THEMIS— Continued 



the mystery -god and that Olympos he might never really enter. 

 I knew the reason of my own profound discontent. I saw 

 in a word that Dionysos, with every other mystery-god, was 

 an instinctive attempt to express what Professor Bergson 

 calls dtirde, that life which is one, indivisible and yet cease- 

 lessly changing My second debt is to Professor Emile 



Durkheim. In the light of his De la Definition des Phdno- 

 menes Religieux and other works I saw why Dionysos, the 

 mystery-god, who is the expression and representation of 

 durde, is, alone among Greek divinities, constantly attended 

 by a thiasos, a matter cardinal for the understanding of his 

 nature. The mystery-god arises out of those instincts, 

 emotions, desires which attend and express life ; but these 

 emotions, desires, instincts, in so far as they are religious, 

 are at the outset rather of a group than of individual con- 

 sciousness... These two ideas, (i) that the mystery-god and 

 the Olympian express respectively, the one diirde, life, and 

 the other the action of conscious intelligence which reflects 

 on and analyses life, and (2) that, among primitive peoples, 

 religion reflects collective feeling and collective thinking, 

 underlie my whole argument and were indeed the cause and 

 impulse of my book. 



CONTENTS 



The Hymn of the Kouretes — The Dithyramb, the Apu^ci/ov and the 

 Drama — The Kouretes, the Thunder- Rites and Mana — Magic and Tabu— 

 Medicine-Bird and Medicine-King — Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice — 

 The Dithyramb, the Spring Festival and the Hagia Triada Sarcophagos— 

 The Origin of the Olympic Games — Daimon and Hero— From Daimon to 

 Olympian — The Olympians — Themis — Index. 



Athenaeum. Miss Harrison has written a work which is likely to last long as 

 a monument both of her wide range of classical scholarship and of her 

 sympathetic insight into primitive conditions of mind and society. It is 

 a book not only learned but also instinct with a soul. Moreover as 

 every notable creation must be, the book is revolutionary.... Her style of 

 writing is so fresh and free, and she displays such a fine enthusiasm that 

 we are carried along, and feel ourselves not wand-bearers, but Bacchi. 

 The index is magnificent and the letterpress and numerous illustrations 

 are in every way worthy of the Cambridge Press. 



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