undles of the
Pawnees, and the _churinga_, and bark "native portmanteaux," of which Mr.
Carnegie brought several from the Australian desert.
[Demeter and Persephone sending Triptolemos on his mission. Marble
relief found at Eleusis--now in Athens: lang92.jpg]
For all Greek Mysteries a satisfactory savage analogy can be found. These
spring straight from human nature: from the desire to place customs, and
duties, and taboos under divine protection; from the need of
strengthening them, and the influence of the elders, by mystic sanctions;
from the need of fortifying and trying the young by probations of
strength, secrecy, and fortitude; from the magical expulsion of hostile
influences; from the sympathetic magic of early agriculture; from study
of the processes of nature regarded as personal; and from guesses,
surmises, visions, and dreams as to the fortunes of the wandering soul on
its way to its final home. I have shown all these things to be human,
universal, not sprung from one race in one region. Greek Mysteries are
based on all these natural early conceptions of life and death. The
early Greeks, like other races, entertained these primitive, or very
archaic ideas. Greece had no need to borrow from Egypt; and, though
Egypt was within reach, Greece probably developed freely her original
stock of ideas in her own fashion, just as did the Incas, Aztecs,
Australians, Ojibbeways, and the other remote peoples whom I have
selected. The argument of M. Foucart, I think, is only good as long as
we are ignorant of the universally diffused forms of religious belief
which correspond to the creeds of Eleusis or of Egypt. In the Greek
Mysteries we have the Greek guise,--solemn, wistful, hopeful, holy, and
pure, yet not uncontaminated with archaic buffoonery,--of notions and
rites, hopes and fears, common to all mankind. There is no other secret.
The same arguments as I have advanced against Greek borrowing from Egypt,
apply to Greek borrowing from Asia. Mr. Ramsay, following Mr. Robertson
Smith, suggests that Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis, may be "the
old Semitic Al-lat." {95a} Then we have Leto and Artemis, as the Mother
and the Maid (Kore) with their mystery play. "Clement describes them"
(the details) as "Eleusinian, for they had spread to Eleusis as the rites
of Demeter and Kore _crossing from Asia to Crete, and from Crete to the
European_ peninsula." The ritual "remained everywhere fundamentally the
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