derive the spirals, volutes, and concentric circles of Mycenaean gold
work, from the identical motives, on the oldest incised rocks and kists
of our Islands, of North and South America, and of the tribes of Central
Australia, recently described by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and Mr.
Carnegie. The material of the Mycenaean artist may be gold, his work may
be elegant and firm, but he traces the selfsame ornament as the naked
Arunta, with feebler hand, paints on sacred rocks or on the bodies of his
tribesmen. What is true of ornament is true of myth, rite, and belief.
Greece only offers a gracious modification of the beliefs, rites, and
myths of the races who now are "nearest the beginning," however remote
from that unknown beginning they may be. To understand this is to come
closer to a true conception of the evolution of Greek faith and art than
we can reach by any other path. Yet to insist on this is not to ignore
the unmeasured advance of the Greeks in development of society and art.
On that head the Hymns, like all Greek poetry, bear their own free
testimony. But, none the less, Greek religion and myth present features
repellent to us, which derive their origin, not from savagery, but from
the more crude horrors of the lower and higher barbarisms.

Greek religion, Greek myth, are vast conglomerates. We find a savage
origin for Apollo, and savage origins for many of the Mysteries. But the
cruelty of savage initiations has been purified away. On the other hand,
we find a barbaric origin for departmental gods, such as Aphrodite, and
for Greek human sacrifices, unknown to the lowest savagery. From
savagery Zeus is probably derived; from savagery come the germs of the
legends of divine amours in animal forms. But from barbarism arises the
sympathetic magic of agriculture, which the lowest races do not practise.
From the barbaric condition, not from savagery, comes Greek hero-worship,
for the lowest races do not worship ancestral spirits. Such is the
medley of prehistoric ideas in Greece, while the charm and poetry of the