99.  This was the Athena of the greatest people of the days of old.  And opposite to the temple of this Spirit of the breath, and life-blood, of man and beast, stood, on the Mount of Justice, and near the chasm which was haunted by the goddess-Avengers, an altar to a God unknown,—­ proclaimed at last to them, as one who, indeed, gave to all men, life, and breath, and all things; and rain from heaven, filling their hearts with rain from heaven, filling their hearts with food and gladness; a God who had made of one blood all nations of men who dwell on the face of all the earth, and had determined the times of their fate, and the bounds of their habitation.

100.  We ourselves, fretted here in our narrow days, know less, perhaps, in very deed, than they, what manner of spirit we are of, or what manner of spirit we ignorantly worship.  Have we, indeed, desired the Desire of all nations? and will the Master whom we meant to seem, and the Messenger in whom we thought we delighted, confirm, when He comes to His temple,—­ or not find in its midst,—­the tables heavy with gold for bread, and the seats that are bought with the price of the dove?  Or is our own land also to be left by its angered Spirit,—­left among those, where sunshine vainly sweet, and passionate folly of storm, waste themselves in the silent places of knowledge that has passed away, and of tongues that have ceased?

This only we may discern assuredly; this, every true light of science, every mercifully-granted power, every wisely-restricted thought, teach us more clearly day by day, that in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, there is one continual and omnipotent presence of help, and of peace, for all men who know that they live, and remember that they die.

III.

Athena ERGANE.*
(Athena in the Heart.)

* “Athena the worker, or having rule over work.”  The name was first give to her by the Athenians.

VARIOUS NOTES RELATING TO THE CONCEPTION OF ATHENA AS THE DIRECTRESS OF THE IMAGINATION AND WILL.

101.  I have now only a few words to say, bearing on what seems to me present need, respecting the third function of Athena, conceived as the directress of human passion, resolution, and labor.

Few words, for I am not yet prepared to give accurate distinction between the intellectual rule of Athena and that of the Muses; but, broadly, the Muses, with their king, preside over meditative, historical, and poetic arts, whose end is the discovery of light or truth, and the creation of beauty; but Athena rules over moral passion, and practically useful art.  She does not make men learned, but prudent and subtle; she does not teach them to make their work beautiful, but to make it right.