"THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 61 



feeling of pollution and of the need of expiation which will 

 blaze out in the oldest Greek tragedies as almost a veritable 

 sense of sin. We might almost say that a sense of morality 

 toward the spirit world is now appearing in a religion pre- 

 viously almost or quite unmoral. We may easily overesti- 

 mate the extent and power of the change, but we can hardly 

 be mistaken in recognizing its dawn and the vast germinal 

 possibilities of this dim feeling or conception. 



In agriculture and throughout nature, seedtime was fol- 

 lowed by harvest, fall, and winter's gloom and death. Then 

 in the next spring there was a return, a rebirth or a resur- 

 rection. If the seed failed to come up, if the blade withered 

 or was blighted, it was because the vegetation spirit or demon 

 had failed to reappear or had been reborn weak or sickly, and 

 all this because some one had broken taboo, had touched the 

 forbidden thing. This must be prevented at all cost, they 

 must help the spirit. Hence there must be every year a time 

 of purification, or renovation, when the old garments and uten- 

 sils and everything which could carry the pollution of death 

 were cast off or cleansed.^ ^ 



All these conclusions, and some others of equal importance 

 to which we will return later, are expressed or symbolized in 

 the great Dromena, festivals, mysteries, or whatever you may 

 call these rites of pre-Homeric Greece. Then for a time, 

 they are partially, though never totally, eclipsed by the bril- 

 liant beauty of the Olympian religion with its glorious temples, 

 statues, and other works of art. 



There was vastly more vitality in the ancient crude symbols 

 and chaos of conceptions than in the ordered and artistic 

 Olympian hierarchy with its marvellous rpnresentations o^ the 

 gods in human or superhuman form and beauty.^ ^ Even its 

 art and Hterature could not save it. It had lost its mysticism. 

 The old Neolithic religion, handed down by peasants and 

 artisans reoccupied the field, transformed sometimes almost 

 beyond recognition like the Ugly Duckling of the fairy tale. 



11 66 



12 64-66 



