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Rh various names in different parts of Greece. It was Dionysus at Acharnæ, in Rhodes, and in Delos. It was the sisters Dâmia and Auxêsia in Ægina; Demeter in some parts of Attica; Pan in the Northern Peloponnese. It is always a shock to the modern imagination to come upon the public establishment of such monstrously indecent performances among a people so far more simple and less self-indulgent than ourselves. But, apart from possible elements of unconscious hypocrisy on our own part, there are many things to be borne in mind. In dealing with those elements in human nature which are more permanent than respectable, the characteristic Greek method was frank recognition and regulation. A pent-up force becomes dangerous; let all natural impulses be given free play in such ways and on such occasions as will do least damage. There were the strictest laws against the abuse of these festivals, against violence, against the undue participation of the young; but there was, roughly speaking, no shame and no secrecy. We have, unfortunately, lost Aristotle's philosophy of comedy. It was in the missing part of the Poetics. But when he explains the moral basis of tragedy as being "to purge our minds of their vague impulses of pity and terror" by a strong bout of these emotions; when he justifies 'tumultuous' music as affording a 'purgation' of the wild emotional element in our nature which might else break out in what he calls enthousiasmos; it is easy to see that the licences in comedy might be supposed to effect a more obvious and necessary purgation. Besides this, we must not