638
PARTISAN REVIEW
The myth describes what the ritual enacts. A mode of symbolic ex–
pression objectifying early human feeling and experience, the myth
is least of all the product of the reflective or historical consciousness,
or of the search for scientific or philosophical truth. T1lOUgh satisfying
"the demands of incipient rationality ... in an unfathomed world," s
it arises, basically, in response to ever-recurrent needs of a practical
and emotional nature that are assumed to require for their gratifica–
tion the magical potency of a sacral act. Its originators, as S. M.
Hooke writes, "were not occupied with general questions concerning
the world but with certain practical and pressing problems of daily
life. There were the main problems of securing the means of sub–
sistence, of keeping the sun and moon doing their duty, of ensuring
the regular flooding of the Nile, of maintaining the bodily vigor of
the king who was the embodiment of the prosperity of community....
In order to meet these needs the early inhabitants of Egypt and
Mesopotamia developed a set of customary activities directed toward
a definite end. Thus the coronation of a king ... consisted of a regu–
lar pattern of actions, of things prescribed to be done, whose purpose
was to fit the king completely to be the source of the well-being of
the community. This is the sense in which we shall use the tenn
'ritual.'
"4
Cassirer uses the term in much the same sense, as for ex–
ample, in his comment on the mythic tale of Dionysus Zagreus:
"What is recalled here is neither a physical nor historical phenomenon.
It is not a fact of nature nor a recollection of the deeds or sufferings
of a heroic ancestor. Nevertheless the legend is not a mere fairy tale.
It
had a
fundamentum in re
J '
it refers to a certain 'reality.' ...
It
is
ritual.
What is seen in the Dionysiac cult is explained in the myth."5
As
for the Greek myths with which we are most familiar, Hooke sees
them as the fragments of a very antique pattern that in becoming
separated from ritual gradually acquired an independent life through
poetic formulation. Thus both the Minotaur and Perseus myths mani–
festly involve an underlying ritual pattern of human sacrifice devel–
oped in a stage when myth and ritual were still one. And to compre–
hend that unity one must
k~ep
in mind, as Lord Raglan puts it, that
"in the beginning the thing said and the thing done were irueparably
united, although in the course of time they were divorced and gave
rise to widely differing literary, artistic and religious fonus. " It is clear
that both
epos
and
logos
evolved out of
mytlws.
But that this evolu-
