hose
grace only men are men, and fit to become Man. Therefore, the gods are
eternal; not they die, but we, when we think them dead. And no man who
does not know them, and knowing, worship and love, is able to be a
member of the body of Man. Thus it is that the sign of a step forward
is a look backward; and Greece stands eternally at the threshold of the
new life. Forget her, and you sink back, if not to the brute, to the
insect. Consider the ant, and beware of her! She is there for a
warning. In universal Anthood there are no ants. From that fate may
men save Man!

"But the Pagan gods were pitiless; they preyed upon the weak. Their
wisdom was rooted in folly, their beauty in squalor, their love in
oppression. So fostered, those flowers decayed. And out of the
rotting soil rose the strange new blossoms we call Faith, and Hope, and
Charity. For Folly cried, 'I know not, but I believe'; Squalor, 'I am
vile, but I hope'; and the oppressed, 'I am despised, but I love.'
That was the Christian Trinity, the echo of man's frustration, as the
other was the echo of his accomplishment. Yet both he needs. For
because he grows, he is dogged by imperfection. His weakness is mocked
by those shining forms on the mountain-top. But Faith, and Hope, and
Charity walk beside him in the mire, to kindle, to comfort and to help.
And of them justice is born, the plea of the Many against the Few, of
the nation against the class, of mankind against the nation, of the
future against the present. In Christianity men were born into Man.
Yet in Him let not men die! For what profits justice unless it be the
step to the throne of Olympus? What profit Faith and Hope without a
goal? Charity without an object? Vain is the love of emmets, or of
bees and coral-insects. For the worth of love is as the worth of the
lover. It is only in the soil of Paganism that Christianity can come
to maturity. And Faith, Hope, Charity, are but seeds of themselves
till they fall into the womb of Wisdom, Beauty, and Love. Olympus lies
before us, the snow-capped mountain. Let us climb it, together, if you
will, not some on the corpses of the rest; but climb at least, not
fester and swarm on rich meadows of equality. We are not for the
valley, nor for the forests or the pastures. If we be brothers, yet we
are brothers in a quest, needing our foremost to lead. Aphrodite,
Apollo, Athene, are before us, not behind. Majestic forms, they gleam
among the