next chapter the correlation of Celtic religious ideas to the stages of
Celtic civilisation will be further developed.




CHAPTER III--THE CORRELATION OF CELTIC RELIGION WITH THE GROWTH OF CELTIC
CIVILISATION


In dealing with the long vista of prehistoric time, it is very difficult
for us, in our effort after perspective, not to shorten unduly in our
thoughts the vast epochs of its duration. We tend, too, to forget, that
in these unnumbered millennia there was ample time for it to be possible
over certain areas of Europe to evolve what were practically new races,
through the prepotency of particular stocks and the annihilation of
others. During these epochs, again, after speech had arisen, there was
time enough to recast completely many a language, for before the dawn of
history language was no more free from change than it is now, and in
these immense epochs whatever ideas as to the world of their surroundings
were vaguely felt by prehistoric men and formulated for them by their
kinsmen of genius, had abundant time in which to die or to win supremacy.
There must have been aeons before the dawn even of conscious animism, and
the experiment of trying sympathetic magic was, when first attempted,
probably regarded as a master-stroke of genius. The Stone Age itself was
a long era of great if slow progress in civilisation, and the evolution
of the practices and ideas which emerge as the concomitants of its
agricultural stage, when closely regarded, bear testimony to the mind's
capacity for religious progress in the light of experience and
intelligent experiment, and at the same time to the errors into which it