When we try to conceive the state of mind of primitive man the first
thing that occurs to us is the bewilderment and terror he must have felt
in the presence of the powers of nature. Naked, houseless, weaponless,
he is at the mercy, every hour, of this immense and incalculable
Something so alien and so hostile to himself. As fire it burns, as water
it drowns, as tempest it harries and destroys; benignant it may be at
times, in warm sunshine and calm, but the kindness is brief and
treacherous. Anyhow, whatever its mood, it has to be met and dealt with.
By its help, or, if not, in the teeth of its resistance, every step in
advance must be won; every hour, every minute, it is there to be
reckoned with. What is it then, this persistent, obscure, unnameable
Thing? What is it? The question haunts the mind; it will not be put
aside; and the Greek at last, like other men under similar conditions,
only with a lucidity and precision peculiar to himself, makes the reply,
"it is something like myself." Every power of nature he presumes to be a
spiritual being, impersonating the sky as Zeus, the earth as Demeter,
the sea as Poseidon; from generation to generation under his shaping
hands, the figures multiply and define themselves; character and story
crystallise about what at first were little more than names; till at
last, from the womb of the dark enigma that haunted him in the
beginning, there emerges into the charmed light of a world of ideal
grace a pantheon of fair and concrete personalities. Nature has become a
company of spirits; every cave and fountain is haunted by a nymph; in
the ocean dwell the Nereids, in the mountain the Oread, the Dryad in the
wood; and everywhere, in groves and marshes, on the pastures or the
rocky heights, floating in the current of the streams or traversing
untrodden snows, in the day at the chase and as evening closes in
solitude fingering his flute, seen and heard by shepherds, alone or with
his dancing train, is to be met the horned and goat-footed, the sunny-
smiling Pan.
Thus conceived, the world has become less terrible because more
familiar. All that was incomprehensible, all that was obscure and dark,
has now been seized and bodied forth in form, so that everywhere man is
confronted no longer with blind and unintelligible force, but with
spiritual beings moved by like passions with himself. The gods, it is
true, were capricious and often hostile to his good, but at least they
had a nature akin to his; if they were angry, they might be propitiated;
if they were jealous, they might be appeased; the enmity of one might be
compensated by the friendship of another; dealings with them, after all,
were not so unlike dealings with men, and at the worst there was always
a chance for courage, patience and wit.
Man, in short, by his religion has been made at home in the world; and
that is the first point to seize upon. To drive it home, let us take an
illustration from the story of Odysseus. Odysseus, it will be
remembered, after the sack of Troy, for ten years was a wanderer on the
seas, by tempest, enchantment, and every kind of danger detained, as it
seemed, beyond hope of return from the wife and home he had left in
Ithaca. The situation is forlorn enough. Yet, somehow or other, beauty
in the story predominates over terror. And this, in part at least,
because the powers with which Odysseus has to do, are not mere forces of
nature, blind and indifferent, but spiritual beings who take an
interest, for or against, in his fate. The whole story becomes familiar,
and, if one may say so, comfortable, by the fact that it is conducted
under the control and direction of the gods. Listen, for example, to the
Homeric account of the onset of a storm, and observe how it sets one at
ease with the elements:
"Now the lord, the shaker of the earth, on his way from the Ethiopians,
espied Odysseus afar off from the mountains of the Solymi: even thence
he saw him as he sailed over the deep; and he was yet more angered in
spirit, and wagging his head he communed with his own heart. 'Lo now, it
must be that the gods at the last have changed their purpose concerning
Odysseus, while I was away among the Ethiopians. And now he is nigh to
the Phaeacian land, where it is so ordained that he escape the great
issues of the woe which hath come upon him. But me-thinks, that even yet
I will drive him far enough in the path of suffering.'
"With that he gathered the clouds and troubled the waters of the deep,
grasping his trident in his hands; and he roused all storms of all
manner of winds, and shrouded in clouds the land and sea: and down sped
night from heaven. The East Wind and the South Wind clashed, and the
stormy West, and the North, that is born in the bright air, rolling
onward a great wave." [Footnote: Odyss. v. 282.--Translated by Butcher
and Lang.]
The position of the hero is terrible, it is true, but not with the
terror of despair; for as it is a god that wrecked him, it may also be a
god that will save. If Poseidon is his enemy, Athene, he knows, is his
friend; and all lies, after all, in the hands, or, as the Greeks said,
"on the knees," not of a blind destiny, but of beings accessible to
prayer.
Let us take another passage from Homer to illustrate the same point. It
is the place where Achilles is endeavouring to light the funeral pyre of
Patroclus, but because there is no wind the fire will not catch. What is
he to do? What _can_ he do? Nothing, say we, but wait till the wind
comes. But to the Greek the winds are persons, not elements; Achilles
has only to call and to promise, and they will listen to his voice. And
so, we are told, "fleet-footed noble Achilles had a further thought:
standing aside from the pyre he prayed to the two winds of North and
West, and promised them fair offerings, and pouring large libations from
a golden cup besought them to come, that the corpses might blaze up
speedily in the fire, and the wood make haste to be enkindled. Then
Iris, when she heard his prayer, went swiftly with the message to the
Winds. They within the house of the gusty West Wind were feasting all
together at meat, when Iris sped thither, and halted on the threshold of
stone. And when they saw her with their eyes, they sprung up and called
to her every one to sit by him. But she refused to sit, and spake her
word: 'No seat for me; I must go back to the streams of Ocean, to the
Ethiopians' land where they sacrifice hecatombs to the immortal gods,
that I too may feast at their rites. But Achilles is praying the North
Wind and the loud West to come, and promising them fair offerings, that
ye may make the pyre be kindled whereon lieth Patroclos, for whom all
the Achaians are making moan.'
"She having thus said departed, and they arose with a mighty sound,
rolling the clouds before them. And swiftly they came blowing over the
sea, and the wave rose beneath their shrill blast; and they came to
deep-soiled Troy, and fell upon the pile, and loudly roared the mighty
fire. So all night drave they the flame of the pyre together, blowing
shrill; and all night fleet Achilles, holding a two-handled cup, drew
wine from a golden bowl, and poured it forth and drenched the earth,
calling upon the spirit of hapless Patroclos. As a father waileth when
he burneth the bones of his son, new-married, whose death is woe to his
hapless parents, so wailed Achilles as he burnt the bones of his
comrade, going heavily round the burning pile, with many moans.
"But at the hour when the Morning Star goeth forth to herald light upon
the earth, the star that saffron-mantled Dawn cometh after, and
spreadeth over the salt sea, then grew the burning faint, and the flame
died down. And the Winds went back again to betake them home over the
Thracian main, and it roared with a violent swell. Then the son of
Peleus turned away from the burning and lay down wearied, and sweet
sleep leapt on him." [Footnote: Iliad xxiii. p. 193.--Translated by
Lang, Leaf and Myers.]
The exquisite beauty of this passage, even in translation, will escape
no lover of poetry. And it is a beauty which depends on the character of
the Greek religion; on the fact that all that is unintelligible in the
world, all that is alien to man, has been drawn, as it were, from its
dark retreat, clothed in radiant form, and presented to the mind as a
glorified image of itself. Every phenomenon of nature, night and "rosy-
fingered" dawn, earth and sun, winds, rivers, and seas, sleep and
death,--all have been transformed into divine and conscious agents, to
be propitiated by prayer, interpreted by divination, and comprehended by
passions and desires identical with those which stir and control
mankind.