ecome finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the
antagonism takes a spiritual form. In the Hindoo fables, Vishnu follows
Maya through all her ascending changes, from insect and crawfish up to
elephant; whatever form she took, he took the male form of that kind,
until she became at last woman and goddess, and he a man and a god. The
limitations refine as the soul purifies, but the ring of necessity is
always perched at the top.

When the gods in the Norse heaven were unable to bind the Fenris Wolf with
steel or with weight of mountains,--the one he snapped and the other he
spurned with his heel,--they put round his foot a limp band softer than
silk or cobweb, and this held him: the more he spurned it, the stiffer it
grew. So soft and so staunch is the ring of Fate. Neither brandy, nor
nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, nor ichor, nor poetry, nor
genius, can get rid of this limp band. For if we give it the high sense in
which the poets use it, even thought itself is not above Fate: that too
must act according to eternal laws, and all that is willful and fantastic
in it is in opposition to its fundamental essence.

And, last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears
as vindicator, leveling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in
man, and always striking soon or late, when justice is not done. What is
useful will last; what is hurtful will sink. "The doer must suffer," said
the Greeks: "you would soothe a Deity not to be soothed." "God himself
cannot procure good for the wicked," said the Welsh triad. "God may
consent, but only for a time," said the bard of Spain. The limitation is
impassable by any insight of man. In its last and loftiest ascensions,
insight itself, and the freedom of the will, is one of its obedient
members. But we must not run into generalizations too large, but show the
natural bounds or essential distinctions, and seek to do justice to the
other elements as well.

* * * * *

Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, and morals--in race, in retardations
of strata, and in thought and character as well. It is everywhere bound or
limitation. But fate has its lord; limitation its limits; is different
seen from above and from below; from within and from without. For, though
Fate is immense, so is power, which is the other fact in the dual world,
immense. If Fate follows and limits power, power attends and antagonizes
Fate. We must respect F