Ixion, the sinner, suffering eternal torment, questions the justice of such torment. The first very important conclusion to which he comes, and it is one entirely in accord with science, is that sin is an aberration of sense, merely the result of external conditions in which the soul of man has no active part. The soul simply dreams, but once fully awakened, it would free itself from this bondage of sense if it were allowed to do so. Ixion argues that it is Zeus that hath made him and not he himself, and if he has sinned it is through the bodily senses which Zeus has conferred upon him, and if he were the friendly and all-powerful god which he claimed himself to be and which Ixion believed he was, why did he allow these distractions of sense to lead him (Ixion) into sin which could only be expiated by eternal punishment? Without body there would have been nothing to obstruct his soul's rush upon the real; and with one touch of pitying power Zeus might have dispersed "this film-work, eye's and ear's." It is entirely the fault of Zeus that he had sinned; and having done so will external torture make him repent any more who has repented already? This is the old, old problem that has taxed the brains of many a philosopher and the faith of many a theologian--the reconcilement of the existence of evil with an omnipotent God. Then follows a comparison between the actions of Zeus, a god, and of Ixion, the human king; and Ixion declares could he have known all, as Zeus does, he would have warded off evil from his subjects, would have seen that they were trained aright from the first--in fact, would not have allowed evil to exist, or failing this, could he have seen the heart of the criminals and realized how they repented he would have given them a chance to retrieve their past. Ixion now realizes that his human ideal is higher than that of Zeus. He had imagined him possessed of human qualities, and finds his qualities are less than human. What must be the inevitable result of arriving at such a conclusion? It means the dethronement of the god, and either a lapse into hopeless atheism or the recognition that the conception formed of the god was that of the human mind at an earlier stage of understanding. This conception becomes crystallized into an anthropomorphic god; but the mind of man goes onward on its way to higher heights, and lo! there comes a day when the god-ideal of the past is lower than the human ideal of the present. It is such a crisis as this that Ixion has arrived at, and his faith is equal to the strain. Since Zeus is man's own mind-made god, Ixion's tortures must be the natural consequences of his sin, and not the arbitrary punishment of a god; and what is Ixion's sin as Browning has interpreted the myth?