Margaret and Her Friends / or, Ten conversations with Margaret Fuller upon the mythology of the Greeks and its expression in art, held at the house of the Rev. George Ripley, Bedford Place, Boston, beginning March 1, 1841

by Caroline Wells Healey Dall; Margaret Fuller

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“Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness.”—Longfellow.

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MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS.

I.

Monday Evening, March 1, 1841.

Margaret opened the conversation by a beautiful sketch of the origin of Mythology. The Greeks she thought borrowed their Gods from the Hindus and Egyptians, but they idealized their personifications to a far greater extent. The Hindus dwelt in the All, the Infinite, which the Greeks analyzed and to some degree humanized. All things sprang from Cœlus and Terra.,—that is, from Heaven and Earth, or spirit and matter. Rhea, or the Productive Energy, and Saturn, or Time, were the children of Cœlus and Terra. The progress of any people is marked by its mythi. Mythology is only the history of the development of the Infinite in the Finite. Saturn devoured his own children until the disappointed Rhea put a stone (or obstacle) in his way, and she succeeded in raising Jupiter. The development of human faculties was slow, therefore Time seemed to absorb all that Productive Energy brought forth, until Energy itself created obstacles; and of these was born the Indomitable Will. Jupiter represented that Will, and usurped the rule of Time, fighting with the low and sensual passions, represented by the Titans and the Giants, until he seated himself securely on the Olympian Throne, the Father of the Gods. This Will was not in itself the highest development of either Beauty, Genius, Wisdom, or Thought; but such developments were subject to it, were its children.