II.
March 8, 1841.
Margaret recapitulated the statements she made last week. By thus giving to each fabled Deity its place in the scheme of Mythology, she did not mean to ignore the enfolding ideas, the one thought developed in all—as in Rhea, Bacchus, Pan. She would only imply that each personification was individual, served a particular purpose, and was worshipped in a particular way.
Before proceeding to talk about Ceres, she wished to remind us of the mischief of wandering from our subject. She hoped the ground she offered would be accepted at least to talk about! Certainly no one could deny that a mythos was the last and best growth of a national mind, and that in this case the characteristics of the Greek mind were best gathered from this creation.
Ceres, Persephone, and Isis, as well as Rhea, Diana, and so on, seem to be only modifications of one enfolding idea,—a goddess accepted by all nations, and not peculiar to Greece. The pilgrimages of the more prominent of these goddesses, Ceres and Isis, seem to indicate the life which loses what is dear in childhood, to seek in weary pain for what after all can be but half regained. Ceres regained her daughter, but only for half the year. Isis found her husband, but dismembered. This era in Mythology seems to mark the progress of a people from an unconscious to a conscious state. Persephone’s periodical exile shows the impossibility of resuming an unconsciousness from which we have been once aroused, the need thought has, having once felt the influence of the Seasons, to retire into itself.
Charles Wheeler reminded Margaret that she had said that the predominant goddesses, without reference to Greece, enfolded only one idea, that of the female Will or Genius,—the bounteous giver. He had asked her if she could sustain herself by etymological facts, and she replied that her knowledge of the Greek was not critical enough. Since then he had inquired into the origin of the proper names of the Greek deities, and found that it confirmed her impression. The names of Rhea, Tellus, Isis, and Diana were resolvable into one, and the difference in their etymology was only a common and permissible change in the position of the letters of which they are composed, or a mere provincial dialectic change. Diana is the same as Dione, also one of the names of Juno.
E. P. P. asked if Homer ever confounded the last two? Margaret thought not. Homer was purely objective. He knew little and cared less about the primitive creation of the myths.
R. W. Emerson thought it would be very difficult to detect this secret. Jupiter, for instance, might have been a man who was the exponent of Will to his race.
Margaret said, “No; they could have deduced him just as easily from Nature herself, or from a single exhibition of will power.”