244 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



or hanging from their folding chairs, their very 

 mannerisms as seen on the frescoes, pointing their 

 conversation with animated gestures how 

 strangely out of place would it all appear in a 

 classical design. Nowhere, not even at Pompeii, 

 have more living pictures of ancient life been 

 called up for us than in the Minoan Palace of 

 Knossos. The touches supplied by its closing 

 scene are singularly dramatic the little bathroom 

 opening out of the Queen's parlor, with its painted 

 clay bath, the royal draught-board flung down in 

 the court, the vessels for anointing and the oil jar 

 for their filling ready to hand by the throne of the 

 priest-king, with the benches of his consistory 

 round and the sacred griffins on either side. Re- 

 ligion, indeed, entered in at every turn. The 

 palaces were also temples, the tomb a shrine of 

 the great mother. It was perhaps owing to the 

 religious control of art that among all the Minoan 

 representations now to be numbered by thous- 

 ands no single example of indecency has come 

 to light." 6 



Rather startling, is it not? And rather a 

 striking contrast to the indescribable moral de- 

 cline of this same civilization in the classic days of 

 Greece and Rome. In the meantime, during all 

 these periods, Paleolithic and Neolithic man was 

 roaming the forests and dwelling in caves, often 

 the decadent descendant of perhaps just such a 



"Evans, op. cit., pp. 442-445. 



