It may therefore be expected that in the course of the intellectual and spiritual development of any primitive people, the more accurately they learn to measure their own imperfections and limitations, and the more imaginatively they magnify the wisdom and power of their gods, the wider and more impassable grows the chasm that divides mortal from immortal, human from divine; communion of man and god becomes less frequent, less direct. Such certainly was the experience of the Greek nation in some measure; but, owing probably to an innate and persistent vanity which at all times has made the race blind to its own failings, that experience was less acute than in the case of other peoples. There had been days indeed when their gods walked the earth with men and counselled them in troubles and fought in their battles; there had been days when the chiefest of all the gods sought a hero’s aid against his giant foes; there had been days when men and women might aspire even to wedlock with immortals, and to possess children half-divine. In those days too death was not the only path by which the heavens or the house of Hades might be gained. Kings and prophets, warriors and fair women passed thither by grace of the gods living and unscathed; nay, even personal skill or prowess emboldened minstrel and hero to match themselves with the gods below, and wielding of club or sweeping of lyre sufficed to open the doors for their return to earth. But those days soon passed; men walked and spoke and held open fellowship with the gods no more; the very poetry and imagination of the Greek temperament so fast outstripped in rapidity of development the growth of material or moral resources, that the rift between their religious ideals and the realities of their life and character ever widened, until the daily and familiar intercourse of their ancestors with the gods seemed to them a condition of life irretrievable and thenceforth impossible. This result was observed and remarked by the Greeks themselves, but the process by which it had come about was not agreed. To one school of thought, it was the degeneracy of mankind through successive ages--the golden age in which men lived as gods and passed hence, as it were in sleep, to become spirits clothed in air, administering upon earth the purposes of mighty Zeus--the silver age wherein childhood was still long and innocent, and, though men’s riper years brought cares and quarrels and indifference to holy things, yet when the earth covered them they were called blessed and received a measure of honour--the bronze age when all men’s minds were set on war and their stalwart arms were busy with brazen weapons, and by each other’s hands they were sent down to the chill dark house of Hades and their names were no more known--the age of heroes who were called half-divine, who fought in the Theban and the Trojan wars, and when the doom of death overtook them were granted a life apart from other