Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

460 The Olympians [ch.
against the worship of Earth and the daimones of the fertility
of Earth. So far they command our respect and even our
s)^mpathy. As long as man is engaged in a hand to hand struggle
for bare existence, his principal focus of attention must be on food.
The magical inducement of the recurrent fertility of the earth is
his first and well-nigh his last religious duty. But, as civilization
advances, and he is freed from the more urgent necessities, his
circle of needs enlarges and the focus of his attention widens.
The old intense interest in food and fertility slackens. Moreover
a worship of the powers of fertility, which includes all plant and
animal life, is broad enough to be sound and healthy, but, as man's
attention centres more and more intently on his own humanity,
such a worship is an obvious source of danger and disease. In-
stinctively a healthy stock will purge its religion from elements
exclusively phallic. This expurgation ranks first and foremost
among the services Olympianism rendered to Greece 1 . The fight
of the Gods against the Giants had right as well as might on
its side.
But, if the fight of the Gods against the Earth-born Giants be
just and right, the same can scarcely be said of the fight against
the Titans. These powers of the upper air, these gods of storm
and lightning, these /xerdpaia may be, because not understood,
lawless, but they are nowise impure and their worship can scarcely
degrade. Moreover, though the fierdpaia were, as being wholly
unintelligible and apparently irresponsible, the appropriate objects
of magic, the ixerewpa with their ordered comings and goings,
risings and settings, waxings and wanings, tempted man up the
steep road of exact observation. Measurements led him to mathe-
matics, in a word, to science. The Olympians would have done well
had they, while renouncing or at least reforming Earth and rd
perdpaia, clung to and developed the worship of rd p,ereaipa.
It has already been observed 2 that, in the course of the advance
of European civilization, each new period of enlightenment has
1 See Kaibel, Daktyloi Idaioi, 1902, p. 512, for expurgation in Homer, and
Prof. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic'-, 1911, pp. 143 ff. The process of expurgation
probably loug preceded its literary expression. For the general moral gain and the
softening of manners see Greek Epic-, p. 257, where Prof. Murray quotes Plutarch's
significant words which head this chapter as motto, Vit. Pelop. xxi., a human
sacrifice is opposed on the grounds (is ovSevl tuiv KpeiTTovwv ko.1 vir&p 17/xas dper^v
ovaav oiirw (3ap(3apoi> teal wa.pavop.ov Ovolav ' ov yap tovs Tv(pwi>as iiceivovs ovdt tovs
Tiyavras apx^iv dXXd tov irarepa 6eu>v Kai avOpuiiruv.
- Supra, p. 439.