NOTES 



God-Man or Ape-Man 



Some months ago I was reading during an air-raid Sir James 

 Frazer's admirable Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend, and History, 

 in which he describes how, even in the day of Marcus Aurelius 

 and Pausanias, the heroic age of Greece was already a matter 

 of antiquity. This was so early as a.d. 174 ; and even then 

 Pausanias described ' ' shrunken or ruined cities, deserted villages, 

 roofless temples, shrines without images and pedestals without 

 statues." In one neglected fane he saw a great ivy-tree 

 rending the stones asunder, and in others nothing left but the 

 tall columns standing up against the sky — as they are seen 

 to-day. More than half a century earlier Plutarch had de- 

 clared that the world in general and Greece in particular were 

 depopulated by wars and civil brawls — so much so that Greece 

 could now scarcely put 3,000 infantry in the field, the number 

 that Megara alone had formerly levied for the Persian wars. 

 But the decadence extended even to the minds of the people ; 

 for the great race which had worshipped the godhead of man 

 in the superb figures of Apollo and Artemis, and which had 

 built the Parthenon for the glory of Science, was now succeeded 

 by persons who offered flesh and cakes to the alleged sceptre 

 of Agamemnon or who sought to preserve vineyards from 

 stormy weather by running round them carrying bleeding 

 pieces of a white fowl ! And while I read those pages the half- 

 human fools who made the present war were engaged in dropping 

 bombs on the women and children of London in the hope that 

 they were winning some kind of victory by doing so ! 



Some weeks later I was at Delphi itself — where one can 

 still imagine Apollo descended from Parnassus standing at the 

 mouth of the Castalian Gorge, 



In perfect wisdom, perfect beauty dight. 



In this figure I see the sum of the ancient civilisation. In it 

 I see also the truest religion of man ; of which the divinity 



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