Vlll 



PREFACE. 



inventions of the thinking organs of past human 

 kind, without thinking of them ? Revelation after 

 revelation turns up ; but, by means of a mental 

 sieve, these heterogeneous revelations are sifted 

 into some sort of order and plausible reality. 



By the mode of thinking of to-day, we have to 

 interpret the mode of thinking of those days. The 

 emotions of the poet, the artist, the philosopher, 

 are presumably the same at all times. It is the 

 amount of accumulated knowledge, whether stored 

 in books, or in memories, that makes all the 

 difference. 



As soon as one key is discovered, other keys — 

 more or less like — can be invented to open the 

 secrets of the beginnings of human philosophy. 

 Comparing, sifting, speculating, is then a matter 

 of time and patience. By what is going on now, 

 as I said, we try to explain what went on then. 



The Greek artist appears to have been essen- 

 tially a poet of a child-like nature. He saw figures 

 and symbols on Assyrian and Egyptian monuments. 

 He used these figures and symbols as motives for 

 weaving other poetical figures and symbols, and 

 so he turned gradually the whole affair into a 

 congeries of novelets — myths and legends — suited 

 to altered and more refined surroundings. These 

 imaginary and poetical stories were about things 

 that his brain was not ripe enough to solve on 

 physical lines. 



