ower of sculpture in Greece. You
remember that I told you, in my Sixth Introductory Lecture (Sec. 151), that
the mythic accounts of Greek sculpture begin in the legends of the
family of Tantalus; and especially in the most grotesque legend of them
all, the inlaying of the ivory shoulder of Pelops. At that story Pindar
pauses,--not, indeed, without admiration, nor alleging any impossibility
in the circumstances themselves, but doubting the careless hunger of
Demeter,--and gives his own reading of the event, instead of the ancient
one. He justifies this to himself, and to his hearers, by the plea that
myths have, in some sort, or degree, ([Greek: pou ti],) led the mind of
mortals beyond the truth; and then he goes on:--

"Grace, which creates everything that is kindly and soothing for
mortals, adding honor, has often made things, at first untrustworthy,
become trustworthy through Love."

87. I cannot, except in these lengthened terms, give you the complete
force of the passage; especially of the [Greek: apiston emesato
piston]--"made it trustworthy by passionate desire that it should be
so"--which exactly describes the temper of religious persons at the
present day, who are kindly and sincere, in clinging to the forms of
faith which either have long been precious to themselves, or which they
feel to have been without question instrumental in advancing the dignity
of mankind. And it is part of the constitution of humanity--a part
which, above others, you are in danger of unwisely contemning under the
existing conditions of our knowledge, that the things thus sought for
belief with eager passion, do, indeed, become trustworthy to us; that,
to each of us, they verily become what we would have them; the force of
the [Greek: menis] and [Greek: mneme] with which we seek after them,
does, indeed, make them powerful to us for actual good or evil; and it
is thus granted to us to create not only with our hands things that
exalt or degrade our sight, but with our hearts also, things that exalt
or degrade our souls; giving true substance to all that we hoped for;
evidence to things that we have not seen, but have desired to see; and
calling, in the sense of creating, things that are not, as though they
were.

88. You remember that in distinguishing Imagination from Idolatry, I
referred[21] you to the forms of passionate affection with which a
noble people commonly regards the rivers and springs of its native land.
Some conception