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

470 The Olympians [ch.
figures of the Kouros and the Mother were but the projections
of social conditions essential to a Matrilinear group 1 . Further,
in considering totemistic societies 2 , we have seen that their main
characteristic was solidarity, lack of differentiation. Man had
not yet separated himself out from nature, and the individual
man has but slight consciousness of himself as distinguished from
his group. Such a social state of things has its religious counter-
part, its religious projection, in undifferentiated forms like the
daimon of the group, the functionary, uttering and embodying the
collective life of the group 3 .
But as the group system disintegrates, the individual emerges,
and further, not only does the individual emerge from the group,
but the human individual is more and more conscious of his sharp
distinction from animals and plants, from the whole of nature
that surrounds him. This twofold emergence of the individual
from the group, of the human individual from the nature-world
around him, is inevitably mirrored in the personality, in the
individuality of the Olympian gods.
We are still too apt to put the cart before the horse, to think
of the group as made up of an aggregate of individuals rather
than of the individuals as a gradual segregation of the group. It
is only by an effort of imagination that we realize that plurality,
the group, comes first. A simple illustration from language may
serve to make clear this point.
In many North American, Central Asian, and Pacific languages
two plurals are in use, the Inclusive and Exclusive, or, as they
are perhaps better called, the Collective and Selective Plurals.
The Collective ' ' we
includes all persons present, the
;
Selective '
a smaller selected group, to which the speaker belongs. The
proper use of this plural is essential to the successful missionary,
otherwise doctrinal scandal may ensue :
When the formula 'We have sinned' occurs in prayer, the exclusive form
must be employed, for the supplicant would otherwise be including the
Almighty among those to whom sin is imputed. The same expression
occurring in a sermon, takes the inclusive form ; for the audience would
otherwise be excluded from the category of sinners and would understand
the preacher's meaning to be 'We, the clergy, have sinned but not you, the
people 4 .'
1 pp. 38—42. - pp. 118—127. 3 pp. 271—273.
4 Payne, op. cit. 188.