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.
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