Monday Evening, March 1, 1841.

Margaret opened the conversation by a beautiful sketch of the origin of Mythology. The Greeks she thought borrowed their Gods from the Hindus and Egyptians, but they idealized their personifications to a far greater extent. The Hindus dwelt in the All, the Infinite, which the Greeks analyzed and to some degree humanized. All things sprang from Coelus and Terra.,—that is, from Heaven and Earth, or spirit and matter. Rhea, or the Productive Energy, and Saturn, or Time, were the children of Coelus and Terra. The progress of any people is marked by its mythi. Mythology is only the history of the development of the Infinite in the Finite. Saturn devoured his own children until the disappointed Rhea put a stone (or obstacle) in his way, and she succeeded in raising Jupiter. The development of human faculties was slow, therefore Time seemed to absorb all that Productive Energy brought forth, until Energy itself created obstacles; and of these was born the Indomitable Will. Jupiter represented that Will, and usurped the rule of Time, fighting with the low and sensual passions, represented by the Titans and the Giants, until he seated himself securely on the Olympian Throne, the Father of the Gods. This Will was not in itself the highest development of either Beauty, Genius, Wisdom, or Thought; but such developments were subject to it, were its children.

Juno is only the feminine form of this Indomitable Will. By herself she is inferior to it, and whenever she opposes it, loses the game. Vulcan, her child, is Mechanic Art, great in itself to be sure, but not comparable to the Perfect Wisdom, or Minerva, which sprang ready armed from the masculine Will. She was greater than her Father, but still his child.

Neptune, who raises always a “placid head above the waves,” represents the flow of thought,—all-embracing, girdling in the world, Diana and Apollo, or Purity and Genius.

Mercury is Genius in the extrinsic, of eloquence, human understanding, and expression. All were the embodiments of Absolute Ideas, of ideas that had no origin,—that were eternal. Love brooded over Chaos; and the perfect Beauty and Love, represented among the Greeks by Venus and her son, rose from the turbid elements. It is singular that even the ancients should have maintained the pre-existence of Love. It was before Order, Men, or the Gods men worshipped. The fable suggests the truth,—Infinite Love and Beauty always was. It is only with their development in finite beings that History has to do.

Here Margaret recapitulated. The Indomitable Will had dethroned Time, and, acting with Productive Energy,—variously represented at different times by Isis, Rhea, Ceres, Persephone, and so on,—had driven back the sensual passions to the bowels of the earth, while it produced Perfect Wisdom, Genius, Beauty, and Love, results which were more excellent if not more powerful than their Cause.

To understand this Mythology, we must denationalize ourselves, and throw the mind back to the consideration of Greek Art, Literature, and Poesy. It is only scanty justice that my pen can render to Margaret’s eloquent talk.

Frank Shaw asked her how she imagined these personifications to have suggested themselves in that barbarous age.

Margaret objected to the word barbarous. She believed that in the age of Plato the human intellect reached a point as elevated in some respects as any it had ever touched.

But the Gods were not the product of that age, but of another far more remote, Frank objected. Was not the infinity of Hindu conception impaired, when the Greeks attributed to the Gods the duties, passions, and criminal indulgences of men?

Mrs. Ripley said that the virtue of the Hindu lay in contemplation. If a man had seen God, he was exempt from the ordinary obligations of life, and allowed to pass his life in quiet adoration.

Margaret added that the Greek knew better than that. He felt the necessity of developing the Infinite through action, and embodied this necessity in his art and poesy as well as in his myths.

Frank seemed still to think that in losing the adoring contemplation of the Hindu, and bringing their deities to the human level, the Greeks had taken one step down.

E. P. P. had always thought it had been a step up, and Ann Clarke thought that the Greeks forgot themselves, merged all remembrance of the Finite, in realizing the individual forces of the Infinite.

William White, who had not waded very far into the stream, thought the North American Indian’s worship of the Manitou purer than the Greek worship, for the very reason that the Indian ascribed to his Manitou no passion that had degraded humanity.

Margaret said that the Indian propitiated his God by vile deeds, by ignoble treacheries and revenge. So the Hindu throws her child into the Ganges, and an ecstatic crowd falls before the car of Juggernaut.

I thought a good deal, but did not speak. Did not William’s question grow out of the simple Unity of the Indian worship? But the Indian does not worship the Manitou because he recognizes a single First Cause, comprehending in itself all beauty, wisdom, purity, and truth, but because his heart is naturally lifted toward an unknown something, which he has hardly yet considered as a Cause. The Greek recognized the abstract forces of the Universe, but did not perceive their Unity, and so personified them separately.

E. P. P. suggested that the Indian had no literature, and had left no record of his Olympus!

Margaret added that, if we compare the Indian Elysium with the Greek, the difference in spirituality is perceived at once.

Henry Hedge said that Frank Shaw talked about Greek mythi, but nobody could show a purely Greek mythos.

Frank replied that he only meant that when the Greek mind had acted on a myth, it had not refined it.

Margaret added that it was a vulgar notion that the Poets of Greece created her Gods; that the Poets were objective, and could give only humanized representations of them.

Henry Hedge thought that there was a point to which philosophy aided and prompted the creative power, but, that point passed, rather checked its action. Analysis took the place of the objective tendency.

Well! said William White, would not the human mind, aided only by culture, be incapable of any better idea than Frank Shaw suggested? Must not revelation complete the work?

Margaret said that the answer to his question would be determined by his understanding of the word “revelation.” She could not believe in a God who had ever left himself without a witness in the world. As soon as the human mind and will were ready, there was always some great Truth waiting to be submitted to their united action, until it was worn out. The beautiful Greek era had been succeeded by a period of inaction; the Roman era by another, and so on. She was sorry we had wandered from our subject so far as to doubt her very premises!

Frank said, everything rested on those premises; so he thought that the ideals of beauty, love, justice, and truth should be referred to the Infinite Mind, and not to the Greek.

I wonder where he was when Margaret told about the Love which “was” before Order!

Henry Hedge said that Culture was the Mediator between the Finite and the Infinite.

James Freeman Clarke, alluding to Mr. Hedge’s previous remark upon the growth of philosophy, and the loss of the creative power, said that if that were a fact, it greatly diminished the probability of the birth of pure Genius into the world. Plato wrote when philosophy was at the turning point.

Margaret said that there were many proofs in Plato that the philosophers understood the personifications of the mythi. She thought that the gods, the demigods, and the heroes of mythology represented distinct classes, and that this was not sufficiently remembered. She referred to the story of the burning of Hercules in Ovid, where Jupiter calls Juno to see how well his son endures!

William White said that he thought the idea of Deity was degraded when the Greeks changed a hero into a god; but if Culture be a Mediator, would not Plato have been greater had he been born into the nineteenth century?

James F. Clarke said Platos were impossible now.

Margaret agreed, and said that the pride of knowledge which he would find in the world should he appear, would be a greater obstacle than superstition once was.

Did somebody say a little while ago that Will indomitable was born of obstacle?

Margaret told William White that Coleridge had once said that he could neither measure nor understand Plato’s ignorance! His mind had not reached that altitude!

Henry Hedge, not willing to forego the possible birth of Genius, asked if all the experience and discovery with which the world had been enriched since Plato’s time would not furnish enough for the new-comer to act upon?

Margaret replied that the mind could not receive unless excited. She must go through all the intellectual experience of a Plato, to be as great as he; but she might stand upon the general or even her own intuitive recognition of the truths he had advanced, and go forward to greater results,—but still that would not be to make herself greater.

But, said Mrs. Ripley, in the first case you would be nothing but Plato.

Margaret acceded, but begged not to be understood as doubting that the future would be capable of finer things than the past.

The ideal significance of the Mythology was further dwelt upon, and much was said of the contrast between the thought of the priest and the worship of the people. It was acknowledged as a matter of course, that only a few preserved any consciousness of the original significance of the Mythology.

Henry Hedge thought that this was the true key to the purpose of the Eleusinian mysteries, whether in Egypt where they originated, or in Greece where they were introduced. Through them, all who chose became initiated into the interior meaning of the Mythology.

Charles Wheeler added, that in the flourishing times of the Athenian Republic every citizen was compelled to initiate himself.

Margaret closed our talk with a gentle reproof to our wandering wits. To prevent such desultory prattling, she desired that a subject should be proposed for the next evening. The story of Ceres or Rhea, in fact the Productive Energy however manifested, carried general favor, and Margaret said archly that she had thought the presence of gentlemen (who had never until now attended one of her talks) would prevent the wandering and keep us free from prejudice!

I thought she was rightly disappointed.

I cannot recall the words, but at some time this evening Margaret distinguished three mythological dynasties. The first was the reign of the Natural Powers. The second, represented by Jupiter, Pluto, and Neptune, stood for the height, the depth, and the surface or flow of things, the first manifestations of human consciousness. The third was the Bacchic, Bacchus not being yet, in her estimation, the vulgar God of the wine-vat and the festival, but the inspired Genius,—being to Apollo, as she said, what the nectar is to the grape.

CAROLINE W. HEALEY.

March 2, 1841.

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