Moira was the name given by the Greeks to this realm of the incalculable and of sublime and eternal limitedness; and they set it round their gods like a horizon beyond which they could neither see nor act,—with that secret defiance of the gods which one meets with in different nations; the gods are worshipped, but a final trump card is held in readiness to play against them. As instances of this we may recollect that the Indians and the Persians, who conceived all their gods as having to depend upon the sacrifices of mortals, so that if it came to the worst the mortals could, at least, let the gods die of starvation; or the gods of the stubborn and melancholy Scandinavians, who enjoyed a quiet revenge in the thought that a twilight of the gods was to come as some compensation for the perpetual fear which their evil gods caused them. The case of Christianity was very different, for its essential feelings were not those of the Indians, Persians, Greeks, or Scandinavians. Christianity commanded its disciples to worship in the dust the spirit of power, and to kiss the very dust. It gave the world to understand that this omnipotent “realm of stupidity” was not so stupid as it seemed, and that we, on the contrary, were stupid when we could not perceive that behind this realm stood God Himself: He who, although fond of dark, crooked and wonderful ways, at last brought everything to a “glorious end.” This new myth of God, who had hitherto been mistaken for a race of giants or Moira, and who was now Himself the spinner and weaver of webs and purposes even more subtle than those of our own intellect—so subtle, indeed, that they appear to be incomprehensible and even unreasonable—this myth was so bold a transformation and so daring a paradox that the over-refined ancient world could not resist it, however extravagant and contradictory the thing seemed: for, let it be said in confidence, there was a contradiction in it,—if our intellect cannot divine the intellect and aims of God, how did it divine this quality of its intellect and this quality of God’s intellect?