safe and comprehensive statement that the Greeks conceived the relation
of man to the gods mechanically, than we are reminded of quite another
phase of their religion, different from and even antithetic to that with
which we have hitherto been concerned. Nothing, we might be inclined to
say on the basis of what we have at present ascertained, nothing could
be more opposed to the clear anthropomorphic vision of the Greek, than
that conception of a mystic exaltation, so constantly occurring in the
history of religion, whose aim is to transcend the limits of human
personality and pass into direct communion with the divine life. Yet of
some such conception, and of the ritual devised under its influence, we
have undoubted though fragmentary indications in the civilization of the
Greeks. It is mainly in connection with the two gods Apollo and Dionysus
that the phenomena in question occur; gods whose cult was introduced
comparatively late into Greece and who brought with them from the north
something of its formless but pregnant mystery; as though at a point the
chain of guardian deities was broken, and the terror and forces of the
abyss pressed in upon the charmed circle of Hellas. For Apollo, who in
one of his aspects is a figure so typically Hellenic, the ever-young and
beautiful god of music and the arts, was also the Power of prophetic
inspiration, of ecstasy or passing out of oneself. The priestess who
delivered his oracle at Delphi was possessed and mastered by the god.
Maddened by mephitic vapours streaming from a cleft in the rock,
convulsed in every feature and every limb, she delivered in semi-
articulate cries the burden of the divine message. Her own personality,
for the time being, was annihilated; the wall that parts man from god
was swept away; and the Divine rushed in upon the human vessel it
shattered as it filled. This conception of inspiration as a higher form
of madness, possessed of a truer insight than that of sanity, was fully
recognised among the Greeks. "There is a madness," as Plato puts it,
"which is the special gift of heaven, and the source of the chiefest