49.  Then, lastly, the creed of the philosophers of sages varied according to the character and knowledge of each; their relative acquaintance with the secrets of natural science, their intellectual and sectarian egotism, and their mystic or monastic tendencies, for there is a classic as well as a mediaeval monasticism.  They end in losing the life of Greece in play upon words; but we owe to their early thought some of the soundest ethics, and the foundation of the best practical laws, yet known to mankind.

50.  Such was the general vitality of the heathen creed in its strength.  Of its direct influence on conduct, it is, as I said, impossible for me to speak now; only, remember always, in endeavoring to form a judgment of it, that what of good or right the heathens did, they did looking for no reward.  The purest forms of our own religion have always consisted in sacrificing less things to win greater, time to win eternity, the world to win the skies.  The order, “Sell that thou hast,” is not given without the promise, “Thou shalt have treasure in heaven;” and well for the modern Christian if he accepts the alternative as his Master left it, and does not practically read the command and promise thus:  “Sell that thou hast in the best market, and thou shalt have treasure in eternity also.”  But the poor Greeks of the great ages expected no reward from heaven but honor, and no reward from earth but rest; though, when, on those conditions, they patiently, and proudly, fulfilled their task of the granted day, an unreasoning instinct of an immortal benediction broke from their lips in song; and they, even they, had sometimes a prophet to tell them of a land “where there is sun alike by day and alike by night, where they shall need no more to trouble the earth by strength of hands for daily bread; but the ocean breezes blow around the blessed islands, and golden flowers burn on their bright trees for evermore.”

II.

Athena KERAMITIS.*

(Athena in the Earth.)

* “Athena, fit for being made into pottery.”  I coin the expression as a counterpart of ‘ge parthenia’, “Clay intact.”

STUDY, SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE PRECEDING LECTURE, OF THE SUPPOSED AND ACTUAL RELATIONS OF ATHENA TO THE VITAL FORCE IN MATERIAL ORGANISM

51.  It has been easy to decipher approximately the Greek conception of the physical power of Athena in cloud and sky, because we know ourselves what clouds and skies are, and what the force of the wind is in forming them.  But it is not at all easy to trace the Greek thoughts about the power of Athena in giving life, because we do not ourselves know clearly what life is, or in what way the air is necessary to it, or what there is, besides the air, shaping the forms that it is put into.  And it is comparatively of small consequence to find out what the Greeks thought or meant, until we have determined what we ourselves think, or mean, when we translate the Greek word for “breathing” into the Latin-English word “spirit.”