DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0104
84
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART
CHAP.
certain elements in it as belonging only to a very early age,
and others as developed from these and taking their place at
a later period. The fact is that different views and phases of
religion coexisted in time, some being natural to the intellectu-
ally more advanced, and some to the intellectually more
backward of the race. It is nearer the truth to regard them as
belonging to strata of society in each age, rather than as belong-
ing to all the people at successive ages. There were not indeed
among the Greeks those immense differences in intellectual
development between class and class which now are found in
England, Germany and France, and which constitute an ever-
present peril to society. In Greek cities, with their stirring
political life and their constant throngings in the market-place,
there was not the same contrast between stratum and stratum
of the people. The extremes were nothing like so far apart.
The poorest citizen might spend the morning in listening to the
discourses of Socrates or Antisthenes, and the afternoon in
discussing the most recent sculptural dedications. But yet
the contrasts existed, in the temperaments if not in the sur-
roundings of the citizens. And outside the cities was a popula-
tion of peasants and farmers, absorbed in the operations of
agriculture, and without opportunities for cultivating the mind.
Thus in the religions of Greece, as in those of modern coun-
tries, there were various strains. And some of these strains had
far more affinity to art than others. We may distinguish four
such strains. (1) In the deepest stratum of religion, perhaps
the oldest, and certainly that which had most vogue in remote
places and among the most backward of the race, lay the old-
world belief in ghosts, in sympathetic magic, in woodland and
agricultural demons. Such beliefs are found among most
peoples at a low level of culture. We have heard a great deal
about them of late years from the anthropologists, who roam
from Britain to Japan, and from Patagonia to Kamchatka in
the hope of finding primitive human beliefs enshrined in sur-
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART
CHAP.
certain elements in it as belonging only to a very early age,
and others as developed from these and taking their place at
a later period. The fact is that different views and phases of
religion coexisted in time, some being natural to the intellectu-
ally more advanced, and some to the intellectually more
backward of the race. It is nearer the truth to regard them as
belonging to strata of society in each age, rather than as belong-
ing to all the people at successive ages. There were not indeed
among the Greeks those immense differences in intellectual
development between class and class which now are found in
England, Germany and France, and which constitute an ever-
present peril to society. In Greek cities, with their stirring
political life and their constant throngings in the market-place,
there was not the same contrast between stratum and stratum
of the people. The extremes were nothing like so far apart.
The poorest citizen might spend the morning in listening to the
discourses of Socrates or Antisthenes, and the afternoon in
discussing the most recent sculptural dedications. But yet
the contrasts existed, in the temperaments if not in the sur-
roundings of the citizens. And outside the cities was a popula-
tion of peasants and farmers, absorbed in the operations of
agriculture, and without opportunities for cultivating the mind.
Thus in the religions of Greece, as in those of modern coun-
tries, there were various strains. And some of these strains had
far more affinity to art than others. We may distinguish four
such strains. (1) In the deepest stratum of religion, perhaps
the oldest, and certainly that which had most vogue in remote
places and among the most backward of the race, lay the old-
world belief in ghosts, in sympathetic magic, in woodland and
agricultural demons. Such beliefs are found among most
peoples at a low level of culture. We have heard a great deal
about them of late years from the anthropologists, who roam
from Britain to Japan, and from Patagonia to Kamchatka in
the hope of finding primitive human beliefs enshrined in sur-