ferent
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.

* * * * *

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