in her two powers; and I do this now, because, among the many monstrous
and misbegotten fantasies which are the spawn of modern license, perhaps
the most impishly opposite to the truth is the conception of music which
has rendered possible the writing, by educated persons, and, more
strangely yet, the tolerant criticism, of such words as these: "This so
persuasive art is the only one that has no didactic efficacy, that
engenders no emotions save such as are without issue on the side of moral
truth, that expresses nothing of God, nothing of reason, nothing of human
liberty." I will not give the author's name; the passage is quoted in
the "Westminster Review" for last January [1869].

43. I must also anticipate something of what I have to say respecting
the relation of the power of Athena to organic life, so far as to note
that her name, Pallas, probably refers to the quivering or vibration of
the air; and to its power, whether as vital force, or communicated wave,
over every kind of matter, in giving it vibratory movement; first, and
most intense, in the voice and throat of the bird, which is the air
incarnate; and so descending through the various orders of animal life to
the vibrating and semi-voluntary murmur of the insect; and, lower still,
to the hiss or quiver of the tail of the half-lunged snake and deaf
adder; all these, nevertheless, being wholly under the rule of Athena as
representing either breath or vital nervous power; and, therefore, also,
in their simplicity, the "oaten pipe and pastoral song," which belong to
her dominion over the asphodel meadows, and breathe on their banks of
violets.

Finally, is it not strange to think of the influence of this one power of
Pallas in vibration (we shall see a singular mechanical energy of it
presently in the serpent's motion), in the voices of war and peace? How
much of the repose, how much of the wrath, folly, and misery of men, has