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

476 The Olympians [ch.
Here we seem to trace one cause of the chill remoteness of the
Olympians. They are objects to a subject, they are concepts thrown
out of the human mind, looked at from a distance, things known,
not like the mystery gods felt and lived. The more clearly they
are envisaged the more reasonable and thinkable they are, the
less are they the sources, the expression, of emotion.
We touch here on the very heart and secret of the difference
between the Olympian and the mystery-god, between Apollo and
Zeus on the one hand and Dionysos on the other :
a
difference, the
real significance of which was long ago, with the instinct of genius,
divined by Nietzsche 1 . The Olympian has clear form, he is the
' principium individuationis ''
incarnate
; he can be thought, hence
his calm, his sophrosyne. The mystery-god is the life of the whole
of things, he can only be felt—as soon as he is thought and in-
dividualized he passes, as Dionysos had to pass, into the thin,
rare ether of the Olympian. The Olympians are of conscious
thinking, divided, distinct, departmental ; the mystery-god is the
impulse of life through all things, perennial, indivisible.
Above the intellectualized Olympians was set, by Homer and
by /Eschylus alike, the dominant figure of Moira 2 , division,
partition, allotment, and rightly, for it is by dividing, by dis-
tinguishing, by classifying, that we know. This impulse to
divide is reflected in Moira, and the departmental Olympians
are, so far as they are thought, but specialized Moirai. As has
been well said
:
Chaque rnythologie est, au fond, une classification, mais qui emprunte ses
principes a des croyances religieuses, et non pas a des notions scientifiques.
1 Die ' Geburt der Tragodie, p. 116, erste aus dem Geiste der Musik heraus
versteben wir eine Freude an der Vernichtung des Individuums. Denn, an den
einzeluen Beispielen einer solchen Vernichtung, wird uns nur das ewige Phanomen
der dionysischen Kunst deutlich gemacbt, die den Willen in seiner Allmacht
gleichsam hinter dem principio individuationis, das ewige Leben jenseit aller
Erscheinung und trotz aller Vernichtung, zum Ausdruck bringt,' and again, p. 23,
' man mochte selhst Apollo als das herrliche Gotterbild des principii individuationis
bezeichnen ;
' for the emotional, unifying tendency of Dionysos see p. 24.
a The meaning of this figure of Moira and the inherent scepticism of the
Olympians was also in his inspired way divined by Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 69,
'...dies alles erinnert auf das starkste an dem Mittelpunkt und Hauptsatz der
aschyleischen Weltbetrachtung, die fiber Gottern und Menschen die Moira als
ewige Gerechtigkeit thronen sieht. Bei der erstaunlichen Kfihnheit, mit der
Aschylus die olympische Welt auf seine Gerechtigkeitswagschalen stellt, mtissen
wir uns vergegenwartigen, dass der tiefsinnige Grieche einen unverrfickbar festen
Untergrund des metaphysiscben Denkens in seinen Mysterien hatte, und dass sich an
den Olympiern alle seine skeptischen Anwandelungen entladen konnten.'