To all which, most worshipful, thou didst answer wisely: saying
that Hera could not be both night, and earth, and water, and air,
and the love of sexes, and the confusion of the elements; but that
all these opinions were vain dreams, and the guesses of the learned.
And why--thou saidst--even if the Gods were pure natural creatures,
are such foul things told of them in the Mysteries as it is not
fitting for me to declare. "These wanderings, and drinkings, and
loves, and seductions, that would be shameful in men, why," thou
saidst, "were they attributed to the natural elements; and wherefore
did the Gods constantly show themselves, like the sorcerers called
werewolves, in the shape of the perishable beasts?" But, mainly,
thou didst argue that, till the philosophers of the heathen were
agreed among themselves, not all contradicting each the other, they
had no semblance of a sure foundation for their doctrine.

To all this and more, most worshipful Father, I know not what the
heathen answered thee. But, in our time, the learned men who stand
to it that the heathen Gods were in the beginning the pure elements,
and that the nations, forgetting their first love and the
significance of their own speech, became confused and were betrayed
into foul stories about the pure Gods--these learned men, I say,
agree no whit among themselves. Nay, they differ one from another,
not less than did Plutarch and Porphyry and Theagenes, and the rest
whom thou didst laugh to scorn. Bear with me, Father, while I tell
thee how the new Plutarchs and Porphyrys do contend among
themselves; and yet these differences of theirs they call "Science"!

Consider the goddess Athene, who sprang armed from the head of Zeus,
even as--among the fables of the poor heathen folk of seas thou