just as would be the case if it touched a vital part of the human body.  Throughout the passage the manner of conception is perfectly clear and consistent; and if, in other places, the exact connection between the ruling spirit and the thing ruled is not so manifest, it is only because it is almost impossible for the human mind to dwell long upon such subjects without falling into inconsistencies, and gradually slackening its effort to grasp the entire truth; until the more spiritual part of it slips from its hold, and only the human form of the god is left, to be conceived and described as subject to all the errors of humanity.  But I do not believe that the idea ever weakens itself down to mere allegory.  When Pallas is said to attack and strike down Mars, it does not mean merely that Wisdom at that moment prevailed against Wrath.  It means that there are, indeed, two great spirits, one entrusted to guide the human soul to wisdom and chastity, the other to kindle wrath and prompt to battle.  It means that these two spirits, on the spot where, and at the moment when, a great contest was to be decided between all that they each governed in man, then and there (assumed) human form, and human weapons, and did verily and materially strike at each other, until the Spirit of Wrath was crushed.  And when Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the woods, it does not mean merely, as Wordsworth puts it,[78] that the poet or shepherd saw the moon and stars glancing between the branches of the trees, and wished to say so figuratively.  It means that there is a living spirit, to which the light of the moon is a body; which takes delight in glancing between the clouds and following the wild beasts as they wander through the night; and that this spirit sometimes assumes a perfect human form, and in this form, with real arrows, pursues and slays the wild beasts, which with its mere arrows of moonlight it could not slay; retaining, nevertheless, all the while, its power and being in the moonlight, and in all else that it rules.

There is not the smallest inconsistency or unspirituality in this conception.  If there were, it would attach equally to the appearance of the angels to Jacob, Abraham, Joshua, or Manoah.[79] In all those instances the highest authority which governs our own faith requires us to conceive divine power clothed with a human form (a form so real that it is recognized for superhuman only by its “doing wondrously"), and retaining, nevertheless, sovereignty and omnipresence in all the world.  This is precisely, as I understand it, the heathen idea of a God; and it is impossible to comprehend any single part of the Greek mind until we grasp this faithfully, not endeavouring to explain it away in any wise, but accepting, with frank decision and definition, the tangible existence of its deities;—­blue-eyed—­white-fleshed—­ human-hearted,—­capable at their choice of meeting man absolutely in his own nature—­feasting with him—­talking with him—­fighting