The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV
General
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV
Literature -- Collections
Ovations, now to the living king and now to the dead king, while
taking saltatory and musical forms, took also verbal forms, originally
spontaneous and irregular, but presently studied and measured;
whence, first, the unrhythmical speech of the orator, which under
higher emotional excitement grew into the rhythmical speech of the
priest poet, chanting verses--verses that finally became established
hymns of praise. Meanwhile from accompanying rude imitations of the
hero's acts, performed now by one and now by several, grew dramatic
representations, which, little by little elaborated, fell under the
regulation of a chief actor, who prefigured the playwright. And out of
these germs, all pertaining to worship, came eventually the various
professions of poets, actors, dramatists, and the subdivisions of
these.
The great deeds of the hero god, recited, chanted, or sung, and
mimetically rendered, naturally came to be supplemented by details, so
growing into accounts of his life; and thus the priest poet gave
origin to the biographer, whose narratives, being extended to less
sacred personages, became secularized. Stories of the apotheosized
chief or king, joined with stories of his companions and amplified by
narratives of accompanying transactions, formed the first histories.
And from these accounts of the doings of particular men and groups of
men, partly true but passing by exaggeration into the mythical, came
the wholly mythical, or fiction; which then and always preserved the
biographico-historical character. Add to which that out of the
criticisms and reflections scattered through this personal literature
an impersonal literature slowly emerged; the whole group of these
products having as their deepest root the eulogies of the priest
poet.
Prompted as were the medicine-men of savages and the priests of early
civilized peoples to increase their influence, they were ever
stimulated to acquire knowledge of natural actions and the properties
of things; and, being in alleged communication with supernatural
beings, they were supposed to acquire such knowledge from them. Hence,
by implication, the priest became the primitive man of science; and
led by his special experiences to speculate about the causes of
things, thus entered the sphere of philosophy: both his science and
his philosophy being pursued in the service of his religion.
Not only his higher culture, but his alleged intercourse with the
gods, whose mouthpiece he was, made him the authority in cases of
dispute; and being also, as historian, the authority concerning past
transactions and traditional usages, or laws, he acquired in both
capacities the character of judge. Moreover, when the growth of legal
administration brought the advocate, he, tho usually of lay origin,
was sometimes clerical.
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