he sees the mermaid's head, but not the dragon's tail; and thinks he
can cut off that which he would have, from that which he would not
have. "How secret art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens in
silence, O thou only great God, sprinkling with an unwearied
Providence certain penal blindnesses upon such as have unbridled
desires!"[111]

The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of fable, of
history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. It finds a tongue in
literature unawares. Thus the Greeks called Jupiter,[112] Supreme
Mind; but having traditionally ascribed to him many base actions, they
involuntarily made amends to reason, by tying up the hands[113] of so
bad a god. He is made as helpless as a king of England.[114]
Prometheus[115] knows one secret which Jove must bargain for;
Minerva,[116] another. He cannot get his own thunders; Minerva keeps
the key of them.

"Of all the gods, I only know the keys
That ope the solid doors within whose vaults
His thunders sleep."

A plain confession of the in-working of the All, and of its moral aim.
The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; and it would seem
impossible for any fable to be invented to get any currency which was
not moral. Aurora[117] forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though
Tithonus is immortal, he is old, Achilles[118] is not quite
invulnerable; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis
held him. Siegfried,[119] in the Niebelungen, is not quite immortal,
for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon's
blood, and that spot which it covered is mortal. And so it must be.