Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/195

Rh the earliest times to certain usages of patriarchal life, the kindling of fire, the washing of the body, the breaking of bread, the slaughter of the flock, the gathering of harvest, holidays and dances. Here are the beginnings of a ritual, at first as occasional and unfixed as the sentiment which it expresses, but destined to become the permanent element of religious life. The usages of patriarchal life change; but this germ of ritual remains, developing, but always in a religious interest, losing its domestic character, and therefore becoming more and more inexplicable with each generation. This pagan cult, in spite of local colouring, essentially one, is the base of all religions. It is the anodyne which the religious principle, like one administering opiates to the incurable, has added to the law which makes life sombre for the vast majority of mankind.

More definite religious conceptions come from other sources, and fix themselves upon this cult in various ways, changing it and giving it new meanings. With the Hebrew people they came from individuals of genius, the authors of the prophetic literature. In Greece they were derived from mythology, itself not due to a religious source at all, but developing in the course of time into a body of anthropomorphic religious conceptions. To the unprogressive ritual element it brought these conceptions, itself the πτερού