Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/30

xx (necessarily very meagre and imperfect) of the progress of religious thought, both before and after his appearance on the stage of history, and as art has its root in the religious nature of man, we shall thus obtain a key to the three great epochs which mark the artistic development of humanity, which have been characterized as the Symbolical, the Classical, and the Romantic eras.

When the rays of tradition first dawn upon our planet, we discover the primeval ancestors of the Aryan race, before their dispersion from their common home, still gazing with awe and wonder upon the working of the vast nature-powers by which they were environed. While led through the religious instincts implanted in human nature to recognize the existence of a Being or Beings who hear and answer prayer, they were unable to separate the idea of mind, as a causal power, from the aspects of external nature. Accordingly, the shadowy divinities of the Vedic Pantheon, Indra, Agni, Varuna, can hardly be regarded as distinct personalities, holding definite relations to each other, or to their worshippers. As in the fluctuating scenery of the diurnal drama the sun is obscured by clouds, which in their turn are scattered and anon collected again, so these deified impersonations of physical phenomena loom dimly before our mental vision, each supreme and absolute in turn; nor is it easy to determine whether behind these innumerable divinities, the conception of One infinite Spirit had yet dawned upon the Aryan mind.