To primitive man, as we have seen, beast and bird and plant and himself
were not sharply divided, and the periodicity of the seasons was for
all. It will depend on man's social and geographical conditions whether
he notices periodicity most in plants or animals. If he is nomadic he
will note the recurrent births of other animals and of human children,
and will connect them with the lunar year. But it is at once evident
that, at least in Mediterranean lands, and probably everywhere, it is
the periodicity of plants and vegetation generally which depends on
moisture, that is most striking. Plants die down in the heat of summer,
trees shed their leaves in autumn, all Nature sleeps or dies in winter,
and awakes in spring.

Sometimes it is the dying down that attracts most attention. This is
very clear in the rites of Adonis, which are, though he rises again,
essentially rites of lamentation. The details of the ritual show this
clearly, and specially as already seen in the cult of Osiris. For the
"gardens" of Adonis the women took baskets or pots filled with earth,
and in them, as children sow cress now-a-days, they planted wheat,
fennel, lettuce, and various kinds of flowers, which they watered and
tended for eight days. In hot countries the seeds sprang up rapidly, but
as the plants had no roots they withered quickly away. At the end of the
eight days they were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis and
thrown with them into the sea or into springs. The "gardens" of Adonis
became the type of transient loveliness and swift decay.

* * * * *

"What waste would it be," says Plutarch,[9] "what inconceivable waste,
for God to create man, had he not an immortal soul. He would be like the
women who make little gardens, not less pleasant than the gardens of