also, father, it seemed as though my element
was burdened with a secret which it knew not how to convey to me.

[_A silence._]

APHRODITE [_aside to_ PALLAS].

If we must be driven forth again, let us at least cling to such
new gifts as we have secured here.

PALLAS [_in an eager whisper_].

I should like to know what you consider them to be. Do you hold
introspection as one of them?

APHRODITE.

I certainly do. The analysis of one's own feelings, and the sense
of watching the fluctuating symptoms of one's individuality, form
one of the principal consolations of our mortal state.

PALLAS.

I think I should give it another name.

HERMES [_who has come up behind them, and bending forward has
overheard the conversation_].

My name for it would be the indulgence of personal vanity.

APHRODITE [_speaks louder, while the conversation becomes general,
except that_ ZEUS _takes no part in it_].

You may call it so, if you please, but it is a source of genuine
pleasure to us.

PHOEBUS.

Ignorance is doubtless another of these consolations--ignorance
chemically modified by a few drops of the desire for knowledge....
[_Enthusiastically._] And all the chastened forms of recollection,
how delightful they are, and how they add to our satisfaction here!

NIKE.

It would be interesting to me to understand what you mean by
chastened forms of recollection. I don't think that is my
experience.

PALLAS.

I conceive memory as a pure, unbiased emotion, an image of past
life cast upon an unflawed mirror. Why do you say "chastened"?

PHOEBUS.

That memory which is nothing but a plain reproduction on the mirror
of the mind is a tame concern, Pallas. It transfers, without
modification, all that is dull, and squalid, and unessential. The
only memory which is worthy of those who have tasted immortality is
that which has in some degree been fortified. To recollect with
enjoyment is to select certain salient facts from an experience and
to be oblivious of the rest; or else it is to heighten the exciting
elements of an event out of all proportion with historic fact; or
it even is to place what should be in the seat of what precisely
was.... But this must be done firmly, logically, with no timidity
in reminiscence, so that the mind shall rest in a perfectly
artistic conviction that what it recollects is all the truth and
nothing but the truth. This is chastened, or, if you prefer it,
civilised memory. But Zeus i