nce; it includes too much and not enough. All "things done" are
not rites. You may shrink back from a blow; that is the expression of an
emotion, that is a reaction to a stimulus, but that is not a rite. You
may digest your dinner; that is a thing done, and a thing of high
importance, but it is not a rite.

One element in the rite we have already observed, and that is, that it
be done collectively, by a number of persons feeling the same emotion. A
meal digested alone is certainly no rite; a meal eaten in common, under
the influence of a common emotion, may, and often does, _tend_ to become
a rite.

Collectivity and emotional tension, two elements that tend to turn the
simple reaction into a rite, are--specially among primitive
peoples--closely associated, indeed scarcely separable. The individual
among savages has but a thin and meagre personality; high emotional
tension is to him only caused and maintained by a thing felt socially;
it is what the tribe feels that is sacred, that is matter for ritual. He
may make by himself excited movements, he may leap for joy, for fear;
but unless these movements are made by the tribe together they will not
become rhythmical; they will probably lack intensity, and certainly
permanence. Intensity, then, and collectivity go together, and both are
necessary for ritual, but both may be present without constituting art;
we have not yet touched the dividing line between art and ritual. When
and how does the _dromenon_, the _rite done_, pass over into the
_drama_?

The genius of the Greek language _felt_, before it consciously _knew_,
the difference. This feeling ahead for distinctions is characteristic of
all languages, as has been well shown by Mr. Pearsall Smith[6] in
another manual of our series. It is an instinctive process arising
independently of reason, though afterwards justified by it. What, then,
is the distinction between art and ritual which the genius of the Greek
language felt after, when it used the two words _dromenon_ and _drama_
for two different sorts of "things done"? To answer our question we must
turn for a brief moment to psychology, the science of human behaviour.

* * * * *

We are accustomed for practical convenience to divide up our human
nature into partitions--intellect, will, the emotions, the
passions--with further subdivisions, _e.g._ of the intellect into
reason, imagination, and the like. These partitions we are apt to