Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/39

religion this rule does not apply. They are often of the nature of passing comment, or obiter dicta. Had Euripides found no difficulty in popular theology, he might, without sacrifice of dramatic fitness, have omitted them without changing the general drift of the speeches in which they occur. The conclusion forces itself on the reader that Euripides not only saw clearly the inconsistency of ascribing the baser human vices to those supreme beings who demand righteousness in their creatures; but, while he did not aim at flouting the simple popular faith, he at all events sought to lead his audiences to think seriously, to question their own consciences, and to strive to dissociate fable from faith. To say that "his stories assume that the Gods do not exist,"^[1] is surely to take for granted that, by representing the popular divinities in the naked deformity of their lust, their cruelty, their jealousy, a poet would expect to drive his audience to the inevitable conclusion that these Gods were non-existent. The experience of all ages and all nations disproves the theory. Men have always worshipped their Gods, not for their goodness, but for their power; and the more realistic such stories were, the more they brought home to believers the nearness, the formidable irresponsibility, the readiness to harm if offended, to help if propitiated, of these beings. It does not appear that the faith of Sophocles, much less that of his audience, staggered at the ruthless vindictiveness and partiality of Athena, in his Ajax.

But Euripides differed from his countrymen in that he refused to see in the constitution and moral government of the world any reason for accepting fables about its supreme rulers for which he felt the only ultimate authority was the imagination of men. The existence of Zeus, Apollo,