nate spirit is chief among the ancient giant-gods, Titans of his mythology, who were lords of the old simple world and its good things, its wise delights and strong sweet instincts, full of the vigorous impulse of innocence; lords of an extinct kingdom, superseded now and transformed by the advent of moral fear and religious jealousy, of pallid faith and artificial abstinence. In this manner Albion is changed and overthrown; hence at length he dies, stifled and slain by his children under the new law. His one friend, not misled or converted to the dispensations of bodily virtue and spiritual restraint, but faithful from of old and even after his change and conversion to moral law, is Time; whose Spectre, or mere outside husk and likeness, is indeed (as it must needs be) fain to range itself on the transitory side of things, fain to follow after the fugitive Emanation embodied in these new forms of life and allied to the faith and habit of the day against the old liberty;[1] but for all the desire of his despair and fierce entreaties to be let go, he is yet kept to work, however afflicted and rebellious, and compelled to labour with Time's self at the building up within every man of that spiritual city which is redemption and freedom for all men (ch. i.). All the myth of this building of "Golgonooza," (that is,
- ↑ In the mythologic scheme, also, Los god of time and Albion father of the races of men are rival powers; and the "Spectre" or satellite deity reproaches his lord with resignation of the world and all its ways and generations (which should have been subject only to the Time-Spirit) to the guidance of the nations sprung from the patriarch Albion (called in Biblical records after Jewish names, here spoken of by their English or other titles, more or less burlesque and barbaric) who have taken upon themselves to subdue even Time himself to this work and divide his spoils. So closely is the bare mythical construction enwound with the symbolic or doctrinal passages which are meant to give it such vitality and such coherence as they may.
