10. Here we might conclude our remarks on this subject, did not the following important question deserve some consideration. What relation can we suppose to have existed between the races which migrated into those northern districts, and the native tribes, and what between the different races of Greece itself? All inquiries on this subject lead us back to the Pelasgians, who although not found in every part of ancient Greece (for tradition makes so wide a distinction between them and many other nations, that no confusion ever takes place),(54) yet occur almost universally wherever early civilization, ancient settlements, and worships of peculiar sanctity and importance existed. And in fact there is no doubt that most of the ancient religions of Greece owed their origin to this race. The Zeus and Dione of Dodona; Zeus and Heré of Argos; Hephæstus and Athené of Athens; Demeter and Cora of Eleusis; Hermes and Artemis of Arcadia, together with Cadmus and the Cabiri of Thebes, cannot properly be referred to any other origin. We must therefore attribute to that nation an excessive readiness in creating and metamorphosing objects of religious worship, so that the same fundamental conceptions were variously developed in different places; a variety which was chiefly caused by the arbitrary neglect of, or adherence to, particular parts of the same legend. In many places also we may recognise the sameness of character which pervaded the different worships of the above gods; everywhere we see manifested in symbols, names, rites, and legends, a uniformity of ideas and feelings. The religions introduced from Phrygia and Thrace, such as that of the Cretan Zeus and Dionysus or Bacchus, may be easily distinguished by their more enthusiastic character from the native Pelasgic worship. The Phœnician and Egyptian religions lay at a great distance from the early Greeks, were almost unknown even where they existed in the immediate neighbourhood, were almost unintelligible when the Greeks attempted to learn them, and repugnant to their nature when understood. On the whole, the Pelasgic worship appears to form part of a simple elementary religion, which easily represented the various forms produced by the changes of nature in different climates and seasons, and which abounded in expressive signs for all the shades of feeling which these phenomena awakened.