“Who are you? And where are we?”
“This hill is Mount Parnassus; and I am Themis, the goddess of Justice,” said she. “I have finished my work upon the earth, and am on my way home to the sky. I know your story. Live, and be good, and be warned by what has happened to all other men.”
“But what is the use of our living?” they asked, “and what is the use of this great world to us two? For we have no children to come after us when we die.”
“What you say is just,” said the goddess of Justice. “Jupiter will be pleased enough to give this empty world to a wiser and better race of men. But he will be quite as content without them. In short, you may have companions, if you want them, and if you will teach them to be better and wiser than the old ones. Only you must make them for yourselves.”
“But how can we make men?” asked they.
“I will tell you. Throw your grandmother’s bones behind you without looking round.”
“Our grandmother’s bones? But how are we to find them after this flood, or to know which are hers?”
“The gods,” said Themis, “tell people what to do, but not how it is to be done.” And she vanished into the air.
I think Themis was right. All of us are taught what we ought to do; but we are usually left to ask ourselves whether any particular thing is right or wrong.
Deucalion and Pyrrha asked one another; but neither knew what to say. The whole world, after the Great Flood, was full of bones everywhere. Which were their grandmother’s, and where? They wandered about over half the world trying to find them, but all in vain, till they thought they would have to give it up in despair.