Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/196

174 δύναμις, an element of refinement, of ascension, with the promise of an endless destiny. While the cult remains fixed, the æsthetic element, only accidentally connected with it, expands with the freedom and mobility of the things of the intellect. Always the fixed element is the religious observance; the fluid unfixed element is the myth, the religious conception. This religion is itself pagan, and has on a broad view of it the pagan sadness. It does not at once and for the majority become the higher Hellenic religion. That primeval pagan sentiment, as it is found in its most pronounced form in Christian countries where Christianity has been least adulterated by modern ideas, as in Catholic Bavaria, is discernible also in the common world of Greek religion, against which the higher Hellenic culture is in relief. In Greece, as in Catholic Bavaria, the beautiful artistic shrines, with their chastened taste, are far between. The wilder people have wilder gods; which, however, in Athens or Corinth, or Lacedæmon, changing ever with the worshippers in whom they live and move and have their being, borrow something of the lordliness and distinction of human nature there. The fiery, stupefying wine becomes in a happier region clear and exhilarating. In both, the country people cherish the unlovely idols of an earlier time, such as those which Pausanias