A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

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Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862

"A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"

I am
not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal
divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah,
though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute
and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not
so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not
exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a
god of the Greeks. I should fear the infinite power and
inflexible justice of the almighty mortal, hardly as yet
apotheosized, so wholly masculine, with no Sister Juno, no
Apollo, no Venus, nor Minerva, to intercede for me, phyle'ousa' te, k_edome'n_e te>. The Grecian are youthful and
erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many
important respects essentially of the divine race. In my
Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy
face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his
crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the
great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored.

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The French Revolution - Volume 1 (page 249) When Valmond Came to Pontiac, Volume 2. (page 40) The Emancipatrix (page 91)

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Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862

"A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"