te by true labor; until, out of the
chasm, cleft by resolute and industrious fortitude, springs the Spirit
of Wisdom.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.]

74. Here (Fig. 4) is an early drawing of the myth, to which I shall
have to refer afterwards in illustration of the childishness of the
Greek mind at the time when its art-symbols were first fixed; but it is
of peculiar value, because the physical character of Vulcan, as fire, is
indicated by his wearing the [Greek: endromides] of Hermes, while the
antagonism of Zeus, as the adverse chaos, either of cloud or of fate, is
shown by his striking at Hephaestus with his thunderbolt. But Plate IV.
gives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow it to be
deciphered) a characteristic representation of the scene, as conceived
in later art.

75. I told you in a former Lecture of this course[19] that the entire
Greek intellect was in a childish phase as compared to that of modern
times. Observe, however, childishness does not necessarily imply
universal inferiority: there may be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemn
childhood, and there may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition of
advanced life; but the one is still essentially the childish, and the
other the adult phase of existence.

76. You will find, then, that the Greeks were the first people that were
born into complete humanity. All nations before them had been, and all
around them still were, partly savage, bestial, clay-incumbered,
inhuman; still semi-goat, or semi-ant, or semi-stone, or semi-cloud. But
the power of a new spirit came upon the Greeks, and the stones were
filled with breath, and the clouds clothed with flesh; and then came the
great spiritual battle between the Centaurs and Lapithae; and the living
creatures became "Children of Men." Taught, yet by the Centaur--sown, as
they knew, in the fang--from the dappled skin of the brute, from the
leprous scale of the serpent, their flesh came again as the flesh of a
little child, and they were clean.

Fix your mind on this as the very central character of the Greek
race--the being born pure and human out of the brutal misery of the
past, and looking abroad, for the first time, with their children's
eyes, wonderingly open, on the strange and divine world.

[Illustration: IV.

THE NATIVITY OF ATHENA.]

77. Make some effort to remember, so far as may be possible to you,
either what you felt in yourselves when you were young, or what you have
observed i