Introduction. 7 



goddess, but goddess-like. Her work is to reveal to the 

 Spartan King that the help he needs is to be found, not 

 in himself, but in her father, or rather in the higher 

 powers to whom she and her father are both subject, 

 and to do what else she herself may in helping a work 

 for which, by her more delicate and docile nature, woman 

 is better fitted than man. It may be, indeed, that 

 Eidothea is intended to 1 personify pure womanhood, and 

 to show how needful the help of true woman is to man 

 a lesson which man is always slow to learn, and most 

 of all that man who, like Menelaus, is bound by mere 

 chains of sense to a woman who, like Helen, is little 

 more than a creature of flesh. .';' 



Not altogether unintelligible, also, is the part which 

 the companions of Menelaus have to play. The lesson 

 here is plainly this, that the chief alone is unequal to 

 the work he is called upon to do that he may succeed 

 by acting in concert with other men that he must bow 

 to the law of fellowship as paramount in human affairs. 

 And most assuredly the conquest of nature agrees with 

 the capture of Proteus at least in this, that the work 

 to be done is altogether beyond the power of any one 

 man in either case. 



So, too, a deep meaning may be found in that part 

 of the story which tells how the approach to Proteus 

 was secured under the disguise of seals, and how 

 the skins necessary for this purpose were purified in 

 nectar, even this, that the heart of nature is to be 

 reached most readily by the comparative anatomist who 

 sees his own image reflected everywhere in the lower 

 animals typified in the seal, and who, instead of suffering 

 annoyance from the reek of death which fouls the 

 atmosphere in which he lives and works, is continually 

 finding therein a pleasant nectar-like perfume. 



