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 one
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 battles, 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
forever: 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 from making them in our thoughts.
We have learned to distrust the adorning of fair fantasms, to which we
once sought for succor;--it is well, if we learn to distrust also the
adorning of those to which we seek, for temptation; but the verity of
gains like these can only be known by our confession of the divine seal
of strength and beauty upon the tempered frame, and honor in the