carried on in that admirable spirit of tolerance and appreciation 

 exhibited in so beautiful a manner by such writers as Murray, 

 Harrison and others. 



This first stage is claimed by Murray to be characterized by 

 three things, first, an atmosphere of religious fear; secondly, 

 a whole sequence of magical ceremonies, and thirdly, a divine or 

 sacred animal. 1 The Olympian gods were not known at all. They 

 were a later invention. These conclusions, the result, mainly, 

 of the analysis of three great festivals which were held, appear 

 quite worthy of credence. If one asks the origin of this "atmos- 

 phere of religious fear", of the magical ceremonies and of the 

 reverence shown to snake and pig and bull, the answer can only 

 be conjectural. The dreams of primitive man, his strong emotions, 

 his many memories, his vivid imaginations, the surprises which 

 were constantly meeting him in his daily life, caused by storm and 

 famine and earthquake, and, again, by sunshine and fertilizing 

 rain, the pain he was at times forced to bear, death, with its sad 

 and strange results, these led him to dread and fear, and, finally, 

 to appease and mollify or give thanks to the agencies which he 

 gradually came to believe must surround him, agencies which 

 were imaginative constructions made from his own experiences. 



To the average child the tree, the chair, the doll are all alive. 

 The pre-mundane existence whence he comes, according to the 

 poet, "trailing clouds of glory" seems not to save him from many 

 vague fears and superstitions. Those, who are older, watch his 

 naive play and conclude that he has, in some way, clothed 

 with life inanimate things. So is it with primitive man. Do his 

 hunting expeditions end in repeated failure? Some person, stronger 

 than he but like him, bears him malice. Is a tree struck by light- 

 ning? Someone has thrown his battle-axe at it. Do the storms 

 rage and does the earth tremble beneath his feet? Some mighty 

 hand is behind it all. So then primitive man, in measure like a 

 little child, comes to regard, by some process of empathy, inanimate 

 things and unseen agencies as beings like himself. 



Now it seems a far cry from this Euetheia period to that of the 

 Olympic gods, but, after all, the process is a natural one. The 

 anthropomorphism, which made Zeus and Apollo and Athena so 



1 Four Stages of Greek Religion, Cf. P. 32. 



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