The Queen of the Air | Page 5

hunter dreamed, or what childish race
first dreaded it; but what wise man first perfectly told, and what strong
people first perfectly lived by it. And the real meaning of any myth is
that which it has at the noblest age of the nation among whom it is
current. The farther back you pierce, the less significance you will find,
until you come to the first narrow thought, which, indeed, contains the
germ of the accomplished tradition; but only as the seed contains the
flower. As the intelligence and passion of the race develop, they cling
to and nourish their beloved and sacred legend; leaf by leaf it expands
under the touch of more pure affections, and more delicate imagination,
until at last the perfect fable burgeons out into symmetry of milky stem
and honied bell.
8. But through whatever changes it may pass, remember that our right
reading of it is wholly dependent on the materials we have in our own
minds for an intelligent answering sympathy. If it first arose among a
people who dwelt under stainless skies, and measures their journeys by
ascending and declining stars, we certainly cannot read their story, if
we have never seen anything above us in the day but smoke, nor
anything around us in the night but candles. If the tale goes on to
change clouds or planets into living creatures,--to invest them with fair
forms and inflame them with mighty passions,--we can only understand
the story of the human-hearted things, in so far as we ourselves take
pleasure in the perfectness of visible form, or can sympathize, by an
effort of imagination, with the strange people who had other loves than
those of wealth, and other interests than those of commerce. And, lastly,
if the myth complete itself to the fulfilled thoughts of the nation, by
attributing to the gods, whom they have carved out of their fantasy,
continual presence with their own souls; and their every effort for good
is finally guided by the sense of the companionship, the praise, and the
pure will of immortals, we shall be able to follow them into this last
circle of their faith only in the degree in which the better parts of our
own beings have been also stirred by the aspects of nature, or
strengthened by her laws. It may be easy to prove that the ascent of
Apollo in his chariot signifies nothing but the rising of the sun. But
what does the sunrise itself signify to us? If only languid return to

frivolous amusement, or fruitless labor, it will, indeed, not be easy for
us to conceive the power, over a Greek, of the name of Apollo. But if,
fir us also, as for the Greek, the sunrise means daily restoration to the
sense of passionate gladness and of perfect life--if it means the thrilling
of new strength through every nerve,--the shedding over us of a better
peace than the peace of night, in the power of the dawn,--and the
purging of evil vision and fear by the baptism of its dew;--if the sun
itself is an influence, to us also, of spiritual good--and becomes thus in
reality, not in imagination, to us also, a spiritual power,--we may then
soon over-pass the narrow limit of conception which kept that power
impersonal, and rise with the Greek to the thought of an angel who
rejoiced as a strong man to run his course, whose voice calling to life
and to labor rang round the earth, and whose going forth was to the
ends of heaven.
9. The time, then, at which I shall take up for you, as well as I can
decipher it, the traditions of the gods of Greece, shall be near the
beginning of its central and formed faith,--about 500 B.C.,--a faith of
which the character is perfectly represented by Pindar and Æschylus,
who are both of them outspokenly religious, and entirely sincere men;
while we may always look back to find the less developed thought of
the preceding epoch given by Homer, in a more occult, subtle,
half-instinctive, and involuntary way.
10. Now, at that culminating period of the Greek religion, we find,
under one governing Lord of all things, four subordinate elemental
forces, and four spiritual powers living in them and commanding them.
The elements are of course the well-known four of the ancient world,--
the earth, the waters, the fire, and the air; and the living powers of them
are Demeter, the Latin Ceres; Poseidon, the Latin Neptune; Apollo,
who has retained always his Greek name; and Athena, the Latin
Minerva. Each of these are descended from, or changed from, more
ancient, and therefore more mystic, deities of the earth and heaven, and
of a finer element of æther supposed to be beyond the