BOOK
practice would tend to prove only that the mythology of the Greeks
was not necessarily their religion, and was certainly not commensurate
with it. Still, although there is not much in the phenomena of
morning, or in the myth of the Delian Artemis, to suggest the
practice of slaying youths and maidens, or scourging them until the
blood ran in streams to glut the angry demon, there are not wanting
mythical phrases which, if translated into the conditions of human
life, would point to such revolting systems.^ Adonis cannot rise to
the life of the blessed gods until he has been slain. The morning
cannot come until the Eos who closed the previous day has faded
away and died in the black abyss of night So it is also with
Memnon and Sarpedon, with Endymion and Narkissos. But all
these are the children of Zeus or Phoibos, or some other deity of
the heaven or the sun ; and thus the parents may be said to sacrifice
their children, as Tantalos placed the mangled Pelops on the banquet-
table of Zeus. It is thus seemingly that Iphigeneia must die before
Helen can be brought again from Ilion : but Helen is herself
Iphigeneia, and thus the return of Helen is the resurrection of the
victim doomed by the words of Kalchas and the consent of Aga-
memnon, and Iphigeneia becomes the priestess of Artemis, whose
wrath she had been slain to expiate. With an unconscious fidelity to
the old mythical phrases, which is still more remarkable, Iphigeneia
is herself Artemis, and thus the story resolves itself into the saying
that the evening and the morning are the same, but that she must die
at night before she can spring into life again at dawn. Nor must it
be forgotten that Helen stolen away from the Argive or gleaming land
this character of devil-worship, in which not called upon to reconcile them. We streams of human blood were the only are not building up questionable theories, effectual offerings. The unsatisfied but expounding unquestionable matters shades or ghosts of heroes became hate- of fact ; and it is a perfectly open subject ful demons, going about with wide- of discussion whether the pagan idea of stretched mouths for anything which sacrifice is a corruption of a revealed might serve as a prey. These are the obligation of man to his Creator, or Latin Manduci and Lemures, the Greek whether it was (as many will think more Lamyroi, and Charon, the gaper, words probable) independently derived and "all pointing to swallowing and devour- developed from the materialistic and ing, as our goblin is supposed to do,"' sensuous notions of the untutored races p. 7. The general proposition is indis- of antiquity about the nature, condition, putable, but the English goblin seems and wants of beings, infernal and super- to represent etymologically the Teutonic nal," p. 13. Kobold and the Greek Kobalos, beings ' Mr. Brown (Great Dionysiak doubtless of closely kindred character. Afyth, i. 135) regards the version of the If this be so, the idea of sacrifice is myth which speaks of the substitution traced back to an utterly revolting source of the stag for Iphiger..ia at the moment in the thoughts of the still savage man. of sacrifice, as being, like the similar To the cjuestion which asks how this .substitution in the case of Isaac, an conclusion " can be reconciled with the instance "of disapprobation of the Jewish doctrine of sacrifice and all its bloody cult peculiar to Kanaanite, Phe momentous consequences," he answers, nician, and Karthaginian." " I think we may fairly reply, we are
