their wounds, never closed from generation to
generation. It is with a rush of home-sickness that the thought of death
presents itself. He would remain at home for ever on the earth if he
could: as it loses its colour and the senses fail, he clings ever closer
to it; but since the mouldering of bones and flesh must go on to the end,
he is careful for charms and talismans, that may chance to have some
friendly power in them, when the inevitable shipwreck comes. Such
sentiment is a part of the eternal basis of all religions, modified
indeed by changes of time and place, but indestructible, because its root
is so deep in the earth of man's nature. The breath of religious
initiators passes over them; a few "rise up with wings as eagles," but
the broad level of religious life is not permanently changed. Religious
progress, like all purely spiritual progress, is confined to a few. This
sentiment fixes itself in the earliest times to certain usages of
patriarchal life, the kindling of fire, the washing of the body, the
slaughter of the flock, the gathering of harvest, holidays and dances.
Here are the beginnings of a ritual, at first as occasional and unfixed
as the sentiment which it expresses, but destined to become the permanent
element of religious life. The usages of patriarchal life change; but
this germ of ritual remains, developing, but always in a religious
interest, losing its domestic character, and therefore becoming more and
more inexplicable with each generation. This pagan worship, in spite of
local variations, essentially one, is an element in all religions. It is
the anodyne which the religious principle, like one administering opiates
to the incurable, has added to the law which makes life sombre for the
vast majority of mankind.

More definite religious conceptions come from other sources, and fix
themselves upon this ritual in various ways, changing it, and giving it
new meanings. In Greece they were derived from mythology, itself not due
to a religious source at all, but developing in the course of time into a
body of religious conceptions, entirely human in form and character. To
the unprogressive ritual element it brought these conceptions,
itself--he pterou dunamis, the power of the wing--an element of
refinement, of ascension, with the promise of an endless destiny. While
the ritual remains fixed, the aesthetic element, only accidentally
connected with it, expands with the freedom and mobility of the th