else he is betrayed into something merely human. This difficult
antagonism, of what is most and what is least generic, must be
maintained, otherwise the idea, the possible idea, of that august
unveiling which takes place in the Judaico-Christian God, is
absolutely in clouds. Now, this antagonism utterly collapses in
paganism. And to a philosophic apprehension, this peculiarity of
the heathen gods is more shocking and fearful than what at first
sight had seemed most so. When a man pauses for the purpose of
attentively reviewing the Pantheon of Greece and Rome, what strikes
him at the first with most depth of impression and with most horror
is, the _wickedness_ of this Pantheon. And he observes with
surprise, that this wickedness, which is at a furnace-heat in the
superior gods, becomes fainter and paler as you descend. Amongst
the semi-deities, such as the Oreads or Dryads, the Nereids or
Naiads, he feels not at all offended. The odor of corruption, the
_saeva mephitis_, has by this time exhaled. The uproar of
eternal outrage has ceased. And these gentle divinities, if too
human and too beset with infirmities, are not impure, and not vexed
with ugly appetites, nor instinct of quarrel: they are tranquil
as are the hills and the forests; passionless as are the seas and
the fountains which they tenant. But, when he ascends to the _dii
majorum gentium_, to those twelve gods of the supreme house,
who may be called in respect of rank, the Paladins of the classical
Pantheon, secret horror comes over him at the thought that demons,
reflecting the worst aspects of brutal races, ever _could_
have levied worship from his own. It is true they do so no longer
as regards _our_ planet. But what _has_ been apparently
_may_ be. God made the Greeks and Romans of one blood with
himself; he cannot deny that _intellectually_ the Greeks--he
cannot deny that _morally_ the Romans--were amongst the foremost