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Then, secondly, the creed of the upper classes was more refined and spiritual, but quite as honest, and even more forcible in its effect on the life. You might imagine that the employment of the artifice just referred to implied utter unbelief in the persons contriving it; but it really meant only that the more worldly of them would play with a popular faith for their own purposes, as doubly-minded persons have often done since, all the while sincerely holding the same ideas themselves in a more abstract form; while the good and unworldly men, the true Greek heroes, lived by their faith as firmly as St. Louis, or the Cid, or the Chevalier Bayard.

The myth of Athena an incentive to the

search after

truth.

Then, thirdly, the faith of the poets and artists was, necessarily, less definite, being continually modified by the involuntary action of their own fancies, and by the necessity of presenting, in clear verbal or material form, things of which they had no authoritative knowledge. Their faith was, in some respects, like Dante's or Milton's; firm in genearly Greeks to eral conception, but not able to vouch for every detail in the forms they gave it; but they went considerably farther, even in that minor sincerity, than subsequent poets, and strove with all their might to be as near the truth as they could. Pindar says, quite simply, 'I cannot think so-andso of the Gods. It must have been this way-it cannot have been that way-that the thing was done.' And so late among the Latins as the days of Horace this sincerity remains. Horace is just as true and simple in his religion as Wordsworth; but all power of understanding any of the honest classic poets has been taken away from most English gentlemen by the mechanical drill in verse writing at school. Throughout the whole of their lives afterwards they never can get themselves quit of the notion that all verses were written as an exercise, and that Minerva was only a convenient word for the last of an hexameter, and Jupiter for the last but one.

It is impossible that any notion can be more fallacious or more misleading in its consequences. All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has of literature in been sincere song. With deliberate didactic purpose the tragedians-with pure and native pas

The wrong use

our modern

schools.

sion the lyrists-fitted their perfect words to their dearest faiths. 'I, little thing that I am, weave my laborious songs' as earnestly as the bee among the bells of thyme on the Matin mountains. Yes, and he dedicates his favorite pine to Diana, and he chants his autumnal hymn to the Faun that guards his fields, and he guides the noble youths and maids of Rome in their choir to Apollo, and he tells the farmer's little girl that the Gods will love her, though she has only a handful of salt and meal to give them-just as earnestly as ever English gentlemen taught Christain faith to English youth in England's truest days.

Then, lastly, the creed of the philosophers or sages varied according to the character and knowledge of each. They ended in losing the life of Greece in play upon words; but we owe to! their early thought some of the soundest ethics and the foundation of the best practical laws yet known to mankind.

strength.

The vitality of the influence of the

myth not yet lost.

Such was the general vitality of the heathen creed in its Of its direct influence on conduct, it is, as I said, impossible for me to speak now; only, remember always, in endeavoring to form a judgment of it, that what of good or right the heathens did, they did looking for no reward. The purest forms of our own religion have always consisted in sacrificing less things to win greater;— time, to win eternity,-the world, to win the skies. The order, 'sell that thou hast,' is not given without the promise,-‘thou shalt have treasure in heaven;' and well for the modern Christian if he accepts the alternative as his Master left it-and does not practically read the command and promise thus: 'Sell that thou hast in the best market, and thou shalt have treasure in eternity also.' But the poor Greeks of the great ages expected no reward from heaven but honor, and no reward from earth but rest; though, when, on those conditions, they patiently and proudly fulfilled their task of the granted day, an unreasoning instinct of an immortal benediction broke from their lips in song: and they, even they, had sometimes a prophet to tell them of a land where there is sun alike by day, and alike by night—where they shall need no more to trouble the earth by strength of hands for daily bread-but the ocean breezes blow around the blessed islands, and golden flowers burn on their bright trees for evermore.""

The study of

Athena a study

CHAPTER II.

Ruskin's Theory Continued.

In reviewing the preceding chapter we find that we have not only been making a study of one of the greatest of the myths, but also that we have studied a great piece of English prose, and the character of one of the noblest men of the present day, for nowhere do we find the essential greatness of a man as we find it in his writings. Reverence is the supreme quality of Ruskin. of the human mind, "The master-key of knowledge" Lowell calls it, and reverence for human feelings even in their earliest stages, is conspicuously inherent in Ruskin, if we may judge him through his words. We see in this essay how reverence has led him on to deeper insight into his subject, and a broader grasp of it. He has taken us into the heart-life of the Greeks, and given us a large look at the myth-making age; he has, I hope, aroused our curiosity to investigate other myths that we may discover their deeper meanings, at the same time that he has elevated our respect for the human race in all of its aspirations from the humblest to the highest, and has made us feel the heartbeat of our own century.

In the next essays of the same work he proceeds to outline the power of Athena in the earth, and in the heart, as he has already traced their thought of her in the air and water and heavens. He says:

"It is not at all easy to trace the Greek thoughts about the power of Athena in giving life, because we do not ourselves know clearly what life is, or in what way the air is necessary to it, or what there is, besides the air, shaping the forms that it is put into. And it is comparatively of small consequence to find out what the Greeks thought or meant, until we have determined what we ourselves think, or mean, when we translate the Greek word for 'breathing' into the Latin-English word 'spirit.'

But it is of great consequence that you should fix in your minds -and hold, against the baseness of mere materialism on the one hand, and against the fallacies of controversial speculation on the other the certain and practical sense of this word 'spirit;'—the sense in which you all know that its reality exists, as the power which shaped you into your shape, and by which you love and hate, when you have received that shape. You need not fear, on the one hand, that either the sculpturing or the loving power can ever be beaten down by the philosophers into a metal, or evolved by them into a gas; but on the other hand, take care that you yourselves, in trying to elevate your conception of it, do not lose its truth in a dream, or even in a word. Beware always of contending for words: you will find them not easy to grasp, if you know them in several languages.

The deep of air that surrounds the earth enters into union with the earth at its surface, and with its waters; so as to be the apparent cause of their ascending into life. First, it warms them, and shades, at once, staying the heat of the sun's rays in its own body, but warding their force with its clouds. It warms and cools at once, with traffic of balm and frost; so that the white wreaths are withdrawn from the field of the Swiss peasant by the glow of Libyan rock. It gives its own strength to the sea; forms and fills every cell of its foam; sustains the precipices, and designs the valleys of its waves; gives the gleam to their moving under the night, and the white fire to their plains under in the earth. sunrise; lifts their voices along the rocks, bears above them the spray of birds, pencils through them the dimpling of unfooted sands. It gathers out of them a portion in the hollow of its hand; dyes with that, the hills into dark blue, and their glaciers with dying rose; inlays with that, for sapphire, the

Athena's power

dome in which it has to set the cloud; shapes out of that the heavenly flocks; divides them, numbers, cherishes, bears them on its bosom, calls them to their journeys, waits by their rest; feeds from them the brooks that cease not, and strews with them the dews that cease. It spins and weaves their fleece into wild tapestry, rends it, and renews; and flits and flames, and whispers, among the golden threads, thrilling them with a plectrum of strange fire that traverses them to and fro, and is enclosed in them like life.

It enters into the surface of the earth, subdues it, and falls together with it into fruitful dust, from which can be moulded flesh; it joins itself, in dew, to the substance of adamant; and becomes the green leaf out of the dry ground; it enters into the separated shapes of the earth it has tempered, commands the ebb and flow of the current of their life, fills their limbs with its own lightness, measures their existence by its indwelling pulse, moulds upon their lips the words by which one soul can be known to another; is to them the hearing of the ear, and the beating of the heart; and, passing away, leaves them to the peace that hears and moves no more.

This was the Athena of the greatest people of the days of old.” Of Athena "in the heart " he

says:

"Athena rules over moral passion, and practically useful art. She does not make men learned, but prudent and subtle; she does not teach them to make their work beautiful, but to make it right.

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We continually speak thus of works of art. We talk of their faults and merits, as of virtues and vices. What do we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or the merits of a piece of stone? The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, and its virtues his virtues.

Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, and mean art, that of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish person builds foolishly, and a wise one sensibly; a virtuous one,

Ruskin refers to the expression "Athena Keramistis," and puts upon it the meaning "Athena, fit for being made into pottery."

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