r, while I tell thee how the new Plutarchs and
Porphyrys do contend among themselves; and yet these differences of
theirs they call 'Science'!

Consider the goddess Athene, who sprang armed from the head of Zeus,
even as--among the fables of the poor heathen folk of seas thou never
knewest--goddesses are fabled to leap out from the armpits or feet of
their fathers. Thou must know that what Plato, in the 'Cratylus,' made
Socrates say in jest, the learned among us practise in sad earnest. For,
when they wish to explain the nature of any God, they first examine
his name, and torment the letters thereof, arranging and altering them
according to their will, and flying off to the speech of the Indians and
Medes and Chaldeans, and other Barbarians, if Greek will not serve their
turn. How saith Socrates? 'I bethink me of a very new and ingenious idea
that occurs to me; and, if I do not mind, I shall be wiser than I should
be by to-morrow's dawn. My notion is that we may put in and pull out
letters at pleasure and alter the accents.' Even so do our learned--not
at pleasure, maybe, but according to certain fixed laws (so they
declare); yet none the more do they agree among themselves. And I deny
not that they discover many things true and good to be known; but,
as touching the names of the Gods, their learning, as it standeth, is
confusion. Look, then, at the goddess Athene: taking one example out of
hundreds. We have dwelling in our coasts Muellerus, the most erudite
of the doctors of the Alemanni, and the most golden-mouthed. Concerning
Athene, he saith that her name is none other than, in the ancient tongue
of the Brachmanae, _Ahana'_, which, being interpreted, means the Dawn.
'And that the morning light,' saith he, 'offers the best starting-point;
for the later growth of Athene has been proved, I believe, beyond the
reach of doubt or even cavil.' (1)

(1) 'The Lesson of Jupiter.'--_Nineteenth Century_, October, 1885.

Yet this same doctor candidly lets us know that another of his nation,
the witty Benfeius, hath devised another sense and origin of Athene,
taken from the speech of the old Medes. But Muellerus declares to us
that whosoever shall examine the contention of Benfeius 'will be bound,
in common honesty, to confess that it is untenable.' This, Father, is
one for Benfeius, as the saying goes. And as Muellerus holds that these
matters 'admit of almost mathematical precision,' it would seem
that Benfeius is but a