"
II.
ATHENA KERAMITIS.*
(Athena in the Earth.)
* "Athena, fit for being made into pottery." I coin the expression as a
counterpart of 'ge parthenia', "Clay intact."
STUDY, SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE PRECEDING LECTURE, OF THE SUPPOSED AND
ACTUAL RELATIONS OF ATHENA TO THE VITAL FORCE IN MATERIAL ORGANISM
51. It has been easy to decipher approximately the Greek conception of
the physical power of Athena in cloud and sky, because we know ourselves
what clouds and skies are, and what the force of the wind is in forming
them. But it is not at all easy to trace the Greek thoughts about the
power of Athena in giving life, because we do not ourselves know clearly
what life is, or in what way the air is necessary to it, or what there
is, besides the air, shaping the forms that it is put into. And it is
comparatively of small consequence to find out what the Greeks thought
or meant, until we have determined what we ourselves think, or mean, when
we translate the Greek word for "breathing" into the Latin-English word
"spirit."
52. But it is of great consequence that you should fix in your minds--
and hold, against the baseness of mere materialism on the one hand, and
against the fallacies of controversial speculation on the other--the
certain and practical sense of this word "spirit;" the sense in which you
all know that its reality exists, as the power which shaped you into your
shape, and by which you love and hate when you have received that shape.
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