When the Comparative Method is applied in a wider and more catholic spirit than hitherto it will then--but not till then--be seen whether the fair humanities are exploded superstitions or are sufficiently alive to blossom in the dust.
It is quite proper to designate _The Golden Bough_ a puppet-play of corn-gods,[82] for the author himself, referring to Balder the Beautiful, writes: "He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears, and the gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and it is time to unmask him before laying him up in the box".
But to me the divinities of antiquity are not mere dolls to be patted superciliously on the head and then remitted to the dustbin. Our own ideals of to-day are but the idols or dolls of to-morrow, and even a golliwog if it has comforted a child is entitled to sympathetic treatment. To the understanding of symbolism sympathy is a useful key.
The words _doll_, _idol_, _ideal_, and _idyll_, which are all one and the same, are probably due to the island of Idea which was one of the ancient names of Crete. Not only was Crete known as Idæa, but it was also entitled Doliche, which may be spelled to-day Idyllic. Crete, the Idyllic island, the island of Ideas, was also known as Aeria, and I think it probably was the centre whence was spun the gossamer of aerial and ethereal tales, which have made the Isles of Greece a land of immortal romance. We shall also see as we proceed that the mystic philosophy known to history as the Gnosis[83] was in all probability the philosophy taught in prehistoric times at Gnossus, the far-famed capital of Crete. From Gnossus, whence the Greeks drew all their laws and science, came probably the Greek word _gnosis_, meaning _knowledge_. But the mystic Gnosis connoted more than is covered by the word _knowledge_: it claimed to be the wisdom of the ancients, and to disclose the ideal value lying behind the letter of all mysteries, myths, and religious ordinances.
I am convinced that the Christian Gnostics, with whom the Tertullian type were in constant conflict, really did know much that they claimed, and that had they not been trampled out of the light of day Europe would never have sunk into the melancholy, well-designated Dark Ages. Gnostic emblems have been found abundantly in Ireland: the Pythagorean or Gnostic symbol known as the pentagon or Solomon's seal occurs on British coins,[84] and the Bardic literature of Wales is deeply steeped with a Gnostic mysticism for which historians find it difficult to account. The facts which I shall adduce in the following pages are sufficiently curious to permit the hope that they may lead a few of us to become less self-complacent, and in the words of the author of _Ancient Britain_ relative to aboriginal Britons, "to think more of those primitive ancestors. In some things we have sunk below their level."[85]