is victory in war. In an earlier part of this work1 we saw that not only the warrior in the field but his friends at home will often bridle their sensual appetites from a belief that by so doing they will the more easily overcome their enemies. The fallacy of such a belief, like the belief that the chastity of the sower conduces to the growth of the seed, is plain enough to us; yet perhaps the self-restraint which these and the like beliefs, vain and false as they are, have imposed on mankind, has not been without its utility in bracing and strengthening the breed. For strength of character in the race as in the individual consists mainly in the power of sacrificing the present to the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is exercised the higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of heroism is reached in men who sacrifice the pleasures of life and even life itself for the sake of keeping or winning for others, perhaps in distant ages, the blessings of freedom and truth.

Compared with the Corn-mother of Germany and the harvest-Maiden of Scotland, the Demeter and Proserpine of Greece are late products of religious growth. But, as Aryans, the Greeks must at one time or another have observed harvest customs like those which are still practised by Celts, Teutons, and Slavs, and which, far beyond the limits of the Aryan world, have been practised by the Incas of Peru, the Dyaks of Borneo, and the Malays of Java, of Sumatra, and of the Peninsula-a sufficient proof that the ideas on which these customs rest are not confined to any one race, but naturally suggest themselves to all untutored peoples engaged in agriculture. It is probable, therefore, that Demeter and Proserpine, those stately and beautiful figures of Greek mythology, grew out of the same simple beliefs and practices which still prevail among our modern peasantry, and that they were represented by rude dolls made out of the yellow sheaves on many a harvestfield long before their breathing images were wrought in bronze and marble by the master hands of Phidias and

1 Vol. i. pp. 29, 31 sq., 328.

Praxiteles.

A reminiscence of that olden time- -a scent, so to say, of the harvest-field-lingered to the last in the title of the Maiden (Kore) by which Proserpine was commonly known. Thus if the prototype of Demeter is the Cornmother of Germany, the prototype of Proserpine is the harvestMaiden, which, autumn after autumn, is still made from the last sheaf on the Braes of Balquhidder. Indeed if we knew more about the peasant-farmers of ancient Greece we should probably find that even in classical times they continued annually to fashion their Corn-mothers (Demeters) and Maidens (Proserpines) out of the ripe corn on the harvestfields.1 But unfortunately the Demeter and Proserpine whom we know are the denizens of towns, the majestic inhabitants of lordly temples; it was for such divinities alone that the refined writers of antiquity had eyes; the uncouth rites performed by rustics amongst the corn were beneath their notice. Even if they noticed them, they probably never dreamed of any connection between the puppet of corn-stalks on the sunny stubble-field and the marble divinity in the shady coolness of the temple. Still the writings even of these town-bred and cultured persons afford us an occasional glimpse of a Demeter as rude as the rudest that a remote German village can show. Thus the story that Iasion begat a child Plutus ("wealth," "abundance") by Demeter on a thrice-ploughed field, may be compared with the West Prussian custom of the mock birth of a child on the harvest-field.3 In this Prussian custom the pretended mother represents the Corn-mother (Żytniamatka); the pretended child represents the Cornbaby, and the whole ceremony is a charm to ensure a crop next year. The custom and the legend alike point to an

1 In Theocritus (vii. 155 sqq.) mention is made of a Demeter of the Threshing-floor with a heap of corn beside her and sheaves and poppies in her hands. Mr. W. H. D. Rouse suggested to me that this description perhaps applied to a Corn-mother or Corn-maiden of the kind referred to in the text. In modern times an image of Demeter at her old sanctuary of Eleusis was regarded by the peasants as essential to the prosperity of the crops;

it stood in the middle of a threshingfloor, and after it had been removed by Dr. Clarke in 1802 the people lamented that their abundant harvests had disappeared with it. See E. Dodwell, Tour through Greece, i. 583; compare R. Chandler, Travels in Greece, p. 191.

2 Homer, Od. v. 125 sqq.; Hesiod, Theog. 969 sqq.

3 See above, p. 182 sq.

4 It is possible that a ceremony per

older practice of performing, among the sprouting crops in spring or the stubble in autumn, one of those real or mimic acts of procreation by which, as we have seen, primitive man often seeks to infuse his own vigorous life into the languid or decaying energies of nature. Another glimpse of the savage under the civilised Demeter will be afforded farther on, when we come to deal with another aspect of these agricultural divinities.

The reader may have observed that in modern folkcustoms the corn-spirit is generally represented either by a Corn-mother (Old Woman, etc.) or by a Maiden (Harvestchild, etc.), not both by a Corn-mother and by a Maiden. Why then did the Greeks represent the corn both as a mother and a daughter?

In the Breton custom the mother-sheaf-a large figure made out of the last sheaf with a small corn-doll inside of it clearly represents both the Corn-mother and the Corndaughter, the latter still unborn. Again, in the Prussian custom just referred to, the woman who plays the part of Corn-mother represents the ripe grain; the child appears to represent next year's corn, which may be regarded, naturally enough, as the child of this year's corn, since it is from the seed of this year's harvest that next year's crop will spring. Further, we have seen that among the Malays of the Peninsula and sometimes among the Highlanders of Scotland the spirit of the grain is represented in double female form, both as old and young, by means of ears taken alike from the ripe crop : in Scotland the old spirit of the corn appears as the Carline or Cailleach, the young spirit as the Maiden; while among the Malays of the Peninsula the two spirits of the rice are

formed in a Cyprian worship of Ariadne may have been of this nature. See Plutarch, Theseus, 20: év dǹ Tŷ Ovσia Toû Γορπιαίου μηνὸς ἱσταμενου δευτέρᾳ κατακλινόμενόν τινα τῶν νεανίσκων φθέγγεσθαι καὶ ποιεῖν ἅπερ ὠδινοῦσαι γυναίκες. We have already seen grounds for regarding Ariadne as a goddess or spirit of vegetation (vol. i. p. 229). If, however, the reference is to the Syro-Macedonian calendar, in which Gorpiaeus corresponds to September (Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. des Antiquités, i. 831), the

ceremony could not have been a harvest celebration, but may have been a vintage one. Amongst the Minnitarees in North America, the Prince of Neuwied saw a tall strong woman pretend to bring up a stalk of maize out of her stomach; the object of the ceremony was to secure a good crop of maize in the following year. See Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-America, ii. 269.

1 See above, p. 173.

3

definitely related to each other as mother and child.1 Judged by these analogies Demeter would be the ripe crop of this year; Proserpine would be the seed-corn taken from it and sown in autumn, to reappear in spring. The descent of Proserpine into the lower world would thus be a mythical expression for the sowing of the seed; her reappearance in spring would signify the sprouting of the young corn. In this way the Proserpine of one year becomes the Demeter of the next, and this may very well have been the original form of the myth. But when with the advance of religious thought the corn came to be personified, no longer as a being that went through the whole cycle of birth, growth, reproduction, and death within a year, but as an immortal goddess, consistency requires that one of the two personifications, the mother or the daughter, should be sacrificed. However, the double conception of the corn as mother and daughter may have been too old and too deeply rooted in the popular mind to be eradicated by logic, and so room had to be found in the reformed myth both for mother and daughter. This was done by assigning to Proserpine the character of the corn sown in autumn and sprouting in spring, while Demeter was left to play the somewhat vague part of the heavy mother of the corn, who laments its annual disappearance underground, and rejoices over its reappearance in spring. Thus instead of a regular succession of divine beings, each living a year and then giving birth to her successor, the reformed myth exhibits the conception of two divine and immortal beings, one of whom annually disappears into and reappears from the ground, while the other has little to do but to weep and rejoice at the appropriate seasons.

This theory of the double personification of the corn in Greek myth assumes that both personifications (Demeter and Proserpine) are original. But if we suppose that the Greek myth started with a single personification, the after

1 See above, pp. 187 sqq., 199 sqq. 2 Cp. Preller, Griech. Mythol.1 i. 763, note 3. In Greece the annual descent of Proserpine appears to have taken place at the Great Eleusinian Mysteries and at the Thesmophoria, that is, about the time of the autumn

sowing. But in Sicily her descent seems to have been celebrated when the corn was fully ripe (Diodorus, v. 4), that is, in summer.

3 Homer, Hymn to Demeter, 401 sqq.; Preller, l.c.

growth of a second personification may perhaps be explained as follows. On looking over the harvest customs which have been passed under review, it may be noticed that they involve two distinct conceptions of the corn-spirit. For whereas in some of the customs the corn-spirit is treated as immanent in the corn, in others it is regarded as external to it. Thus when a particular sheaf is called by the name of the cornspirit, and is dressed in clothes and handled with reverence,1 the spirit is clearly regarded as immanent in the corn. But when the spirit is said to make the crops grow by passing through them, or to blight the grain of those against whom she has a grudge," she is apparently conceived as distinct from, though exercising power over, the corn. Conceived in the latter way the corn-spirit is in a fair way to become a deity of the corn, if she has not become so already. Of these two conceptions, that of the corn-spirit as immanent in the corn is doubtless the older, since the view of nature as animated by indwelling spirits appears to have generally preceded the view of it as controlled by external deities; to put it shortly, animism precedes deism. In the harvest customs of our European peasantry the corn-spirit appears to be conceived now as immanent in the corn and now as external to it. In Greek mythology, on the other hand, Demeter is viewed rather as the deity of the corn than as the spirit immanent in it.3 The process of thought which leads to the change from the one mode of conception to the other is anthropomorphism, or the gradual investment of the immanent spirits with more and more of the attributes of humanity. As men emerge from savagery the tendency to humanise their divinities gains strength; and the more human these become the wider is the breach which severs them from the natural objects of which they were at first merely the animating spirits or souls.

1 In some places it was customary to kneel down before the last sheaf, in others to kiss it. See W. Mannhardt, Korndämonen, p. 26; id., Mytholog. Forschungen, p. 339. The custom of kneeling and bowing before the last corn is said to have been observed, at least occasionally, in England. See Folk-lore Journal, vii. (1888), p. 270.

But in the progress

The Malay sorceress who cut the seven ears of rice to form the Rice-child kissed the ears after she had cut them (W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 241).

2 Above, p. 170 sq.

3 In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, she is represented as controlling the growth of the corn. See above, p. 169.