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covering this to reward serious study, their differences are still far 

 too great to afford us any consistent theory of this mythic world; 

 indeed they rather demonstrate it as a rich and varied mass of 

 tradition, gathered from too many sources, and too many and 

 varied minds to be reduced to system at all. 



If so, so be it; yet this has never prevented any scholar from 

 searching out this or that particular mythic creation, and so finding 

 more in it than had previously been made clear. And though the 

 next inquirer finds something else, why not ? The poetic and sym- 

 bolic imagination is not restrained to the single and unified present- 

 ments we seek in science : and as we humans throughout our course 

 of life have very different aspects, relations, and developments of 

 character, for better and worse, why not also the Olympian Gods, 

 whom man created to surpass his own best? What bright vision 

 then to share theirs; and so be each again, as with modern poet, 

 like sculptor of old, 



as one that sees 

 The very Gods arising 'mid their graven image? ! 



THE GODDESSES AS TYPES OF WOMANHOOD.— That man, 



in his undying idealisation of woman, created the Goddesses in her 

 image is surely plain; so who were they? What images of her had 

 he to choose? In simplest answer, without going too far into their 

 various attributes and perfections, we cannot but find among 

 them, and indeed most obviously of all, the essential phases of 

 woman's life. So let us consider them here in that order of age, as 

 they passed before the minds of their poets and sculptors and 

 those they worked for, each with his own loving and understanding 

 concentration of choice. First then, as youngest, Hebe: and who is 

 she, if not the child in her first beauty, her first helpfulness as well, 

 eagerly waiting at table, fiUing the cup of Zeus? Then Artemis — 

 Diana the huntress? Primarily the growing girl, still in maidenly 

 unconsciousness of sex, and so running free and wild in Nature, of 

 which she is still a part; so that even the later matured and "many- 

 breasted mother" of the Ephesian temple remains type of Nature 

 still, untouched by man. Next Aphrodite? Here is full-ripening 

 maidenhood, rising from Nature's sea and awakening suddenly 

 to her compelling charm, henceforth potent beyond those of all 

 other goddesses; and hence winning the apple of Paris — the choice 

 of youth — from her sublime and her enthroned successors. Of 

 these, first and central to all, Pallas Athena, supreme expression to 

 this day of woman's intuition at its brightest, .its keenest too. See 

 her terrible lance — no mere amazonian weapon, but also that 

 "last word" which leaves man silenced, and even turned to stone, 

 by her Gorgon shield of scorn. Thus too she is swift inspirer in 

 battle, and thus gainer of victory for whom she favours. Yet gently 



