that they kept the
whole thing going. They dealt meanly with men. Athena took the form of
Deiphobus in order to persuade Hector to meet Achilles and be
killed.[1643] They sent dreams to men to mislead them. What can men do
against that? They mixed in the fights of men, but availed themselves of
their godship, if things went against them, and especially in order to
get revenge for defeat. There was no chivalry or nobility of mind or
behavior. It is plain that the gods are not idealized men. They are
worse than the men. Von der March[1644] has collected evidence that the
heroes were savage, cruel, cowardly, venal, rancorous, vain, and lacking
in fortitude, when compared with German epic heroes. It is far more
important to notice that this evidence proves that the Greeks did not
have, and therefore could not ascribe to the gods, a standard of
seemliness above what these traits of the picture disclose. Since that
is so, it follows that the standard of what is fit, seemly, becoming,
good form, is a function of the folkways, or rather of class ways, since
it is only selected classes who cultivate seemliness. Seemliness is a
light, remote, and less important form of propriety. It is a matter of
taste, and taste is cultivated by the folkways.

+497. Greek tragedies and notions of seemliness.+ We think it unseemly
to criticise the ways of Divine Providence, and we refrain from it,
whatever we may think. Since Christianity is no longer imposed by pains
and penalties, we think it unseemly to assail Christianity in the
interest of a negative or destructive philosophy. The Greeks of the
fifth century B.C. had not these notions. They upbraided the gods for
their ways to men and for their vices. The antagonisms of the mores were
antagonisms of gods. In the _Eumenides_ the most tragic consequences
follow from the antagonism of the mores of the mother and father family.
The Furies do not insist on the duty of Orestes to kill his mother, in
blood revenge for the murder of his father, because they belong to the
old system, in which the son was of the mother's blood; but Apollo, the
god of the new system, orders it. A new doctrine of procreation has to
be promulgated. "The mother does not procreate the son; she only bears
and cherishes the awakened life." [Here we see how the doctrines are
invented afterwards to fit the exigencies of new folkways.] Orestes
obeys Apollo and is a victim. Since the command comes from a god, how
shall the man