fe and being of his own, apart from the rite, he is a first stage
in art, a work of art existing in the mind, gradually detached from even
the faded action of ritual, and later to be the model of the actual work
of art, the copy in stone.

The stages, it would seem, are: actual life with its motor reactions,
the ritual copy of life with its faded reactions, the image of the god
projected by the rite, and, last, the copy of that image, the work of
art.

* * * * *

We see now why in the history of all ages and every place art is what is
called the "handmaid of religion." She is not really the "handmaid" at
all. She springs straight out of the rite, and her first outward leap is
the image of the god. Primitive art in Greece, in Egypt, in Assyria,[47]
represents either rites, processions, sacrifices, magical ceremonies,
embodied prayers; or else it represents the images of the gods who
spring from those rites. Track any god right home, and you will find him
lurking in a ritual sheath, from which he slowly emerges, first as a
_daemon_, or spirit, of the year, then as a full-blown divinity.

* * * * *

In Chapter II we saw how the _dromenon_ gave birth to the _drama_, how,
bit by bit, out of the chorus of dancers some dancers withdrew and
became spectators sitting apart, and on the other hand others of the
dancers drew apart on to the stage and presented to the spectators a
spectacle, a thing to be looked _at_, not joined _in_. And we saw how in
this spectacular mood, this being cut loose from immediate action, lay
the very essence of the artist and the art-lover. Now in the drama of
Thespis there was at first, we are told, but one actor; later AEschylus
added a second. It is clear who this actor, this _protagonist_ or "first
contender" was, the one actor with the double part, who was Death to be
carried out and Summer to be carried in. He was the Bough-Bearer, the
only possible actor in the one-part play of the renewal of life and the
return of the year.

* * * * *

The May-King, the leader of the choral dance gave birth not only to the
first actor of the drama, but also, as we have just seen, to the god, be
he Dionysos or be he Apollo; and this figure of the god thus imagined
out of the year-spirit was perhaps more fertile for art than even the
protagonist of the drama. It may seem strange to us that a god should
rise up out