Darkness Within

Poul Anderson, Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 20, "Twilight of the Gods."

When the High Doctor acknowledges that he had been mistaken to taboo scientific knowledge:

"It was as if a great brooding presence were suddenly gone, as if the wandering night breeze sobbed in a new loneliness." (p. 187)

Pathetic Fallacy: the darkness of ignorance is about to be dispelled; the night breeze sympathizes. Yet again, the wind comments on human actions.

"The gods were doomed - the cruel, old pagan gods of human fear and human ignorance felt their twilight upon them." (ibid.)

Not all pagan gods are cruel. See "Hers are the trees..."

Carl thinks of the doomed gods metaphorically whereas, for Gratillonius, real beings had died. See Gods Dead Or Withdrawn?

"And the darkness which dwells in every mortal heart cried out to the dying gods." (ibid.)

Does something within us regret the passing of those cruel old gods? That darkness within sounds like the old and protean enemy yet again. It also sounds like James Blish's "night shapes." Rediscovered dinosaurs are killed but:

"'The beasts in the valley may die'...' I think they will. The night-shapes are another story entirely. They can never die. The night-shapes aren't animals, or men, or demons, even to begin with. They're the ideas of evil for which those real things only stand. The real things are temporary. They can be hunted. But the shapes are inside us. They've always lived there. They always will.'"
-James Blish, The Night Shapes (London, 1965), V, p. 125.

Finally, real but temporary things standing for ideas are Platonic.