The ethnological method, starting from generalizations drawn from heterogeneous elements, is, I confess, a dangerous tool. However, it has on its side wonderful achievements capable of reassembling scattered phenomena according to the stages of their developments.
The danger of forming schemas is great, and even greater is the danger of incoherent and ungrounded interpretations, which will add the chaos of interpretation to the chaos of the material. Indeed, there are so many primitive elements in Dionysian religion that, in any circumstance, if a branch of ancient religion can only be studied through the ethnological method, that branch is Dionysian religion.
Farnell, a scholar who with his reservations about the application of the method rightfully earned the title of "sober," proclaims that "the problems that Dionysian religion presents to the student of Mediterranean religion, history, and anthropology are of paramount importance."
Finally, the response to the frequent and well-known objections about the use of the ethnological method in the study of Greek religion and intellectual history has been beautifully provided in a recent work. The enemies of this method unknowingly use theories and findings of ethnology that have passed into the science of antiquity, from its first contacts with ethnological applications, and thus have long since become outdated.
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