mer's pantheon.

That man's primary and most satisfying ideal is something of this sort
is clear in itself, and attested by mythology; for the great use of the
gods is that they interpret the human heart to us, and help us, while we
conceive them, to discover our inmost ambition and, while we emulate
them, to pursue it. Christian fancy, because of its ascetic meagreness
and fear of life, has not known how to fill out the picture of heaven
and has left it mystical and vague; but whatever paradise it has
ventured to imagine has been modelled on the same primary ideal. It has
represented a society of eternal beings among which there was no
marriage nor giving in marriage and where each found his congenial
mansion and that perfected activity which brings inward peace.

After this easy fashion were death and birth conquered in the myths,
which truly interpreted the will to live according to its primary
intention, but in reality such direct satisfaction was impossible. A
total defeat, on the other hand, would have extinguished the will itself
and obliterated every human impulse seeking expression. Man's existence
is proof enough that nature was not altogether unpropitious, but
offered, in an unlooked-for direction, some thoroughfare to the soul.
Roundabout imperfect methods were discovered by which something at least
of what was craved might be secured. The individual perished, yet not
without having segregated and detached a certain portion of himself
capable of developing a second body and mind. The potentialities of this
seminal portion, having been liberated long after the parent body had
begun to feel the shock of the world, could reach full expression after
the parent body had begun to decay; and the offspring needed not itself
to succumb before it had launched a third generation. A cyclical life or
arrested death, a continual motion by little successive explosions,
could thus establish itself and could repeat from generation to
generation a process not unlike nutrition; only that, while in nutrition
the individual form remains and the inner substance is renewed
insensibly, in reproduction the form is renewed openly and the inner
substance is insensibly continuous.

[Sidenote: Its indirect attainment by reproduction.]

Reproduction seems, from the will's point of view, a marvellous
expedient involving a curious mixture of failure and success. The
individual, who alone is the seat and principle of will, is thereby
sa