To grandmothers everywhere I bring the frightful truth: these things we do and call human, they are the ways of spirits too — forgetting, boasting, procrastinating — even in the purest reaches of the non-material worlds. Lofty inhabitants there falter, are prey to mortal vice: pride, greed, lust. They have not transcended folly. It is because they have not ceased trying to transcend it. Moral infirmities are still with them; despite our prayers the heavens resound with evils not unlike our own. For all their wonders the gods are only human.