The student of origins, as French critics say, of the earliest stages of art and poetry, must be content to follow faint traces; and in what has been here said, much may seem to have been made of little, with too much completion, by a general framework or setting, of what after [112] all are but doubtful or fragmentary indications. Yet there is a certain cynicism too, in that over-positive temper, which is so jealous of our catching any resemblance in the earlier world to the thoughts that really occupy our own minds, and which, in its estimate of the actual fragments of antiquity, is content to find no seal of human intelligence upon them. Slight indeed in themselves, these fragmentary indications become suggestive of much, when viewed in the light of such general evidence about the human imagination as is afforded by the theory of "comparative mythology," or what is called the theory of "animism." Only, in the application of these theories, the student of Greek religion must never forget that, after all, it is with poetry, not with systematic theological belief or dogma, that he has to do. As regards this story of Demeter and Persephone, what we actually possess is some actual fragments of poetry, some actual fragments of sculpture; and with a curiosity, justified by the direct aesthetic beauty of these fragments, we feel our way backwards to that engaging picture of the poet-people, with which the ingenuity of modern theory has filled the void in our knowledge. The abstract poet of that first period of mythology, creating in this wholly impersonal, intensely spiritual way,--the abstract spirit of poetry itself, rises before the mind; and, in speaking of this poetical age, we must take heed, before all things, in no sense to misconstrue the poets. NOTES 94. +Transliteration: epainê Persephonê. Translation: "dread Persephone." See, for example, Odyssey, Book 10.490 and 563. 94. +"According to the apparent import of her name"; Pater likely refers to the etymology of "Persophone"--"bringer of destruction." 95. *Theogony, 912-14: +Transliteration: Autar ho Dêmêtros polyphorbês es lechos êlthen ê teke Persephonên leukôlenon, hên Aidôneus hêrpasen hês para mêtros, edôke de mêtieta Zeus. +Translation: "And he came to bountiful Demeter’s bed, / and she gave birth to white-armed Persephone, whom Aidoneus / took from her mother’s side; but Zeus, wise counsellor, gave her to him." Hesiod. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Theogony. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press. London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. 103. *In the Homeric hymn, pre-eminently, of the flower which grew up for the first time, to snare the footsteps of Kore, the fair but deadly Narcissus, the flower of narkê, the numbness of death. 108. +Transliteration: einodia symbola. Translation: "signs along the roadside." 110. +Transliteration: Korê arrêtos. Translation: "Korê the mysterious, the horrible ." THE MYTH OF DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE: II