Note 356 — Chapter V · THE RELIGION OF THE FOLK

Gomme, Ethnology in Folk-lore, 21; Village Community, 69; Report of Brit. Ass. (1896), 626; F. L. Congress, 348; F. L. x. 129, ascribes the fire customs of Europe to Aryans and the water customs to the pre-Aryans. A. Bertrand, Religion des Gaulois, 68, considers human sacrifice characteristically pre-Aryan. There seems to me more hope of arriving at a knowledge of specific Mediterranean cults, before the Aryan intermixture, from a study of the stone amulets and cup-markings of the megaliths (Bertrand, op. cit. 42) or from such investigations into ‘Mycenaean’ antiquity as that of A. J. Evans, Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult (1901). The speculations of Nietzsche, in A Genealogy of Morals and elsewhere, as to the altruistic ‘slave’ morality of the pre-Aryan and the self-regarding morality of the conquering Aryan ‘blond beast’ are amusing or pitiful reading, according to one’s mood.