f
to young persons, or indeed at all; or, if at all, then in a mystery,
after the sacrifice, not of an Eleusinian pig, but of some unprocurable
animal. Shall our youth be encouraged to beat their fathers by the
example of Zeus, or our citizens be incited to quarrel by hearing or
seeing representations of strife among the gods? Shall they listen to
the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother, and of Zeus sending him
flying for helping her when she was beaten? Such tales may possibly have
a mystical interpretation, but the young are incapable of understanding
allegory. If any one asks what tales are to be allowed, we will answer
that we are legislators and not book-makers; we only lay down the
principles according to which books are to be written; to write them is
the duty of others.

And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not
as the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the
poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two
casks full of destinies;--or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus to
break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of
Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to
destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was
just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was
evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will
allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great
principle--God is the author of good only.

And the second principle is like unto it:--With God is no variableness
or change of form. Reason teaches us this; for if we suppose a change
in God, he must be changed either by another or by himself. By
another?--but the best works of nature and art and the noblest qualities
of mind are least liable to be changed by any external force. By
himself?--but he cannot change for the better; he will hardly change
for the worse. He remains for ever fairest and best in his own image.
Therefore we refuse to listen to the poets who tell us of Here begging
in the likeness of a priestess or of other deities who prowl about at
night in strange disguises; all that blasphemous nonsense with which
mothers fool the manhood out of their children must be suppressed. But
some one will say that God, who is himself unchangeable, may take a form
in relation to us. Why should he? For gods as well as men hate the lie
in the soul,