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1HE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



gods and heroes fight against their own kith and 

 kin. But if there is any possibility of persuading 

 them that to quarrel with one's fellow is a sin, of 

 which no member of a state was ever guilty, such 

 ought rather to he the language held to our chil- 

 dren from the first, hy old men and old women, 

 and all elderly persons ; and such is the strain in 

 which our poets must he compelled to write. But 

 stories like the chaining of Hera by her son, and 

 the flinging of Hephaistos out of heaven for trying 

 to take his mother's part when his father was beat- 

 ing her, and all those battles of the gods which are 

 to be found in Homer, must be refused admittance 

 into our state, whether they be allegorical or not. 

 For a child cannot discriminate between what is 

 allegory and what is not ; and whatever at that age 

 is adopted as a matter of belief, has a tendency to 

 become fixed and indelible, and therefore, perhaps, 

 we ought to esteem it of the greatest importance 

 that the fictions which children first hear should 

 be adapted in the most perfect maimer to the pro- 

 motion of virtue." 



And Seneca says the same thing, with still 

 more reason in his day and country : " What else 

 is this appeal to the precedent of the gods for, 

 but to inflame our lusts, and to furnish license 

 and excuse for the corrupt act under the divine 

 protection?" And again, of the character of 

 Jupiter as described in the popular legends : 

 " This has led to no other result than to deprive 

 sin of its shame in man's eyes, by showing him 

 the god no better than himself." In imperial 

 Rome, the sink of all nations, it was not uncom- 

 mon to find " the intending sinner addressing to 

 the deified vice which he contemplated a prayer 

 for the success of his design ; the adulteress im- 

 ploring of Venus the favors of her paramour ; 

 . . . the thief praying to Hermes Dolios for aid 

 in his enterprise, or offering up to him the first- 

 fruits of his plunder ; . . . youths entreating 

 Hercules to expedite the death of a rich uncle." ' 



When we reflect that criminal deities were 

 worshiped all over the empire, we cannot but 

 wonder that any good people were left ; that man 

 could still be holy, although every god was vile. 

 Yet this was undoubtedly the case ; the social 

 forces worked steadily on wherever there were 

 peace and a settled government and municipal 

 freedom ; and the wicked stories of theologians 

 were somehow explained away and disregarded. 

 If men were no better than their religions, the 

 world would be a hell indeed. 



It is very important, however, to consider 

 what really ought to be done in the case of stories 

 like these. When the poet sings that Zeus kicked 



i North British Review, 1S6T, p. 284. 



Hephaistos out of heaven for trying to help his 

 mother, Plato says that this fiction must be sup- 

 pressed by law. We cannot follow him there, for 

 since his time we have had too much of trying to 

 suppress false doctrines by law. Plato thinks it 

 quite obviously clear that God cannot produce 

 evil, and he would stop everybody's mouth who 

 ventured to say that he can. But in regard to 

 the doctrine itself, we can only ask, " Is it true ? " 

 And that is a question to be settled by evidence. 

 Did Zeus commit this crime, or did he not? We 

 must ask the apologists, the reconcilers of religion 

 and science, what evidence they can produce to 

 prove that Zeus kicked Hephaistos out of heaven. 

 That a doctrine may lead to immoral consequences 

 is no reason for disbelieving it. But whether the 

 doctrine were true or false, one thing does clear- 

 ly follow from its moral character: namely, this, 

 that if Zeus behaved as he is said to have be- 

 haved, he ought not to be worshiped. To those 

 who complain of his violence and injustice, it 

 is no answer to say that the divine attributes 

 arc far above human comprehension — that 

 the ways of Zeus are not our ways, neither are 

 his thoughts our thoughts. If he is to be wor- 

 shiped, he must do something vaster and nobler 

 and greater than good men do, but it must be 

 like what they do in its goodness.' His actions 

 must not be merely a magnified copy of what bad 

 men do. So soon as they are thus represented, 

 morality has something to say. Not indeed about 

 the fact ; for it is not conscience, but reason, that 

 has to judge matters of fact ; but about the wor- 

 ship of a character so represented. If there 

 really is good evidence that Zeus kicked Hephai- 

 stos out of heaven, and seduced Alkmene by a 

 mean trick, say so by all means ; but say, also, 

 that it is wrong to salute his priests or to make 

 offerings in his temple. 



When men do their duty in this respect, mo- 

 rality has a very curious indirect effect on the re- 

 ligious doctrine itself. As soon as the offerings 

 become less frequent, the evidence for the doc- 

 trine begins to fade away ; the process of theo- 

 logical interpretation gradually brings out the 

 true inner meaning of it, that Zeus did not kick 

 Hephaistos out of heaven, and did not seduce Alk- 

 mene. 



Is this a merely theoretical discussion about 

 faraway things? Let us come back for a mo. 

 ment to our own time and country, and think 

 whether there can be any lesson for us in this 

 refusal of common-sense morality to worship a 

 deity whose actions are a magnified copy of what 

 bad men do. There are three doctrines which 



