animal or a little child; afterwards, the soul of the whole species,
the spirit of fire and dew, alive and leaping in a thousand vines, as
the higher intelligence, brooding more deeply over things, pursues,
in thought, the generation of sweetness and strength in the veins of
the tree, the transformation of water into wine, little by little;
noting all the influences upon it of the heaven above and the earth
beneath; and shadowing forth, in each pause of the process, an
intervening person--what is to us but the secret chemistry of nature
being to them the mediation of living spirits. So they passed on to
think of Dionysus (naming him at last from the brightness of the sky
and the moisture of the earth) not merely as the soul of the vine,
but of all that life in flowing things of which the vine is the
symbol, because its most emphatic example. At Delos he bears a son,
from whom [14] in turn spring the three mysterious sisters Oeno,
Spermo, and Elais, who, dwelling in the island, exercise respectively
the gifts of turning all things at will into oil, and corn, and wine.
In the Bacchae of Euripides, he gives his followers, by miracle,
honey and milk, and the water gushes for them from the smitten rock.
He comes at last to have a scope equal to that of Demeter, a realm as
wide and mysterious as hers; the whole productive power of the earth
is in him, and the explanation of its annual change. As some embody
their intuitions of that power in corn, so others in wine. He is the
dispenser of the earth's hidden wealth, giver of riches through the
vine, as Demeter through the grain. And as Demeter sends the airy,
dainty-wheeled and dainty-winged spirit of Triptolemus to bear her
gifts abroad on all winds, so Dionysus goes on his eastern journey,
with its many intricate adventures, on which he carries his gifts to
every people.

A little Olympus outside the greater, I said, of Dionysus and his