XLIX] Studies in primitive Greek religion. 47 



indefatigable zeal with which some early Christian wrifcers 

 tried to combat these „heathen" beliefs. In addition to the 

 statemen ts referring to different cults which have been quoted 

 above, \ve may add the foUowing passage from Lactantius 

 which may give us an understanding of the general religions 

 view still held by the Greeks of his time. After having 

 in the fifth chapter of his Origin of Error endeavoured to 

 defeat the belief that the heavenly bodies are divine beings^ 

 he continues in the next: „In like maner, if the land on which 

 we tread, and which we subdue and cultivate for food is not 

 a god, then the plains and mountains will not be gods; and 

 if these are not so, it follows that the whole of the eartli can- 

 not appear to be god. In like manner, if the water which is 

 adapted to the wants of the livings creatures for the pnrpose 

 of drinking and bathing, is not a god, neither are the springs 

 gods from which the water flows. And if the springs are not 

 gods, neither are the rivers, which are collected from the springs. 

 And if the rivers are not gods, it follows that the sea, which 

 is made np of rivers, cannot be considered as a god" ^) etc. 



It cannot be doubted that this view was derived from 

 the most ancient times in the history of the Greeks and of 

 the Indo-European race. There is no reason to ask, as some 

 students have done, whether, for instansce, the stock- and stone- 

 worship v/as primarily Greek or if it was „borrowed" from 

 some other peoples, Semites or Pelasges. Animism, as far as is 

 known, forms a constitutive element in the religions belief of 

 all lower races in modern and ancient times; its principles are 

 rooted in human nature itself. The only question to be raised 

 is what possible changes and modifications this view of nature 

 underwent among the Greeks in the course of ages. To fol- 

 low the development of ideas on this point is, of course, im- 

 possible. But there is sufiicient ground for assuming that 

 originally the whole object deified was itself looked upon as 

 a living conscious agent without an}' idea of an indwelling 

 spirit being attached to it. The theory of Professor Tylor^), 

 according to which man at first formed the ideå of a human 



') Lactant. De origine crroris, c. 6. 

 7 Tylor, Primitive Culiure, II, p. 100. 



