THE STATTiRE OF MAN AT VARIOUS EPOCHS. 519 



health pliysiolofjicallv and iiornially sonnd; that is to say, they are 

 diseased and fall within the domain of the pathologist. '* Here, then," 

 as E. Brissaud says, "yon have yonr giants despoiled of their ancient 

 and fabled prestige; mythology yields the place to pathology." 

 Such is the new doctrine in its most categoric or most expressive 

 form. 



The imagination of all ancient peoples was haunted by the chimer- 

 ical vision of a sort of superman, like ordinary man, but bigger and 

 stronger. These beings of perfect proportion, but of colossal stature, 

 were giants. The conception has remained firmly fixed in popular 

 belief, and it has been so general and so deep rooted that the question 

 must perforce ai'ise whether it did not have some foundation in re- 

 ality. A i3riori, one is tempted to see in it the recollection, magnified 

 by tradition, of a colossal race that actually existed. All mythologies, 

 in fact, contain legends of giants. Oreek mythology represents huge 

 beings, children of the earth, carrying on formidable conflicts against 

 the gods who inhabit heaven. The details of the struggle are 

 recounted in a thousand different ways; now, it is an army of giants 

 who stand in battle array under the leadershij:) of Alcyoneus and 

 Porphyrion and await the attack of the inhabitants of Olympus, aided 

 by the hero Hercules. Another time it is Otus and Ephialtes, who 

 pile mountain upon mountain to scale heaven and throw burning 

 rocks against it. But the wars which break out over and over again 

 always end in the triumph of the king of the gods; and the giants 

 doomed to inevitable defeat are struck by Jupiter's thunderbolts, 

 crushed under the wheels of his chariot, and finally hurled into Tar- 

 tarus. 



Historians and critics who insist that all myths have a significance 

 symbolic and natural at the same time have no trouble to explain this 

 one. They find in it a reflection and personification of the subter- 

 ranean forces in revolt against the laws of nature — the Greeks said 

 Divine laws — which require and maintain the solidity and fixity of 

 the earth. These irregular, tumultuous forces, volcanic eruptions, 

 earthquakes, violent cataclysms, these agents of destruction proceed- 

 ing from the bowels of the eartli and loosed against the order of the 

 world; that is, against the gods, all these are giants. It is a remark- 

 able fact that while the poets in symbolizing these natural forces gave 

 frightful descriptions of them, endowing them with multiple mem- 

 bers, with horrible heads, and enormous mouths spitting flames, the 

 Greek artists, on the contrary, alwa^'s susceptible to actual forms, rep- 

 resented them simply with human faces and figures. For example, in 

 a painting on a very ancient vase the giant Antanis is represented 

 as thrown into a prostrate attitude by Hercules and seeking to touch 

 the earth with- his hands in order to draw fresh vigor from it. His 

 body, though that of a man admiral)ly ])r()})ortioned, is nearly double 



