ABSTRACT
The Greeks were fascinated by change, its sources, properties, directions, and its relation to the principles of organic growth. Greek thought from beginning to end, and it transferred itself to Rome and then to all subsequent Western intellectual inquiry. True, there were Greeks, as there have been individuals in all ages, our own included, who turned their backs on change, so to speak, and who in the interests of seeking refuge in the abiding and the permanent, declared change to be mere appearance, not reality. Change, the Greeks were fascinated by; growth, they virtually adored. From the model of growth in the organic world around them they drew some of the deepest and most far-reaching ideas in Western philosophy. So far as Western thought is concerned, the most famous and, by all odds, most influential of the seed-deities was Demeter. And the reason for this is the relation of Demeter to the Greeks.
