Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/317

 *tation by experts—and, apart from that consideration, the distinction was the invention of a philosophical sect and not an expression of popular feeling. There is nothing to show that the common-folk, believing as they did in the practicability of communion with their gods, esteemed one means of divination as intrinsically more valuable than another.

Nor was there any logical reason for such discrimination. Granted that there were gods superior to man in knowledge and in power and also willing to communicate with him, no restriction could logically be set upon the means of communication which they might choose to adopt. There was no reason why they should speak by the mouth of a priestess intoxicated with mephitic vapours or disturb men's sleep with visions rather than use the birds as their messengers or write their commandment on the intestines of a sacrificial victim.

A certain justification for accepting some means of divination, such as intelligible dreams, and for suspecting others, might certainly have been found in distrust of any human intermediary; vagrant and necessitous oracle-mongers infested the country; and even the priestess of Delphi, as history shows, was not always superior to political and pecuniary considerations. But experience of fraud did not apparently teach distrust; the fact that oracles and other means of divination were undoubtedly often abused did not cause the Greek people to reject the proper use of them; down to this day all the chief methods of ancient divination still continue. In some cases, we shall see, the modern employment of such methods is a mere survival of ancient custom without any intelligent religious motive; but in others there is abundant evidence that the modern folk are still actuated by the feelings which so dominated the lives of their ancestors—the belief in, and the desire for, close and frequent communion with the powers above.

Direct inspiration is a gift which at the present day a man is not inclined to claim for himself, though he will often attribute it to another; for it implies insanity. But though the gift is not therefore envied, it is everywhere respected. Mental derangement, which appears to me to be exceedingly common among the Greek peasants, sets the sufferer not merely apart from his fellows but in a sense above them. His utterances are received with a certain awe, and so far as they are intelligible are taken as