nipresent power in the heavens themselves, and gathering
clouds, with which, filled with the moon's own arrows or beams, she
was encumbering and concealing the moon; he is welcome to this out
carrying of the idea, provided that he does not pretend to make it an
interpretation instead of a mere extension, nor think to explain away
my real, running, beautiful beaten Diana, into a moon behind
clouds.[83]

It is only farther to be noted, that the Greek conception of Godhead,
as it was much more real than we usually suppose, so it was much more
bold and familiar than to a modern mind would be possible. I shall
have something more to observe, in a little while, of the danger of
our modern habit of endeavouring to raise ourselves to something like
comprehension of the truth of divinity, instead of simply believing
the words in which the Deity reveals Himself to us. The Greek erred
rather on the other side, making hardly any effort to conceive divine
mind as above the human; and no more shrinking from frank intercourse
with a divine being, or dreading its immediate presence, than that of
the simplest of mortals. Thus Atrides, enraged at his sword's breaking
in his hand upon the helmet of Paris, after he had expressly invoked
the assistance of Jupiter, exclaims aloud, as he would to a king who
had betrayed him, "Jove, Father, there is not another god more
evil-minded than thou!"[84] and Helen, provoked at Paris's defeat, and
oppressed with pouting shame both for him and for herself, when Venus
appears at her side, and would lead her back to the delivered Paris,
impatiently tells the goddess to "go and take care of Paris
herself."[85]

The modern mind is naturally, but vulgarly and unjustly, shocked by
this kind of familiarity. Rightly understood, it is not so much a sign
of misunderstanding of the divine nature as of good understanding of
the human. The Greek lived, in all things, a healthy, and, in a
certain degree, a perfect life. He had no morbid or sickly feeling of
any kind. He was accustomed to face death without the slightest
shrinking, to undergo all kinds of bodily hardship without complaint,
and to do what he supposed right and honourable, in most cases, as a
matter of course. Confident of his own immortality, and of the power
of abstract justice, he expected to be dealt with in the next world as
was right, and left the matter much in his god's hands; but being thus
immortal, and finding in his own soul something whi