Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/197

Rh found still devoutly preserved in Arcadia. Athenæus tells the story of one who, coming to a temple of Latona, had expected to see a worthy image of the mother of Apollo, and who laughed on finding only a shapeless wooden figure. In both, the fixed element is not the myth or religious conception, but the cult with its unknown origin and meaning only half understood. Even the mysteries, the centres of Greek religious life at a later period, were not a doctrine but a ritual; and one can imagine the Catholic church retaining its hold through the 'sad mechanic exercise' of its ritual, in spite of a diffused criticism or scepticism. Again, each adjusts but imperfectly its moral and theological conceptions; each has its mendicants, its purifications, its Antinomian mysticism, its garments offered to the gods, its statues worn with kissing, its exaggerated superstitions for the vulgar only, its worship of sorrow, its addolorata, its mournful mysteries. There is scarcely one wildness of the Catholic church that has not been anticipated by Greek polytheism. What should we have thought of the vertiginous prophetess at the very centre of Greek religion? The supreme Hellenic culture is a sharp edge of light across this gloom. The Dorian cult of Apollo, rational, chastened,