MARGARET liked the reason, and wished she had thought of it herself! Some one asked about the connection between Diana and Apollo. MARGARET said that Genius needed a sister to console him. EMERSON asked what bearing the inscription over the Delphic temple had upon the story of Apollo,—the Divine pun EI, which means equally “Thou art” and “If,”—as grand a pun as that of him who, dying, said he was going to see the great “Perhaps”!—“le grand peut-être.” Better translated, I thought, as the great “May-be.” GEORGE RIPLEY asked if it were not generally accepted positively as “Thou art”? “Probably,” MR. EMERSON said. HENRY HEDGE found another type of the Apollo in the Egyptian Horus. MRS. RUSSELL asked if the two Greek vowels had not once stood for Isis and Osiris. If so, they would have a natural connection with the oracle. I remembered the inscription on the statue of Isis, “I am all that has been and that shall be, and none among mortals has taken off my veil.” The “I am” of the Jews, and the “Thou art” of the Delphic temple are epigrammatic, but the same. EMERSON, replying somewhat curtly to Mrs. Russell, said there were various explanations. The story of Phaeton came next. HENRY HEDGE asked how Presumption should be the child of Genius. “Genius must be self-confident,” Margaret said, “and that might predominate.” I asked if real Genius did not know its own resources and husband them. MARGARET thought Genius often attempted more than it could do. I said a man might have genius and presume, but that if _he were a genius_ I should expect him to be modest. Still, as it must have a crowd of imitators, it might become the father of presumption. The substance creates the shadow. WILLIAM STORY said no product could be as great as the producing power; but that did not seem to me to touch the point, for the question was not whether Apollo could not give birth to something less than himself, but whether the possession of power could create an unfounded claim to it. The story of Latona followed. HENRY HEDGE said that the word meant concealment. MARGARET thought this very expressive, and said that the isolation which Goethe and other geniuses had been craving since the world began Apollo had no need to seek. His mother was concealment. The oracle was then discussed,—how it was possible to consult it many times and receive each time a different answer,—how it could be bribed, as by Alexander, or would give two answers in one; but nothing very new was said. I remembered the double answer of the Pythoness to Crœsus when he meditated crossing the Halys. “Thou shalt destroy a great empire,” she said. He thought it was the enemy’s: fate decided it should be his own. SOPHIA RIPLEY thought the oracle belonged to Wisdom rather than Genius. MARGARET said Minerva dwelt in men’s houses. It was necessary a voice from Heaven should speak.