INTRODUCTION 17 



creation collectively " the unreasoning ones." The 

 Northern race, whether in its native plains or woods, 

 its less permanent resting-places in the hill cities of 

 the Apennines and the plain of Lombardy, on the 

 shores of Asia Minor and Magna Grsecia, or in the 

 Thracian wilds and amid the jealous rivalries of the 

 Hellenic states, preserves its racial characteristics. 

 The Northern mind is not a thing apart from nature, 

 but readily acknowledges his kinships, bestowing 

 spirits and souls of like kind to his own on the animate 

 and inanimate objects by which he is surrounded. 



" Images and temples and altars," writes Herodotus 

 when describing the ancient Persian religion, the 

 creation of another branch of the Northern race, " it is 

 not in their law to set up nay, they count them fools 

 who make such, because they do not hold the gods 

 to be man-shaped, as the Greeks do. Their habit is 

 to sacrifice to Zeus, going up to the tops of the highest 

 mountains, holding all the round of the sky to be Zeus. 

 They sacrifice to the sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and 

 the winds." 



The Southerner in his pagan moods reverses the 

 process, and to express his religious convictions adds 

 bestial countenances to the human form in order to 

 obtain his inhuman gods. Such differences as these 

 represent unfathomable chasms of racial antipathy. 



Throughout the ages, the Southern races appear 

 to have emphasized the necessity of form, of definite 

 and concrete statement such as finds its highest 

 expression in clear-cut dogma. There is a finite tree 

 of knowledge in their philosophy, attainable some- 

 where, yet impious for the ordinary mortal to aspire to. 

 Religion becomes an affair of the priesthood, of those 



2 



