402 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



instructive if their study taught us this one fact 

 only, namely, that the evolution of religion depends 

 on the tendencies of the great masses of the people ; 

 their aspirations, their needs, their education deter- 

 mine its course, which is only in a very slight degree 

 guided or checked by the influence of a sacerdotal 

 caste. 



There is another striking lesson, however, to be 

 learnt from a study of Medisevalism, a lesson which it 

 shares with Hellenism. If religion is to give birth to a 

 great art and to be a centre of social and civic enthusiasm, 

 it must be a religion of festival, of great folk-gatherings, 

 of ceremonial ritual, of the drama, and if possible of 

 song and dance. 1 The religious festival brings all 

 classes of the community together on a common ground ; 

 it unites for a time high and low in the same pleasure ; 

 and the feelings of fellowship and of identity of pursuits, 

 so necessary for the permanency of any social group, 

 are thereby materially strengthened. The religious 

 drama of the Middle Ages was an outcome of mediaeval 

 religious and civic socialism, and with the growth of 

 theological and economic individualism it necessarily 

 decayed. When the passion-plays were employed as 

 instruments of controversial theology ; when the monk 

 appeared on the stage in order to be dragged off to hell, 

 and little children came to Christ prattling of the true 

 gospel of Wittenberg and of the Antichrist at Eome, then 

 these plays became sources of social discord, and not the 



1 Herein at once lies the justification and the futility of the great festivals of 

 humanity proposed by Comte. They are justified, because every religion needs 

 folk-festivals ; they are futile, because they are the artifice of a priest, and not a 

 natural product of an individual people. 



