gious practices and habits of thought.
When African negroes are converted to Christianity and forbidden to
practise their tribal magic, they are apt to steal away into the depths
of the forest and do secretly what they have always considered necessary
to ensure a good harvest. Not to do so would be too great a risk. When
Goths were "converted by battalions" the change must have been more in
names than in substance. When Greeks of the Mediterranean were forbidden
to say prayers to a figure of Helios, the Sun, it was not difficult to
call him the prophet Elias and go on with the same prayers and hopes.
Not difficult to continue your prayers to the age-old Mother Goddess of
all Mediterranean peoples, while calling her Mary, the Mother of Christ.
Eusebius studied the subject, somewhat superficially, in his
_Praeparatio Evangelica_, in which he argued that much old pagan belief
was to be explained as an imperfect preparation for the full light of
the Gospel. And it is certainly striking how the Anatolian peoples,
among whom the seed of the early Church was chiefly sown, could never,
in spite of Jewish monotheism, give up the beloved Mother Goddess for
whom mankind craves, or the divine "Faithful Son" who will by his own
sacrifice save his people. Where scientific knowledge fails man cannot
but be guided by his felt needs and longings and aspirations.

The elements in Christianity which derive from what Jews called "_the
Goyim_" or "nations" beyond the pale, seem to be far deeper and more
numerous than those which come unchanged from Judaism. Even the Sabbath
had to be changed, and the birthday of Jesus conformed to that of the
Sun. Judaism contributed a strong, though not quite successful,
resistance to polytheism, and a purification of sexual morality. It
provided perhaps a general antiseptic, which was often needed by the
passionate gropings of Hellenistic religion, in the stage which I call
the Failure of Nerve.

G. M.

_September 1951._

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

In revising the _Four Stages of Greek Religion_ I have found myself
obliged to change its name. I felt there was a gap in the story. The
high-water mark of Greek religious thought seems to me to have come just
between the Olympian Religion and the Failure of Nerve; and the
decline--if that is the right word--which is observable in the later
ages of antiquity is a decline not from Olymp