And only thus does Eve find god—in her perfect self—
Ready and boon to be fulfilled of Thee,
Thine ample, tameless creature,—
Against thy will and word, behold, Lord, this is She!
Here, indeed, is the religion of our time. A faithfulness that is deeper than the old faithfulness; and that challenge which of all modern inspiration is the most flaming:
Whoso denyeth aught, let him depart from here!
This is not the balance of a personality that denies itself! Like Nietzsche, Moody is shaken with the conviction that the most deadly sin is not disobedience, but smallness.
There is a striking similarity between the religious attitude of Moody and that of Nietzsche. Moody mentions Zarathustra only once in his published letters. Certainly he was not obsessed by the German, or a confessed follower. Nor did Moody elaborate any social philosophy, beyond a general radicalism quite different from Nietzsche’s condemnation of socialism. But, like Nietzsche, Moody was in reaction against a false and narrow culture. And like him, Moody found in Hellenic ideals a blood-stirring inspiration. He found not the external grace of the Greek which Keats celebrated, not the static classical perfection which has furnished an anodyne for scholars. It was the deeper, cloudy spirit of Aeschylus, the heaven-scaling challenge of Euripides, the Dionysiac worship of joy and passion. Take, for instance, the chorus of young men in The Fire-Bringer which Professor Manly has called “insolent”—though it seems to me of a divine insolence:
Eros, how sweet
Is the cup of thy drunkenness!