For what is the secret of the eternal freshness, the eternal beauty, ay,
I may say boldly, in spite of all their absurdities and immoralities,
the eternal righteousness of those old Greek myths? What is it which
made Socrates and Plato cling lovingly and reverently to them, they
scarce knew why, while they deplored the immoralities to which they had
given rise? What is it which made those myths, alone of all old
mythologies, the parents of truly beautiful sculpture, painting, poetry?
What is it which makes us love them still; find, even at times against
our consciences, new meaning, new beauty in them; and brings home the
story of Perseas or of Hercules, alike to the practised reason of
Niebuhr, and the untutored instincts of Niebuhr's little child, for whom
he threw them into simplest forms? Why is it that in spite of our
disagreeing with their creed and their morality, we still persist--and
long may we persist, or rather be compelled--as it were by blind
instinct, to train our boys upon those old Greek dreams; and confess,
whenever we try to find a substitute for them in our educational
schemes, that we have as yet none? Because those old Greek stories do
represent the Deities as the archetypes, the kinsmen, the teachers, the
friends, the inspirers of men. Because while the schoolboy reads how
the Gods were like to men, only better, wiser, greater; how the Heroes
are the children of the Gods, and the slayers of the monsters which
devour the earth; how Athene taught men weaving, and Phoebus music, and
Vulcan the cunning of the stithy; how the Gods took pity on the noble-
hearted son of Danae, and lent him celestial arms and guided him over
desert and ocean to fulfil his vow--that boy is learning deep lessons of
metaphysic, more in accordance with the reine vernunft, the pure reason
whereby man perceives that which is moral, and spiritual, and eternal,
than he would from all disquisitions about being and becoming, about
actualities and potentialities, which ever tormented the weary brain of