be absent.

Periodicity is fundamental to certain departments of mathematics, that
is evident; it is perhaps less evident that periodicity is a factor that
has gone to the making of ritual, and hence, as we shall see, of art.
And yet this is manifestly the case. All primitive calendars are ritual
calendars, successions of feast-days, a patchwork of days of different
quality and character recurring; pattern at least is based on
periodicity. But there is another and perhaps more important way in
which periodicity affects and in a sense causes ritual. We have seen
already that out of the space between an impulse and a reaction there
arises an idea or "presentation." A "presentation" is, indeed, it would
seem, in its final analysis, only a delayed, intensified desire--a
desire of which the active satisfaction is blocked, and which runs over
into a "presentation." An image conceived "presented," what we call an
_idea_ is, as it were, an act prefigured.

Ritual acts, then, which depend on the periodicity of the seasons are
acts necessarily delayed. The thing delayed, expected, waited for, is
more and more a source of value, more and more apt to precipitate into
what we call an idea, which is in reality but the projected shadow of an
unaccomplished action. More beautiful it may be, but comparatively
bloodless, yet capable in its turn of acting as an initial motor impulse
in the cycle of activity. It will later (p. 70) be seen that these
periodic festivals are the stuff of which those faded, unaccomplished
actions and desires which we call gods--Attis, Osiris, Dionysos--are
made.

* * * * *