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, promoted
now with a consciously religious motive, losing its domestic
character, and therefore becoming more and more inexplicable
with each generation. Such 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 dynamis, the power of the wing--an element [203] of
refinement, of ascension, with the promise of an endless destiny.
While the ritual remains unchanged, the aesthetic element, only
accidentally connected with it, expands with the freedom and
mobility of the things of the intellect. Always, the fixed element
is the religious observance; the fluid, unfixed element is the
myth, the religious conception.
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