of flesh, and to have various work to do among the clouds and waves, out of his human way; or sometimes, even in a sort of service to himself.  Was not the nourishment of herbs and flowers a kind of ministering to his wants; were not the gods in some sort his husbandmen, and spirit-servants?  Their mere strength or omnipresence did not seem to him a distinction absolutely terrific.  It might be the nature of one being to be in two places at once, and of another to be only in one; but that did not seem of itself to infer any absolute lordliness of one nature above the other, any more than an insect must be a nobler creature than a man, because it can see on four sides of its head, and the man only in front.  They could kill him or torture him, it was true; but even that not unjustly, or not for ever.  There was a fate, and a Divine Justice, greater than they; so that if they did wrong, and he right, he might fight it out with them, and have the better of them at last.  In a general way, they were wiser, stronger, and better than he; and to ask counsel of them, to obey them, to sacrifice to them, to thank them for all good, this was well:  but to be utterly downcast before them, or not to tell them his mind in plain Greek if they seemed to him to be conducting themselves in an ungodly manner—­this would not be well.

Such being their general idea of the gods, we can now easily understand the habitual tone of their feelings towards what was beautiful in nature.  With us, observe, the idea of the Divinity is apt to get separated from the life of nature; and imagining our God upon a cloudy throne, far above the earth, and not in the flowers or waters, we approach those visible things with a theory that they are dead; governed by physical laws, and so forth.  But coming to them, we find the theory fail; that they are not dead; that, say what we choose about them, the instinctive sense of their being alive is too strong for us; and in scorn of all physical law, the wilful fountain sings, and the kindly flowers rejoice.  And then, puzzled, and yet happy; pleased, and yet ashamed of being so; accepting sympathy from nature which we do not believe it gives, and giving sympathy to nature, which we do not believe it receives,—­mixing, besides, all manner of purposeful play and conceit with these involuntary fellowships,—­we fall necessarily into the curious web of hesitating sentiment, pathetic fallacy, and wandering fancy, which form a great part of our modern view of nature.  But the Greek never removed his god out of nature at all; never attempted for a moment to contradict his instinctive sense that God was everywhere.  “The tree is glad,” said he, “I know it is; I can cut it down:  no matter, there was a nymph in it.  The water does sing,” said he; “I can dry it up; but no matter, there was a naiad in it.”  But in thus clearly defining his belief, observe, he threw it entirely into a human form, and gave his faith to nothing but the image of his own