The Mesopotamians brilliantly intuited that the highest god—the highest good—involved careful attention (the multiple, head-circling eyes of Marduk) and effective language (the magic words of Marduk, capable of generating a cosmos), in addition to the courage and strength to voluntarily confront and overcome chaos, the unknown. It could be argued that these are the defining features of the great central spirit of mankind, at least insofar as that spirit is noble and admirable.
