1. We have seen in the story of the Aeacidæ how great importance was attached in the Greek mind of the figure or shadow of the unity of human and brutal nature in the great Centaur, Cheiron. Not only you find the Aeacidse descended from him on the mother's side, but to him you have entrusted in their youth Æsculapius, Jason, and Achilles. Physician, seafarer, and soldier must alike be brought up at the feet of the Centaur; and stranger still, there is no other subject of sculpture associated with the procession in her own honour, represented on the temple of Athena, but the war of the Centaurs and Lapithæ.

2. Two great truths are hidden under this myth of the Centaur as it takes possession of the Greek mind. There is no more marked instance of the force of a vision, which is scarcely understood by the dreamer, but is to be interpreted by the whole course of subsequent history. In the first place remember that, as in most of the early mythic figures, there is a good and evil meaning continually mingled in it. The Centaurs, as the sons of Ixion and the cloud, are images of wild, unnatural, and disappointed passion; but Cheiron, as the son of Philyra and Chronos [Saturn], is one of the great group of Titans opposed to the injustice of Zeus.