They could kill him or torture
him, it was true; but even that not unjustly, or not for ever. There
was a fate, and a Divine Justice, greater than they; so that if they
did wrong, and he right, he might fight it out with them, and have the
better of them at last. In a general way, they were wiser, stronger,
and better than he; and to ask counsel of them, to obey them, to
sacrifice to them, to thank them for all good, this was well: but to
be utterly downcast before them, or not to tell them his mind in plain
Greek if they seemed to him to be conducting themselves in an ungodly
manner--this would not be well.
Such being their general idea of the gods, we can now easily
understand the habitual tone of their feelings towards what was
beautiful in nature. With us, observe, the idea of the Divinity is apt
to get separated from the life of nature; and imagining our God upon a
cloudy throne, far above the earth, and not in the flowers or waters,
we approach those visible things with a theory that they are dead;
governed by physical laws, and so forth. But coming to them, we find
the theory fail; that they are not dead; that, say what we choose
about them, the instinctive sense of their being alive is too strong
for us; and in scorn of all physical law, the wilful fountain sings,
and the kindly flowers rejoice.
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