VARIOUS ASPECTS OF RELIGION Religion, for our present purpose, may be considered as (1) popular, (2) official, (3) poetic, and (4) philosophical.

These four divisions, or rather aspects, are not, of course, mutually exclusive, and they act and react extensively upon one another; but, in their relations to art, it is convenient to observe the distinction between them.
(1) The beliefs of the people are, of course, the basis of all the others, though they come to be affected by these others in various degrees.

There is no doubt that the people generally believed in the sanctity and efficacy of the shapeless idols or primitive images, and this belief would tend to support hieratic conservatism, and thus to hinder artistic progress.

But, on the other hand, the people of Greece showed throughout their history a tendency to an intensely and vividly anthropomorphic imagination.

This tendency was doubtless realised and encouraged by the poets, but it was not created by them, any more than by the mythologists who defined and systematised it.