y spring nevertheless remain clearly recognizable.

The legendary stories have thus attained the last stage of their
elaboration and completed their diffusion. They have penetrated not only
into the purlieus of the cities but into distant countries; into
centers of education as among the popular classes. Wounded convalescents
and soldiers on leave at home for a time have told them to the city man
and to the peasant. Both have found them in letters from the front; both
have read them in journals and books, both have listened to the warnings
of the government and to the imperial word. The schoolteacher has mixed
these episodes with his teaching; he has nourished with them infantile
imaginations. Scholars have read the text of them in their classbooks
and have enacted them in the games inspired by the war; they have told
them at home in the family circle, giving them the authority attached to
the master's word.

Everywhere these accounts have been the subject of ardent commentaries;
in the village, in the councils held upon doorsteps, and in the barrooms
of inns; in the big cafes, the trams, and the public promenades of
towns. Everywhere they have become an ordinary topic of conversation,
everywhere they have met with ready credence. The term _franc tireur_
has become familiar. Its use is general and its acceptance widespread.

A collection of prayers for the use of the Catholic German soldiers
includes this incredible text: "Shame and malediction on him who wishes
to act like the Belgian and French, perfidious and cruel, who have even
attacked defenseless wounded."

3. Ritual, Myth, and Dogma[268]

The antique religions had for the most part no creed; they consisted
entirely of institutions and practices. No doubt, men will not
habitually follow certain practices without attaching a meaning to them;
but as a rule we find that while the practice was rigorously fixed, the
meaning attached to it was extremely vague, and the same rite was
explained by different people in different ways, without any question of
orthodoxy or heterodoxy arising in consequence. In ancient Greece, for
example, certain things were done at a temple, and people were agreed
that it would be impious not to do them. But if you had asked why they
were done, you would probably have had several mutually contradictory
explanations from different persons, and no one would have thought it a
matter of the least religious importance which of these you cho