unable to furnish mankind with anything more spiritual or ethical, he also does not belong to the race of new gods, but to the Titans[164].
Hephaestos, it is true, also possessed fire and the particular crafts to which it is essential as an instrument for his field of activity, and is none the less accredited as a new god: but Zeus cast him from Olympus, and he continued to limp ever after. Just as little is it, therefore, an inconsequence when we find Ceres placed among the younger gods, who proved herself a benefactor of mankind just as Prometheus did. For that which Ceres taught was agriculture, with which at the same time property, and yet more, marriage, social custom, and law stand in close association.
(_γγ_) A third class of the ancient gods contains, it is true, neither personified potencies of Nature, as such, nor the might which next follows as lord over the particular elements of Nature in the service of the more subordinate human necessities, but is already contestant with that which is essentially in itself ideal, universal, and spiritual. What, however, is none the less lacking in the powers we have here to reckon with is spiritual individuality and its appropriate form and manifestation, so that they also more or less relatively to their operations keep a position which is more nearly akin to the necessity and essential being of Nature. In illustration of this type we may recall the conception of Nemesis, Dike, the Erinnyes, Eumenides, and Moirai. No doubt we find associated with these figures the determinate notions of right and justice; but this inevitable right, instead of being conceived and clothed in the essentially spiritual and substantive medium of social morality[165], remains either persistent in the universal abstract notion, or is related to the obscure right of that which is natural within the circle of spiritual connections, the love of kindred, for example, and its paramount claim, which does not appertain to Spirit in the open freedom of itself self-recognized; and consequently also does not appear as lawful right, but in opposition to this as the irreconcilable right of revenge.
To bring the view of the above nearer I will merely draw attention to one or two ideas bound up with it. Nemesis, for example, is the might to humiliate the exalted, and to cast down the man all too fortunate from his lofty seat, and consequently to restore equilibrium. The claim or right of equilibrium is the purely abstract and external right, which, it is true, certifies itself as operative in the range of spiritual circumstances, and conditions, without, however, making the ethical organization of the same the content of justice. Another aspect of importance attaches to this circumstance, that the right of the family-condition is apportioned by the ancient gods, in so far as these repose on a condition of Nature, and thereby are in antagonism with the public right and law of the community. We may adduce the Eumenides of Aeschylus as the clearest illustration of this point. The direful maidens pursue Orestes on account of the murder of his mother, a murder which Apollo, the younger god, had directed, in order that Agamemnon, the slaughtered spouse and king, should not remain unavenged. The entire drama consequently is concentrated in a conflict between these divine Powers, which confront each other in person. On the one side we have the goddesses of revenge, the Eumenides; but they are called here the beneficent, and our ordinary conception of the Furies, into which we convert them, is set before us as rude and uncouth. For they possess an essential right thus to persecute, and are therefore not merely hateful, wild, and ferocious in the torments which they impose.
The right, however, which they enforce as against Orestes is only the family-right in so far as this is rooted in the blood relation. The profoundest association of son and mother is the substantive fact which they represent. Apollo opposes to this natural ethical relation, rooted as it is already both on the physical side and in feeling, the right of the spouse and the chieftain who has been violated in respect to the highest right he can claim. This distinction is in the first instance brought to our notice in an external way since both parties are champions for morality within one and the same sphere, namely the family. The sterling[166] imagination of Aeschylus has, however, here--and we cannot sufficiently value it on this score--discovered for us a contradiction, which is not by any means a superficial one, but of fundamental significance. That is to say, the relation of children to parents reposes on the unity of the natural nexus; the association of man and wife on the contrary must be accepted as marriage, which does not merely proceed from purely natural love, that is from the blood or natural affinity, but originates out of a conscious inclination, and for this reason belongs to the free ethical sphere of the self-conscious will. However much, therefore, marriage is bound up with love and feeling it is none the less to be distinguished from the purely natural emotion of love, because it also freely recognizes definite obligations quite independent of the same, which persist when that feeling of love may have ceased. The notion, in short, and the knowledge of the substantiality of marital life is something later and more profound than the purely natural connection between mother and son, and constitutes the beginning of the State as the realization of the free and rational will. In like manner we shall find resident in the relation of prince to citizen the association of a similar political right, law, and the self-conscious freedom and spirituality of similar social aims. This is the reason why the Eumenides, the ancient goddesses, pursue Orestes with punishment, whereas Apollo--the clear, knowing and self-consciously knowing ethical sense--defends the right of the spouse and the chief, justly opposing the Eumenides: "If the crime of Clytemnestra were not scented out I should be in verity without honour and despised as nought by the consummator Here and the Councils of Zeus[167]."
Of still greater interest, albeit wholly involved in human feeling and action, is the contradiction which we have set before us in the "Antigone," one of the most sublime, and in every respect most consummate work of art human effort ever produced. Not a detail in this tragedy but is of consequence. The public law of the State and the instinctive family-love and duty towards a brother are here set in conflict. Antigone, the woman, is pathetically possessed by the interest of family; Kreon, the man, by the welfare of the community.
Polynices, in war with his own father-city, had fallen before the gates of Thebes, and Kreon, the lord thereof, had by means of a public proclamation threatened everyone with death who should give this enemy of the city the right of burial. Antigone, however, refused to accept this command, which merely concerned the public weal, and, constrained by her pious devotion for her brother, carried out as sister the sacred duty of interment. In doing this she relied on the law of the gods.
The gods, however, whom she thus revered, are the _Dei inferi_ of Hades[168], the instinctive Powers of feeling, Love and kinship, not the daylight gods of free and self-conscious, social, and political life.
(_γ_) The _third_ point, which we would advert to in connection with the theogony of the outlook of artists in the classic period, has reference to the difference between individuals of the older gods relatively to their powers and the duration of their authority.
(_αα_) In the first place, the origin of these gods is a succession.
From Chaos, according to Hesiod, proceeds Gaia, Uranos, and others, after that Kronos and his race, finally Zeus and his subjects. This succession appears in one aspect of it as a rise from the more abstract and formless to the more concrete and already fairly defined powers of Nature; in another as the beginnings of the superiority of the spiritual over the natural. Thus in his "Eumenides" Aeschylus makes the Pythia in the temple of Delphi begin with the words: "First of all I revere in my prayer her who first gave us oracles, Gaia, and after her Themis, who as second after her mother had her prophetic seat in this place." Pausanias, on the other hand, who also names the Earth first as giver of oracles, says that Daphne was ordained by her afterwards in the prophetic office. In another series again Pindar places Night in the first place, after her he makes Themis follow, then comes Phoebe, and finally he closes the succession with Phoebus. It would be of interest to analyse more closely these particular differences; such an inquiry, however, lies outside our present purpose.
(_ββ_) This succession further, in addition to its aspect of being an extension into essentially profounder conceptions of godhead, possessing, that is, a fuller content, also appears as the degradation of the earlier and more abstract type within the range of the older race of gods itself. The primary and most ancient powers are robbed of their masterdom, just as we find Kronos dethroned Uranos, and the later representatives are set up in their place.
(_γγ_) In this way the negative relation of the reformation[169], which we settled at once to be the essence of this first stage of the classic type of art, becomes the proper centre of the same. And it is so for the reason that personification is here the universal form, in which the gods are presented to the imagination, and the progressive movement comes into opposition with human and spiritual individuality.
And although this appears in the first instance still in a form indeterminate and formless, we necessarily find that the imagination presents this negative attitude of the younger gods against the more ancient under the image of conflict and war. The essential advance is, however, from Nature to Spirit, implying by the latter the true content and the real form appropriate to classical art. This progress and the conflicts by means of which we perceive that it is carried forward, belong no longer exclusively to the sphere of the old gods, but centre in the war through which the new gods lay the foundation of their enduring mastery over the ancient.
(_c_) The opposition between Nature and Spirit is in the nature of the case inevitable. For the notion of Spirit, as in very truth totality, is, as we have already seen, _essentially_ simply this, to split itself in twain, that is into its intrinsic constituents as objectivity and as subject, in order that by means of this opposition it may emerge from Nature and confront the same forthwith free and jubilant as vanquisher and superior might. This fundamental phase, rooted in the very essence of Spirit, is consequently a material aspect in the conception which it supplies to itself of that nature. Regarded historically, that is on the plane of ordinary reality, this passage asserts itself as the reconstruction through progressive steps of the natural man into the condition where right, property, laws, constitution and political life are paramount. Regarded under a mode which relates this process to gods and _sub specie eternitatis_ it becomes the conception of the victory over the natural Powers by means of the spiritual and individual Divinities.
(_α_) This contest exposes an absolute catastrophe, and is the essential deed of the gods, by virtue of which the fundamental distinction between the old and new gods is first made visible.
Consequently we ought not to point to the war, which exposes this distinction as a mythical story in the same way we should point to any other myth; rather we should regard it as the mythos, which in fact punctuates a great moment of transition, and expresses the creation of the later theogony.
(_β_) The result of this violent strife among the gods is the ruin of the Titans, the unique victory of the new gods, who forthwith receive in their assured dominion a plenitude of gifts in every direction from the imagination. The Titans, on the other hand, are banished, and compelled to huddle in the hollows of the Earth, or, like Oceanos, dally on the dark skirts of the clear, joyful world, or still endure many grievous punishments. Prometheus, for example, is fettered on the Scythian mountains, where an eagle insatiable devours the liver that ever renews itself. In like manner an infinite and inexhaustible thirst torments Tantalus in the lower world, and Sisyphus is for ever constrained to roll up hill in vain the rock that for ever rolls back again. These punishments are, in truth, the false type of infinity, the yearning of the indefinite aspiration or the unsatisfied craving of natural desires, which in their eternal repetition fail to discover rest or final satisfaction. For the truly godlike intuition of the Greeks regarded the mere extension into space and the region of the indefinite, not, as some modern votaries of such longings do, as the highest attainment of mankind, but as a damnation which it relegates to Tartarus.
(_γ_) If we ask ourselves in a general way, what from this point must for classical art fall into the background, failing, that is, to have any right to figure as its final form and adequate content, we shall find at the earliest point of departure the elements of Nature. With them disappear from the world of the new gods all that is gloomy[170], fantastical, void of clarity, every wild confusion between Nature and Spirit, between significances essentially substantive and the accidental incidents of externality. In a world such as this the creations of an unrestricted imagination, which has not yet for its principle the measure of spiritual proportion, have no place, and are compelled and justly so to vanish before the clear light of day.
We may furbish up the monstrous Cabeiri[171], the Corybantes, these representatives of procreative force as much as we choose, yet for all that such presentations in every trait of them--to say nothing of the ancient Baubo, whom Goethe sets careering over the Blocksberg on an old sow--belong to a greater or less degree to the twilight of consciousness. Only that which is spiritual imperatively demands the light; and that which does not reveal itself and in itself expound its own interpretation is the unspiritual, which fades again once more into Night and obscurity. That which is of Spirit on the contrary reveals itself, and purifies itself, by itself defining its external form, from the caprice of the imagination, the flood of obstructing shapes, and the otherwise perturbed accessories of symbolical sense.
For the same reasons we now find that human activity, in so far as it is limited merely to Nature's wants and their satisfaction, falls into the background. That old right, Themis, Dike and the rest, as one not determinate through laws which originate in self-conscious Spirit, loses its unimpaired validity, and in the same way, if conversely, that which is purely local, albeit there is still room left for its play, passes by incorporation into the universal figures of the gods; in which we may still trace the lingering vestiges that remain of it. For as in the Trojan war the Greeks fought and conquered as _one_ people, so, too, the Homeric gods, who already have their conflict with the Titans behind them in the past, are one essentially secure and defined god-world, a world which is yet further with ever-increasing fulness made definite and unassailable by later poetry and the plastic arts.
This invincible consistency[172] is in its relation to the content of the Greek world of gods Spirit and only Spirit; but not Spirit in its abstract ideality, but as identified with its external and adequate existence, just as with Plato soul and body, as in union brought into one nature and in this consolidation from one piece, is at once the Divine and Eternal.
3. THE POSITIVE CONSERVATION OF THE CONDITIONS SET UP THROUGH NEGATION Despite, then, the victory of the new gods that which came before them still remains in the classical type of art partly preserved and revered in the original form in which we have already recognized it, partly under a transmuted mode. It is only the limited Jewish national god which is unable to tolerate other gods in its company for the reason that it purports as _the_ one god to include everything, although in regard to the definition of its form it fails to pass beyond its exclusiveness wherein the god is merely the God of His own people. Such a god manifests his universality in fact only through his creation of Nature and as Lord of the heavens and the earth. For the rest he remains the god of Abraham, who led his people Israel out of Egypt, gave them laws on Sinai, and divided the land of Canaan among the Jews.
And through this narrow identification of him with the Jewish nation he is in a quite peculiar way the god of this folk; and consequently, speaking generally, neither stands in positive consonance with Nature, nor appears truly as absolute Spirit referable back from his determinate character and objectivity to his universality. Consequently this austere, national god is so jealous, and ordains in his jealousy that men shall see elsewhere merely false idols. The Greeks, on the contrary, discovered their gods among other nations and accepted what was foreign among themselves. For the god of classical art has spiritual and bodily individuality and is for this reason not the one and only one, but merely a _particular_ godhead, which, as everything else that shares particularity, has a circle of particularity which surrounds it or in opposition to it as its Other, from which it is the result, and which is qualified to preserve its validity and worth.
The process here is analogous to that of the particular divisions of Nature. Although the world of vegetation is the truth of the geological image of Nature, the animal again the higher truth of the vegetable, yet the mountains and the flooded land persist as the solid basis of trees, shrubs, and flowers, which in their turn do not lose their existence alongside the world of animals.
(_a_) The earliest form under which among the Greeks we come upon this ancient residue, are the _Mysteries._ The Greek Mysteries were nothing secret in the sense that the Greek nation was not in a general way aware of their content. On the contrary, the majority of the Athenians and a large number of foreigners were among the initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries; but they were not permitted to speak of that in which they had been instructed through initiation. In our own times people have been at great pains to discover more nearly the type of conceptions which prevailed in these mysteries, and to investigate the kind of religious services which were used in their celebration. It appears, however, that on the whole there was no extensive wisdom or profound knowledge concealed in the Mysteries. They merely preserved the old traditions, the basis, that is, of what was latterly reconstructed by the genuine type of art, and consequently, so far from containing the true, higher, and more valuable content, rather unfolded that which was of less significance and of inferior rank. Whatever it was, this holiness was not clearly expressed in the mysteries, but merely handed down in its symbolical features. And in fact this character of secrecy and reticence is bound up with the old telluric, sidereal, and Titanic deposit; Spirit alone is the revealed and the self-revealer. Consonant, too, with this it is the symbolical mode of expression which constitutes the other aspect of secrecy in the mysteries, because in symbolism the interpretation remains obscure, and contains a something other than the external image, which it purports to display, in fact offers to the view. In this sense, for example, the mysteries of Demeter and Bacchus were, it is true, spiritually interpreted, and contained a profounder sense. The form of the same remained quite externally isolate from this content, so that it was impossible clearly to disengage it from it. Consequently the Mysteries had very little influence over art; for though we are told of Aeschylus, that he willfully betrayed something which attached to the Demeter mysteries, this merely amounts to an assertion on his part that Artemis had been the daughter of Ceres, which is not very profound wisdom after all.
(_b_) But, _secondly_, we find that the reverence and preservation of the old _régime_ is yet more clearly indicated in actual artistic representation. We have already referred to Prometheus as the chastised Titan who appears in the stage immediately prior to that of genuine art. We meet with him however again as delivered. For as the Earth and as the Sun, so also the fire, which Prometheus brought down to men, that is, the eating of flesh, which he taught them, is an essential feature of human life, a necessary condition for the satisfaction of their needs; and consequently Prometheus is honoured with an enduring recognition[173]. In the Oedipus Colonos of Sophocles we have the words: /$ χῶρoς μὲν ἱερὸς πᾶς ὅδ ἔστ· ἔχει δέ νιν σεμνὸς Πoσειδῶν· ἐν δ' ὁ πoρφόρoς θeὸς Tιτὰν Πρoμηθὲυς[174] $/ and the scholiast adds that Prometheus was revered in the Academy along with Athene, as Hephaestos was, and a temple was shown in a grove of the goddess, and an ancient pedestal near the entrance, where there was not only an image of Hephaestos, but also one of Prometheus.
Prometheus, however, according to the statement of Lysimachides, was represented as primary and more ancient, and he held in his hand a sceptre; Hephaestos as the younger and in the second place, and the altar on the pedestal was shared by both. Prometheus, then, according to the tale, was not obliged to endure his chastisement for ever, but was released from his fetters by Hercules. In this story of his liberation we come across certain remarkable traits. In other words, Prometheus is delivered from his agony because he informs Zeus of the danger which threatens his empire at the hands of the thirteenth descendant. This descendant is Hercules, to whom, we may add in illustration, Poseidon exclaims in the "Birds" of Aristophanes[175], "he will do himself an injury, if he strike a bargain with reference to the transference of the divine headship, for all that Zeus leaves behind him on his decease will most assuredly take place." And, in fact, Hercules is the only man who passed over into Olympus, became a god after being a man, and stands higher than Prometheus, who remained a Titan. Moreover, the overturning of the old race of tyrants is intimately connected with the name of Hercules and the Heraklidae. The Heraklidae break up the power of the old dynasties and royal houses, in which we may remark the selfish desire of personal aggrandizement and lawlessness no less than disregard for their subjects admitted no judicial restraint, and consequently was responsible for the grossest cruelties. Hercules, though himself in the service of a superior lord, overcame the savagery of this despotism.
In a similar way we may, to linger once more for a moment by the illustrations we adduced on a former page, recall again to our readers the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The conflict between Apollo and the Eumenides is to be settled by the intervention of the Areopagus. In other words, a human tribunal, as a whole, at whose head stands Athene, stands forth as the concrete spirit of the folk, and is as such to terminate the collision. The judges, however, give an equal number of votes for condemnation and acquittal, having an equal reverence both for the Eumenides and Apollo; the white pebble of Athene, however, decides the conflict in favour of Apollo. The Eumenides break out in indignation against this decision of Athene; she, however, allays their wrath by promising them worship and altars in the famous grove of Colonos. What the Eumenides have to give in return to her people is a protection against the evils[176] which result from the elements of _Nature_, the earth, the heavens, the sea, and the winds; they have further to ward off unfruitfulness in the fields, the failure of living seed, and misbirths in all else that is procreated. Pallas, on her part, takes beneath her protection the strife of wars and sacred contests. Ina similar way Sophocles[177], in his "Antigone," not only makes Antigone suffer and die, but to a like extent we find that Kreon is punished by the loss of his wife and the death of Haemon, both of whom perish through the death of Antigone.
(_c_) _Thirdly_, the ancient gods do not merely preserve their place in juxtaposition to the new, but, what is of more importance, the natural basis itself is maintained by the new gods, and receives, continuing to made its echo sound in them, if in conformity with the spiritual individuality of classical art, a reverential acceptance.
(_α_) And for this reason people are not unfrequently led into the error of conceiving the Greek gods, in respect to their human character and form, as mere _allegories_ of such natural elements. This is not so. In this sense we frequently hear it stated that Helios is the god of the sun, Diana the goddess of the moon, or Neptune the god of the sea. Such a separation, however, between the natural element, as content, and the humanly shaped personification, as form, no less than the external association of both, regarded merely as the masterdom of the god over the natural fact, as we are accustomed to it in the Old Testament, is quite inapplicable to Greek conceptions. We never find among the Greeks such an expression as ὁ θεὸς τoῦ ἡλίoυ, τῆς θαλάσσης, and so forth, though it is quite certain they would have used with others such an expression for the relation in question, had it been compatible with their point of view. Helios is the sun as god.
(_β_) We must, however, at once insist on the further fact that the Greeks never regarded mere Nature as itself divine. On the contrary, they retained the definite conception that what was purely natural was not divine. This is partly contained, if unexpressed, in what their gods actually are, in part also it is expressly stated so by themselves. Plutarch, for example, in his essay upon Isis and Osiris, refers incidentally to the modes of interpretation current of myths and divinities. Osiris and Isis belong to the Egyptian theogony, and had yet more of the natural element for their content than the Greek gods, who correspond to them; they merely express the longing and conflict to escape out of the circle of Nature to that of Spirit. In later times they were very highly honoured in Rome, and the mysteries allied with them were of great importance. Yet for all that it is Plutarch's view that it would be an interpretation beneath the level of the subject to think of explaining them as sun, earth, or water.
Only that which in the sun, Earth, and so forth, is without measure or co-ordination, defective or superfluous, can strictly be referred to the natural elements, and all that is good and conformable to order is as exclusively a work of Isis, and the rational principle, the λόγoς, a work of Osiris. It is not, therefore, the natural as such which is adduced as the substantive content of these gods, but the spiritual principle, the universal, λόγoς, reason, conformity to law.
By virtue of this insight into the spiritual nature of the gods, the more definite elements of Nature, then, had also among the Greeks been differentiated from the later gods. We have, it is true, grown accustomed to associate Helios and Selene, to take two examples, with Apollo and Diana: in Homer, however, they are presented as distinct.
The same remark applies to Oceanos and others.
(_γ_) But in the _third_ place an echo still lingers in the new gods of the natural powers, whose operative energies themselves belong to the spiritual individuality of the gods. We have already indicated, at an earlier stage, the basis of this positive connection of the spiritual and natural in the ideal of classical art, and may limit our observations here to a few illustrations.
(_αα_) In Poseidon resides, as in Pontus and Oceanus, the might of the world-encircling sea, but his power and activity extends further.
He built Ilium and was a shield of Athens. Generally he is revered as the founder of cities, in so far as the sea is the element of sea-faring, of commerce, and a bond between mankind. Apollo, in like manner, is the light of knowledge, of oracular speech, and preserves, moreover, a distant relation with Helios, as the natural light of the sun. Critics differ, no doubt--take Voss and Creuzer for examples--as to whether Apollo is referable to the sun. One may, however, in fact, assert that he both is and is not the sun, since he is not limited to its natural content, but is raised thereby to the significance of a spiritual import. It is impossible to escape the inevitable connection in which knowledge and light, the light of Nature and that of Spirit, if we regard their fundamental characteristics, stand relatively to one another. Light regarded as a element of Nature is that which manifests. Without our seeing Light itself it makes visible to us the illuminated objects around. By means of Light everything grows on the plane of contemplation for something else. Spirit, that is the free light of consciousness, knowledge, and cognition, possesses just the same character of manifestation. The distinction, apart from the differences of the respective spheres, in which these two modes of manifestation reveal themselves, consists simply in this, that Spirit reveals itself, and in that which it brings us, or which it assimilates as content[178], remains constant to itself. Light, however, does not make itself apprehensible to itself, but, on the contrary, makes that which is other and external to itself apprehensible; and though, no doubt, we may say this is done from its own resources, yet it cannot, as the Spirit can, once more retire into itself. For this reason it does not win the higher unity which finds itself constant by itself in another. Just as, then, light and knowledge are closely associated, we find in Apollo, as spiritual god, still a recollection of the light of the sun. For this reason Homer, for example, ascribes the plague in the camp of the Greeks to Apollo, which, in such a locality is in the summer solstice ascribable to the operation of the sun. We may add that his deadly arrows have unquestionably a symbolical reference to the solar rays. In the external representation it is external signs which more closely determine under what specific interpretation the god shall be mainly accepted.
More particularly when we follow up the origins of the later gods we are able to recognize the natural element, which the gods of the classic ideal retain in themselves. This is a point which Creuzer in particular has made clear. For example, in the conception of Jupiter there are many features which indicate a solar source. The twelve labours of Hercules, the expedition, for example, in which he carries off the apples of the Hesperides, have relation both to the sun and the twelve months. At the root of the conception of Diana we have the distinct suggestion of the mother of Nature, just as the Ephesian Diana, for example, which floats between the old world and the new, has for her fundamental content Nature generally, procreation and nutrition; which latter feature is clearly indicated in a part of her external form, namely the breasts. If we consider the Greek Artemis, on the other hand, the huntress, who slays wild animals, we find that in her humanly beautiful and maiden form and self-continency, this aspect falls entirely into the background, although the half moon and the arrows still distinctly recall to us Selene. To take Aphrodite in the same way, the more we follow her back to her original source in Asia the more she approaches a force of Nature. Once arrived in Greece, the spiritual and more individual aspect of her grace, charm, and love, passion is more emphasized, albeit here, too, the natural basis is by no means entirely absent. In the same way the productivity of Nature is, no doubt, the original cradle which gives us Ceres. Starting from that we proceed to the spiritual content, whose relations are developed from agriculture, property, etc. The source in Nature of the Muses is the murmur of the spring-water; and Zeus himself may be accepted under one aspect as the universal Power of Nature, and is revered as the Thunderer, as with Homer already thunder is the sign of misfortune or assistance, is, in short, an omen, and as such is relative to that which is human and spiritual. Juno, too, implies a natural association with the firmament of cloud and the heavenly sphere in which the gods move to and fro. So we are told, for example, that Zeus laid Hercules on the breast of Juno, and from the milk which spouted thereout flashed into being the Milky Way.
(_ββ_) Just as, then, in the later gods, from one point of view the universal elements of Nature are dethroned, while from another they are maintained, we have the same process repeated in that which is, more strictly speaking, animal, which we merely regarded in a former passage on the side of its degradation. We are now able to point out a more positive aspect under which such may be considered. Since, however, in the classic gods the symbolic mode of configuration is abolished, and they secure as their content the spirit that is self-luminous, the symbolical _significance_ of animals must tend to pass away precisely in proportion as the animal form has taken to itself the right to mingle with the human under a mode naturally alien to it.
It will therefore appear merely as a significant attribute, and is established in juxtaposition to the human form of the gods. Thus we find the eagle as attendant on Jupiter, the peacock on Juno, the doves as accompanying Aphrodite, the hound, Anubis, as watch-dog of the lower world, and so forth. If, therefore, there is still a symbolical aspect which attaches to the ideals of the spiritual gods, yet, if contrasted with the original significance, it will appear of little importance; and the natural significance, if strictly regarded, which previously constituted the essential content, will merely persist as a residue, and mere particular mode of externality, which, on account of its accidental character, more often than not has a grotesque appearance, for the reason that the former significance is no longer there. Inasmuch as the ideal content of these gods is that which partakes of Spirit and humanity, the externality pertinent to them approximates to a _human_ contingency and weakness. In this connection we may once more recall to memory the numerous love affairs of Zeus.
According to their original symbolic significance, they are related, as we already have seen, to the universal activity of generation, that is,