it is round some sacred thing, at first a\nmaypole, or the reaped corn, later the figure of a god or his altar. On\nthis dancing-place the whole body of worshippers would gather, just as\nnow-a-days the whole community will assemble on a village green. There\nis no division at first between actors and spectators; all are actors,\nall are doing the thing done, dancing the dance danced. Thus at\ninitiation ceremonies the whole tribe assembles, the only spectators are\nthe uninitiated, the women and children. No one at this early stage\nthinks of building a _theatre_, a spectator place. It is in the common\nact, the common or collective emotion, that ritual starts. This must\nnever be forgotten.\n\n[Illustration: Fig. 1. Theatre of Epidaurus Showing Circular Orchestra.]\n\nThe most convenient spot for a mere dancing-place is some flat place.\nBut any one who travels through Greece will notice instantly that all\nthe Greek theatres that remain at Athens, at Epidaurus, at Delos,\nSyracuse, and elsewhere, are built against the side of hills. None of\nthese are very early; the earliest ancient orchestra we have is at\nAthens. It is a simple stone ring, but it is built against the steep\nsouth side of the Acropolis. The oldest festival of Dionysos was, as\nwill presently be seen, held in quite another spot, in the _agora_, or\nmarket-place. The reason for moving the dance was that the wooden seats\nthat used to be set up on a sort of \"grand stand\" in the market-place\nfell down, and it was seen how safely and comfortably the spectators\ncould be seated on the side of a steep hill.\n\nThe spectators are a new and different element, the dance is not only\ndanced, but it is watched from a distance, it is a spectacle; whereas in\nold days all or nearly all were worshippers acting, now many, indeed\nmost, are spectators, watching, feeling, thinking, not doing. It is in\nthis new attitude of the spectator that we touch on the difference\nbetween ritual and art; the _dromenon_, the thing actually done by\nyourself has become a _drama_, a thing also done, but abstracted from\nyour doing. Let us look for a moment at the psychology of the spectator,\nat his behaviour.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nArtists, it is often said, and usually felt, are so unpractical. They\nare always late for dinner, they forget to post their letters and to\nreturn the books or even money that is lent them. Art is to most\npeople's minds a sort of luxury, not a necessity. In but recently bygone\ndays music, drawing, and dancing were no part of a training for ordinary\nlife, they were taught at school as \"accomplishments,\" paid for as\n\"extras.\" Poets on their side equally used to contrast art and life, as\nthough they were things essentially distinct.\n\n    \"Art is long, and Time is fleeting.\"\n\nNow commonplaces such as these, being unconscious utterances of the\ncollective mind, usually contain much truth, and are well worth\nweighing. Art, we shall show later, is profoundly connected with life;\nit is nowise superfluous. But, for all that, art, both its creation and\nits enjoyment, is unpractical. Thanks be to God, life is not limited to\nthe practical.\n\nWhen we say art is unpractical, we mean that art is _cut loose from\nimmediate action_. Take a simple instance. A man--or perhaps still\nbetter a child--sees a plate of cherries. Through his senses comes the\nstimulus of the smell of the cherries, and their bright colour urging\nhim, luring him to eat. He eats and is satisfied; the cycle of normal\nbehaviour is complete; he is a man or a child of action, but he is no\nartist, and no art-lover. Another man looks at the same plate of\ncherries. His sight and his smell lure him and urge him to eat. He does\n_not_ eat; the cycle is not completed, and, because he does not eat, the\nsight of those cherries, though perhaps not the smell, is altered,\npurified from desire, and in some way intensified, enlarged. If he is\njust a man of taste, he will take what we call an \"\u00e6sthetic\" pleasure in\nthose cherries. If he is an actual artist, he will paint not the\ncherries, but his vision of them, his purified emotion towards them. He\nhas, so to speak, come out from the chorus of actors, of cherry-eaters,\nand become a spectator.\n\nI borrow, by his kind permission, a beautiful instance of what he well\ncalls \"Psychical Distance\" from the writings of a psychologist.[36]\n\n\"Imagine a fog at sea: for most people it is an experience of acute\nunpleasantness. Apart from the physical annoyance and remoter forms of\ndiscomfort, such as delays, it is apt to produce feelings of peculiar\nanxiety, fears of invisible dangers, strains of watching and listening\nfor distant and unlocalized signals. The listless movements of the ship\nand her warning calls soon tell upon the nerves of the passengers; and\nthat special, expectant tacit anxiety and nervousness, always associated\nwith this experience, make a fog the dreaded terror of the sea (all the\nmore terrifying because of its very silence and gentleness) for the\nexpert seafarer no less than the ignorant landsman.\n\n\"Nevertheless, a fog at sea can be a source of intense relish and\nenjoyment. Abstract from the experience of the sea-fog, for the moment,\nits danger and practical unpleasantness; ... direct the attention to the\nfeatures 'objectively' constituting the phenomena--the veil surrounding\nyou with an opaqueness as of transparent milk, blurring the outlines of\nthings and distorting their shapes into weird grotesqueness; observe the\ncarrying power of the air, producing the impression as if you could\ntouch some far-off siren by merely putting out your hand and letting it\nlose itself behind that white wall; note the curious creamy smoothness\nof the water, hypercritically denying as it were, any suggestion of\ndanger; and, above all, the strange solitude and remoteness from the\nworld, as it can be found only on the highest mountain tops; and the\nexperience may acquire, in its uncanny mingling of repose and terror, a\nflavour of such concentrated poignancy and delight as to contrast\nsharply with the blind and distempered anxiety of its other aspects.\nThis contrast, often emerging with startling suddenness, is like the\nmomentary switching on of some new current, or the passing ray of a\nbrighter light, illuminating the outlook upon perhaps the most ordinary\nand familiar objects--an impression which we experience sometimes in\ninstants of direst extremity, when our practical interest snaps like a\nwire from sheer over-tension, and we watch the consummation of some\nimpending catastrophe with the marvelling unconcern of a mere\nspectator.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt has often been noted that two, and two only, of our senses are the\nchannels of art and give us artistic material. These two senses are\nsight and hearing. Touch and its special modifications, taste and smell,\ndo not go to the making of art. Decadent French novelists, such as\nHuysmann, make their heroes revel in perfume-symphonies, but we feel\nthat the sentiment described is morbid and unreal, and we feel rightly.\nSome people speak of a cook as an \"artist,\" and a pudding as a \"perfect\npoem,\" but a healthy instinct rebels. Art, whether sculpture, painting,\ndrama, music, is of sight or hearing. The reason is simple. Sight and\nhearing are the distant senses; sight is, as some one has well said,\n\"touch at a distance.\" Sight and hearing are of things already detached\nand somewhat remote; they are the fitting channels for art which is cut\nloose from immediate action and reaction. Taste and touch are too\nintimate, too immediately vital. In Russian, as Tolstoi has pointed out\n(and indeed in other languages the same is observable), the word for\nbeauty (_krasota_) means, to begin with, only that which pleases the\nsight. Even hearing is excluded. And though latterly people have begun\nto speak of an \"ugly deed\" or of \"beautiful music,\" it is not good\nRussian. The simple Russian does not make Plato's divine muddle between\nthe good and the beautiful. If a man gives his coat to another, the\nRussian peasant, knowing no foreign language, will not say the man has\nacted \"beautifully.\"\n\nTo see a thing, to feel a thing, as a work of art, we must, then, become\nfor the time unpractical, must be loosed from the fear and the flurry of\nactual living, must become spectators. Why is this? Why can we not live\nand look at once? The _fact_ that we cannot is clear. If we watch a\nfriend drowning we do not note the exquisite curve made by his body as\nhe falls into the water, nor the play of the sunlight on the ripples as\nhe disappears below the surface; we should be inhuman, \u00e6sthetic fiends\nif we did. And again, why? It would do our friend no harm that we should\nenjoy the curves and the sunlight, provided we also threw him a rope.\nBut the simple fact is that we _cannot_ look at the curves and the\nsunlight because our whole being is centred on acting, on saving him; we\ncannot even, at the moment, fully feel our own terror and impending\nloss. So again if we want to see and to feel the splendour and vigour of\na lion, or even to watch the cumbrous grace of a bear, we prefer that a\ncage should intervene. The cage cuts off the need for motor actions; it\ninterposes the needful physical and moral distance, and we are free for\ncontemplation. Released from our own terrors, we see more and better,\nand we feel differently. A man intent on action is like a horse in\nblinkers, he goes straight forward, seeing only the road ahead.\n\nOur brain is, indeed, it would seem, in part, an elaborate arrangement\nfor providing these blinkers. If we saw and realized the whole of\neverything, we should want to do too many things. The brain allows us\nnot only to remember, but, which is quite as important, to forget and\nneglect; it is an organ of oblivion. By neglecting most of the things we\nsee and hear, we can focus just on those which are important for action;\nwe can cease to be potential artists and become efficient practical\nhuman beings; but it is only by limiting our view, by a great\nrenunciation as to the things we see and feel. The artist does just the\nreverse. He renounces doing in order to practise seeing. He is by nature\nwhat Professor Bergson calls \"distrait,\" aloof, absent-minded, intent\nonly, or mainly, on contemplation. That is why the ordinary man often\nthinks the artist a fool, or, if he does not go so far as that, is made\nvaguely uncomfortable by him, never really understands him. The artist's\nfocus, all his system of values, is different, his world is a world of\nimages which are his realities.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe distinction between art and ritual, which has so long haunted and\npuzzled us, now comes out quite clearly, and also in part the relation\nof each to actual life. Ritual, we saw, was a re-presentation or a\npre-presentation, a re-doing or pre-doing, a copy or imitation of life,\nbut,--and this is the important point,--always with a practical end. Art\nis also a representation of life and the emotions of life, but cut loose\nfrom immediate action. Action may be and often is represented, but it is\nnot that it may lead on to a practical further end. The end of art is in\nitself. Its value is not mediate but _im_mediate. Thus ritual _makes, as\nit were, a bridge between real life and art_, a bridge over which in\nprimitive times it would seem man must pass. In his actual life he hunts\nand fishes and ploughs and sows, being utterly intent on the practical\nend of gaining his food; in the _dromenon_ of the Spring Festival,\nthough his _acts_ are unpractical, being mere singing and dancing and\nmimicry, his _intent_ is practical, to induce the return of his\nfood-supply. In the drama the representation may remain for a time the\nsame, but the intent is altered: man has come out from action, he is\nseparate from the dancers, and has become a spectator. The drama is an\nend in itself.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe know from tradition that in Athens ritual became art, a _dromenon_\nbecame the drama, and we have seen that the shift is symbolized and\nexpressed by the addition of the _theatre_, or spectator-place, to the\norchestra, or dancing-place. We have also tried to analyse the meaning\nof the shift. It remains to ask what was its cause. Ritual does not\nalways develop into art, though in all probability dramatic art has\nalways to go through the stage of ritual. The leap from real life to the\nemotional contemplation of life cut loose from action would otherwise be\ntoo wide. Nature abhors a leap, she prefers to crawl over the ritual\nbridge. There seem at Athens to have been two main causes why the\n_dromenon_ passed swiftly, inevitably, into the drama. They are, first,\nthe decay of religious faith; second, the influx from abroad of a new\nculture and new dramatic material.\n\nIt may seem surprising to some that the decay of religious faith should\nbe an impulse to the birth of art. We are accustomed to talk rather\nvaguely of art \"as the handmaid of religion\"; we think of art as\n\"inspired by\" religion. But the decay of religious faith of which we now\nspeak is not the decay of faith in a god, or even the decay of some high\nspiritual emotion; it is the decay of a belief in the efficacy of\ncertain magical rites, and especially of the Spring Rite. So long as\npeople believed that by excited dancing, by bringing in an image or\nleading in a bull you could induce the coming of Spring, so long would\nthe _dromena_ of the Dithyramb be enacted with intense enthusiasm, and\nwith this enthusiasm would come an actual accession and invigoration of\nvital force. But, once the faintest doubt crept in, once men began to be\nguided by experience rather than custom, the enthusiasm would die down,\nand the collective invigoration no longer be felt. Then some day there\nwill be a bad summer, things will go all wrong, and the chorus will\nsadly ask: \"Why should I dance my dance?\" They will drift away or become\nmere spectators of a rite established by custom. The rite itself will\ndie down, or it will live on only as the May Day rites of to-day, a\nchildren's play, or at best a thing done vaguely \"for luck.\"\n\nThe spirit of the rite, the belief in its efficacy, dies, but the rite\nitself, the actual mould, persists, and it is this ancient ritual mould,\nforeign to our own usage, that strikes us to-day, when a Greek play is\nrevived, as odd and perhaps chill. A _chorus_, a band of dancers there\nmust be, because the drama arose out of a ritual dance. An _agon_, or\ncontest, or wrangling, there will probably be, because Summer contends\nwith Winter, Life with Death, the New Year with the Old. A tragedy must\nbe tragic, must have its _pathos_, because the Winter, the Old Year,\nmust die. There must needs be a swift transition, a clash and change\nfrom sorrow to joy, what the Greeks called a _peripeteia_, a\n_quick-turn-round_, because, though you carry out Winter, you bring in\nSummer. At the end we shall have an Appearance, an Epiphany of a god,\nbecause the whole gist of the ancient ritual was to summon the spirit of\nlife. All these ritual forms haunt and shadow the play, whatever its\nplot, like ancient traditional ghosts; they underlie and sway the\nmovement and the speeches like some compelling rhythm.\n\nNow this ritual mould, this underlying rhythm, is a fine thing in\nitself; and, moreover, it was once shaped and cast by a living spirit:\nthe intense immediate desire for food and life, and for the return of\nthe seasons which bring that food and life. But we have seen that, once\nthe faith in man's power magically to bring back these seasons waned,\nonce he began to doubt whether he could really carry out Winter and\nbring in Summer, his emotion towards these rites would cool. Further, we\nhave seen that these rites repeated year by year ended, among an\nimaginative people, in the mental creation of some sort of d\u00e6mon or god.\nThis d\u00e6mon, or god, was more and more held responsible on his own\naccount for the food-supply and the order of the Hor\u00e6, or Seasons; so we\nget the notion that this d\u00e6mon or god himself led in the Seasons; Hermes\ndances at the head of the Charites, or an Eiresione is carried to Helios\nand the Hor\u00e6. The thought then arises that this man-like d\u00e6mon who rose\nfrom a real King of the May, must himself be approached and dealt with\nas a man, bargained with, sacrificed to. In a word, in place of\n_dromena_, things done, we get gods worshipped; in place of sacraments,\nholy bulls killed and eaten in common, we get sacrifices in the modern\nsense, holy bulls offered to yet holier gods. The relation of these\nfigures of gods to art we shall consider when we come to sculpture.\n\nSo the _dromenon_, the thing done, wanes, the prayer, the praise, the\nsacrifice waxes. Religion moves away from drama towards theology, but\nthe ritual mould of the _dromenon_ is left ready for a new content.\n\nAgain, there is another point. The magical _dromenon_, the Carrying out\nof Winter, the Bringing in of Spring, is doomed to an inherent and\ndeadly monotony. It is only when its magical efficacy is intensely\nbelieved that it can go on. The life-history of a holy bull is always\nthe same; its magical essence is that it should be the same. Even when\nthe life-d\u00e6mon is human his career is unchequered. He is born,\ninitiated, or born again; he is married, grows old, dies, is buried; and\nthe old, old story is told again next year. There are no fresh personal\nincidents, peculiar to one particular d\u00e6mon. If the drama rose from the\nSpring Song only, beautiful it might be, but with a beauty that was\nmonotonous, a beauty doomed to sterility.\n\nWe seem to have come to a sort of _impasse_, the spirit of the\n_dromenon_ is dead or dying, the spectators will not stay long to watch\na doing doomed to monotony. The ancient moulds are there, the old\nbottles, but where is the new wine? The pool is stagnant; what angel\nwill step down to trouble the waters?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFortunately we are not left to conjecture what _might_ have happened. In\nthe case of Greece we know, though not as clearly as we wish, what did\nhappen. We can see in part why, though the _dromena_ of Adonis and\nOsiris, emotional as they were and intensely picturesque, remained mere\nritual; the _dromenon_ of Dionysos, his Dithyramb, blossomed into drama.\n\nLet us look at the facts, and first at some structural facts in the\nbuilding of the theatre.\n\nWe have seen that the orchestra, with its dancing chorus, stands for\nritual, for the stage in which all were worshippers, all joined in a\nrite of practical intent. We further saw that the _theatre_, the place\nfor the spectators, stood for art. In the orchestra all is life and\ndancing; the marble _seats_ are the very symbol of rest, aloofness from\naction, contemplation. The seats for the spectators grow and grow in\nimportance till at last they absorb, as it were, the whole spirit, and\ngive their name _theatre_ to the whole structure; action is swallowed up\nin contemplation. But contemplation of what? At first, of course, of the\nritual dance, but not for long. That, we have seen, was doomed to a\ndeadly monotony. In a Greek theatre there was not only orchestra and a\nspectator-place, there was also a _scene_ or _stage_.\n\nThe Greek word for stage is, as we said, _sken\u00e8_, our scene. The _scene_\nwas not a stage in our sense, _i.e._ a platform raised so that the\nplayers might be better viewed. It was simply a tent, or rude hut, in\nwhich the players, or rather dancers, could put on their ritual dresses.\nThe fact that the Greek theatre had, to begin with, no permanent stage\nin our sense, shows very clearly how little it was regarded as a\nspectacle. The ritual dance was a _dromenon_, a thing to be done, not a\nthing to be looked at. The history of the Greek stage is one long story\nof the encroachment of the stage on the orchestra. At first a rude\nplatform or table is set up, then scenery is added; the movable tent is\ntranslated into a stone house or a temple front. This stands at first\noutside the orchestra; then bit by bit the _scene_ encroaches till the\nsacred circle of the dancing-place is cut clean across. As the drama and\nthe stage wax, the _dromenon_ and the orchestra wane.\n\nThis shift in the relation of dancing-place and stage is very clearly\nseen in Fig. 2, a plan of the Dionysiac theatre at Athens (p. 144). The\nold circular orchestra shows the dominance of ritual; the new curtailed\norchestra of Roman times and semicircular shape shows the dominance of\nthe spectacle.\n\n[Illustration: Fig. 2. Dionysiac Theatre at Athens.]\n\nGreek tragedy arose, Aristotle has told us, from the _leaders_ of the\nDithyramb, the leaders of the Spring Dance. The Spring Dance, the mime\nof Summer and Winter, had, as we have seen, only one actor, one actor\nwith two parts--Death and Life. With only one play to be played, and\nthat a one-actor play, there was not much need for a stage. A _scene_,\nthat is a _tent_, was needed, as we saw, because all the dancers had to\nput on their ritual gear, but scarcely a stage. From a rude platform\nthe prologue might be spoken, and on that platform the Epiphany or\nAppearance of the New Year might take place; but the play played, the\nlife-history of the life-spirit, was all too familiar; there was no need\nto look, the thing was to dance. You need a stage--not necessarily a\nraised stage, but a place apart from the dancers--when you have new\nmaterial for your players, something you need to look at, to attend to.\nIn the sixth century B.C., at Athens, came _the_ great innovation.\nInstead of the old plot, the life-history of the life-spirit, with its\ndeadly monotony, new plots were introduced, not of life-spirits but of\nhuman individual heroes. In a word, Homer came to Athens, and out of\nHomeric stories playwrights began to make their plots. This innovation\nwas the death of ritual monotony and the _dromenon_. It is not so much\nthe old that dies as the new that kills.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\u00c6schylus himself is reported to have said that his tragedies were\n\"slices from the great banquet of Homer.\" The metaphor is not a very\npleasing one, but it expresses a truth. By Homer, \u00c6schylus meant not\nonly our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, but the whole body of Epic or Heroic\npoetry which centred round not only the Siege of Troy but the great\nexpedition of the _Seven Against Thebes_, and which, moreover, contained\nthe stories of the heroes before the siege began, and their adventures\nafter it was ended. It was from these heroic sagas for the most part,\nthough not wholly, that the _myths_ or plots of not only \u00c6schylus but\nalso Sophocles and Euripides, and a host of other writers whose plays\nare lost to us, are taken. The new wine that was poured into the old\nbottles of the _dromena_ at the Spring Festival was the heroic saga. We\nknow as an historical fact, the name of the man who was mainly\nresponsible for this inpouring--the great democratic tyrant\nPeisistratos. We must look for a moment at what Peisistratos found, and\nthen pass to what he did.\n\nHe found an ancient Spring _dromenon_, perhaps well-nigh effete. Without\ndestroying the old he contrived to introduce the new, to add to the old\nplot of Summer and Winter the life-stories of heroes, and thereby arose\nthe drama.\n\nLet us look first, then, at what Peisistratos found.\n\nThe April festival of Dionysos at which the great dramas were performed\nwas not the earliest festival of the god. Thucydides[37] expressly tells\nus that on the 12th day of the month Anthesterion, that is in the quite\nearly spring, at the turn of our February and March, were celebrated\n_the more ancient Dionysia_. It was a three-days' festival.[38] On the\nfirst day, called \"Cask-opening,\" the jars of new wine were broached.\nAmong the Boeotians the day was called not the day of Dionysos, but the\nday of the Good or Wealthy Daimon. The next day was called the day of\nthe \"Cups\"--there was a contest or _agon_ of drinking. The last day was\ncalled the \"Pots,\" and it, too, had its \"Pot-Contests.\" It is the\nceremonies of this day that we must notice a little in detail; for they\nare very surprising. \"Casks,\" \"Cups,\" and \"Pots,\" sound primitive\nenough. \"Casks\" and \"Cups\" go well with the wine-god, but the \"Pots\"\ncall for explanation.\n\nThe second day of the \"Cups,\" joyful though it sounds, was by the\nAthenians counted unlucky, because on that day they believed \"the ghosts\nof the dead rose up.\" The sanctuaries were roped in, each householder\nanointed his door with pitch, that the ghost who tried to enter might\ncatch and stick there. Further, to make assurance doubly sure, from\nearly dawn he chewed a bit of buckthorn, a plant of strong purgative\npowers, so that, if a ghost should by evil chance go down his throat, it\nshould at least be promptly expelled.\n\nFor two, perhaps three, days of constant anxiety and ceaseless\nprecautions the ghosts fluttered about Athens. Men's hearts were full of\nnameless dread, and, as we shall see, hope. At the close of the third\nday the ghosts, or, as the Greeks called them, _Keres_, were bidden to\ngo. Some one, we do not know whom, it may be each father of a household,\npronounced the words: \"Out of the door, ye Keres; it is no longer\nAnthesteria,\" and, obedient, the Keres were gone.\n\nBut before they went there was a supper for these souls. All the\ncitizens cooked a _panspermia_ or \"Pot-of-all-Seeds,\" but of this\nPot-of-all-Seeds no citizen tasted. It was made over to the spirits of\nthe under-world and Hermes their daimon, Hermes \"Psychopompos,\"\nConductor, Leader of the dead.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have seen how a forest people, dependent on fruit trees and berries\nfor their food, will carry a maypole and imagine a tree-spirit. But a\npeople of agriculturists will feel and do and think quite otherwise;\nthey will look, not to the forest but to the earth for their returning\nlife and food; they will sow seeds and wait for their sprouting, as in\nthe gardens of Adonis. Adonis seems to have passed through the two\nstages of Tree-Spirit and Seed-Spirit; his effigy was sometimes a tree\ncut down, sometimes his planted \"Gardens.\" Now seeds are many,\ninnumerable, and they are planted in the earth, and a people who bury\ntheir dead know, or rather feel, that the earth is dead man's land. So,\nwhen they prepare a pot of seeds on their All Souls' Day, it is not\nreally or merely as a \"supper for the souls,\" though it may be that\nkindly notion enters. The ghosts have other work to do than to eat their\nsupper and go. They take that supper \"of all seeds,\" that _panspermia_,\nwith them down to the world below, that they may tend it and foster it\nand bring it back in autumn as a pot of _all fruits_, a _pankarpia_.\n\n     \"Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.\"\n\nThe dead, then, as well as the living--this is for us the important\npoint--had their share in the _dromena_ of the \"more ancient Dionysia.\"\nThese agricultural spring _dromena_ were celebrated just outside the\nancient city gates, in the _agora_, or place of assembly, on a circular\ndancing-place, near to a very primitive sanctuary of Dionysos which was\nopened only once in the year, at the Feast of Cups. Just outside the\ngates was celebrated yet another festival of Dionysos equally primitive,\ncalled the \"Dionysia in the Fields.\" It had the form though not the date\nof our May Day festival. Plutarch[39] thus laments over the \"good old\ntimes\": \"In ancient days,\" he says, \"our fathers used to keep the feast\nof Dionysos in homely, jovial fashion. There was a procession, a jar of\nwine and a _branch_; then some one dragged in a goat, another followed\nbringing a wicker basket of figs, and, to crown all, the phallos.\" It\nwas just a festival of the fruits of the whole earth: wine and the\nbasket of figs and the branch for vegetation, the goat for animal life,\nthe phallos for man. No thought here of the dead, it is all for the\nliving and his food.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSuch sanctities even a great tyrant might not tamper with. But if you\nmay not upset the old you may without irreverence add the new.\nPeisistratos probably cared little for, and believed less in, magical\nceremonies for the renewal of fruits, incantations of the dead. We can\nscarcely picture him chewing buckthorn on the day of the \"Cups,\" or\nanointing his front door with pitch to keep out the ghosts. Very wisely\nhe left the Anthesteria and the kindred festival \"in the fields\" where\nand as they were. But for his own purposes he wanted to do honour to\nDionysos, and also above all things to enlarge and improve the rites\ndone in the god's honour, so, leaving the old sanctuary to its fate, he\nbuilt a new temple on the south side of the Acropolis where the present\ntheatre now stands, and consecrated to the god a new and more splendid\nprecinct.\n\nHe did not build the present theatre, we must always remember that. The\nrows of stone seats, the chief priest's splendid marble chair, were not\nerected till two centuries later. What Peisistratos did was to build a\nsmall stone temple (see Fig. 2), and a great round orchestra of stone\nclose beside it. Small fragments of the circular foundation can still be\nseen. The spectators sat on the hill-side or on wooden seats; there was\nas yet no permanent _the{-a}tron_ or spectator-place, still less a stone\nstage; the _dromena_ were done on the dancing-place. But for\nspectator-place they had the south slope of the Acropolis. What kind of\nwooden stage they had unhappily we cannot tell. It may be that only a\nportion of the orchestra was marked off.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhy did Peisistratos, if he cared little for magic and ancestral ghosts,\ntake such trouble to foster and amplify the worship of this\nmaypole-spirit, Dionysos? Why did he add to the Anthesteria, the\nfestival of the family ghosts and the peasant festival \"in the fields,\"\na new and splendid festival, a little later in the spring, the _Great\nDionysia_, or _Dionysia of the City_? One reason among others was\nthis--Peisistratos was a \"tyrant.\"\n\nNow a Greek \"tyrant\" was not in our sense \"tyrannical.\" He took his own\nway, it is true, but that way was to help and serve the common people.\nThe tyrant was usually raised to his position by the people, and he\nstood for democracy, for trade and industry, as against an idle\naristocracy. It was but a rudimentary democracy, a democratic tyranny,\nthe power vested in one man, but it stood for the rights of the many as\nagainst the few. Moreover, Dionysos was always of the people, of the\n\"working classes,\" just as the King and Queen of the May are now. The\nupper classes worshipped then, as now, not the Spirit of Spring but\n_their own ancestors_. But--and this was what Peisistratos with great\ninsight saw--Dionysos must be transplanted from the fields to the city.\nThe country is always conservative, the natural stronghold of a landed\naristocracy, with fixed traditions; the city with its closer contacts\nand consequent swifter changes, and, above all, with its acquired, not\ninherited, wealth, tends towards democracy. Peisistratos left the\nDionysia \"in the fields,\" but he added the Great Dionysia \"in the city.\"\n\nPeisistratos was not the only tyrant who concerned himself with the\n_dromena_ of Dionysos. Herodotos[40] tells the story of another tyrant,\na story which is like a window opening suddenly on a dark room. At\nSicyon, a town near Corinth, there was in the _agora_ a _heroon_, a\nhero-tomb, of an Argive hero, Adrastos.\n\n\"The Sicyonians,\" says Herodotos, \"paid other honours to Adrastos, and,\nmoreover, they celebrated his death and disasters with tragic choruses,\nnot honouring Dionysos but Adrastos.\" We think of \"tragic\" choruses as\nbelonging exclusively to the theatre and Dionysos; so did Herodotus, but\nclearly here they belonged to a local hero. His adventures and his death\nwere commemorated by choral dances and songs. Now when Cleisthenes\nbecame tyrant of Sicyon he felt that the cult of the local hero was a\ndanger. What did he do? Very adroitly he brought in from Thebes another\nhero as rival to Adrastos. He then split up the worship of Adrastos;\npart of his worship, and especially his sacrifices, he gave to the new\nTheban hero, but the tragic choruses he gave to the common people's god,\nto Dionysos. Adrastos, the objectionable hero, was left to dwindle and\ndie. No local hero can live on without his cult.\n\nThe act of Cleisthenes seems to us a very drastic proceeding. But\nperhaps it was not really so revolutionary as it seems. The local hero\nwas not so very unlike a local _d\u00e6mon_, a Spring or Winter spirit. We\nhave seen in the Anthesteria how the paternal ghosts are expected to\nlook after the seeds in spring. The more important the ghost the more\nincumbent is this duty upon him. _Noblesse oblige_. On the river\nOlynthiakos[41] in Northern Greece stood the tomb of the hero Olynthos,\nwho gave the river its name. In the spring months of Anthesterion and\nElaphebolion the river rises and an immense shoal of fish pass from the\nlake of Bolbe to the river of Olynthiakos, and the inhabitants round\nabout can lay in a store of salt fish for all their needs. \"And it is a\nwonderful fact that they never pass by the monument of Olynthus. They\nsay that formerly the people used to perform the accustomed rites to\nthe dead in the month Elaphebolion, but now they do them in\nAnthesterion, _and that on this account the fish come up in those months\nonly_ in which they are wont to do honour to the dead.\" The river is the\nchief source of the food-supply, so to send fish, not seeds and flowers,\nis the dead hero's business.\n\nPeisistratos was not so daring as Cleisthenes. We do not hear that he\ndisturbed or diminished any local cult. He did not attempt to move the\nAnthesteria with its ghost cult; he only added a new festival, and\ntrusted to its recent splendour gradually to efface the old. And at this\nnew festival he celebrated the deeds of other heroes, not local but of\ngreater splendour and of wider fame. If he did not bring Homer to\nAthens, he at least gave Homer official recognition. Now to bring Homer\nto Athens was like opening the eyes of the blind.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nCicero, in speaking of the influence of Peisistratos on literature,\nsays: \"He is said to have arranged in their present order the works of\nHomer, which were previously in confusion.\" He arranged them not for\nwhat we should call \"publication,\" but for public recitation, and\nanother tradition adds that he or his son fixed the order of their\nrecitation at the great festival of \"All Athens,\" the Panathenaia.\nHomer, of course, was known before in Athens in a scrappy way; now he\nwas publicly, officially promulgated. It is probable, though not\ncertain, that the \"Homer\" which Peisistratos prescribed for recitation\nat the Panathenaia was just our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, and that the rest\nof the heroic cycle, all the remaining \"slices\" from the heroic banquet,\nremained as material for dithyrambs and dramas. The \"tyranny\" of\nPeisistratos and his son lasted from 560 to 501 B.C.; tradition said\nthat the first dramatic contest was held in the new theatre built by\nPeisistratos in 535 B.C., when Thespis won the prize. \u00c6schylus was born\nin 525 B.C.; his first play, with a plot from the heroic saga, the\n_Seven Against Thebes_, was produced in 467 B.C. It all came very\nswiftly, the shift from the dithyramb as Spring Song to the heroic drama\nwas accomplished in something much under a century. Its effect on the\nwhole of Greek life and religion--nay, on the whole of subsequent\nliterature and thought--was incalculable. Let us try to see why.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHomer was the outcome, the expression, of an \"heroic\" age. When we use\nthe word \"heroic\" we think vaguely of something brave, brilliant,\nsplendid, something exciting and invigorating. A hero is to us a man of\nclear, vivid personality, valiant, generous, perhaps hot-tempered, a\ngood friend and a good hater. The word \"hero\" calls up such figures as\nAchilles, Patroklos, Hector, figures of passion and adventure. Now such\nfigures, with their special virtues, and perhaps their proper vices, are\nnot confined to Homer. They occur in any and every heroic age. We are\nbeginning now to see that heroic poetry, heroic characters, do not arise\nfrom any peculiarity of race or even of geographical surroundings, but,\ngiven certain social conditions, they may, and do, appear anywhere and\nat any time. The world has seen several heroic ages, though it is,\nperhaps, doubtful if it will ever see another. What, then, are the\nconditions that produce an heroic age? and why was this influx of heroic\npoetry, coming just when it did, of such immense influence on, and\nimportance to, the development of Greek dramatic art? Why had it power\nto change the old, stiff, ritual dithyramb into the new and living\ndrama? Why, above all things, did the democratic tyrant Peisistratos so\neagerly welcome it to Athens?\n\nIn the old ritual dance the individual was nothing, the choral band, the\ngroup, everything, and in this it did but reflect primitive tribal life.\nNow in the heroic _saga_ the individual is everything, the mass of the\npeople, the tribe, or the group, are but a shadowy background which\nthrows up the brilliant, clear-cut personality into a more vivid light.\nThe epic poet is all taken up with what he called _klea andron_,\n\"glorious deeds of men,\" of individual heroes; and what these heroes\nthemselves ardently long and pray for is just this glory, this personal\ndistinction, this deathless fame for their great deeds. When the armies\nmeet it is the leaders who fight in single combat. These glorious heroes\nare for the most part kings, but not kings in the old sense, not\nhereditary kings bound to the soil and responsible for its fertility.\nRather they are leaders in war and adventure; the homage paid them is a\npersonal devotion for personal character; the leader must win his\nfollowers by bravery, he must keep them by personal generosity.\nMoreover, heroic wars are oftenest not tribal feuds consequent on tribal\nraids, more often they arise from personal grievances, personal\njealousies; the siege of Troy is undertaken not because the Trojans have\nraided the cattle of the Ach\u00e6ans, but because a single Trojan, Paris,\nhas carried off Helen, a single Ach\u00e6an's wife.\n\nAnother noticeable point is that in heroic poems scarcely any one is\nsafely and quietly at home. The heroes are fighting in far-off lands or\nvoyaging by sea; hence we hear little of tribal and even of family ties.\nThe real centre is not the hearth, but the leader's tent or ship. Local\nties that bind to particular spots of earth are cut, local differences\nfall into abeyance, a sort of cosmopolitanism, a forecast of\npan-Hellenism, begins to arise. And a curious point--all this is\nreflected in the gods. We hear scarcely anything of local cults, nothing\nat all of local magical maypoles and Carryings-out of Winter and\nBringings-in of Summer, nothing whatever of \"Suppers\" for the souls, or\neven of worship paid to particular local heroes. A man's ghost when he\ndies does not abide in its grave ready to rise at springtime and help\nthe seeds to sprout; it goes to a remote and shadowy region, a common,\npan-Hellenic Hades. And so with the gods themselves; they are cut clean\nfrom earth and from the local bits of earth out of which they grew--the\nsacred trees and holy stones and rivers and still holier beasts. There\nis not a holy Bull to be found in all Olympus, only figures of men,\nbright and vivid and intensely personal, like so many glorified,\ntransfigured Homeric heroes.\n\nIn a word, the heroic spirit, as seen in heroic poetry, is the outcome\nof a society cut loose from its roots, of a time of migrations, of the\nshifting of populations.[42] But more is needed, and just this something\nmore the age that gave birth to Homer had. We know now that before the\nnorthern people whom we call Greeks, and who called themselves Hellenes,\ncame down into Greece, there had grown up in the basin of the \u00c6gean a\ncivilization splendid, wealthy, rich in art and already ancient, the\ncivilization that has come to light at Troy, Mycen\u00e6, Tiryns, and most of\nall in Crete. The adventurers from North and South came upon a land\nrich in spoils, where a chieftain with a band of hardy followers might\nsack a city and dower himself and his men with sudden wealth. Such\nconditions, such a contact of new and old, of settled splendour beset by\nunbridled adventure, go to the making of a heroic age, its virtues and\nits vices, its obvious beauty and its hidden ugliness. In settled,\nsocial conditions, as has been well remarked, \"most of the heroes would\nsooner or later have found themselves in prison.\"\n\nA heroic age, happily for society, cannot last long; it has about it\nwhile it does last a sheen of passing and pathetic splendour, such as\nthat which lights up the figure of Achilles, but it is bound to fade and\npass. A heroic _society_ is almost a contradiction in terms. Heroism is\nfor individuals. If a society is to go on at all it must strike its\nroots deep in some soil, native or alien. The bands of adventurers must\ndisband and go home, or settle anew on the land they have conquered.\nThey must beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into\npruning-hooks. Their gallant, glorious leader must become a sober,\nhome-keeping, law-giving and law-abiding king; his followers must abate\ntheir individuality and make it subserve a common social purpose.\n\nAthens, in her sheltered peninsula, lay somewhat outside the tide of\nmigrations and heroic exploits. Her population and that of all Attica\nremained comparatively unchanged; her kings are kings of the stationary,\nlaw-abiding, state-reforming type; Cecrops, Erechtheus, Theseus, are not\nsplendid, flashing, all-conquering figures like Achilles and Agamemnon.\nAthens might, it would seem, but for the coming of Homer, have lain\nstagnant in a backwater of conservatism, content to go on chanting her\ntraditional Spring Songs year by year. It is a wonderful thing that this\ncity of Athens, beloved of the gods, should have been saved from the\nstorm and stress, sheltered from what might have broken, even shattered\nher, spared the actual horrors of a heroic _age_, yet given heroic\n_poetry_, given the clear wine-cup poured when the ferment was over. She\ndrank of it deep and was glad and rose up like a giant refreshed.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have seen that to make up a heroic age there must be two factors, the\nnew and the old; the young, vigorous, warlike people must seize on,\nappropriate, in part assimilate, an old and wealthy civilization. It\nalmost seems as if we might go a step farther, and say that for every\ngreat movement in art or literature we must have the same conditions, a\ncontact of new and old, of a new spirit seizing or appropriated by an\nold established order. Anyhow for Athens the historical fact stands\ncertain. The amazing development of the fifth-century drama is just\nthis, the old vessel of the ritual Dithyramb filled to the full with the\nnew wine of the heroic _saga_; and it would seem that it was by the hand\nof Peisistratos, the great democratic tyrant, that the new wine was\noutpoured.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSuch were roughly the outside conditions under which the drama of art\ngrew out of the _dromena_ of ritual. The racial secret of the individual\ngenius of \u00c6schylus and the forgotten men who preceded him we cannot hope\nto touch. We can only try to see the conditions in which they worked and\nmark the splendid new material that lay to their hands. Above all things\nwe can see that this material, these Homeric _saga_, were just fitted\nto give the needed impulse to art. The Homeric _saga_ had for an\nAthenian poet just that remoteness from immediate action which, as we\nhave seen, is the essence of art as contrasted with ritual.\n\nTradition says that the Athenians fined the dramatic poet Phrynichus for\nchoosing as the plot of one of his tragedies the Taking of Miletus.\nProbably the fine was inflicted for political party reasons, and had\nnothing whatever to do with the question of whether the subject was\n\"artistic\" or not. But the story may stand, and indeed was later\nunderstood to be, a sort of allegory as to the attitude of art towards\nlife. To understand and still more to contemplate life you must come out\nfrom the choral dance of life and stand apart. In the case of one's own\nsorrows, be they national or personal, this is all but impossible. We\ncan ritualize our sorrows, but not turn them into tragedies. We cannot\nstand back far enough to see the picture; we want to be doing, or at\nleast lamenting. In the case of the sorrows of others this standing back\nis all too easy. We not only bear their pain with easy stoicism, but we\npicture it dispassionately at a safe distance; we feel _about_ rather\nthan _with_ it. The trouble is that we do not feel enough. Such was the\nattitude of the Athenian towards the doings and sufferings of Homeric\nheroes. They stood towards them as spectators. These heroes had not the\nintimate sanctity of home-grown things, but they had sufficient\ntraditional sanctity to make them acceptable as the material of drama.\n\nAdequately sacred though they were, they were yet free and flexible. It\nis impiety to alter the myth of your local hero, it is impossible to\nrecast the myth of your local d\u00e6mon--that is fixed forever--his\nconflict, his _agon_, his death, his _pathos_, his Resurrection and its\nheralding, his Epiphany. But the stories of Agamemnon and Achilles,\nthough at home these heroes were local _daimones_, have already been\nvariously told in their wanderings from place to place, and you can\nmould them more or less to your will. Moreover, these figures are\nalready personal and individual, not representative puppets, mere\nfunctionaries like the May Queen and Winter; they have life-histories of\ntheir own, never quite to be repeated. It is in this blend of the\nindividual and the general, the personal and the universal, that one\nelement at least of all really great art will be found to lie; and just\nhere at Athens we get a glimpse of the moment of fusion; we see a\ndefinite historical reason why and how the universal in _dromena_ came\nto include the particular in drama. We see, moreover, how in place of\nthe old monotonous plots, intimately connected with actual practical\nneeds, we get material cut off from immediate reactions, seen as it were\nat the right distance, remote yet not too remote. We see, in a word, how\na ritual enacted year by year became a work of art that was a\n\"possession for ever.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPossibly in the mind of the reader there may have been for some time a\ngrowing discomfort, an inarticulate protest. All this about _dromena_\nand drama and dithyrambs, bears and bulls, May Queens and Tree-Spirits,\neven about Homeric heroes, is all very well, curious and perhaps even in\na way interesting, but it is not at all what he expected, still less\nwhat he wants. When he bought a book with the odd incongruous title,\n_Ancient Art and Ritual_, he was prepared to put up with some remarks on\nthe artistic side of ritual, but he did expect to be told something\nabout what the ordinary man calls art, that is, statues and pictures.\nGreek drama is no doubt a form of ancient art, but acting is not to the\nreader's mind the chief of arts. Nay, more, he has heard doubts raised\nlately--and he shares them--as to whether acting and dancing, about\nwhich so much has been said, are properly speaking arts at all. Now\nabout painting and sculpture there is no doubt. Let us come to business.\n\nTo a business so beautiful and pleasant as Greek sculpture we shall\ngladly come, but a word must first be said to explain the reason of our\nlong delay. The main contention of the present book is that ritual and\nart have, in emotion towards life, a common root, and further, that\nprimitive art develops normally, at least in the case of the drama,\nstraight out of ritual. The nature of that primitive ritual from which\nthe drama arose is not very familiar to English readers. It has been\nnecessary to stress its characteristics. Almost everywhere, all over the\nworld, it is found that primitive ritual consists, not in prayer and\npraise and sacrifice, but in mimetic dancing. But it is in Greece, and\nperhaps Greece only, in the religion of Dionysos, that we can actually\ntrace, if dimly, the transition steps that led from dance to drama, from\nritual to art. It was, therefore, of the first importance to realize the\nnature of the dithyramb from which the drama rose, and so far as might\nbe to mark the cause and circumstances of the transition.\n\nLeaving the drama, we come in the next chapter to Sculpture; and here,\ntoo, we shall see how closely art was shadowed by that ritual out of\nwhich she sprang.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[35] See Bibliography at end for Professor Murray's examination.\n\n[36] Mr. Edward Bullough, _The British Journal of Psychology_ (1912), p.\n88.\n\n[37] II, 15.\n\n[38] See my _Themis_, p. 289, and _Prolegomena_, p. 35.\n\n[39] _De Cupid. div._ 8.\n\n[40] V, 66.\n\n[41] _Athen._, VIII, ii, 334 f. See my _Prolegomena_, p. 54.\n\n[42] Thanks to Mr. H.M. Chadwick's _Heroic Age_ (1912).\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nGREEK SCULPTURE: THE PANATHENAIC FRIEZE AND THE APOLLO BELVEDERE\n\n\nIn passing from the drama to Sculpture we make a great leap. We pass\nfrom the living thing, the dance or the play acted by real people, the\nthing _done_, whether as ritual or art, whether _dromenon_ or _drama_,\nto the thing _made_, cast in outside material rigid form, a thing that\ncan be looked at again and again, but the making of which can never\nactually be re-lived whether by artist or spectator.\n\nMoreover, we come to a clear threefold distinction and division hitherto\nneglected. We must at last sharply differentiate the artist, the work of\nart, and the spectator. The artist may, and usually indeed does, become\nthe spectator of his own work, but the spectator is not the artist. The\nwork of art is, once executed, forever distinct both from artist and\nspectator. In the primitive choral dance all three--artist, work of art,\nspectator--were fused, or rather not yet differentiated. Handbooks on\nart are apt to begin with the discussion of rude decorative patterns,\nand after leading up through sculpture and painting, something vague is\nsaid at the end about the primitiveness of the ritual dance. But\nhistorically and also genetically or logically the dance in its\ninchoateness, its undifferentiatedness, comes first. It has in it a\nlarger element of emotion, and less of presentation. It is this\ninchoateness, this undifferentiatedness, that, apart from historical\nfact, makes us feel sure that logically the dance is primitive.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTo illustrate the meaning of Greek sculpture and show its close affinity\nwith ritual, we shall take two instances, perhaps the best-known of\nthose that survive, one of them in relief, the other in the round, the\nPanathenaic frieze of the Parthenon at Athens and the Apollo Belvedere,\nand we shall take them in chronological order. As the actual frieze and\nthe statue cannot be before us, we shall discuss no technical questions\nof style or treatment, but simply ask how they came to be, what human\nneed do they express. The Parthenon frieze is in the British Museum, the\nApollo Belvedere is in the Vatican at Rome, but is readily accessible\nin casts or photographs. The outlines given in Figs. 5 and 6 can of\ncourse only serve to recall subject-matter and design.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Panathenaic frieze once decorated the _cella_ or innermost shrine of\nthe Parthenon, the temple of the Maiden Goddess Athena. It twined like a\nribbon round the brow of the building and thence it was torn by Lord\nElgin and brought home to the British Museum as a national trophy, for\nthe price of a few hundred pounds of coffee and yards of scarlet cloth.\nTo realize its meaning we must always think it back into its place.\nInside the _cella_, or shrine, dwelt the goddess herself, her great\nimage in gold and ivory; outside the shrine was sculptured her worship\nby the whole of her people. For the frieze is nothing but a great ritual\nprocession translated into stone, the Panathenaic procession, or\nprocession of _all_ the Athenians, of all Athens, in honour of the\ngoddess who was but the city incarnate, Athena.\n\n    \"A wonder enthroned on the hills and the sea,\n    A maiden crowned with a fourfold glory,\n    That none from the pride of her head may rend;\n    Violet and olive leaf, purple and hoary,\n    Song-wreath and story the fairest of fame,\n    Flowers that the winter can blast not nor bend,\n    A light upon earth as the sun's own flame,\n    A name as his name--\n    Athens, a praise without end.\"\n\nSWINBURNE: _Erechtheus_, 141.\n\nSculptural Art, at least in this instance, comes out of ritual, has\nritual as its subject, _is_ embodied ritual. The reader perhaps at this\npoint may suspect that he is being juggled with, that, out of the\nthousands of Greek reliefs that remain to us, just this one instance has\nbeen selected to bolster up the writer's art and ritual theory. He has\nonly to walk through any museum to be convinced at once that the author\nis playing quite fair. Practically the whole of the reliefs that remain\nto us from the archaic period, and a very large proportion of those at\nlater date, when they do not represent heroic mythology, are ritual\nreliefs, \"votive\" reliefs as we call them; that is, prayers or praises\ntranslated into stone.\n\n[Illustration: Fig. 3. Panathenaic Procession.]\n\nOf the choral dance we have heard much, of the procession but little,\nyet its ritual importance was great. In religion to-day the dance is\ndead save for the dance of the choristers before the altar at Seville.\nBut the procession lives on, has even taken to itself new life. It is a\nmeans of bringing masses of people together, of ordering them and\nco-ordinating them. It is a means for the magical spread of supposed\ngood influence, of \"grace.\" Witness the \"Beating of the Bounds\" and the\nfrequent processions of the Blessed Sacrament in Roman Catholic lands.\nThe Queen of the May and the Jack-in-the-Green still go from house to\nhouse. Now-a-days it is to collect pence; once it was to diffuse \"grace\"\nand increase. We remember the procession of the holy Bull at Magnesia\nand the holy Bear at Saghalien (pp. 92-100).\n\n[Illustration: Fig. 4. Panathenaic Procession.]\n\nWhat, then, was the object of the Panathenaic procession? It was first,\nas its name indicates, a procession that brought all Athens together.\nIts object was social and political, to express the unity of Athens.\nRitual in primitive times is always social, collective.\n\nThe arrangement of the procession is shown in Figs. 3 and 4 (pp. 174,\n175). In Fig. 3 we see the procession as it were in real life, just as\nit is about to enter the temple and the presence of the Twelve Gods.\nThese gods are shaded black because in reality invisible. Fig. 4 is a\ndiagram showing the position of the various parts of the procession in\nthe sculptural frieze. At the west end of the temple the procession\nbegins to form: the youths of Athens are mounting their horses. It\ndivides, as it needs must, into two halves, one sculptured on the north,\none on the south side of the _cella_. After the throng of the cavalry\ngetting denser and denser we come to the chariots, next the sacrificial\nanimals, sheep and restive cows, then the instruments of sacrifice,\nflutes and lyres and baskets and trays for offerings; men who carry\nblossoming olive-boughs; maidens with water-vessels and drinking-cups.\nThe whole tumult of the gathering is marshalled and at last met and, as\nit were, held in check, by a band of magistrates who face the procession\njust as it enters the presence of the twelve seated gods, at the east\nend. The whole body politic of the gods has come down to feast with the\nwhole body politic of Athens and her allies, of whom these gods are but\nthe projection and reflection. The gods are there together because man\nis collectively assembled.\n\nThe great procession culminates in a sacrifice and a communal feast, a\nsacramental feast like that on the flesh of the holy Bull at Magnesia.\nThe Panathenaia was a high festival including rites and ceremonies of\ndiverse dates, an armed dance of immemorial antiquity that may have\ndated from the days when Athens was subject to Crete, and a recitation\nordered by Peisistratos of the poems of Homer.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSome theorists have seen in art only an extension of the \"play\ninstinct,\" just a liberation of superfluous vitality and energies, as it\nwere a rehearsing for life. This is not our view, but into all art, in\nso far as it is a cutting off of motor reactions, there certainly enters\nan element of recreation. It is interesting to note that to the Greek\nmind religion was specially connected with the notion rather of a\nfestival than a fast. Thucydides[43] is assuredly by nature no reveller,\nyet religion is to him mainly a \"rest from toil.\" He makes Perikles say:\n\"Moreover, we have provided for our spirit by many opportunities of\nrecreation, by the celebration of games and sacrifices throughout the\nyear.\" To the anonymous writer known as the \"Old Oligarch\" the main gist\nof religion appears to be a decorous social enjoyment. In easy\naristocratic fashion he rejoices that religious ceremonials exist to\nprovide for the less well-to-do citizens suitable amusements that they\nwould otherwise lack. \"As to sacrifices and sanctuaries and festivals\nand precincts, the People, knowing that it is impossible for each man\nindividually to sacrifice and feast and have sacrifices and an ample and\nbeautiful city, has discovered by what means he may enjoy these\nprivileges.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the procession of the Panathenaia all Athens was gathered together,\nbut--and this is important--for a special purpose, more primitive than\nany great political or social union. Happily this purpose is clear; it\nis depicted in the central slab of the east end of the frieze (Fig. 5).\nA priest is there represented receiving from the hands of a boy a great\n_peplos_ or robe. It is the sacred robe of Athena woven for her and\nembroidered by young Athenian maidens and offered to her every five\nyears. The great gold and ivory statue in the Parthenon itself had no\nneed of a robe; she would scarcely have known what to do with one; her\nraiment was already of wrought gold, she carried helmet and spear and\nshield. But there was an ancient image of Athena, an old Madonna of the\npeople, fashioned before Athena became a warrior maiden. This image was\nrudely hewn in wood, it was dressed and decked doll-fashion like a May\nQueen, and to her the great _peplos_ was dedicated. The _peplos_ was\nhoisted as a sail on the Panathenaic ship, and this ship Athena had\nborrowed from Dionysos himself, who went every spring in procession in a\nship-car on wheels to open the season for sailing. To a seafaring people\nlike the Athenians the opening of the sailing season was all-important,\nand naturally began not at midsummer but in spring.\n\n[Illustration: Fig. 5.]\n\nThe sacred _peplos_, or robe, takes us back to the old days when the\nspirit of the year and the \"luck\" of the people was bound up with a rude\nimage. The life of the year died out each year and had to be renewed. To\nmake a new image was expensive and inconvenient, so, with primitive\neconomy it was decided that the life and luck of the image should be\nrenewed by re-dressing it, by offering to it each year a new robe. We\nremember (p. 60) how in Thuringia the new puppet wore the shirt of the\nold and thereby new life was passed from one to the other. But behind\nthe old image we can get to a stage still earlier, when there was at the\nPanathenaia no image at all, only a yearly maypole; a bough hung with\nribbons and cakes and fruits and the like. A bough was cut from the\nsacred olive tree of Athens, called the _Moria_ or Fate Tree. It was\nbound about with fillets and hung with fruit and nuts and, in the\nfestival of the Panathenaia, they carried it up to the Acropolis to give\nto Athena _Polias_, \"Her-of-the-City,\" and as they went they sang the\nold Eiresione song (p. 114). _Polias_ is but the city, the _Polis_\nincarnate.\n\nThis _Moria_, or Fate Tree, was the very life of Athens; the life of the\nolive which fed her and lighted her was the very life of the city. When\nthe Persian host sacked the Acropolis they burnt the holy olive, and it\nseemed that all was over. But next day it put forth a new shoot and the\npeople knew that the city's life still lived. Sophocles[44] sang of the\nglory of the wondrous life tree of Athens:\n\n    \"The untended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe,\n    Sea-gray, children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow,\n    None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth nor age grown bold.\n    For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old;\n    He beholds it, and, Athene, thy own sea-gray eyes behold.\"\n\nThe holy tree carried in procession is, like the image of Athena, made\nof olive-wood, just the incarnate life of Athens ever renewed.\n\nThe Panathenaia was not, like the Dithyramb, a spring festival. It took\nplace in July at the height of the summer heat, when need for rain was\nthe greatest. But the month Hecatombaion, in which it was celebrated,\nwas the first month of the Athenian year and the day of the festival was\nthe birthday of the goddess. When the goddess became a war-goddess, it\nwas fabled that she was born in Olympus, and that she sprang full grown\nfrom her father's head in glittering armour. But she was really born on\nearth, and the day of her birth was the birthday of every earthborn\ngoddess, the day of the beginning of the new year, with its returning\nlife. When men observe only the actual growth of new green life from the\nground, this birthday will be in spring; when they begin to know that\nthe seasons depend on the sun, or when the heat of the sun causes great\nneed of rain, it will be at midsummer, at the solstice, or in northern\nregions where men fear to lose the sun in midwinter, as with us. The\nfrieze of the Parthenon is, then, but a primitive festival translated\ninto stone, a rite frozen to a monument.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPassing over a long space of time we come to our next illustration, the\nApollo Belvedere (Fig. 6).\n\nIt might seem that here at last we have nothing primitive; here we have\nart pure and simple, ideal art utterly cut loose from ritual, \"art for\nart's sake.\" Yet in this Apollo Belvedere, this product of late and\naccomplished, even decadent art, we shall see most clearly the intimate\nrelation of art and ritual; we shall, as it were, walk actually across\nthat transition bridge of ritual which leads from actual life to art.\n\n[Illustration: Fig. 6. The Apollo Belvedere.]\n\nThe date of this famous Apollo cannot be fixed, but it is clearly a copy\nof a type belonging to the fourth century B.C. The poise of the figure\nis singular and, till its intent is grasped, unsatisfactory. Apollo is\ncaught in swift motion but seems, as he stands delicately poised, to be\nabout to fly rather than to run. He stands tiptoe and in a moment will\nhave left the earth. The Greek sculptor's genius was all focussed, as we\nshall presently see, on the human figure and on the mastery of its many\npossibilities of movement and action. Greek statues can roughly be dated\nby the way they stand. At first, in the archaic period, they stand\nfirmly planted with equal weight on either foot, the feet close\ntogether. Then one foot is advanced, but the weight still equally\ndivided, an almost impossible position. Next, the weight is thrown on\nthe right foot; and the left knee is bent. This is of all positions the\nloveliest for the human body. We allow it to women, forbid it to men\nsave to \"\u00e6sthetes.\" If the back numbers of _Punch_ be examined for the\nfigure of \"Postlethwaite\" it will be seen that he always stands in this\ncharacteristic relaxed pose.\n\nWhen the sculptor has mastered the possible he bethinks him of the\nimpossible. He will render the human body flying. It may have been the\naccident of a mythological subject that first suggested the motive.\nLeochares, a famous artist of the fourth century B.C., made a group of\nZeus in the form of an eagle carrying off Ganymede. A replica of the\ngroup is preserved in the Vatican, and should stand for comparison near\nthe Apollo. We have the same tiptoe poise, the figure just about to\nleave the earth. Again, it is not a dance, but a flight. This poise is\nsuggestive to us because it marks an art cut loose, as far as may be,\nfrom earth and its realities, even its rituals.\n\nWhat is it that Apollo is doing? The question and suggested answers have\noccupied many treatises. There is only one answer: We do not know. It\nwas at first thought that the Apollo had just drawn his bow and shot an\narrow. This suggestion was made to account for the pose; but that, as we\nhave seen, is sufficiently explained by the flight-motive. Another\npossible solution is that Apollo brandishes in his uplifted hand the\n\u00e6gis, or goatskin shield, of Zeus. Another suggestion is that he holds\nas often a lustral, or laurel bough, that he is figured as Daphnephoros,\n\"Laurel-Bearer.\"\n\nWe do not know if the Belvedere Apollo carried a laurel, but we _do_\nknow that it was of the very essence of the god to be a Laurel-Bearer.\nThat, as we shall see in a moment, he, like Dionysos, arose in part out\nof a rite, a rite of Laurel-Bearing--a _Daphnephoria_. We have not got\nclear of ritual yet. When Pausanias,[45] the ancient traveller, whose\nnotebook is our chief source about these early festivals, came to Thebes\nhe saw a hill sacred to Apollo, and after describing the temple on the\nhill he says:\n\n     \"The following custom is still, I know, observed at Thebes. A boy\n     of distinguished family and himself well-looking and strong is made\n     the priest of Apollo, _for the space of a year_. The title given\n     him is Laurel-Bearer (Daphnephoros), for these boys wear wreaths\n     made of laurel.\"\n\nWe know for certain now what these yearly priests are: they are the Kings\nof the Year, the Spirits of the Year, May-Kings, Jacks-o'-the-Green.\nThe name given to the boy is enough to show he carried a laurel branch,\nthough Pausanias only mentions a wreath. Another ancient writer gives us\nmore details.[46] He says in describing the festival of the\nLaurel-Bearing:\n\n     \"They wreathe a pole of olive wood with laurel and various flowers.\n     On the top is fitted a bronze globe from which they suspend\n     smaller ones. Midway round the pole they place a lesser globe,\n     binding it with purple fillets, but the end of the pole is decked\n     with saffron. By the topmost globe they mean the sun, to which they\n     actually compare Apollo. The globe beneath this is the moon; the\n     smaller globes hung on are the stars and constellations, and the\n     fillets are the course of the year, for they make them 365 in\n     number. The Daphnephoria is headed by a boy, both whose parents are\n     alive, and his nearest male relation carries the filleted pole. The\n     Laurel-Bearer himself, who follows next, holds on to the laurel; he\n     has his hair hanging loose, he wears a golden wreath, and he is\n     dressed out in a splendid robe to his feet and he wears light\n     shoes. There follows him a band of maidens holding out boughs\n     before them, to enforce the supplication of the hymns.\"\n\nThis is the most elaborate maypole ceremony that we know of in ancient\ntimes. The globes representing sun and moon show us that we have come to\na time when men know that the fruits of the earth in due season depended\non the heavenly bodies. The year with its 365 days is a Sun-Year. Once\nthis Sun-Year established and we find that the times of the solstices,\nmidwinter and midsummer became as, or even more, important than the\nspring itself. The date of the _Daphnephoria_ is not known.\n\nAt Delphi itself, the centre of Apollo-worship, there was a festival\ncalled the _Stepteria_, or festival \"of those who make the wreathes,\" in\nwhich \"mystery\" a Christian Bishop, St. Cyprian, tells us he was\ninitiated. In far-off Tempe--that wonderful valley that is still the\ngreenest spot in stony, barren Greece, and where the laurel trees still\ncluster--there was an altar, and near it a laurel tree. The story went\nthat Apollo had made himself a crown from this very laurel, and _taking\nin his hand a branch of this same laurel_, i.e. as Laurel-Bearer, had\ncome to Delphi and taken over the oracle.\n\n\"And to this day the people of Delphi send high-born boys in procession\nthere. And they, when they have reached Tempe and made a splendid\nsacrifice return back, after wearing themselves wreaths from the very\nlaurel from which the god made himself a wreath.\"\n\nWe are inclined to think of the Greeks as a people apt to indulge in the\nsingular practice of wearing wreaths in public, a practice among us\nconfined to children on their birthdays and a few eccentric people on\ntheir wedding days. We forget the intensely practical purport of the\ncustom. The ancient Greeks wore wreaths and carried boughs, not because\nthey were artistic or poetical, but because they were ritualists, that\nthey might bring back the spring and carry in the summer. The Greek\nbridegroom to-day, as well as the Greek bride, wears a wreath, that his\nmarriage may be the beginning of new life, that his \"wife may be as the\nfruitful vine, and his children as the olive branches round about his\ntable.\" And our children to-day, though they do not know it, wear\nwreaths on their birthdays because with each new year their life is\nre-born.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nApollo then, was, like Dionysos, King of the May and--saving his\npresence--Jack-in-the-Green. The god manifestly arose out of the rite. For\na moment let us see _how_ he arose. It will be remembered that in a\nprevious chapter (p. 70) we spoke of \"personification.\" We think of the\ngod Apollo as an abstraction, an unreal thing, perhaps as a \"false god.\"\nThe god Apollo does not, and never did, exist. He is an idea--a thing made\nby the imagination. But primitive man does not deal with abstractions,\ndoes not worship them. What happens is, as we saw (p. 71), something like\nthis: Year by year a boy is chosen to carry the laurel, to bring in the\nMay, and later year by year a puppet is made. It is a different boy each\nyear, carrying a different laurel branch. And yet in a sense it is the\nsame boy; he is always the Laurel-Bearer--\"Daphnephoros,\" always the\n\"Luck\" of the village or city. This Laurel-Bearer, the same yesterday,\nto-day, and forever, is the stuff of which the god is made. The god arises\nfrom the rite, he is gradually detached from the rite, and as soon as he\ngets a life and being of his own, apart from the rite, he is a first stage\nin art, a work of art existing in the mind, gradually detached from even\nthe faded action of ritual, and later to be the model of the actual work\nof art, the copy in stone.\n\nThe stages, it would seem, are: actual life with its motor reactions,\nthe ritual copy of life with its faded reactions, the image of the god\nprojected by the rite, and, last, the copy of that image, the work of\nart.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe see now why in the history of all ages and every place art is what is\ncalled the \"handmaid of religion.\" She is not really the \"handmaid\" at\nall. She springs straight out of the rite, and her first outward leap is\nthe image of the god. Primitive art in Greece, in Egypt, in Assyria,[47]\nrepresents either rites, processions, sacrifices, magical ceremonies,\nembodied prayers; or else it represents the images of the gods who\nspring from those rites. Track any god right home, and you will find him\nlurking in a ritual sheath, from which he slowly emerges, first as a\n_d\u00e6mon_, or spirit, of the year, then as a full-blown divinity.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn Chapter II we saw how the _dromenon_ gave birth to the _drama_, how,\nbit by bit, out of the chorus of dancers some dancers withdrew and\nbecame spectators sitting apart, and on the other hand others of the\ndancers drew apart on to the stage and presented to the spectators a\nspectacle, a thing to be looked _at_, not joined _in_. And we saw how in\nthis spectacular mood, this being cut loose from immediate action, lay\nthe very essence of the artist and the art-lover. Now in the drama of\nThespis there was at first, we are told, but one actor; later \u00c6schylus\nadded a second. It is clear who this actor, this _protagonist_ or \"first\ncontender\" was, the one actor with the double part, who was Death to be\ncarried out and Summer to be carried in. He was the Bough-Bearer, the\nonly possible actor in the one-part play of the renewal of life and the\nreturn of the year.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe May-King, the leader of the choral dance gave birth not only to the\nfirst actor of the drama, but also, as we have just seen, to the god, be\nhe Dionysos or be he Apollo; and this figure of the god thus imagined\nout of the year-spirit was perhaps more fertile for art than even the\nprotagonist of the drama. It may seem strange to us that a god should\nrise up out of a dance or a procession, because dances and processions\nare not an integral part of our national life, and do not call up any\nvery strong and instant emotion. The old instinct lingers, it is true,\nand emerges at critical moments; when a king dies we form a great\nprocession to carry him to the grave, but we do not dance. We have court\nballs, and these with their stately ordered ceremonials are perhaps the\nlast survival of the genuinely civic dance, but a court ball is not\ngiven at a king's funeral nor in honour of a god.\n\nBut to the Greek the god and the dance were never quite sundered. It\nalmost seems as if in the minds of Greek poets and philosophers there\nlingered some dim half-conscious remembrance that some of these gods at\nleast actually came out of the ritual dance. Thus, Plato,[48] in\ntreating of the importance of rhythm in education says: \"The gods,\npitying the toilsome race of men, have appointed the sequence of\nreligious festivals to give them times of rest, and have given them the\nMuses and Apollo, the Muse-Leader, as fellow-revellers.\"\n\n\"The young of all animals,\" he goes on to say, \"cannot keep quiet,\neither in body or voice. They must leap and skip and overflow with\ngamesomeness and sheer joy, and they must utter all sorts of cries. But\nwhereas animals have no perception of order or disorder in their\nmotions, the gods who have been appointed to men as our fellow-dancers\nhave given to us a sense of pleasure in rhythm and harmony. And so they\nmove us and lead our bands, knitting us together with songs and in\ndances, and these we call _choruses_.\" Nor was it only Apollo and\nDionysos who led the dance. Athena herself danced the Pyrrhic dance.\n\"Our virgin lady,\" says Plato, \"delighting in the sports of the dance,\nthought it not meet to dance with empty hands; she must be clothed in\nfull armour, and in this attire go through the dance. And youths and\nmaidens should in every respect imitate her example, honouring the\ngoddess, both with a view to the actual necessities of war and to the\nfestivals.\"\n\nPlato is unconsciously inverting the order of things, natural\nhappenings. Take the armed dance. There is, first, the \"actual necessity\nof war.\" Men go to war armed, to face actual dangers, and at their head\nis a leader in full armour. That is real life. There is then the festal\nre-enactment of war, when the fight is not actually fought, but there is\nan imitation of war. That is the ritual stage, the _dromenon_. Here,\ntoo, there is a leader. More and more this dance becomes a spectacle,\nless and less an action. Then from the periodic _dromenon_, the ritual\nenacted year by year, emerges an imagined permanent leader; a d\u00e6mon, or\ngod--a Dionysos, an Apollo, an Athena. Finally the account of what\nactually happens is thrown into the past, into a remote distance, and we\nhave an \"\u00e6tiological\" myth--a story told to give a cause or reason. The\nwhole natural process is inverted.\n\nAnd last, as already seen, the god, the first work of art, the thing\nunseen, imagined out of the ritual of the dance, is cast back into the\nvisible world and fixed in space. Can we wonder that a classical\nwriter[49] should say \"the statues of the craftsmen of old times are the\nrelics of ancient dancing.\" That is just what they are, rites caught and\nfixed and frozen. \"Drawing,\" says a modern critic,[50] \"is at bottom,\nlike all the arts, a kind of gesture, a method of dancing on paper.\"\nSculpture, drawing, all the arts save music are imitative; so was the\ndance from which they sprang. But imitation is not all, or even first.\n\"The dance may be mimetic; but the beauty and verve of the performance,\nnot closeness of the imitation impresses; and tame additions of truth\nwill encumber and not convince. The dance must control the pantomime.\"\nArt, that is, gradually dominates mere ritual.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe come to another point. The Greek gods as we know them in classical\nsculpture are always imaged in human shape. This was not of course\nalways the case with other nations. We have seen how among savages the\ntotem, that is, the emblem of tribal unity, was usually an animal or a\nplant. We have seen how the emotions of the Siberian tribe in Saghalien\nfocussed on a bear. The savage totem, the Saghalien Bear, is on the way\nto be, but is not quite, a god; he is not personal enough. The\nEgyptians, and in part the Assyrians, halted half-way and made their\ngods into monstrous shapes, half-animal, half-man, which have their own\nmystical grandeur. But since we are men ourselves, feeling human\nemotion, if our gods are in great part projected emotions, the natural\nform for them to take is human shape.\n\n\"Art imitates Nature,\" says Aristotle, in a phrase that has been much\nmisunderstood. It has been taken to mean that art is a copy or\nreproduction of natural objects. But by \"Nature\" Aristotle never means\nthe outside world of created things, he means rather creative force,\nwhat produces, not what has been produced. We might almost translate the\nGreek phrase, \"Art, like Nature, creates things,\" \"Art acts like Nature\nin producing things.\" These things are, first and foremost, human\nthings, human action. The drama, with which Aristotle is so much\nconcerned, invents human action like real, _natural_ action. Dancing\n\"imitates character, emotion, action.\" Art is to Aristotle almost wholly\nbound by the limitations of _human_ nature.\n\nThis is, of course, characteristically a Greek limitation. \"Man is the\nmeasure of all things,\" said the old Greek sophist, but modern science\nhas taught us another lesson. Man may be in the foreground, but the\ndrama of man's life is acted out for us against a tremendous background\nof natural happenings: a background that preceded man and will outlast\nhim; and this background profoundly affects our imagination, and hence\nour art. We moderns are in love with the background. Our art is a\nlandscape art. The ancient landscape painter could not, or would not,\ntrust the background to tell its own tale: if he painted a mountain he\nset up a mountain-god to make it real; if he outlined a coast he set\nhuman coast-nymphs on its shore to make clear the meaning.\n\nContrast with this our modern landscape, from which bit by bit the nymph\nhas been wholly banished. It is the art of a stage, without actors, a\nscene which is all background, all suggestion. It is an art given us by\nsheer recoil from science, which has dwarfed actual human life almost to\nimaginative extinction.\n\n     \"Landscape, then, offered to the modern imagination a scene empty\n     of definite actors, superhuman or human, that yielded to reverie\n     without challenge all that is in a moral without a creed, tension\n     or ambush of the dark, threat of ominous gloom, the relenting and\n     tender return or overwhelming outburst of light, the pageantry of\n     clouds above a world turned quaker, the monstrous weeds of trees\n     outside the town, the sea that is obstinately epic still.\"[51]\n\nIt was to this world of backgrounds that men fled, hunted by the sense\nof their own insignificance.\n\n\"Minds the most strictly bound in their acts by civil life, in their\nfancy by the shrivelled look of destiny under scientific speculation,\nfelt on solitary hill or shore those tides of the blood stir again that\nare ruled by the sun and the moon and travelled as if to tryst where an\napparition might take form. Poets ordained themselves to this vigil,\nhaunters of a desert church, prompters of an elemental theatre,\nlisteners in solitary places for intimations from a spirit in hiding;\nand painters followed the impulse of Wordsworth.\"\n\nWe can only see the strength and weakness of Greek sculpture, feel the\nemotion of which it was the utterance, if we realize clearly this modern\nspirit of the background. All great modern, and perhaps even ancient,\npoets are touched by it. Drama itself, as Nietzsche showed, \"hankers\nafter dissolution into mystery. Shakespeare would occasionally knock the\nback out of the stage with a window opening on the 'cloud-capp'd\ntowers.'\" But Maeterlinck is the best example, because his genius is\nless. He is the embodiment, almost the caricature, of a tendency.\n\n     \"Maeterlinck sets us figures in the foreground only to launch us\n     into that limbus. The supers jabbering on the scene are there,\n     children of presentiment and fear, to make us aware of a third, the\n     mysterious one, whose name is not on the bills. They come to warn\n     us by the nervous check and hurry of their gossip of the approach\n     of that background power. Omen after omen announces him, the talk\n     starts and drops at his approach, a door shuts and the thrill of\n     his passage is the play.\"[52]\n\nIt is, perhaps, the temperaments that are most allured and terrified by\nthis art of the bogey and the background that most feel the need of and\nbest appreciate the calm and level, rational dignity of Greek naturalism\nand especially the naturalism of Greek sculpture.\n\nFor it is naturalism, not realism, not imitation. By all manner of\nrenunciations Greek sculpture is what it is. The material, itself\nmarble, is utterly unlike life, it is perfectly cold and still, it has\nneither the texture nor the colouring of life. The story of Pygmalion\nwho fell in love with the statue he had himself sculptured is as false\nas it is tasteless. Greek sculpture is the last form of art to incite\nphysical reaction. It is remote almost to the point of chill\nabstraction. The statue in the round renounces not only human life\nitself, but all the natural background and setting of life. The statues\nof the Greek gods are Olympian in spirit as well as subject. They are\nlike the gods of Epicurus, cut loose alike from the affairs of men, and\neven the ordered ways of Nature. So Lucretius[53] pictures them:\n\n     \"The divinity of the gods is revealed and their tranquil abodes,\n     which neither winds do shake nor clouds drench with rains, nor snow\n     congealed by sharp frost harms with hoary fall: an ever cloudless\n     ether o'ercanopies them, and they laugh with light shed largely\n     around. Nature, too, supplies all their wants, and nothing ever\n     impairs their peace of mind.\"\n\nGreek art moves on through a long course of technical accomplishment, of\never-increasing mastery over materials and methods. But this course we\nneed not follow. For our argument the last word is said in the figures\nof these Olympians translated into stone. Born of pressing human needs\nand desires, images projected by active and even anxious ritual, they\npass into the upper air and dwell aloof, spectator-like and all but\nspectral.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[43] II, 38.\n\n[44] _Oed. Col._ 694, trans. D.S. MacColl.\n\n[45] IX, 10, 4.\n\n[46] See my _Themis_, p. 438.\n\n[47] It is now held by some and good authorities that the prehistoric\npaintings of cave-dwelling man had also a ritual origin; that is, that\nthe representations of animals were intended to act magically, to\nincrease the \"supply of the animal or help the hunter to catch him.\"\nBut, as this question is still pending, I prefer, tempting though they\nare, not to use prehistoric paintings as material for my argument.\n\n[48] _Laws_, 653.\n\n[49] _Athen._ XIV, 26, p. 629.\n\n[50] D.S. MacColl, \"A Year of Post-Impressionism,\" _Nineteenth Century_,\np. 29. (1912.)\n\n[51] D.S. MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, p. 20. (1902.)\n\n[52] D.S. MacColl, _op. cit._, p. 18.\n\n[53] II, 18.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nRITUAL, ART AND LIFE\n\n\nIn the preceding chapters we have seen ritual emerge from the practical\ndoings of life. We have noted that in ritual we have the beginning of a\ndetachment from practical ends; we have watched the merely emotional\ndance develop from an undifferentiated chorus into a spectacle performed\nby actors and watched by spectators, a spectacle cut off, not only from\nreal life, but also from ritual issues; a spectacle, in a word, that has\nbecome an end in itself. We have further seen that the choral dance is\nan undifferentiated whole which later divides out into three clearly\narticulate parts, the artist, the work of art, the spectator or art\nlover. We are now in a position to ask what is the good of all this\nantiquarian enquiry? Why is it, apart from the mere delight of\nscientific enquiry, important to have seen that art arose from ritual?\n\nThe answer is simple--\n\nThe object of this book, as stated in the preface, is to try to throw\nsome light on the function of art, that is on what it has done, and\nstill does to-day, for life. Now in the case of a complex growth like\nart, it is rarely if ever possible to understand its function--what it\ndoes, how it works--unless we know something of how that growth began,\nor, if its origin is hid, at least of the simpler forms of activity that\npreceded it. For art, this earlier stage, this simpler form, which is\nindeed itself as it were an embryo and rudimentary art, we found to\nbe--ritual.\n\nRitual, then, has not been studied for its own sake, still less for its\nconnection with any particular dogma, though, as a subject of singular\ngravity and beauty, ritual is well worth a lifetime's study. It has been\nstudied because ritual is, we believe, a frequent and perhaps universal\ntransition stage between actual life and that peculiar contemplation of\nor emotion towards life which we call art. All our long examination of\nbeast-dances, May-day festivals and even of Greek drama has had just\nthis for its object--to make clear that art--save perhaps in a few\nspecially gifted natures--did not arise straight out of life, but out\nof that collective emphasis of the needs and desires of life which we\nhave agreed to call ritual.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOur formal argument is now over and ritual may drop out of the\ndiscussion. But we would guard against a possible misunderstanding. We\nwould not be taken to imply that ritual is obsolete and must drop out of\nlife, giving place to the art it has engendered. It may well be that,\nfor certain temperaments, ritual is a perennial need. Natures specially\ngifted can live lives that are emotionally vivid, even in the rare high\nair of art or science; but many, perhaps most of us, breathe more freely\nin the _medium_, literally the _midway_ space, of some collective\nritual. Moreover, for those of us who are not artists or original\nthinkers the life of the imagination, and even of the emotions, has been\nperhaps too long lived at second hand, received from the artist ready\nmade and felt. To-day, owing largely to the progress of science, and a\nhost of other causes social and economic, life grows daily fuller and\nfreer, and every manifestation of life is regarded with a new reverence.\nWith this fresh outpouring of the spirit, this fuller consciousness of\nlife, there comes a need for _first-hand_ emotion and expression, and\nthat expression is found for all classes in a revival of the ritual\ndance. Some of the strenuous, exciting, self-expressive dances of to-day\nare of the soil and some exotic, but, based as they mostly are on very\nprimitive ritual, they stand as singular evidence of this real recurrent\nneed. Art in these latter days goes back as it were on her own steps,\nrecrossing the ritual bridge back to life.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt remains to ask what, in the light of this ritual origin, is the\nfunction of art? How do we relate it to other forms of life, to science,\nto religion, to morality, to philosophy? These are big-sounding\nquestions, and towards their solution only hints here and there can be\noffered, stray thoughts that have grown up out of this study of ritual\norigins and which, because they have helped the writer, are offered,\nwith no thought of dogmatism, to the reader.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe English are not supposed to be an artistic people, yet art, in some\nform or another, bulks large in the national life. We have theatres, a\nNational Gallery, we have art-schools, our tradesmen provide for us\n\"art-furniture,\" we even hear, absurdly enough, of \"art-colours.\"\nMoreover, all this is not a matter of mere antiquarian interest, we do\nnot simply go and admire the beauty of the past in museums; a movement\ntowards or about art is all alive and astir among us. We have new\ndevelopments of the theatre, problem plays, Reinhardt productions,\nGordon Craig scenery, Russian ballets. We have new schools of painting\ntreading on each other's heels with breathless rapidity: Impressionists,\nPost-Impressionists, Futurists. Art--or at least the desire for, the\ninterest in, art--is assuredly not dead.\n\nMoreover, and this is very important, we all feel about art a certain\nobligation, such as some of us feel about religion. There is an \"ought\"\nabout it. Perhaps we do not really care much about pictures and poetry\nand music, but we feel we \"ought to.\" In the case of music it has\nhappily been at last recognized that if you have not an \"ear\" you cannot\ncare for it, but two generations ago, owing to the unfortunate cheapness\nand popularity of keyed instruments, it was widely held that one half of\nhumanity, the feminine half, \"ought\" to play the piano. This \"ought\"\nis, of course, like most social \"oughts,\" a very complex product, but\nits existence is well worth noting.\n\nIt is worth noting because it indicates a vague feeling that art has a\nreal value, that art is not a mere luxury, nor even a rarefied form of\npleasure. No one feels they _ought_ to take pleasure in beautiful scents\nor in the touch of velvet; they either do or they don't. The first\npoint, then, that must be made clear is that art is of real value to\nlife in a perfectly clear biological sense; it invigorates, enhances,\npromotes actual, spiritual, and through it physical life.\n\nThis from our historical account we should at the outset expect, because\nwe have seen art, by way of ritual, arose out of life. And yet the\nstatement is a sort of paradox, for we have seen also that art differs\nfrom ritual just in this, that in art, whether of the spectator or the\ncreator, the \"motor reactions,\" _i.e._ practical life, the life of\ndoing, is for the time checked. This is of the essence of the artist's\nvision, that he sees things detached and therefore more vividly, more\ncompletely, and in a different light. This is of the essence of the\nartist's emotion, that it is purified from personal desire.\n\nBut, though the artist's vision and emotion alike are modified,\npurified, they are not devitalized. Far from that, by detachment from\naction they are focussed and intensified. Life is enhanced, only it is a\ndifferent kind of life, it is the life of the image-world, of the\n_imag_ination; it is the spiritual and human life, as differentiated\nfrom the life we share with animals. It is a life we all, as human\nbeings, possess in some, but very varying, degrees; and the natural man\nwill always view the spiritual man askance, because he is not\n\"practical.\" But the life of imagination, cut off from practical\nreaction as it is, becomes in turn a motor-force causing new emotions,\nand so pervading the general life, and thus ultimately becoming\n\"practical.\" No one function is completely cut off from another. The\nmain function of art is probably to intensify and purify emotion, but it\nis substantially certain that, if we did not feel, we could not think\nand should not act. Still it remains true that, in artistic\ncontemplation and in the realms of the artist's imagination not only are\npractical motor-reactions cut off, but intelligence is suffused in, and\nto some extent subordinated to, emotion.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOne function, then, of art is to feed and nurture the imagination and\nthe spirit, and thereby enhance and invigorate the whole of human life.\nThis is far removed from the view that the end of art is to give\npleasure. Art does usually cause pleasure, singular and intense, and to\nthat which causes such pleasure we give the name of Beauty. But to\nproduce and enjoy Beauty is not the function of art. Beauty--or rather,\nthe sensation of Beauty--is what the Greeks would call an _epigignomenon\nti telos_, words hard to translate, something between a by-product and a\nsupervening perfection, a thing like--as Aristotle[54] for once\nbeautifully says of pleasure--\"the bloom of youth to a healthy young\nbody.\"\n\nThat this is so we see most clearly in the simple fact that, when the\nartist begins to aim direct at Beauty, he usually misses it. We all\nknow, perhaps by sad experience, that the man who seeks out pleasure for\nherself fails to find her. Let him do his work well for that work's\nsake, exercise his faculties, \"energize\" as Aristotle would say, and he\nwill find pleasure come out unawares to meet him with her shining face;\nbut let him look for her, think of her, even desire her, and she hides\nher head. A man goes out hunting, thinks of nothing but following the\nhounds and taking his fences, being in at the death: his day is\nfull--alas! of pleasure, though he has scarcely known it. Let him forget\nthe fox and the fences, think of pleasure, desire her, and he will be in\nat pleasure's death.\n\nSo it is with the artist. Let him feel strongly, and see raptly--that\nis, in complete detachment. Let him cast this, his rapt vision and his\nintense emotion, into outside form, a statue or a painting; that form\nwill have about it a nameless thing, an unearthly aroma, which we call\nbeauty; this nameless presence will cause in the spectator a sensation\ntoo rare to be called pleasure, and we shall call it a \"sense of\nbeauty.\" But let the artist aim direct at Beauty, and she is gone, gone\nbefore we hear the flutter of her wings.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe sign manual, the banner, as it were, of artistic creation is for the\ncreative artist not pleasure, but something better called joy.\nPleasure, it has been well said, is no more than an instrument contrived\nby Nature to obtain from the individual the preservation and the\npropagation of life. True joy is not the lure of life, but the\nconsciousness of the triumph of creation. Wherever joy is, creation has\nbeen.[55] It may be the joy of a mother in the physical creation of a\nchild; it may be the joy of the merchant adventurer in pushing out new\nenterprise, or of the engineer in building a bridge, or of the artist in\na masterpiece accomplished; but it is always of the thing created.\nAgain, contrast joy with glory. Glory comes with success and is\nexceedingly _pleasant_; it is not joyous. Some men say an artist's crown\nis glory; his deepest satisfaction is in the applause of his fellows.\nThere is no greater mistake; we care for praise just in proportion as we\nare not sure we have succeeded. To the real creative artist even praise\nand glory are swallowed up in the supreme joy of creation. Only the\nartist himself feels the real divine fire, but it flames over into the\nwork of art, and even the spectator warms his hands at the glow.\n\nWe can now, I think, understand the difference between the artist and\ntrue lover of art on the one hand, and the mere \u00e6sthete on the other.\nThe \u00e6sthete does not produce, or, if he produces, his work is thin and\nscanty. In this he differs from the artist; he does not feel so strongly\nand see so clearly that he is forced to utterance. He has no joy, only\npleasure. He cannot even feel the reflection of this creative joy. In\nfact, he does not so much feel as want to feel. He seeks for pleasure,\nfor sensual pleasure as his name says, not for the grosser kinds, but\nfor pleasure of that rarefied kind that we call a sense of beauty. The\n\u00e6sthete, like the flirt, is cold. It is not even that his senses are\neasily stirred, but he seeks the sensation of stirring, and most often\nfeigns it, not finds it. The \u00e6sthete is no more released from his own\ndesires than the practical man, and he is without the practical man's\nhealthy outlet in action. He sees life, not indeed in relation to\naction, but to his own personal sensation. By this alone he is debarred\nfor ever from being an artist. As M. Andr\u00e9 Beaunier has well observed,\nby the irony of things, when we see life in relation to ourselves we\ncannot really represent it at all. The profligate thinks he knows women.\nIt is his irony, his curse that, because he sees them always in relation\nto his own desires, his own pleasure, he never really knows them at all.\n\nThere is another important point. We have seen that art promotes a part\nof life, the spiritual, image-making side. But this side, wonderful\nthough it is, is never the whole of actual life. There is always the\npractical side. The artist is always also a man. Now the \u00e6sthete tries\nto make his whole attitude artistic--that is, contemplative. He is\nalways looking and prying and savouring, _savourant_, as he would say,\nwhen he ought to be living. The result is that there is nothing to\n_savourer_. All art springs by way of ritual out of keen emotion towards\nlife, and even the power to appreciate art needs this emotional reality\nin the spectator. The \u00e6sthete leads at best a parasite, artistic life,\ndogged always by death and corruption.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis brings us straight on to another question: What about Art and\nMorality? Is Art immoral, or non-moral, or highly moral? Here again\npublic opinion is worth examining. Artists, we are told, are bad\nhusbands, and they do not pay their debts. Or if they become good\nhusbands and take to paying their debts, they take also to wallowing in\ndomesticity and produce bad art or none at all; they get tangled in the\nmachinery of practical reactions. Art, again, is apt to deal with risky\nsubjects. Where should we be if there were not a Censor of Plays? Many\nof these instructive attitudes about artists as immoral or non-moral,\nexplain themselves instantly if we remember that the artist is _ipso\nfacto_ detached from practical life. In so far as he is an artist, for\neach and every creative moment he is inevitably a bad husband, if being\na good husband means constant attention to your wife and her interests.\nSpiritual creation _\u00e0 deux_ is a happening so rare as to be negligible.\n\nThe remoteness of the artist, his essential inherent detachment from\nmotor-reaction, explains the perplexities of the normal censor. He,\nbeing a \"practical man,\" regards emotion and vision, feeling and ideas,\nas leading to action. He does not see that art arises out of ritual and\nthat even ritual is one remove from practical life. In the censor's\nworld the spectacle of the nude leads straight to desire, so the dancer\nmust be draped; the problem-play leads straight to the Divorce Court,\ntherefore it must be censored. The normal censor apparently knows\nnothing of that world where motor-reactions are cut off, that house made\nwithout hands, whose doors are closed on desire, eternal in the heavens.\nThe censor is not for the moment a _persona grata_, but let us give him\nhis due. He acts according to his lights and these often quite\nadequately represent the average darkness. A normal audience contains\nmany \"practical\" men whose standard is the same as that of the normal\ncensor. Art--that is vision detached from practical reactions--is to\nthem an unknown world full of moral risks from which the artist is _qu\u00e2_\nartist immune.\n\nSo far we might perhaps say that art was non-moral. But the statement\nwould be misleading, since, as we have seen, art is in its very origin\nsocial, and social means human and collective. Moral and social are, in\ntheir final analysis, the same. That human, collective emotion, out of\nwhich we have seen the choral dance arise, is in its essence moral; that\nis, it unites. \"Art,\" says Tolstoy, \"has this characteristic, that it\nunites people.\" In this conviction, as we shall later see, he\nanticipates the modern movement of the Unanimists (p. 249).\n\nBut there is another, and perhaps simpler, way in which art is moral. As\nalready suggested, it purifies by cutting off the motor-reactions of\npersonal desire. An artist deeply in love with his friend's wife once\nsaid: \"If only I could paint her and get what I want from her, I could\nbear it.\" His wish strikes a chill at first; it sounds egotistic; it has\nthe peculiar, instinctive, inevitable cruelty of the artist, seeing in\nhuman nature material for his art. But it shows us the moral side of\nart. The artist was a good and sensitive man; he saw the misery he had\nbrought and would bring to people he loved, and he saw, or rather felt,\na way of escape; he saw that through art, through vision, through\ndetachment, desire might be slain, and the man within him find peace. To\nsome natures this instinct after art is almost their sole morality. If\nthey find themselves intimately entangled in hate or jealousy or even\ncontempt, so that they are unable to see the object of their hate or\njealousy or contempt in a clear, quiet and lovely light, they are\nrestless, miserable, morally out of gear, and they are constrained to\nfetter or slay personal desire and so find rest.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis aloofness, this purgation of emotion from personal passion, art has\nin common with philosophy. If the philosopher will seek after truth,\nthere must be, says Plotinus, a \"turning away\" of the spirit, a\ndetachment. He must aim at contemplation; action, he says, is \"a\nweakening of contemplation.\" Our word _theory_, which we use in\nconnection with reasoning and which comes from the same Greek root as\n_theatre_, means really looking fixedly at, contemplation; it is very\nnear in meaning to our _imagination_. But the philosopher differs from\nthe artist in this: he aims not only at the contemplation of truth, but\nat the ordering of truths, he seeks to make of the whole universe an\nintelligible structure. Further, he is not driven by the gadfly of\ncreation, he is not forced to cast his images into visible or audible\nshape. He is remoter from the push of life. Still, the philosopher,\nlike the artist, lives in a world of his own, with a spell of its own\nnear akin to beauty, and the secret of that spell is the same detachment\nfrom the tyranny of practical life. The essence of art, says Santayana,\nis \"the steady contemplation of things in their order and worth.\" He\nmight have been defining philosophy.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf art and philosophy are thus near akin, art and science are in their\nbeginning, though not in their final development, contrasted. Science,\nit seems, begins with the desire for practical utility. Science, as\nProfessor Bergson has told us, has for its initial aim the making of\ntools for life. Man tries to find out the laws of Nature, that is, how\nnatural things behave, in order primarily that he may get the better of\nthem, rule over them, shape them to his ends. That is why science is at\nfirst so near akin to magic--the cry of both is:\n\n    \"I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.\"\n\nBut, though the feet of science are thus firmly planted on the solid\nground of practical action, her head, too, sometimes touches the\nhighest heavens. The real man of science, like the philosopher, soon\ncomes to seek truth and knowledge for their own sake. In art, in\nscience, in philosophy, there come eventually the same detachment from\npersonal desire and practical reaction; and to artist, man of science,\nand philosopher alike, through this detachment there comes at times the\nsame peace that passeth all understanding.\n\nAttempts have been often made to claim for art the utility, the\ntool-making property, that characterizes the beginnings of science.\nNothing is beautiful, it is sometimes said, that is not useful; the\nbeauty of a jug or a table depends, we are often told, on its perfect\nadaptation to its use. There is here some confusion of thought and some\nobvious, but possibly unconscious, special pleading. Much of art,\nspecially decorative art, arises out of utilities, but its aim and its\ncriterion is not utility. Art may be structural, commemorative, magical,\nwhat-not, may grow up out of all manner of practical needs, but it is\nnot till it is cut loose from these practical needs that Art is herself\nand comes to her own. This does not mean that the jugs or tables are to\nbe bad jugs or tables, still less does it mean that the jugs or tables\nshould be covered with senseless machine-made ornament; but the utility\nof the jug or table is a good in itself independent of, though often\nassociated with, its merit as art.\n\nNo one has, I think, ever called Art \"the handmaid of Science.\" There\nis, indeed, no need to establish a hierarchy. Yet in a sense the\nconverse is true and Science is the handmaid of Art. Art is only\npracticable as we have seen, when it is possible safely to cut off\nmotor-reactions. By the long discipline of ritual man accustomed himself\nto slacken his hold on action, and be content with a shadowy counterfeit\npractice. Then last, when through knowledge he was relieved from the\nneed of immediate reaction to imminent realities, he loosed hold for a\nmoment altogether, and was free to look, and art was born. He can never\nquit his hold for long; but it would seem that, as science advances and\nlife gets easier and easier, safer and safer, he may loose his hold for\nlonger spaces. Man subdues the world about him first by force and then\nby reason; and when the material world is mastered and lies at his beck,\nhe needs brute force no longer, and needs reason no more to make tools\nfor conquest. He is free to think for thought's sake, he may trust\nintuition once again, and above all dare to lose himself in\ncontemplation, dare to be more and more an artist. Only here there lurks\nan almost ironical danger. Emotion towards life is the primary stuff of\nwhich art is made; there might be a shortage of this very emotional\nstuff of which art herself is ultimately compacted.\n\nScience, then, helps to make art possible by making life safer and\neasier, it \"makes straight in the desert a highway for our God.\" But\nonly rarely and with special limitations easily understood does it\nprovide actual material for art. Science deals with abstractions,\nconcepts, class names, made by the intellect for convenience, that we\nmay handle life on the side desirable to us. When we classify things,\ngive them class-names, we simply mean that we note for convenience that\ncertain actually existing objects have similar qualities, a fact it is\nconvenient for us to know and register. These class-names being\n_abstract_--that is, bundles of qualities rent away from living actual\nobjects, do not easily stir emotion, and, therefore, do not easily\nbecome material for art whose function it is to express and communicate\nemotion. Particular qualities, like love, honour, faith, may and _do_\nstir emotion; and certain bundles of qualities like, for example,\nmotherhood tend towards personification; but the normal class label like\nhorse, man, triangle does not easily become material for art; it remains\na practical utility for science.\n\nThe abstractions, the class-names of science are in this respect quite\ndifferent from those other abstractions or unrealities already\nstudied--the gods of primitive religion. The very term we use shows\nthis. _Abstractions_ are things, qualities, _dragged away_ consciously\nby the intellect, from actual things objectively existing. The primitive\ngods are personifications--_i.e._ collective emotions taking shape in\nimagined form. Dionysos has no more actual, objective existence than the\nabstract horse. But the god Dionysos was not made by the intellect for\npractical convenience, he was begotten by emotion, and, therefore, he\nre-begets it. He and all the other gods are, therefore, the proper\nmaterial for art; he is, indeed, one of the earliest forms of art. The\nabstract horse, on the other hand, is the outcome of reflection. We\nmust honour him as of quite extraordinary use for the purposes of\npractical life, but he leaves us cold and, by the artist, is best\nneglected.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere remains the relation of Art to Religion.[56] By now, it may be\nhoped, this relation is transparently clear. The whole object of the\npresent book has been to show how primitive art grew out of ritual, how\nart is in fact but a later and more sublimated, more detached form of\nritual. We saw further that the primitive gods themselves were but\nprojections or, if we like it better, personifications of the rite. They\narose straight out of it.\n\nNow we say advisedly \"primitive gods,\" and this with no intention of\nobscurantism. The god of later days, the unknown source of life, the\nunresolved mystery of the world, is not begotten of a rite, is not,\nessentially not, the occasion or object of art. With his relation to\nart--which is indeed practically non-existent--we have nothing to do. Of\nthe other gods we may safely say that not only are they objects of art,\nthey are its prime material; in a word, primitive theology is an early\nstage in the formation of art. Each primitive god, like the rite from\nwhich he sprang, is a half-way house between practical life and art; he\ncomes into being from a half, but only half, inhibited desire.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIs there, then, no difference, except in degree of detachment, between\nreligion and art? Both have the like emotional power; both carry with\nthem a sense of obligation, though the obligation of religion is the\nstronger. But there is one infallible criterion between the two which is\nall-important, and of wide-reaching consequences. Primitive religion\nasserts that her imaginations have objective existence; art more happily\nmakes no such claim. The worshipper of Apollo believes, not only that he\nhas imagined the lovely figure of the god and cast a copy of its shape\nin stone, but he also believes that in the outside world the god Apollo\nexists as an object. Now this is certainly untrue; that is, it does not\ncorrespond with fact. There is no such thing as the god Apollo, and\nscience makes a clean sweep of Apollo and Dionysos and all such\nfictitious objectivities; they are _eidola_, idols, phantasms, not\nobjective realities. Apollo fades earlier than Dionysos because the\nworshipper of Dionysos keeps hold of _the_ reality that he and his\nchurch or group have projected the god. He knows that _prier, c'est\n\u00e9laborer Dieu_; or, as he would put it, he is \"one with\" his god.\nReligion has this in common with art, that it discredits the actual\npractical world; but only because it creates a new world and insists on\nits actuality and objectivity.\n\nWhy does the conception of a god impose obligation? Just because and in\nso far as he claims to have objective existence. By giving to his god\nfrom the outset objective existence the worshipper prevents his god from\ntaking his place in that high kingdom of spiritual realities which is\nthe imagination, and sets him down in that lower objective world which\nalways compels practical reaction. What might have been an ideal becomes\nan idol. Straightway this objectified idol compels all sorts of ritual\nreactions of prayer and praise and sacrifice. It is as though another\nand a more exacting and commanding fellow-man were added to the\nuniverse. But a moment's reflection will show that, when we pass from\nthe vague sense of power or _mana_ felt by the savage to the personal\ngod, to Dionysos or Apollo, though it may seem a set back it is a real\nadvance. It is the substitution of a human and tolerably humane power\nfor an incalculable whimsical and often cruel force. The idol is a step\ntowards, not a step from, the ideal. Ritual makes these idols, and it is\nthe business of science to shatter them and set the spirit free for\ncontemplation. Ritual must wane that art may wax.\n\nBut we must never forget that ritual is the bridge by which man passes,\nthe ladder by which he climbs from earth to heaven. The bridge must not\nbe broken till the transit is made. And the time is not yet. We must not\npull down the ladder till we are sure the last angel has climbed. Only\nthen, at last, we dare not leave it standing. Earth pulls hard, and it\nmay be that the angels who ascended might _de_scend and be for ever\nfallen.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt may be well at the close of our enquiry to test the conclusions at\nwhich we have arrived by comparing them with certain _endoxa_, as\nAristotle would call them, that is, opinions and theories actually\ncurrent at the present moment. We take these contemporary controversies,\nnot implying that they are necessarily of high moment in the history of\nart, or that they are in any fundamental sense new discoveries; but\nbecause they are at this moment current and vital, and consequently form\na good test for the adequacy of our doctrines. It will be satisfactory\nif we find our view includes these current opinions, even if it to some\nextent modifies them and, it may be hoped, sets them in a new light.\n\nWe have already considered the theory that holds art to be the creation\nor pursuit or enjoyment of beauty. The other view falls readily into two\ngroups:\n\n(1) The \"imitation\" theory, with its modification, the idealization\ntheory, which holds that art either copies Nature, or, out of natural\nmaterials, improves on her.\n\n(2) The \"expression\" theory, which holds that the aim of art is to\nexpress the emotions and thoughts of the artist.\n\nThe \"Imitation\" theory is out of fashion now-a-days. Plato and Aristotle\nheld it; though Aristotle, as we have seen, did not mean by \"imitating\nNature\" quite what we mean to-day. The Imitation theory began to die\ndown with the rise of Romanticism, which stressed the personal,\nindividual emotion of the artist. Whistler dealt it a rude,\nill-considered blow by his effective, but really foolish and irrelevant,\nremark that to attempt to create Art by imitating Nature was \"like\ntrying to make music by sitting on the piano.\" But, as already noted,\nthe Imitation theory of art was really killed by the invention of\nphotography. It was impossible for the most insensate not to see that in\na work of art, of sculpture or painting, there was an element of value\nnot to be found in the exact transcript of a photograph. Henceforth the\nImitation theory lived on only in the weakened form of Idealization.\n\nThe reaction against the Imitation theory has naturally and inevitably\ngone much too far. We have \"thrown out the child with the bath-water.\"\nAll through the present book we have tried to show that art _arises\nfrom_ ritual, and ritual is in its essence a faded action, an\nimitation. Moreover, every work of art _is_ a copy of something, only\nnot a copy of anything having actual existence in the outside world.\nRather it is a copy of that inner and highly emotionalized vision of the\nartist which it is granted to him to see and recreate when he is\nreleased from certain practical reactions.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Impressionism that dominated the pictorial art of the later years of\nthe nineteenth century was largely a modified and very delicate\nimitation. Breaking with conventions as to how things are _supposed to\nbe_--conventions mainly based not on seeing but on knowing or\nimagining--the Impressionist insists on purging his vision from\nknowledge, and representing things not as they are but as they really\n_look_. He imitates Nature not as a whole, but as she presents herself\nto his eyes. It was a most needful and valuable purgation, since\npainting is the art proper of the eye. But, when the new effects of the\nworld as simply _seen_, the new material of light and shadow and tone,\nhad been to some extent--never completely--mastered, there was\ninevitable reaction. Up sprang Post-Impressionists and Futurists. They\nwill not gladly be classed together, but both have this in common--they\nare Expressionists, not Impressionists, not Imitators.\n\nThe Expressionists, no matter by what name they call themselves, have\none criterion. They believe that art is not the copying or idealizing of\nNature, or of any aspect of Nature, but the expression and communication\nof the artist's emotion. We can see that, between them and the\nImitationists, the Impressionists form a delicate bridge. They, too,\nfocus their attention on the artist rather than the object, only it is\non the artist's particular _vision_, his impression, what he actually\nsees, not on his emotion, what he feels.\n\nModern life is _not_ simple--cannot be simple--ought not to be; it is\nnot for nothing that we are heirs to the ages. Therefore the art that\nutters and expresses our emotion towards modern life cannot be simple;\nand, moreover, it must before all things embody not only that living\ntangle which is felt by the Futurists as so real, but it must purge and\norder it, by complexities of tone and rhythm hitherto unattempted. One\nart, beyond all others, has blossomed into real, spontaneous,\nunconscious life to-day, and that is Music; the other arts stand round\narrayed, half paralyzed, with drooping, empty hands. The nineteenth\ncentury saw vast developments in an art that could express abstract,\nunlocalized, unpersonified feelings more completely than painting or\npoetry, the art of Music.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs a modern critic[57] has well observed: \"In tone and rhythm music has\na notation for every kind and degree of action and passion, presenting\nabstract moulds of its excitement, fluctuation, suspense, crisis,\nappeasement; and all this _anonymously_, without place, actors,\ncircumstances, named or described, without a word spoken. Poetry has to\nsupply definite thought, arguments driving at a conclusion, ideas\nmortgaged to this or that creed or system; and to give force to these\ncan command only a few rhythms limited by the duration of a human breath\nand the pitch of an octave. The little effects worked out in this small\ncompass music sweeps up and builds into vast fabrics of emotion with a\ndissolute freedom undreamed of in any other art.\"\n\nIt may be that music provides for a century too stagnant and listless to\nact out its own emotions, too reflective to be frankly sensuous, a\nshadowy pageant of sense and emotion, that serves as a _katharsis_ or\npurgation.\n\nAnyhow, \"an art that came out of the old world two centuries ago, with a\nfew chants, love-songs, and dances; that a century ago was still tied to\nthe words of a mass or an opera; or threading little dance-movements\ntogether in a 'suite,' became in the last century this extraordinary\ndebauch, in which the man who has never seen a battle, loved a woman, or\nworshipped a god, may not only ideally, but through the response of his\nnerves and pulses to immediate rhythmical attack, enjoy the ghosts of\nstruggle, rapture, and exaltation with a volume and intricacy, an\nanguish, a triumph, an irresponsibility, unheard of. An amplified\npattern of action and emotion is given: each man may fit to it what\nimages he will.\"[58]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf our contention throughout this book be correct the Expressionists are\nin one matter abundantly right. Art, we have seen, again and again\nrises by way of ritual out of emotion, out of life keenly and vividly\nlivid. The younger generation are always talking of life; they have a\nsort of cult of life. Some of the more valorous spirits among them even\ntend to disparage art that life may be the more exalted. \"Stop painting\nand sculping,\" they cry, \"and go and see a football match.\" There you\nhave life! Life is, undoubtedly, essential to art because life is the\nstuff of emotion, but some thinkers and artists have an oddly limited\nnotion of what life is. It must, it seems, in the first place, be\nessentially physical. To sit and dream in your study is not to live. The\nreason of this odd limitation is easy to see. We all think life is\nespecially the sort of life we are _not_ living ourselves. The\nhard-worked University professor thinks that \"Life\" is to be found in a\nFrench _caf\u00e9_; the polished London journalist looks for \"Life\" among the\nnaked Polynesians. The cult of savagery, and even of simplicity, in\nevery form, simply spells complex civilization and diminished physical\nvitality.\n\nThe Expressionist is, then, triumphantly right in the stress he lays on\nemotion; but he is not right if he limits life to certain of its more\nelementary manifestations; and still less is he right, to our minds, in\nmaking life and art in any sense coextensive. Art, as we have seen,\nsustains and invigorates life, but only does it by withdrawal from these\nvery same elementary forms of life, by inhibiting certain sensuous\nreactions.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn another matter one section of Expressionists, the Futurists, are in\nthe main right. The emotion to be expressed is the emotion of to-day, or\nstill better to-morrow. The mimetic dance arose not only nor chiefly out\nof reflection on the past; but out of either immediate joy or imminent\nfear or insistent hope for the future. We are not prepared perhaps to go\nall lengths, to \"burn all museums\" because of their contagious\ncorruption, though we might be prepared to \"banish the nude for the\nspace of ten years.\" If there is to be any true living art, it must\narise, not from the contemplation of Greek statues, not from the revival\nof folk-songs, not even from the re-enacting of Greek plays, but from a\nkeen emotion felt towards things and people living to-day, in modern\nconditions, including, among other and deeper forms of life, the haste\nand hurry of the modern street, the whirr of motor cars and aeroplanes.\n\nThere are artists alive to-day, strayed revellers, who wish themselves\nback in the Middle Ages, who long for the time when each man would have\nhis house carved with a bit of lovely ornament, when every village\nchurch had its Madonna and Child, when, in a word, art and life and\nreligion went hand in hand, not sharply sundered by castes and\nprofessions. But we may not put back the clock, and, if by\ndifferentiation we lose something, we gain much. The old choral dance on\nthe orchestral floor was an undifferentiated thing, it had a beauty of\nits own; but by its differentiation, by the severance of artist and\nactors and spectators, we have gained--the drama. We may not cast\nreluctant eyes backwards; the world goes forward to new forms of life,\nand the Churches of to-day must and should become the Museums of\nto-morrow.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is curious and instructive to note that Tolstoy's theory of Art,\nthough not his practice, is essentially Expressive and even approaches\nthe dogmas of the Futurist. Art is to him just the transmission of\npersonal emotion to others. It may be bad emotion or it may be good\nemotion, emotion it must be. To take his simple and instructive\ninstance: a boy goes out into a wood and meets a wolf, he is frightened,\nhe comes back and tells the other villagers what he felt, how he went to\nthe wood feeling happy and light-hearted and the wolf came, and what the\nwolf looked like, and how he began to be frightened. This is, according\nto Tolstoy, art. Even if the boy never saw a wolf at all, if he had\nreally at another time been frightened, and if he was able to conjure up\nfear in himself and communicate it to others--that also would be art.\nThe essential is, according to Tolstoy, that he should feel himself and\nso represent his feeling that he communicates it to others.[59]\nArt-schools, art-professionalism, art-criticism are all useless or worse\nthan useless, because they cannot teach a man to feel. Only life can do\nthat.\n\nAll art is, according to Tolstoy, good _qu\u00e2_ art that succeeds in\ntransmitting emotion. But there is good emotion and bad emotion, and the\nonly right material for art is good emotion, and the only good emotion,\nthe only emotion worth expressing, is subsumed, according to Tolstoy, in\nthe religion of the day. This is how he explains the constant affinity\nin nearly all ages of art and religion. Instead of regarding religion as\nan early phase of art, he proceeds to define religious perception as the\nhighest social ideal of the moment, as that \"understanding of the\nmeaning of life which represents the highest level to which men of that\nsociety have attained, an understanding defining the highest good at\nwhich that society aims.\" \"Religious perception in a society,\" he\nbeautifully adds, \"is like the direction of a flowing river. If the\nriver flows at all, it must have a direction.\" Thus, religion, to\nTolstoy, is not dogma, not petrifaction, it makes indeed dogma\nimpossible. The religious perception of to-day flows, Tolstoi says, in\nthe Christian channel towards the union of man in a common brotherhood.\nIt is the business of the modern artist to feel and transmit emotion\ntowards this unity of man.\n\nNow it is not our purpose to examine whether Tolstoy's definition of\nreligion is adequate or indeed illuminating. What we wish to note is\nthat he grasps the truth that in art we must look and feel, and look and\nfeel forward, not backward, if we would live. Art somehow, like\nlanguage, is always feeling forward to newer, fuller, subtler emotions.\nShe seems indeed in a way to feel ahead even of science; a poet will\nforecast dimly what a later discovery will confirm. Whether and how long\nold channels, old forms will suffice for the new spirit can never be\nforeseen.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe end with a point of great importance, though the doctrine we would\nemphasize may be to some a hard saying, even a stumbling-block. Art, as\nTolstoy divined, is social, not individual. Art is, as we have seen,\nsocial in origin, it remains and must remain social in function. The\ndance from which the drama rose was a choral dance, the dance of a band,\na group, a church, a community, what the Greeks called a _thiasos_. The\nword means a _band_ and a _thing of devotion_; and reverence, devotion,\ncollective emotion, is social in its very being. That band was, to\nbegin with, as we saw, the whole collection of initiated tribesmen,\nlinked by a common name, rallying round a common symbol.\n\nEven to-day, when individualism is rampant, art bears traces of its\ncollective, social origin. We feel about it, as noted before, a certain\n\"ought\" which always spells social obligation. Moreover, whenever we\nhave a new movement in art, it issues from a group, usually from a small\nprofessional coterie, but marked by strong social instincts, by a\nmissionary spirit, by intemperate zeal in propaganda, by a tendency,\nalways social, to crystallize conviction into dogma. We can scarcely,\nunless we are as high-hearted as Tolstoy, hope now-a-days for an art\nthat shall be world-wide. The tribe is extinct, the family in its old\nrigid form moribund, the social groups we now look to as centres of\nemotion are the groups of industry, of professionalism and of sheer\nmutual attraction. Small and strange though such groups may appear, they\nare real social factors.\n\nNow this social, collective element in art is too apt to be forgotten.\nWhen an artist claims that expression is the aim of art he is too apt to\nmean self-expression only--utterance of individual emotion. Utterance\nof individual emotion is very closely neighboured by, is almost\nidentical with, self-enhancement. What should be a generous, and in part\naltruistic, exaltation becomes mere _megalomania_. This egotism is, of\ncourse, a danger inherent in all art. The suspension of motor-reactions\nto the practical world isolates the artist, cuts him off from his\nfellow-men, makes him in a sense an egotist. Art, said Zola, is \"the\nworld seen through a temperament.\" But this suspension is, not that he\nshould turn inward to feed on his own vitals, but rather to free him for\ncontemplation. All great art releases from self.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe young are often temporary artists: art, being based on life, calls\nfor a strong vitality. The young are also self-centred and seek\nself-enhancement. This need of self-expression is a sort of artistic\nimpulse. The young are, partly from sheer immaturity, still more through\na foolish convention, shut out from real life; they are secluded, forced\nto become in a sense artists, or, if they have not the power for that,\nat least self-aggrandizers. They write lyric poems, they love\nmasquerading, they focus life on to themselves in a way which, later\non, life itself makes impossible. This pseudo-art, this\nself-aggrandizement usually dies a natural death before the age of\nthirty. If it live on, one remedy is, of course, the scientific\nattitude; that attitude which is bent on considering and discovering the\nrelations of things among themselves, not their personal relation to us.\nThe study of science is a priceless discipline in self-abnegation, but\nonly in negation; it looses us from self, it does not link us to others.\nThe real and natural remedy for the egotism of youth is Life, not\nnecessarily the haunting of _caf\u00e9s_, or even the watching of football\nmatches, but strenuous activity in the simplest human relations of daily\nhappenings. \"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is always apt to be some discord between the artist and the large\npractical world in which he lives, but those ages are happiest in which\nthe discord is least. The nineteenth century, amid its splendid\nachievements in science and industry, in government and learning, and\nabove all in humanity, illustrates this conflict in an interesting way.\nTo literature, an art which can explain itself, the great public world\nlent on the whole a reverent and intelligent ear. Its great prose\nwriters were at peace with their audience and were inspired by great\npublic interests. Some of the greatest, for example Tolstoy, produced\ntheir finest work on widely human subjects, and numbered their readers\nand admirers probably by the million. Writers like Dickens, Thackeray,\nKingsley, Mill, and Carlyle, even poets like Tennyson and Browning, were\nfull of great public interests and causes, and, in different degrees and\nat different stages of their lives, were thoroughly and immensely\npopular. On the other hand, one can find, at the beginning of the\nperiod, figures like Blake and Shelley, and all through it a number of\npainters--the pre-Raphaelites, the Impressionists--walking like aliens\nin a Philistine world. Even great figures like Burne-Jones and Whistler\nwere for the greater part of their lives unrecognized or mocked at.\nMillais reached the attention of the world, but was thought by the\nstricter fraternity to have in some sense or other sold his soul and\ncommitted the great sin of considering the bourgeois. The bourgeois\nshould be despised not partially but completely. His life, his\ninterests, his code of ethics and conduct must all be matters of entire\nindifference or amused contempt, to the true artist who intends to do\nhis own true work and call his soul his own.\n\nAt a certain moment, during the eighties and nineties, it looked as if\nthese doctrines were generally accepted, and the divorce between art and\nthe community had become permanent. But it seems as if this attitude,\nwhich coincided with a period of reaction in political matters and a\nrecrudescence of a belief in force and on unreasoned authority, is\nalready passing away. There are not wanting signs that art, both in\npainting and sculpture, and in poetry and novel-writing, is beginning\nagain to realize its social function, beginning to be impatient of mere\nindividual emotion, beginning to aim at something bigger, more bound up\nwith a feeling towards and for the common weal.\n\nTake work like that of Mr. Galsworthy or Mr. Masefield or Mr. Arnold\nBennett. Without appraising its merits or demerits we cannot but note\nthat the social sense is always there, whether it be of a class or of a\nwhole community. In a play like _Justice_ the writer does not \"express\"\nhimself, he does not even merely show the pathos of a single human\nbeing's destiny, he sets before us a much bigger thing--man tragically\ncaught and torn in the iron hands of a man-made machine, Society itself.\nIncarnate Law is the protagonist, and, as it happens, the villain of the\npiece. It is a fragment of _Les Mis\u00e9rables_ over again, in a severer and\nmore restrained technique. An art like this starts, no doubt, from\nemotion towards personal happenings--there is nothing else from which it\ncan start; but, even as it sets sail for wider seas, it is loosed from\npersonal moorings.\n\nScience has given us back something strangely like a World-Soul, and art\nis beginning to feel she must utter our emotion towards it. Such art is\nexposed to an inherent and imminent peril. Its very bigness and newness\ntends to set up fresh and powerful reactions. Unless, in the process of\ncreation, these can be inhibited, the artist will be lost in the\nreformer, and the play or the novel turn tract. This does not mean that\nthe artist, if he is strong enough, may not be reformer too, only not at\nthe moment of creation.\n\nThe art of Mr. Arnold Bennett gets its bigness, its collectivity, in\npart--from extension over time. Far from seeking after beauty, he almost\ngoes out to embrace ugliness. He does not spare us even dullness, that\nwe may get a sense of the long, waste spaces of life, their dreary\nreality. We are keenly interested in the loves of hero and heroine, but\nall the time something much bigger is going on, generation after\ngeneration rolls by in ceaseless panorama; it is the life not of Edwin\nand Hilda, it is the life of the Five Towns. After a vision so big, to\ncome back to the ordinary individualistic love-story is like looking\nthrough the wrong end of a telescope.\n\nArt of high quality and calibre is seldom obscure. The great popular\nwriters of the nineteenth century--Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson,\nTolstoy--wrote so that all could understand. A really big artist has\nsomething important to say, something vast to show, something that moves\nhim and presses on him; and he will say it simply because he must get it\nsaid. He will trick it out with no devices, most of all with no\nobscurities. It has vexed and torn him enough while it was pushing its\nway to be born. He has no peace till it is said, and said as clearly as\nhe may. He says it, not consciously for the sake of others, but for\nhimself, to ease him from the burden of big thought. Moreover, art,\nwhose business is to transmit emotion, should need no commentary. Art\ncomes out of _theoria_, contemplation, steady looking at, but never out\nof _theory_. Theory can neither engender nor finally support it. An\nexhibition of pictures with an explanatory catalogue, scientifically\ninteresting though it may be, stands, in a sense, self-condemned.\n\nWe must, however, remember that all art is not of the whole community.\nThere are small groups feeling their own small but still collective\nemotion, fashioning their own language, obscure sometimes to all but\nthemselves. They are right so to fashion it, but, if they appeal to a\nwider world, they must strive to speak in the vulgar tongue,\nunderstanded of the people.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is, indeed, a hopeful sign of the times, a mark of the revival of\nsocial as contrasted with merely individualistic instincts that a\nyounger generation of poets, at least in France, tend to form themselves\ninto small groups, held together not merely by eccentricities of\nlanguage or garb, but by some deep inner conviction strongly held in\ncommon. Such a unity of spirit is seen in the works of the latter group\nof thinkers and writers known as _Unanimists_. They tried and failed to\nfound a community. Their doctrine, if doctrine convictions so fluid can\nbe called, is strangely like the old group-religion of the common dance,\nonly more articulate. Of the Unanimist it might truly be said, \"_il\nbuvait l'indistinction_.\" To him the harsh old Roman mandate _Divide et\nimpera_, \"Divide men that you may rule them,\" spells death. His dream is\nnot of empire and personal property but of the realization of life,\ncommon to all. To this school the great reality is the social group,\nwhatever form it take, family, village or town. Their only dogma is the\nunity and immeasurable sanctity of life. In practice they are Christian,\nyet wholly free from the asceticism of modern Christianity. Their\nattitude in art is as remote as possible from, it is indeed the very\nantithesis to, the \u00e6sthetic exclusiveness of the close of last century.\nLike St. Peter, the Unanimists have seen a sheet let down and heard a\nvoice from heaven saying: \"Call thou nothing common nor unclean.\"\n\nAbove all, the Unanimist remembers and realizes afresh the old truth\nthat \"no man liveth unto himself.\" According to the Expressionist's\ncreed, as we have seen, the end of art is to utter and communicate\nemotion. The fullest and finest emotions are those one human being feels\ntowards another. Every sympathy is an enrichment of life, every\nantipathy a negation. It follows then, that, for the Unanimist, Love is\nthe fulfilling of his Law.\n\nIt is a beautiful and life-giving faith, felt and with a perfect\nsincerity expressed towards all nature by the Indian poet Tagore, and\ntowards humanity especially by M. Vildrac in his _Book of Love_ (\"Livre\nd'Amour\"). He tells us in his \"Commentary\" how to-day the poet, sitting\nat home with pen and paper before him, feels that he is pent in, stifled\nby himself. He had been about to re-tell the old, old story of himself,\nto set himself once more on the stage of his poem--the same old dusty\nself tricked out, costumed anew. Suddenly he knows the figure to be\ntawdry and shameful. He is hot all over when he looks at it; he must out\ninto the air, into the street, out of the stuffy museum where so long\nhe has stirred the dead egotist ashes, out into the bigger life, the\nlife of his fellows; he must live, with them, by them, in them.\n\n    \"I am weary of deeds done inside myself,\n    I am weary of voyages inside myself,\n    And of heroism wrought by strokes of the pen,\n    And of a beauty made up of formul\u00e6.\n\n    \"I am ashamed of lying to my work,\n    Of my work lying to my life,\n    And of being able to content myself,\n    By burning sweet spices,\n    With the mouldering smell that is master here.\"\n\nAgain, in \"The Conquerors,\" the poet dreams of the Victorious One who\nhas no army, the Knight who rides afoot, the Crusader without breviary\nor scrip, the Pilgrim of Love who, by the shining in his eyes, draws all\nmen to him, and they in turn draw other men until, at last:\n\n    \"The time came in the land,\n    The time of the Great Conquest,\n    When the people with this desire\n    Left the threshold of their door\n    To go forth towards one another.\n\n    \"And the time came in the land\n    When to fill all its story\n    There was nothing but songs in unison,\n    _One round danced about the houses_,\n    One battle and one victory.\"\n\nAnd so our tale ends where it began, with the Choral Dance.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[54] _Ethics_, X, 4.\n\n[55] H. Bergson, _Life and Consciousness_, Huxley Lecture, May 29, 1911.\n\n[56] Religion is here used as meaning the worship of some form of god,\nas the practical counterpart of theology.\n\n[57] Mr. D.S. MacColl.\n\n[58] D.S. MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, p. 21. (1902.)\n\n[59] It is interesting to find, since the above was written, that the\nConfession of Faith published in the catalogue of the Second\nPost-Impressionist Exhibition (1912, p. 21) reproduces, consciously or\nunconsciously, Tolstoy's view: _We have ceased to ask, \"What does this\npicture represent?\" and ask instead, \"What does it make us feel?\"_\n\n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\n\nFor Ancient and Primitive Ritual the best general book of reference is:\n\nFRAZER, J.G. _The Golden Bough_, 3rd edition, 1911, from which most of\n    the instances in the present manual are taken. Part IV of _The Golden\n    Bough_, i.e. the section dealing with _Adonis, Attis, and Osiris_,\n    should especially be consulted.\n\nAlso an earlier, epoch-making book:\n\nROBERTSON SMITH, W. _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_, 1889 [3rd\n    edition, 1927]. For certain fundamental ritual notions, _e.g._\n    sacrifice, holiness, etc.\n\n[For Egyptian and Babylonian ritual: _Myth and Ritual_, edited by\nS.H. HOOKE, 1933.]\n\nFor the Greek Drama, as arising out of the ritual dance: Professor\nGILBERT MURRAY'S _Excursus on the Ritual Forms preserved in Greek\nTragedy_ in J.E. HARRISON'S _Themis_, 1912, and pp. 327-40 in the same\nbook; and for the religion of Dionysos and the drama, J.E. HARRISON'S\n_Prolegomena_, 1907, Chapters VIII and X. For the fusion of the ritual\ndance and hero-worship, see W. LEAF, _Homer and History_, 1915, Chapter\nVII. For a quite different view of drama as arising wholly from the\nworship of the dead, see Professor W. RIDGEWAY, _The Origin of Tragedy_,\n1910. An important discussion of the relation of _tragedy_ to the winter\nfestival of the _Lenaia_ appears in A.B. COOK'S _Zeus_, vol. i, sec. 6\n(xxi) [1914].\n\n[More recent works on Greek drama: A.W. PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE, _Dithyramb_,\n_Tragedy and Comedy_, 1927; G. THOMSON, _Aeschylus and Athens_, 1941.]\n\nFor Primitive Art:\n\nHIRN, Y. _The Origins of Art_, 1900. The main theory of the book the\n    present writer believes to be inadequate, but it contains an\n    excellent collection of facts relating to Art, Magic, Art and Work,\n    Mimetic Dances, etc., and much valuable discussion of principles.\n\nGROSSE, E. _The Beginnings of Art_, 1897, in the Chicago Anthropological\n    Series. Valuable for its full illustrations of primitive art, as\n    well as for text.\n\n[BOAS, F., _Primitive Art_, 1927.]\n\nFor the Theory of Art:\n\nTOLSTOY, L. _What is Art?_ Translated by Aylmer Maude, in the Scott\n    Library.\n\nFRY, ROGER E. _An Essay in \u00c6sthetics_, in the _New Quarterly_, April 1909,\n    p. 174.\n\nThis is the best general statement of the function of Art known to me.\nIt should be read in connection with Mr. Bullough's article, quoted on\np. 129, which gives the psychological basis of a similar view of the\nnature of art. My own theory was formulated independently, in relation\nto the development of the Greek theatre, but I am very glad to find that\nit is in substantial agreement with those of two such distinguished\nauthorities on \u00e6sthetics. For my later conclusions on art, see _Alpha\nand Omega_, 1915, pp. 208-220.\n\n[CAUDWELL, C., _Illusion and Reality_, 1937.]\n\nFor more advanced students:\n\nDUSSAUZE, HENRI. _Les R\u00e8gles esth\u00e9tiques et les lois du sentiment_, 1911.\n\nM\u00dcLLER-FREIENFELS, R. _Psychologie der Kunst_, 1912.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\nAbstraction, 224\n\nAdonis, rites of, 19, 20, 54-56\n----, gardens of, 149\n----, as tree spirit, 149\n\n\u00c6schylus, 47\n\nAesthete, not artist, 214-215\n\nAgon, 15\n\nAnagnorisis, or recognition, 15\n\nAnthesteria, spring festival of, 147-149\n\nApollo Belvedere, 171\n\nAristotle on art, 198\n\nArt and beauty, 213\n---- and imitation, 230\n---- and morality, 215\n---- and nature, 198\n---- and religion, 225\n----, emotional factor in, 26\n----, social elements in, 241-248\n\nAscension festival, 69\n\n\nBear, Aino festival, 92-99\n\nBeast dances, 45, 46\n\nBeauty and art, 211\n\nBergson on art, 134\n\nBirth, rites of new, 104-113\n\nBouphonia, 91-92\n\nBull-driving in spring, 85\n----, festival at Magnesia, 87\n\n\nCat's-cradle, as magical charm, 66\n\nCensor, function of, 216\n\nCharila, spring festival, 80\n\nChorus in Greek drama, 121-128\n\n\nDancing, a work, 30-31\n----, magical, 31-35\n----, commemorative, 44\n\nDaphnephoros, 186\n\nDeath and winter, 67-72\n\nDik\u00e8 as _way of life_, 116\n\nDionysis, 12, 150\n\nDionysis as Holy Child, 103\n---- as tree god, 102\n---- as young man, 113-115\n\nDithyramb, 75-89\n\nDrama and Dromenon, 35-38\n\n\nEaster, in Modern Greece, 73\n\nEiresione, 114\n\nEpheboi, Athenian, 12\n\nEuch\u00e8, meaning of, 25\n\nExpressionists, 232\n\n\nFuturists, 232\n\n\nGhosts as fertilizers, 149\n\n\nHomer, influence on drama, 145-166\n\nHor\u00e6 or seasons, 116\n\n\nIdol and ideal, 227\n\nImpressionism, 231\n\nImitation, 21-23\n----, ceremonies in Australia, 64\n\nIndividualism, 241\n\nInitiation ceremonies, 64, 106-113\n\n\nJack-in-the-Green, 60, 187, 190\n\n\nKangaroos, dance of, 46\n\n\nLandscape, art of, 199-201\n\n\nMaeterlinck, 200\n\nMay-day at Cambridge, 57\n\nMay, queen of the, 57-61\n----, king of the, 193\n\nMime, meaning of, 47\n\nMimesis, 43-47\n\nMusic, function of, 233\n\n\nNew birth, 106-113\n\n\nOlympian gods, 202\n\nOrchestra, meaning of, 123-127\n\nOsiris, rites of, 15-23, 51\n\nOx-hunger, 81\n\n\nPanathenaia, 178\n\nPanspermia, 148\n\nParthenon frieze, 176\n\nPeisistratos, 146\n\nPeplos of Athena, 180\n\nPericles on religion, 178\n\nPersonification and conception, 70-73\n\nPlato on art, 21-23\n\nPleasure not joy, 213\n\nPost-impressionists, 238\n\nPrayer discs, 24\n\nPresentation, meaning of, 53\n\nPsychical distance, 129-134\n\n\nRepresentation, 34-41\n\nResurrection, rites of, 100\n\nRites, periodicity of, 52\n\nRitual forms in drama, 188-189\n\n\nSantayana on art, 220\n\nSemel\u00e8, bringing up of, 81\n\nSpring song at Saffron Walden, 59\n---- at Athens, 77\n\nStage or scene, 142-145\n\nSummer, bringing in of, 67-71\n\n\nTammuz, rites of, 18-20\n\nT{)e}l{)e}t{-e}, _rite of growing up_, 112\n\nTheatre, 10-13, 136\n\nThemis, as ritual custom, 117\n\nTheoria and theory, 248\n\nThreshing-floor at dancing-place, 124\n\nTolstoy on art, 132, 238-241\n\nTotemism and beast dances, 46, 47\n\nTragedy, ritual forms in, 119-122\n----, origin of, 76\n\nTug of war, among Esquimaux, 62\n\n\nUnanimism, 249-252\n\n\nVegetation spirit, 72\n\n\nWinter, carrying out of, 68-72\n\nWool, sacred, 12\n\nWorld-soul, 246\n\nWreaths, festival of, 189\n----, at Greek weddings, 190\n\n\nZola on art, 242\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPrinted in Great Britain by The Camelot Press Ltd., London and\nSouthampton","title":"Ancient Art and Ritual","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":49227}