Thus interpreted the death of Adonis is not the natural decay of
vegetation in general under the summer heat or the winter cold; it
is the violent destruction of the corn by man, who cuts it down on
the field, stamps it to pieces on the threshing-floor, and grinds it
to powder in the mill. That this was indeed the principal aspect in
which Adonis presented himself in later times to the agricultural
peoples of the Levant, may be admitted; but whether from the
beginning he had been the corn and nothing but the corn, may be
doubted. At an earlier period he may have been to the herdsman,
above all, the tender herbage which sprouts after rain, offering
rich pasture to the lean and hungry cattle. Earlier still he may
have embodied the spirit of the nuts and berries which the autumn
woods yield to the savage hunter and his squaw. And just as the
husband-man must propitiate the spirit of the corn which he
consumes, so the herdsman must appease the spirit of the grass and
leaves which his cattle munch, and the hunter must soothe the spirit
of the roots which he digs, and of the fruits which he gathers from
the bough.
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