I am Pallas Athene, and I know the thoughts of all men’s hearts and discern their manhood or their baseness.

From the souls of clay I turn away, and they are blessed but not by me.  They fatten at ease like sheep in the pasture and eat what they did not sow like oxen in the stall.  They grow and spread like the gourd along the ground, but like the gourd they give no shade to the traveler.  When they are ripe death gathers them and they go down unloved into Hell and their name vanishes out of the land.

But to the souls of fire I give more fire, and to those who are manful I give a might more than a man.  These are the heroes, the sons of the immortals who are blessed, but not like the souls of clay, for I drive them forth by strange paths that they may fight the titans and the monsters and the enemies of Gods and men…

Tell me now, Perseus, which of these two sorts of men seem to you more blessed?

Charles Kingsley, Canon of Westminster and Chaplain to Queen Victoria

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