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

x] Dike and Duree 477
Les pantheons bien organises se partagent la nature, tout comnie ailleurs les
clans se partagent l'univers 1 .
The Olympians are then but highly diversified Moirai and the
Moirai are departments, they are the spatial correlatives of the
temporal Horai. The wheel of Dike moves through time, Moira
operates in space. The distinction is of cardinal importance.
Prof. Bergson 2 has shown us that duree, true time, is ceaseless
change, which is the very essence of life— which is in fact ' Involu-
tion Creatrice,' and this is in its very essence one and indivisible.
La duree reelle est ce que l'on a toujours appele" le temps, mais le temps
percu comme indivisible.
We cannot understand this perhaps through the eye, trained
to spatial perception, but we can imagine it through the ear.
Quand nous ecoutons une melodie, nous avons la plus pure impression de
succession que nous puissions avoir—une impression aussi eloignee que
possible de la simultaneite— et pourtant c'est la continuity ineme de la
melodie etl'impossibilite de la decomposer qui font sur nous cette impression.
Si nous la de'coupons en notes distinctes, en autant 'd'avant' et 'd'apres'
qu'il nous plait, c'est que nous y melons des images spatiales et que nous
impregnons la succession de simultaneite ; dans l'espace seulement, il y a
distinction nette de parties exterieures les unes aux autres.
It is this ' duree,' figured by the Greek as Dike, the Way 3 , that
the mystic apprehends ; in the main stream and current of that
life of duration, he lives and has his being. Moira and all the
spatial splendours of her Olympians are to him but an intellectual
backwater.
Finally, the Olympians not only cease to be sources of emotion
but they positively offend that very intellect that fashioned them.
They are really so many clear-cut concepts, but they claim to have
objective reality. This is the rock on which successive genera-
tions of gods have shattered. Man feels rightly and instinctively
1 MM. Durkheim etM. Mauss, De quelques Formes Primitives de Classification—
Contribution a V Etude des Representations Collectives. L'Annee Sociologique, 1901
1902, p. 1. In this monograph, which in its relation to the study of religious
origins is simply ' epoch-making,' the authors seek to establish that logical
classification arises from social. This is analogous to the philosophical position
of Prof. Durkheim, who holds that the ' categories' are modes of collective rather
than individual thinking; see his Sociologie Religieuse et Theorie de la Connaissance
in Rev. de Metaphysique, xvn. 1909, p. 733. For Moira as the principle of classification
I am entirely indebted to Mr Cornford, and, for the full analysis and
significance of the conception, may refer to his forthcoming From Religion to
Philosophy, chapter i.
2 La Perception du Changement, 1911, p. 27.
3 For the significance of Dike see infra, pp. 516—528.
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