When Pallas is said to attack and strike
down Mars, it does not mean merely that Wisdom at that moment
prevailed against Wrath. It means that there are, indeed, two great
spirits, one entrusted to guide the human soul to wisdom and chastity,
the other to kindle wrath and prompt to battle. It means that these
two spirits, on the spot where, and at the moment when, a great
contest was to be decided between all that they each governed in man,
then and there (assumed) human form, and human weapons, and did verily
and materially strike at each other, until the Spirit of Wrath was
crushed. And when Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the woods,
it does not mean merely, as Wordsworth puts it,[78] that the poet or
shepherd saw the moon and stars glancing between the branches of the
trees, and wished to say so figuratively. It means that there is a
living spirit, to which the light of the moon is a body; which takes
delight in glancing between the clouds and following the wild beasts
as they wander through the night; and that this spirit sometimes
assumes a perfect human form, and in this form, with real arrows,
pursues and slays the wild beasts, which with its mere arrows of
moonlight it could not slay; retaining, nevertheless, all the while,
its power and being in the moonlight, and in all else that it
rules.
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