"Eve Repentant" is the woman Eve, the mother of the
race; "Jacob and Esau" are the brothers come to reconciliation; "Jonah"
is the prophet denouncing the Nineveh of his day and the Babylon of
this. The teaching--and there is teaching in every one of them--is plain
and ethical. So also, with the Greek myths; they teach plainly--they
hold no esoteric interpretations. Watts is no Neo-Platonist weaving
mystical doctrines from the ancient hero tales; he is rather a stoic, a
moralist, a teacher of earthly things.
But we must be careful to guard against the impression of Watts as a
lofty philosopher consciously issuing proclamations by means of his art.
Really he was not aware of being a philosopher at all; he was simply an
artist, an exquisitely delicate and sensitive medium, who, when once
before his canvas, suddenly filled with his idea, was compelled to say
his word. If there be any synthesis about his finished work--and no one
can deny this--it was not because Watts gave days and nights and years
to "thinking things out.
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