A Full Life: The Works of Charlotte Mason

The initial Weakness of ’secular Morality.’––Mr. Adler treats the Homeric stories with more grace and sympathy, and with less ruthless violation, than he metes out to those of the Bible; but here again we trace the initial weakness of ’secular’ morality. The ‘Odyssey’ and the ‘Iliad’ are religious poems or they are nothing. The whole motive is religious; every incident is supernaturally directed. The heroic inspiration is entirely wanting if we fail to bear in mind that the characters do and suffer with superlative courage and fortitude, only because they willed to do and suffer, in all things, the will of the gods. The acquiescence of the will with that which they guessed, however darkly, of the divine will, is the truly inspiring quality of the Homeric heroes; and here, as much as in the teaching of Bible morality, ’secular’ ethics are at fault.