Four Stages of Greek Religion: Studies Based on a Course of Lectures Delivered in April 1912 at Columbia University |
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A. B. Cook Achaioi Aegean Aeschylus allegory ancient animals Anthesteria anthropomorphic Aphrodite Apollo appears Aristotle Athena Athenian beautiful believe body Bousset bull century Christian Chrysippus classical conception conquered Corpus Hermeticum course creed dead destroyed Diasia Diels Dionysus divine doctrine earth elements emotion essay eternal evil exist expurgation father feel Gnostic goddess Greece Greek religion heaven Hellenes Hellenistic Hera Hermes Hesiod holy Homer human ideal imagination Ionian Julian kings Korê Kouros Kronos literature live means Meilichios mind Mithras mysticism mythology myths nature never origin Osiris Pagan Pelasgian perhaps philosophers planets Plato Poseidon Posidonius prayers primitive reason Refutatio Omnium Haeresium religious rise rites ritual sacred sacrifice Sallustius seems sometimes soul sphere spirit stars Stoics superstition Themis Thessaly things thought tradition tribal tribe truth virtue whole word worship Zeus καὶ
Popular passages
Page 93 - It is a rise of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a loss of selfconfidence, of hope in this life and of faith in normal human effort; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation; an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul to God.
Page 143 - As far as knowledge and conscious reason will go, we should follow resolutely their austere guidance. When they cease, as cease they must, we must use as best we can those fainter powers of apprehension and surmise and sensitiveness by which, after all, most high truth has been reached as well as most high art and poetry...
Page 103 - A stable and well-governed society does tend, speaking roughly, to ensure that the Virtuous and Industrious Apprentice shall succeed in life, while the Wicked and Idle Apprentice fails. And in such a society people tend to lay stress on the reasonable or visible chains of causation.
Page 172 - I escape uninjured and without the need of hurting him. May I love, seek, and attain only that which is good. May I wish for all men's happiness and envy none.
Page 93 - ANY one who turns from the great writers of classical Athens, say Sophocles or Aristotle, to those of the Christian era must be conscious of a great difference in tone. There is a change in the whole relation of the writer to the world about him.
Page 39 - The extraordinary security of our modern life in times of peace makes it hard for us to realize, except by a definite effort of the imagination, the constant precariousness, the frightful proximity of death, that was usual in these weak ancient communities.
Page 88 - Sky, greater than time and eternity and all the flow of being, is unnamable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not to be seen by any eye. But we, being unable to apprehend His essence, use the help of sounds and names and pictures, of beaten gold and ivory and silver, of plants and rivers...
Page 88 - God Himself, the father and fashioner of all that is, older than the Sun or the Sky, greater than time and eternity and all the flow of being, is unnameable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not to be seen by any eye.
Page 102 - It is worth remembering that the best seed-ground for superstition is a society in which the fortunes of men seem to bear practically no relation to their merits and efforts. A stable and well-governed society does tend, speaking roughly, to ensure that the Virtuous and Industrious Apprentice shall succeed in life, while the Wicked and Idle Apprentice fails.
Page 11 - Paul calls moris or faith : that is, some attitude not of the conscious intellect but of the whole being, using all its powers of sensitiveness, all its feeblest and most inarticulate feelers and tentacles, in the effort somehow to touch by these that which cannot be grasped by the definite senses or analysed by the conscious reason.