ble. He must fly
then for refuge to Loxias the Sun-God, the Supreme Self, who can
protect him from these Erinyes--but it is Pallas, Goddess of the
Inner Wisdom, of the true method of life, that can alone set him
free. And it is thus that Apollo pleads before her for Orestes
who killed his mother (Nature) to avenge his Father (Spirit):--a
man, says he, is in reality the child of his father, not of his
mother:--this lower world in which we are incarnate is not in
truth our parent or originator at all, but only the seed-plot in
which we, sons of the Eternal, are sown, the nursery in which we
grow to the point of birth;--but we ourselves are in our essence
flame of the Flame of God. So Pallas--and you must think of all
she implied--Theosophy, right living, right thought and action,
true wisdom--judges Orestes guiltless, sets him free, and
transforms his passions into his powers.

V. SOME PERICLEAN FIGURES

Yoshio Markino (that ever-delightful Japanese) makes an
illuminating comparison between the modern western and the
ancient eastern civilizations. What he says amounts to this: the
one is of Science, the other of the Human Spirit; the one of
intellect, the other of intuition; the one has learnt rules for
carrying all things through in some shape that will serve--the
other worked its wonders by what may be called a Transcendental
Rule of Thumb. But in fact it was a reliance on the Human Spirit,
which invited the presence thereof;--and hence results were
attained quite unachievable by modern scientific methods. What
Yoshio says of the Chinese and Japanese is also true of all the
great western ages of the past. We can do a number of things,--
that is, have invented machinery to do a number of things for
us,--but with all our resources we could not build a Parthenon:
could not even reproduce it, with the model there before our eyes
to imitate.*

------
* I quote Prof. Mahaffy in his _Problems of Greek History._ He
also points out that it is beyond the powers of modern science in
naval architecture to construct a workable model of a Greek trireme.
------

It stands as a monument of the Human Spirit: as an age-long
witness to the presence and keen activity of that during the Age
of Pericles in Athens. It was built at almost break-neck speed,
yet remains a thing of permanent inimitable beauty, defying time
and the deliberate efforts of men and gunpowder to destroy it.
The work in it which no eye could see wa