are turned into
their dramatic antecedents--as when the wind's rudeness is turned into
his anger. When the natural basis of moral life is not understood, myth
is the only way of expressing it theoretically, as eyes too weak to see
the sun face to face may, as Plato says, for a time study its image
mirrored in pools, and, as we may add, inverted there. So the good,
which in itself is spiritual only, is transposed into a natural power.
At first this amounts to an amiable misrepresentation of natural things;
the gods inhabit Mount Olympus and the Elysian Fields are not far west
of Cadiz. With the advance of geography the mythical facts recede, and
in a cosmography like Hegel's, for instance, they have disappeared
altogether; but there remain the mythical values once ascribed to those
ideal objects but now transferred and fettered to the sad realities that
have appeared in their place. The titles of honour once bestowed on a
fabled world are thus applied to the real world by right of inheritance.

[Sidenote: Truly divine action limited to what makes for the good.]

Nothing could be clearer than the grounds on which pious men in the
beginning recognise divine agencies. We see, they say, the hand of God
in our lives. He has saved us from dangers, he has comforted us in
sorrow. He has blessed us with the treasures of life, of intelligence,
of affection. He has set around us a beautiful world, and one still more
beautiful within us. Pondering all these blessings, we are convinced
that he is mighty in the world and will know how to make all things good
to those who trust in him. In other words, pious men discern God in the
excellence of things. If all were well, as they hope it may some day be,
God would henceforth be present in everything. While good is mixed with
evil, he is active in the good alone. The pleasantness of life, the
preciousness of human possessions, the beauty and promise of the world,
are proof of God's power; so is the stilling of tempests and the
forgiveness of sins. But the sin itself and the tempest, which
optimistic theology has to attribute just as much to God's purposes, are
not attributed to him at all by pious feeling, but rather to his
enemies. In spite of centuries wasted in preaching God's omnipotence,
his omnipotence is contradicted by every Christian judgment and every
Christian prayer. If the most pious of nations is engaged in war, and
suffers a great accidental disaster, such as it might expec