e contest of life with clay; and all my task in explaining to you the
early thought of both the Athenian and Tuscan schools will only be the
tracing of this battle of the giants into its full heroic form, when,
not in tapestry only--but in sculpture--and on the portal of the Temple
of Delphi itself, you have the "[Greek: klonos en teichesi lainoisi
giganton]," and their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delight
from the Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, "[Greek:
leusso Pallad' eman theon]," my own goddess. All our work, I repeat,
will be nothing but the inquiry into the development of this the
subject, and the pressing fully home the question of Plato about that
embroidery--"And think you that there is verily war with each other
among the Gods? and dreadful enmities and battle, such as the poets have
told, and such as our painters set forth in graven scripture, to adorn
all our sacred rites and holy places; yes, and in the great Panathenaea
themselves, the Peplus, full of such wild picturing, is carried up into
the Acropolis--shall we say that these things are true, oh Euthuphron,
right-minded friend?"

108. Yes, we say, and know, that these things are true; and true for
ever: battles of the gods, not among themselves, but against the
earth-giants. Battle prevailing age by age, in nobler life and lovelier
imagery; creation, which no theory of mechanism, no definition of force,
can explain, the adoption and completing of individual form by
individual animation, breathed out of the lips of the Father of Spirits.
And to recognize the presence in every knitted shape of dust, by which
it lives and moves and has its being--to recognize it, revere, and show
it forth, is to be our eternal Idolatry.

"Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them."

"Assuredly no," we answered once, in our pride; and through porch and
aisle, broke down the carved work thereof, with axes and hammers.

Who would have thought the day so near when we should bow down to
worship, not the creatures, but their atoms,--not the forces that form,
but those that dissolve them? Trust me, gentlemen, the command which is
stringent against adoration of brutality, is stringent no less against
adoration of chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to be
reformed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. We have ceased
from the making of monsters to be appeased by sacrifice;--it is
well,--if indeed we have also ceased f