naturally asunder, making, as it were, for the human body a soul of
waters, for the human soul a body of flowers; welding into something
like the identity of a human personality the whole range of man's
experiences of a given object, or series of objects--all their
outward qualities, and the visible facts regarding them--all the
hidden ordinances by which those facts and qualities hold of unseen
forces, and have their roots in purely visionary places.

Dionysus came later than the other gods to the centres of Greek life;
and, as a consequence of this, he is presented to us in an earlier
stage of development than they; that element of natural fact which is
the original essence of all mythology being more unmistakeably
impressed upon us here than in other myths. Not the least
interesting point in the study of him is, that he illustrates very
clearly, not only the [30] earlier, but also a certain later
influence of this element of natural fact, in the development of the
gods of Greece. For the physical sense, latent in it, is the clue,
not merely to the original signification of the incidents of the
divine story, but also to the source of the peculiar imaginative
expression which its persons subsequently retain, in the forms of the
higher Greek sculpture. And this leads me to some general thoughts
on the relation of Greek sculpture to mythology, which may help to
explain what the function of the imagination in Greek sculpture
really was, in its handling of divine persons.

That Zeus is, in earliest, original, primitive intention, the open
sky, across which the thunder sometimes sounds, and from which the
rain descends--is a fact which not only explains the various stories
related concerning him, but determines also the expression which he
retained in the work of Pheidias, so far as it is possible to recall