Make what himself would fain in a manner be--
Weaker in most points, stronger in a few,
Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while."

Made them to plague, as Caliban would have done. And caprice is
Setebos's method. He does things wantonly. No noble master passion
flames in him. No goodness blesses him. Such a god Caliban makes, so
that it is odds whether Caliban make God or God make Caliban. Be sure,
a man-made god is like the man who made him. The sole explanation of
God, "who dwelleth in light which no man can approach unto," and who is
whiter than the light in which he dwells, is, he is not myth, man-made.
God made man, and revealed to him the Maker. Thus only do we explain
the surpassing picture the prophets and the Christ and the evangelists
have left us of the mighty God. Caliban will persist in the belief
that the visible system was created in Setebos's moment of being ill at
ease and in cruel sportiveness. Nature is a freak of a foul mind. But
Caliban's god is not solitary. How hideous were the Aztec gods! They
were pictured horrors. Montezuma's gods were Caliban's. Caliban's
Setebos was another Moloch of the Canaanites, or a Hindoo Krishna. And
the Greek and Norse gods were the infirm shadows of the men who dreamed
them. Who says, after familiarizing himself with the religions of the
world, that Caliban or his theology is myth? Setebos has no morals.
He has might. But this was Jupiter. Read "Prometheus Bound," and know
a Greek conception of Greek Zeus:

"Such shows nor right nor wrong in him,
Nor kind nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea;
Let twenty pass and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so."

How hideous this god, decrepit in all save power! But for argument,
suppose

"He is good i' the main,
Placable if his mind and ways were guessed,
But rougher than his handiwork, be sure."

Caliban thinks Setebos is himself a creature, made by something he
calls "Quiet;" and what is this but the Gnostic notion of aeons and
their subordination to the great, hid God? No, this brief dramatic
lyric is far from being an imagination. Rather say it is a chapter
taken from the history of man's traffic in gods. Setebos is creative;
lacks moral qualities in that he may be evil or good; acts from spleen,
and by simple caprice; is loveless; to be feare