s" expresses at once the devouring eagerness of
fire, and the zeal of progressive labour, for Horace gives it to him
when he is fighting against the giants. And this rude symbol of his
cleaving the forehead of Zeus with the axe, and giving birth to Athena
signifies, indeed, physically the thrilling power of heat in the
heavens, rending the clouds, and giving birth to the blue air; but far
more deeply it signifies the subduing of adverse Fate by true labour;
until, out of the chasm, cleft by resolute and industrious fortitude,
springs the Spirit of Wisdom.

74. Here (Fig. 4) is an early drawing of the myth, to which I shall have
to refer afterwards in illustration of the childishness of the Greek
mind at the time when its art-symbols were first fixed; but it is of
peculiar value, because the physical character of Vulcan, as fire, is
indicated by his wearing the [Greek: endromides] of Hermes, while the
antagonism of Zeus, as the adverse chaos, either of cloud or of fate, is
shown by his striking at Hephaestus with his thunderbolt. But Plate IV.
gives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow it to be
deciphered) a characteristic representation of the scene, as conceived
in later art.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.]

75. I told you in a former lecture of this course that the entire Greek
intellect was in a childish phase as compared to that of modern times.
Observe, however, childishness does not necessarily imply universal
inferiority: there may be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemn childhood,
and there may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition of advanced
life; but the one is still essentially the childish, and the other the
adult phase of existence.

76. You will find, then, that the Greeks were the first people that were
born into complete humanity. All nations before them had been, and all
around them still were, partly savage, bestial, clay-encumbered,
inhuman; still semi-goat, or semi-ant, or semi-stone, or semi-cloud. But
the power of a new spirit came upon the Greeks, and the stones were
filled with breath, and the clouds clothed with flesh; and then came the
great spiritual battle between the Centaurs and Lapithae; and the living
creatures became "Children of Men." Taught, yet, by the Centaur--sown,
as they knew, in the fang--from the dappled skin of the brute, from the
leprous scale of the serpent, their flesh came again as the flesh of a
little child, and they were clean.

Fix your mind on thi