She is the most definite
embodiment of all those fluctuating mystical instincts, of which
Gaia,* the mother of the earth's gloomier offspring, is a vaguer and
mistier one. There is nothing of the confused outline, the mere
shadowiness of mystical dreaming, in this most concrete human figure.
No nation, less aesthetically gifted than the Greeks, could have thus
lightly thrown its mystical surmise and divination into images so
clear and idyllic as those of the solemn goddess of the country, in
whom the characteristics of the mother are expressed with so much
tenderness, and the "beauteous head" of Kore, then so fresh and
peaceful.
In this phase, then, the story of Demeter appears as the peculiar
creation of country-people of a high impressibility, dreaming over
their work in spring or autumn, half consciously touched by a sense
of its sacredness, and a sort of [104] mystery about it. For there
is much in the life of the farm everywhere which gives to persons of
any seriousness of disposition, special opportunity for grave and
gentle thoughts. The temper of people engaged in the occupations of
country life, so permanent, so "near to nature," is at all times
alike; and the habitual solemnity of thought and expression which
Wordsworth found in the peasants of Cumberland, and the painter
Francois Millet in the peasants of Brittany, may well have had its
prototype in early Greece.
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