godship, but the personality of his chief shines through. Hence, wherever the clan community falls under the domination of chiefs (as, in the absence of a strong priestly centralism, it has at least for a time almost always fallen), the powers of Nature are thrust into the background by divinities, or demi-gods, or heroes whose connection with the physical world is obscured by aristocratic associations; wherever communal life has for any length of time held its own against the chiefs, the poetry of Nature, comparatively unhumanised, has been kept alive.
In Homeric Greece and Saxon England the development of social unity found its main channel in the individual enterprise of military chiefs; and the Scôp of the mead-hall or Demodokus in the palace of Alkinous are the song-makers whom such a turn of social circumstances brings to the front. In early Israel or Arabia before the Prophet the progress of social unity moves along another channel—that fusion of leaguered clans which in the Amphiktionic League looks out upon us like a survival from unsuccessful prehistoric efforts after Hellenic unity. In the poetry of Israel and Arabia, accordingly, Nature plays a more prominent part than in that of Homeric Greece or Saxon England. The point of view from which Nature is conceived is also different in these cases—she is the grand unity of the Hebrew and Arab, before which all social differences "are as dust that rises up and is lightly laid again;" she is the grand diversity of the Greek and Saxon, looking out from every place with a new face and a changed name, and a sympathy for none but her local friends. The same principle meets us in the poetry of India. Here Nature, too, predominates, not merely because the splendour of Indian scenery is passively reflected in the
