In the
ancient world, however, such ideas and such rites were by no means
confined to the Oriental peoples of Babylon and Syria, of Phrygia
and Egypt; they were not a product peculiar to the religious
mysticism of the dreamy East, but were shared by the races of
livelier fancy and more mercurial temperament who inhabited the
shores and islands of the Aegean. We need not, with some enquirers
in ancient and modern times, suppose that these Western peoples
borrowed from the older civilisation of the Orient the conception of
the Dying and Reviving God, together with the solemn ritual, in
which that conception was dramatically set forth before the eyes of
the worshippers. More probably the resemblance which may be traced
in this respect between the religions of the East and West is no
more than what we commonly, though incorrectly, call a fortuitous
coincidence, the effect of similar causes acting alike on the
similar constitution of the human mind in different countries and
under different skies. The Greek had no need to journey into far
countries to learn the vicissitudes of the seasons, to mark the
fleeting beauty of the damask rose, the transient glory of the
golden corn, the passing splendour of the purple grapes.
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