[940]. The usual references for Bacchic or Dionysian orgies are Livy, IX. 4 ff., where minute particulars are given; Strabo, bk. X.; Athenæus, X.
[941]. In Nietzsche’s mystic phrase, the chorus “auf seiner primitiven Stufe in der Urtragödie,” is “eine Selbstspiegelung des dionysischen Menschen ... eine Vision der dionysischen Masse.”
[942]. See pp. 60 f. This artistic power is his definition of the poetic process. Professor Giddings, on hints of Mr. Spencer, has drawn a picture of solitary, primitive man arguing a spirit from the phenomenon of his shadow and of the echo of his voice. It may be pointed out that communal shouts and cries, echoed from the rocks, would be more likely to rouse a belief in that horde of spirits with which the primitive human horde thought itself surrounded. Early religion was social, communal; individual meditation, a process of individual thought, was utterly subordinate to communal thought. Even now superstition is a lingering “they say.”
[943]. “Eine Gemeinde von unbewussten Schauspielern,” p. 61.
[944]. Journal d’un Poète, p. 38.
[945]. “Das charakteristische Merkmal der Volkspoesie,” Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsychol., XIX. (1889), 115 ff.
[946]. Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsychol., XIX., p. 120.
[947]. See Schultze, Der Fetischismus, pp. 30 ff., with his authorities.
[948]. Two famous utterances voice this feeling. Swift loved his Peter, Paul, John, and the rest; he hated the human race at large. This for the outer circle. As for crowds, Schiller put the antithesis in a distich:—
Jeder, sieht man ihn einzeln, ist leidlich klug und beständig;