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

490 Themis [ch.
He was concerned, not to lie prostrate in wonder before the
mystery of their life, still less to embark on scientific enquiry
into the causes of that life, but to make them grow and multiply
that he might eat them and grow and multiply himself.
Has man then no sense of mystery, no consciousness of some-
thing greater than himself to which he owes obedience, to which
he pays reverence ? Yes. The instinct of those who, in framing
the old definitions of religion, included ' mystery ' and ' the in-
finite,' was right—though their explanations wrong. The mystery,
the thing greater than man, is potent, not only or chiefly because
it is unintelligible and calls for explanation, not because it stimu-
lates a baffled understanding, but because it is felt as an obligation.
The thing greater than man, the ' power not himself that makes for
righteousness,' is, in the main, not the mystery of the universe to
which as yet he is not awake, but the pressure of that unknown
ever incumbent force, herd instinct, the social conscience. The
mysterious dominant figure is not Physis, but Themis 1 .
If then we would understand religion, we must get behind
theology, behind, for the Greeks, the figures of the Olympians, and
even the shadowy shapes of the daimones, and penetrate to the
social conscience, and first and foremost to its earliest and perhaps
most permanent expression 2 , to social structure—the organized
system of relationships.
This brings us back to the Olympians. Of what social
structure are they the projection ?
Undoubtedly they represent that form of society with which
we are ourselves most familiar, the patriarchal family. Zeus is
the father and head: though Hera and he are in constant unseemly
conflict, there is no doubt about his ultimate supremacy. Hera
1
It will later (p. 516) be seen that Themis casts her shadow over Physis till the
two are scarcely distinguishable.
- For the importance of social structure I may refer to the Presidential address
of Dr W. H. E. Eivers to the Anthropological Section of the British Association,
1911, p. 9. His words are a landmark in the history of anthropological study, and
are specially relevant to all enquiries as to the origin of religious forms. ' If then
social structure has this fundamental and deeply seated character, if it is the least
easily changed and only changed as the result either of actual blending of peoples
or of the most profound political changes, the obvious inference is that it is with
social structure that we must begin the attempt to analyse culture.'