PREFACE
Greek religion may be studied under various aspects; and many recent
contributions to this study have been mainly concerned either with the
remote origin of many of its ceremonies in primitive ritual, or with the
manner in which some of its obscurer manifestations met the deeper
spiritual needs which did not find satisfaction in the official cults.
Such discussions are of the highest interest to the anthropologist and
to the psychologist; but they have the disadvantage of fixing our
attention too exclusively on what, to the ordinary Greek, appeared
accidental or even morbid, and of making us regard the Olympian
pantheon, with its clearly realised figures of the gods, as a mere
system imposed more or less from outside upon the old rites and beliefs
of the people. In the province of art, at least, the Olympian gods are
paramount; and thus we are led to appreciate and to understand their
worship as it affected the religious ideals of the people and the
services of the State. For we must remember that in the case of religion
even more than in that of art, its essential character and its influence
upon life and thought lie rather in its full perfection than in its
origin.
In a short sketch of so wide a subject it has seemed inadvisable to make
any attempt to describe the types of the various gods. Without full
illustration and a considerable expenditure of space, such a description
would be impracticable, and the reader must be referred to the ordinary
handbooks of the subject. A fuller account will be found in Dr.
Farnell's Cults of the Greek States, and some selected types are
discussed with the greatest subtlety and understanding in Brunn's
Griechische Götterideale. In the present volume only a few examples
are mentioned as characteristic of the various periods. It may thus, I
trust, serve as an introduction to a more complete study of the subject;
and may, at the same time, offer to those who have not the leisure or
inclination for such further study, at least a summary of what we may
learn from Greece as to the relations of religion and art under the most
favourable conditions. It is easy, as Aristotle says, to fill in the
details if only the outlines are rightly drawn—
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