But I must explain these three old ones
first.
I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God of Wisdom;
so that whatever contended against their religion,--to the Jews a
stumbling-block,--was, to the Greeks--_Foolishness_.[212]
The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed in the word, of which
we keep the remnant in our words "_Di_-urnal" and "_Di_-vine"--the god
of _Day_, Jupiter the revealer. Athena is his daughter, but especially
daughter of the Intellect, springing armed from the head. We are only
with the help of recent investigation beginning to penetrate the depth
of meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly,
that her aegis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which she
often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her left
hand, for better guard; and the Gorgon, on her shield, are both
representative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men
to stone, as it were), of the outmost and superficial spheres of
knowledge--that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness,
and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown man from the heart of the
child. For out of imperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension,
danger, and disdain; but from perfect knowledge, given by the
full-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign of which she is
crowned with the olive spray, and bears the resistless spear.
Pages:
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388