ch it seemed quite
as difficult to master, as to rule the elements, he did not feel that
it was an appalling superiority in those gods to have bodies of water,
or fire, instead of flesh, and to have various work to do among the
clouds and waves, out of his human way; or sometimes, even in a sort
of service to himself. Was not the nourishment of herbs and flowers a
kind of ministering to his wants; were not the gods in some sort his
husbandmen, and spirit-servants? Their mere strength or omnipresence
did not seem to him a distinction absolutely terrific. It might be the
nature of one being to be in two places at once, and of another to be
only in one; but that did not seem of itself to infer any absolute
lordliness of one nature above the other, any more than an insect must
be a nobler creature than a man, because it can see on four sides of
its head, and the man only in front. 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. And then, puzzled, and yet happy;
pleased, and yet ashamed of being so; accepting sympathy from nature
which we do not believe it gives, and giving sympathy to nature, which
we do not believe it receives,--mixing, besides, all manner of
purposefu