Excerpt from The Makers of Hellas: A Critical Inquiry Into the Philosophy and Religion of Ancient Greece
The author of The Makers of Hellas died before the book was in print, before even the manuscript of the work was completed, and left a request that I would prepare it for the press and publish it without revealing the writer's name. Even if the author had lived until the book appeared in print, I believe the book would have been published anonymously or under a num de plume. Thu reason for this reticence, or this self-suppression, will not be apparent to those who merely scan the title of the work - The Makers of Hellos - for the title scarcely suggests the dominant 'thought of the book. The dominant thought and feeling of the whole work is religious. The makers of Hellas are not those who made - and unmade - her politically, nor even the artists and authors who made her what she is in literature and art.. They are those through whom the spirit of religion spoke. At a time, such as the present, when the material monuments of Greece, and the isles of Greece, are claiming an ever-increasing share of the work of classical students and of the attention of the cultured world, when the sun of solar mythology has set. and folklore is absorbing the study both of ritual and belief, it may seem remote from the general trend of thought to consider seriously the religion, rather than the religious monuments or the rites or myths of ancient Greece. On the other hand, to those whose interest in myths, monuments, and rites alike is weak, it may seem excessive even to speak of the religion of a people who undeniably were pagan.
If, then, either to those who know or to those who claim no special knowledge of the thought of ancient Greece, it should yet appear, after perusal of The Makers of Hellas, that religion played no small part in the making of the Hellenic mind and spirit, the reader will perhaps surmise a reason why the author's name does not appear. If there be any praise-rum nobis, Domine.
The main thought of the work then is that the Greeks were "the world's greatest Pioneers and Experimenters" (p. 3). But, whereas their services to mankind in literature and art are fully recognised, the value of their contributions to religion has generally been overlooked. It is to these evidences of religion that the author wishes to call the attention not only of students of Greek thought, not only of the growing number of those engaged in studying the history or the science of religion, but also of the general reader, and particularly of the religious reader. To the last it may seem, the author is afraid (p. 208), preposterous to talk about religion in connection with pagans, "or of faith in connection with their deities." But I am inclined to think that, justifiable as this fear once was, the occasion for it has much diminished in the last quarter of a century, and that there is a general disposition to pay increased attention to the authority of St. Paul, who declared of "every nation of men" that it was determined "that they should seek after God, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him."
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