be ancestor worship. But this distinction loses all meaning, for the reason that in his last volume Ridgeway maintains that “Vegetation, Corn, and Tree spirits, as well as those of rocks, mountains, and rivers, and what are collectively termed Totemistic beliefs,” fertility-rites, initiation-rites, mana, “the worship of Demeter and almost[82] all other Greek deities” are “not primary phenomena but merely secondary and dependent on the primary belief in the immortality and durability of the soul,” and consequently that tragedy and serious drama (being everywhere associated with some form of religion) not only in Greece but “wherever they are found under the sun have their roots in the world-wide belief in the continued existence of the soul after the death of the body.”[83] How much of truth there may be in Ridgeway’s contention that ancestor worship is prior to and the ultimate source of other forms of religion I shall not stop to discuss. But the practical value of so universal a generalization has been well expressed by another: “Even if it can be shown that your far-off ancestor was an ape, it does not follow that your father was an ape.”[84] In other words, in spite of any resemblance which may have obtained between the ultimate forms of Dionysiac worship and the true veneration of heroes, _at the time when tragedy actually came into being_ the existing differences between them were of much greater significance than any alleged identity of origin in the far-distant past could have been. If it were possible for Ridgeway to substantiate his first position, viz., that tragedy arose _directly_ from the worship of the hero Adrastus at Sicyon, or the like, there would be some meaning in his work. But his doctrine of _ultimate_ derivation loses itself in primeval darkness. _The Origin of Comedy._[85]—The difficulty of this problem was recognized as early as Aristotle: Now the successive changes in tragedy and the persons who were instrumental thereto have not passed into oblivion, but comedy did suffer oblivion for the reason that it was not at first taken seriously. And a proof of this is found in the fact that it was relatively late [viz., 486 B.C.] before the archon granted a chorus of comic performers; they used to be volunteers. And comedy already had certain forms when the aforementioned comic poets [i.e., Chionides and Magnes, the first comedians after official recognition was granted] appear in the records. Who furnished it with “characters” (πρόσωπα)[86] or prologues or number of actors and the like remains unknown. Developing a regular plot was a Sicilian invention, but of the Athenians the first to abandon the “iambic” or lampooning form and to begin to fashion comprehensive themes and plots was Crates.[87]