came my Bible. I accepted his
theology implicitly; I swallowed it whole. The Godhead of the
Olympians, the lesser divinity of Thetis and Alpheios and Xanthos were
indisputable. They were infinitely more real to me than the deities of
my own land; and though I have found room for these later on in life,
it has not been by displacing the others. Nor is there any need for
that, so far as I see. I say that out of Homer I took his Gods; I add
that I took them instantly. I seemed to breathe the air of their
breath; they appealed to my reason; I knew that they had existed and
did still exist. I was not shocked or shaken in my faith, either, by
anything I read about them. Young as I was and insipient, I was
prepared for what is called the burlesque Olympus of the Iliad, so
grievous to Professor Murray. I think I recognised then, what seems
perfectly plain to me now, that you might as well think meanly of a
God of Africa because the natives make him of a cocoanut on a stick,
as of Zeus and Hera because Homer says that they played peccant
husband and jealous wife. If Homer halted it is rash to assume that
Hephaistos did. The pathetic fallacy has crept in here. Mythology was
one of the few subjects I diligently read at school, and all I got out
of it was pure profit--for I realised that the Gods' world was not
ours, and that when their natures came in conflict with ours some such
interpretation must always be put upon their victory. We have a moral
law for our mutual wellbeing which they have not. We translate their
deeds in terms of that law of ours, and it certainly appears like a
standing fact of Nature that when the beings of one order come into
commerce with those of another the result will be tragic. There is
only a harmony in acquiescence, and the way to that is one of blood
and tears.

Brooding over all this I discerned dimly, even in that dusty, brawling
place, and time showed me more and more clearly, that I had always
been aware of the Gods and conscious of their omnipresence. It seemed
plain to me that Zeus, whose haunt is dark Dodona, lorded it over the
English skies and was to be heard in the thunder crashing over the
elms of Middlesex. I knew Athene in the shrill wind which battled
through the vanes and chimneys of our schoolhouse. Artemis was Lady of
my country. By Apollo's light might I too come to be led. Poseidon of
the dark locks girdled my native seas. I had had good reason to know
the awfulness of Pan, and g