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4 GREEK DIVINATION chap.

that the old spectacles prove to be misleading.

When M. Bouche Leclerq wrote his great

work on classical divination, the point of view

from which the scholar started was that of

regarding the Greek as springing upon the

world full armed, like Athena from the head

of Zeus, reason incarnate. Certain forms of

divination he invented on quasi - inductive

grounds, other methods he adopted wholesale

from alien civilisations, and in particular all

ideas and practices connected with inspiration

were to be of foreign importation.1 To-day it

is impossible to work thus with the antithesis

of rational Greece and the emotional Orient.

The problems of origin and development have

assumed a new importance, as we have learned

how near lay Hellenic civilisation to the bar-

barism from which it emerged triumphant.

And to recognise in the Greek a man of like

passions with the rest of humanity is to

appreciate, not to detract from, the splendour

of his achievement.

It is, I believe, essential to the understanding of Greek religion to recognise the importance of what may be termed the " pre-Olympian "

1 Bouche Leclerq, Histoire de la Divination dans iii. p. 88 ; Rohde, Psyche, 2, pp. 56-61. Dr. Farnell rightly protests against such a point of view, Cults of the Greek States, iv. pp. 190-191.