Fantasy literature; Short stories; Supernatural -- Fiction
ours, and that when their natures came in conflict with ours some such
interpretation must always be put upon their victory. We have a moral
law for our mutual wellbeing which they have not. We translate their
deeds in terms of that law of ours, and it certainly appears like a
standing fact of Nature that when the beings of one order come into
commerce with those of another the result will be tragic. There is
only a harmony in acquiescence, and the way to that is one of blood
and tears.
Brooding over all this I discerned dimly, even in that dusty, brawling
place, and time showed me more and more clearly, that I had always
been aware of the Gods and conscious of their omnipresence. It seemed
plain to me that Zeus, whose haunt is dark Dodona, lorded it over the
English skies and was to be heard in the thunder crashing over the
elms of Middlesex. I knew Athené in the shrill wind which battled
through the vanes and chimneys of our schoolhouse. Artemis was Lady of
my country. By Apollo's light might I too come to be led. Poseidon of
the dark locks girdled my native seas. I had had good reason to know
the awfulness of Pan, and guessed that some day I should couch with
Koré the pale Queen. I called them by these names, since these names
expressed to me their essence: you may call them what you will, and so
might I, for I had not then reasoned with myself about names. By their
names I knew them. The Gods were there, indeed, ignorantly worshipped
by all and sundry. Then the Dryad of my earlier experience came up
again, and I saw that she stood in such a relation to the Gods as I
did, perhaps, to the Queen of England; that she, no less than they,
was part of a wonderful order, and the visible expression of the
spirit of some Natural Fact. But whether above all the Gods and
nations of men and beasts there were one God and Father of us all,
whether all Nature were one vast synthesis of Spirit having
innumerable appearance but one soul, I did not then stay to inquire,
and am not now prepared to say. I don't mean by that at all that I
don't believe it. I do believe it, but by an act of religion; for
there are states of the individual mind, states of impersonal soul in
which this belief is a positive truth, in the which one exults madly,
or by it is humbled to the dust. Religion, to my mind, is the result
of this consciousness of kinship with the principle of Life; all the
emotion and moral uplifting involved in this tremendous certainty, and
all the lore gathered and massed about it--this is Religion. Young as
I was at the time I now speak of, ignorant and dumb as I was, I had my
moments of exultation and humility,--moments so wild that I was
transported out of myself. I left my body supine in its narrow bed and
soared above the stars. At such times, in an æther so deep that the
blue of it looked like water, I seemed to see the Gods themselves, a
shining row of them, upon the battlements of Heaven. I called Heaven
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