dice" has in all ages
and countries secured the permanence of ritual and religious traditions.
Men have always argued, like one of the persons in M. Renan's play, Le
Pretre de Nemi, that "l'ordre du monde depend de l'ordre des rites qu'on
observe". The familiar endurable sequence of the seasons of spring, and
seed-sowing, and harvest depend upon the due performance of immemorial
religious acts. "In the mystic deposits," says Dinarchus, "lies the
safety of the city."(2) What the "mystic deposits" were nobody knows
for certain, but they must have been of very archaic sanctity, and occur
among the Arunta and the Pawnees.

(1) Characters.

(2) Ap. Hermann, Lehrbuch, p. 41; Aglaophamus, 965.

Ritual is preserved because it preserves LUCK. Not only among the Romans
and the Brahmans, with their endless minute ritual actions, but among
such lower races as the Kanekas of New Caledonia, the efficacy of
religious functions is destroyed by the slightest accidental infraction
of established rules.(1) The same timid conservatism presides over
myth, and in each locality the mystery-plays, with their accompanying
narratives, preserved inviolate the early forms of legend. Myth and
ritual do not admit of being argued about. "C'etait le rite etabli. Ce
n'etait pas plus absurde qu'autre chose," says the conservative in M.
Renan's piece, defending the mode of appointment of

The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain.

(1) Thus the watchers of the dead in New Caledonia are fed by the
sorcerer with a mess at the end of a very long spoon, and should the
food miss the mouth, all the ceremonies have to be repeated. This detail
is from Mr. J. J. Atkinson.

Now, if the rites and myths preserved by the timorousness of this same
"cowardice towards the supernatural" were originally evolved in the
stage of savagery, savage they would remain, as it is impious and
dangerous to reform them till the religion which they serve perishes
with them. These relics in Greek ritual and faith are very commonly
explained as due to Oriental influences, as things borrowed from the
dark and bloody superstitions of Asia. But this attempt to save the
native Greek character for "blitheness" and humanity must not be pushed
too far.(1) It must be remembered that the cruder and wilder sacrifices
and legends of Greece were strictly LOCAL; that they were attached to
these ancient temples, old altars, barbarous xoana, or wooden idols,