Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/311

 rather than in kind; he has but to picture a race of beings somewhat stronger and somewhat nobler than the foremost of his own fellow-men, and these whom he thus imagines are gods. A single spirit omniscient and omnipotent is too distant, too inaccessible from any known ground. Lack of the capacity to form or to grasp lofty ideals carries with it at least the compensation of closer intimacy with the supernatural and the divine.

It may therefore be expected that in the course of the intellectual and spiritual development of any primitive people, the more accurately they learn to measure their own imperfections and limitations, and the more imaginatively they magnify the wisdom and power of their gods, the wider and more impassable grows the chasm that divides mortal from immortal, human from divine; communion of man and god becomes less frequent, less direct. Such certainly was the experience of the Greek nation in some measure; but, owing probably to an innate and persistent vanity which at all times has made the race blind to its own failings, that experience was less acute than in the case of other peoples. There had been days indeed when their gods walked the earth with men and counselled them in troubles and fought in their battles; there had been days when the chiefest of all the gods sought a hero's aid against his giant foes; there had been days when men and women might aspire even to wedlock with immortals, and to possess children half-divine. In those days too death was not the only path by which the heavens or the house of Hades might be gained. Kings and prophets, warriors and fair women passed thither by grace of the gods living and unscathed; nay, even personal skill or prowess emboldened minstrel and hero to match themselves with the gods below, and wielding of club or sweeping of lyre sufficed to open the doors for their return to earth.

But those days soon passed; men walked and spoke and held open fellowship with the gods no more; the very poetry and imagination of the Greek temperament so fast outstripped in rapidity of development the growth of material or moral resources, that the rift between their religious ideals and the realities of their life and character ever widened, until the daily and familiar intercourse of their ancestors with the gods seemed to them a condition of life irretrievable and thenceforth impossible. This result was observed and remarked by the Greeks themselves, but