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

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468 The Olympians [ch.
and Recessions, his Epiphanies, his Deaths, his Burials, his Resur-
rections, his endless Changes and Chances 1
.
All this, all life and that which is life and reality— Change
and Movement 2—the Olympian renounces. Instead he chooses
Deathlessness and Immutability—a seeming Immortality which
is really the denial of life, for life is change. This brazen lifeless
immutability impressed the imagination of Pindar 3 . Tinged with
Orphism though he was. he did not hear how hollow it rang
Of one race, one only are men and gods ;
draw our breath : but far asunder is all our power divided, and parts us
here there is nought and there in strength of bronze, a seat unshaken, eternal,
abides the heaven above.
both of one mother's womb, we
He sees the beauty and the fertility of Earth's recurrent cycle
mirrored in man
Even so, for a sign thereof, Alcimidas shows clear the mark of his race,
close kin to the fruitful cornlands : whose alternation now gives from the
soil life in abundance to man and now again takes rest to lay hold upon
strength.
But he cannot see that the Olympian who will not die to live
renounces life, he desiccates and dies. Such is the very nature of
life that only through the ceaseless movement and rhythm of
palingenesia is immortality possible. Athanasia, eternity through
not dying, is almost a contradiction in words.
Together with this conception of a dead and barren im-
mortality there grew up the disastrous notion that between god
and man there was a great gulf fixed, that communion was no
more possible. To attempt to pass this gulf was hybris, it was
the sin against the gods. Pindar again lends himself to this
pitiless, fruitless doctrine. The dull, melancholy mandate runs
through his odes
Seek not thou to become a god 4 .
In this mandate we see the door closed finally on the last remnants
of totemistic thinking ; it is the death warrant of sacramentalism.
The only possible service now is gift-sacrifice ; and by that service
alone, history has shown, the soul of man cannot live.
1 See supra, pp. 425, 426.
2 H. Bergson, La Perception du Changement, Conferences faites a Oxford 1911,
p. 28 ' si le changement est reel et meme constitutif de toute realite....'
:i New. vi. sub init.
4 Supra, p. 128.
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