Greek
religion, where we can observe it most distinctly, is at once a
magnificent ritualistic system, and a cycle of poetical conceptions.
Religions, as they grow by natural laws out of man's life, are modified
by whatever modifies his life. They brighten under a bright sky, they
become liberal as the social range widens, they grow intense and shrill
in the clefts of human life, where the spirit is narrow and confined, and
the stars are visible at noonday; and a fine analysis of these
differences is one of the gravest functions of religious criticism.
Still, the broad foundation, in mere human nature, of all religions as
they exist for the greatest number, is a universal pagan sentiment, a
paganism which existed before the Greek religion, and has lingered far
onward into the Christian world, ineradicable, like some persistent
vegetable growth, because its seed is an element of the very soil out of
which it springs. This pagan sentiment measures the sadness with which
the human mind is filled, whenever its thoughts wander far from what is
here, and now.
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