32 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



of the Homeric age had settlements on all the lands 

 which fringe the Mediterranean Sea, and Southern 

 Italy became known as Magna Graecia. Intercourse 

 with these oversea outposts, and with the divergent 

 nations that surrounded them, doubtless played a 

 great part in developing the economic wealth of the 

 nation and the innate powers of the Greek mind. 



While the citizens of the Greek states, the warriors 

 and the traders, were chiefly or exclusively of the 

 Northern stock, the Mediterranean people, retaining 

 their ancient culture and primitive conceptions, still 

 tilled the soil and appeared as the chief element of 

 that slave population on which Greek civilization was 

 built up. 



In Greek religion we seem to catch traces of this 

 dual origin. There is an underworld of spirits of 

 doubtful or hostile intention towards men, and under- 

 lying this again are vestiges of totemistic beliefs, and 

 of that system of magic which springs naturally from 

 the confusion between the life of nature and the life 

 of the tribe, and seems prior to any idea of gods. 

 Here, probably, we have the influence of the religious^ 

 attitude which characterized the earlier dispossessed 

 population. But, in the Homeric poems, which sing 

 the heroes of the conquering Northern race, we find a 

 new joyousness of outlook, an attitude of friendly 

 relations with fully developed divine powers, who, as 

 the populations begin to mingle, are indeed figured 

 simply and naturally as supermen, and superwomen, 

 always interested in mankind, partisans and poli- 

 ticians of the most pronounced type, taking a share in 

 the life of the nation, its wars, its trials and its successes. 

 We find too the attribution of the invention of the arts 



