Men, according to the old Greek, “are the sport of the gods,” who, enthroned on high Olympus, put evil desires into the hearts of mortals; and when evil actions were the outcome of evil thoughts, amused themselves by watching the ineffectual efforts made by their victims to escape a relentless¹ deity² called Nemesis³, who exacted a penalty for their evil deeds. It was no doubt very amusing — to the gods — but it is questionable⁴ if the men found it so. They had their revenge, however, for weary of plaguing puny⁵ mortals, who whimpered and cried when they saw they could not escape, the inevitable⁶ Nemesis turned her attention from actors to spectators, and made a clean sweep of the whole Olympian hierarchy⁷. She smashed their altars, pulled down their statues, and after she had completed her malicious⁸ work, found that she had, vulgarly speaking, been cutting off her nose to spite her face, for she, too, became an object of derision and of disbelief, and was forced to retire to the same obscurity to which she had relegated⁹ the other deities¹⁰. But men found out that she had not been altogether useless as a scapegoat¹¹ upon which to lay the blame of their own shortcomings, so they created a new deity called Fate, and laid any misfortune which happened to them to her charge. Her worship is still very popular, especially among lazy and unlucky people, who never bestir themselves: on the ground that whether they do so or not their lives are already settled by Fate. After all, the true religion of Fate has been preached by George Eliot, when she says that our lives are the outcome of our actions. Set up any

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