wrought. Experiences which were painful or grievous to the actors and
sufferers become in the representation the source of keen pleasure to the
hearers or readers. The Iliad is mainly a story of men destroying one
another. The Odyssey depicts a long strife with hardship and danger.
The men who heard those songs were themselves familiar with the fight,
with the wounds and terrors mixed with its energies and elations; they
had tasted the perils of shipwreck and of pirates. But as they listened,
the rehearsal of trials the counterpart of their own filled them with
exhilaration. We who read in modern days, if less experienced in
bloodshed and bodily peril, yet in some fashion have had our share of
battle and storm; and we, too, like the first listeners, drink in the
tale with delight. The poet, in other words, has the secret not only of
seeing but of idealizing the actual world. We catch from him some subtle
art by which, standing a little aloof from the pressure and turmoil
around us, often felt as painful or degrading, we see it through an
atmosphere in which it becomes a splendid and heart-stirring scene. At a
later stage we may perhaps in a degree analyze the change of view; we may
partly understand how through the struggle with evil man is strengthened
and ennobled; how in such strife courage and sympathy and tenderness are
engendered. But long before we can thus philosophize, and to a degree
which our philosophy can hardly explain, we are affected by this beauty
and elevation imparted to the spectacle of human life by the true poets.
We moderns read Homer with delight in the roll of the music, the
vividness of the pictures, the humanity so near us in its essence and so
unlike in its dress. When we inquire what are the moral ideals, we are
often uncertain how far the impressions made on us may differ from those
of the original audience, or the intention of the singer. But often his
work is like the painting of great Nature herself. We pass upon it as we
pass upon the facts of life.
The supernal features in the story are not here discussed. The deities,
judged by our standards, have little of divinity. Beyond the grave lies
a dim and dreamy realm. All this, with its great significance, we here
omit, to linger a little on the essential and permanent humanity.
Achilles, the embodiment of power and passion, just touched with human
ruth; Hector, the selfless, brave and gentle champion; Odysseus, victor
in the long pilgrimage by fortitude and by wisdom,--these are the three
ideal types of the early world, portrayed by its noblest genius.
The Iliad culminates in the triumph of pity. The heart of Zeus is
melted, the harder heart of Achilles is melted, before the sorrows of
bereaved old age. An exquisite gentleness breathes through the closing
scenes. All the wrath and terror and savagery of the story have led up
to this height of pure compassion. A new light falls on all that has
gone before. Achilles, the fierce hero of the earlier story, is outshone
by his victim, Hector of the great and gentle heart. The crowning word
of praise, after father, mother, wife have uttered their lament, is
spoken by the frail woman whose sin had brought ruin on Hector and his
people: "If any other haply upbraided me in the palace halls, then
wouldst thou soothe such with words, and refrain them by the gentleness
of thy spirit and by thy gentle words. Therefore bewail I thee with pain
at heart, and my hapless self with thee, for no more is any left in wide
Troy-land to be my friend and kind to me, but all men shudder at me."
We see the sin of man and woman wrecking nations and leaving the sinner
in dreary isolation. We see unrelenting wrath, even when provoked by
wrong, spreading woe upon the innocent, and at last smiting the wrathful
man through his dearest affections. We see the heroism which meets death
in defense of the beloved, yet has only tender pity for her who has
wrought the ruin.
The Iliad is mostly war,--men acting hell on earth, as Goethe said. But
in the Odyssey the goal of the hero is his home. The magnet is not
Helen's beauty, but Penelope's faithfulness. Odysseus, mighty warrior,
crafty leader,--who with his sword has smitten the Trojans, by his wiles
destroyed their city,--Odysseus is driven for ten years through hostile
seas and men and gods by the compelling passion of home-sickness!
In the Odyssey, it is the battle with the sea which does most to toughen
and supple and make indomitable. The soldier and sailor are the pioneers
of the race. These and the tiller of the earth are the strong roots out
of which are to grow the flower and fruit.
In the Iliad, woman appears in Helen as the tempting prize and the gage
of battle, and in Andromeda as the tender wife foredoomed to bereavement
and captivity. In the Odyssey, woman plays a higher part--as Penelope,
faithful and prudent and patient wife, fit spouse for Odysseus; as
Eurydice, the devoted old nurse; and as Nausicaa, loveliest of pristine
maidens.
"The story of her worth shall never die; but for all humankind immortal
ones shall make a gladsome song in praise of steadfast Penelope." It is
a noble story: the fidelity of a wife, the undaunted courage of a man; a
long battle with adversity, crowned with the joy of love's reunion; the
meeting with servant, nurse, dog, son, wife, father.
Odysseus fights his battle as every hero must,--against hostile nature
and man,--by courage and patience and craft, and a confidence that the
heavenly power will somehow bring him through.
So at the heart of the Iliad and the Odyssey is an austere and sweet
message. The singers who embodied it in tales which stir every pulse
with delight were among the supreme teachers of mankind. The inner
meaning of humanity's story which their songs display is still the lesson
set us,--out of adversity man may win fortitude; through battle,
shipwreck, and overthrow he scales the heights of manhood; and the
faithful pilgrimage ends in a home which is dearer for all troubles past.
The Homeric poems show man in his first full awaking to beauty and to
music. They show more. The fashioning of the supernal world in man's
mind varies with people and with time. Here it is Zeus and Hades, again
it will be Jehovah and Satan, and then Heaven and Hell. But in the Iliad
and Odyssey the human heart recognizes its rightful lords as long as it
shall endure,--Courage and Pity, Fortitude and Fidelity.
Socrates is the man who has actually achieved goodness, and tries to make
a science and art of goodness, to find a way in which it can be clearly
known and rationally and effectively taught. "Can virtue be taught?" is
his characteristic question. The chief result of his keen scrutiny is to
bring to light how little men really know of the higher life,--how little
he knows of it himself. The effect of this revelation of ignorance is
not a despair of truth, but a humility which is the beginning of wisdom.
The deepest thing in Socrates is his knowledge of the good life as a
reality, and of the joy and peace which it brings. Secure in this, he
can go on in the most fearless temper, and even with light-hearted
jesting, to sift the questions. Intellectually, his main achievement is
to bring out clearly the problems to be faced, and to give an immense
stimulus to the higher class of minds.
In the picture of Socrates by Xenophon in the Memorabilia, which bears
all the marks of true portraiture, goodness goes with happiness and
knowledge. It is a most winning combination--beautiful as a Greek
statue. Xenophon lays stress on his happiness, but the basis is
self-command. Among a people where even religion and philosophy were
tolerant of sensuality, he was pure. He was hardy, trained to bear heat
and cold, temperate, simple, faithful to civic duty, a reverent worshiper
of the gods, watchful for the divine leading.
Xenophon shows him absorbed in teaching, imparting the best he has found,
never so happy as when he can win a young man to virtue. His ideal
society is the union of those who together are seeking goodness and
knowledge.
His patience is shown under the worst of domestic annoyances, a scolding
wife,--he says he thus learns to bear all other crosses. His admonition
to his son to bear with her shows genuine tenderness.
He has the heroic quality. He resists the raging people, and refuses the
part assigned him in voting the death sentence on the generals whose
defeat had been a misfortune and not a fault. He calmly disobeys the
Thirty Tyrants, at the risk of his life. He dies at last, a tranquil
martyr to fearless truth-speaking.
He teaches nobly of Providence, the Supreme, the guidance from above. He
conforms to the religion of his people, while planting a higher truth.
When Athens, faithfully warned by him in vain, was sinking toward ruin
and decay, he was sowing the seeds of spiritual harvests for future
generations, like Jesus when Judea was tottering to its fall. In the
intellectual development of man's higher life he holds a place not unlike
that of Jesus in the emotional development.
Socrates, as Xenophon describes him, goes no farther as a teacher than to
impress the principles of conduct as they were generally accepted by good
men of the time, with peculiar persuasiveness. But Plato shows him as an
original investigator of the human mind and the universe. In this there
is an undoubted trait of true portraiture, but its limit is very
difficult to trace, because in Plato's dialogues the master is made the
mouthpiece of all the pupil's philosophy. The most distinctive feature
which can be identified as that of Socrates himself is the
cross-examination. Under this process, high-sounding generalities,--put
in the mouths of speakers in the dialogues, the whole word-play set forth
with exquisite grace and charm,--are shown by a rigid sifting to resolve
themselves into nebulous and baseless figments,--the mere simulacra of
true knowledge.
The conversations glide from this destructive analysis into a
constructive philosophy, and then we soon feel that it is Plato rather
than Socrates whom we are getting. The great contribution of Socrates
himself to philosophy is the attitude he impressed--of inquiry which is
serious because seeking the foundations of virtue and happiness, and is
inexorable in its insistence on nothing less than solid reality. Against
all allurements of indolence, comfort, and social convention he presses
the question, What is _true_? His characteristic word is:
"Some things, Meno, I have said of which I am not altogether confident.
But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that
we ought to inquire than we should have been if we indulged in the idle
fancy that there was no knowing and no use in searching after what we
know not; that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and
deed, to the utmost of my power."
Plato took from Socrates not method but inspiration, and soared into
speculation. He wrote over the door of the Academy, "Let no one enter
here who does not know geometry." That is, you are first to acquire
absolute confidence, by familiarity with the demonstrations of
mathematics, that real and certain knowledge is accessible to the human
mind. Thus planting his foot on firmest certainty, Plato leaps off into
a glorious sea of clouds. Flashes of insight and sublime allegory mix
with fantastic theory and word-play.
The vast range of his thought we will touch only at two points. In the
Symposium and the Phaedrus he discusses in his most brilliant vein the
problem of love. To the reader who has inherited the ethical ideal of
Christianity, Plato's love will seem like the image in Nebuchadnezzar's
vision,--the head of gold, the feet of miry clay. He has a toleration
for some aspects of sensuality of which Paul said, "it is a shame even to
speak;" and this tolerance, in the greatest of the classic philosophers,
is the most pregnant suggestion of the cleansing work which it was left
for Christianity to undertake. Yet Plato teaches most impressively the
subordination of sense to spirit in love, and the struggle of the two in
man has seldom been set forth more powerfully than in his figure of the
two yoked horses: the white, celestial steed struggling upward; the
black, unruly one plunging down, while Reason, the charioteer, strives to
guide. In the description of Love which Socrates professes to quote from
the wise woman of Mantineia, there is the very height of the Platonic
philosophy,--the gradual sublimation of human passion to the recognition
of all noble forms and ideas, and at last to the vision of the Divine
Beauty which is one with Wisdom and with Love.
"The true order of going or being led by another to the things of love is
to use the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upwards for
the sake of that other beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all
fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to
fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of
absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
"What if man had eyes to see the true beauty--the divine beauty, I mean,
pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollution of
mortality, and all the colors and vanities of human life--thither looking
and holding converse with the true beauty divine and simple, and bringing
into being and educating true creations of virtue, and not idols only?
Do you not see that in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye
of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but
realities; for he has hold not of an image but of a reality,--and will be
enabled, bringing forth and educating true virtue, to become the friend
of God and be immortal, if mortal man may." [1]
It is largely to Plato that we owe the idea of immortality as it exists
in the mind of the civilized world to-day. The belief in a continued
existence beyond death is much older; it is seen in the Iliad, where the
appearance of the dead Patroclus to Achilles in a dream is accepted as
the assurance of a shadowy and forlorn hereafter; and in the Odyssey the
visit of the hero to the land of shades is portrayed with a free and
gloomy imagination. It was a belief which among the earlier Greeks had
little power either to console or to guide. In the age of Socrates, it
seems to have signified little in the minds of the orthodox and pious.
The great tragedians, who sublimate the popular mythology, for the most
part regard the after-life as only a sad inevitable sequel; and to be
snatched back from it for even a brief reprieve, like Alkestis, is
miraculous good fortune. The greatest of the tragedians in his highest
reach, Sophocles in Oedipus at Colonus, invests the departure of the
hero, who has been purified by suffering, with a mystic radiance, a
"light that never was on sea or land," the promise as it were of some
future too sublime for mortal words. But the philosophy of Socrates was
directed rather to the clear penetration of the method and secret of
earthly life, than to any vision of the hereafter. It is noticeable that
Xenophon, the loyal disciple and biographer of Socrates, himself of the
best type of orthodox piety, and zealous to vindicate his master from the
charge of irreligion,--Xenophon, in all the story of the master's life
and death, gives not a hint of any future hope. But Plato developed the
idea that in man there resides an essential, indestructible principle,
superior to the physical frame which is its home and may be either its
servant or master--a principle which manifests itself in thought,
aspiration, virtue; which has existed before the body and will exist
after it; which chooses for itself an upward or downward path; and which
rightly tends to a celestial and immortal destiny. The thought never won
universal acceptance even among philosophers; it had only an indirect and
slight effect on the Stoicism which was the best religious product of
ancient philosophy. But it wrought by degrees all effect on the thinking
of mankind. While the lofty faith of the Egyptian passed away leaving no
visible fruit, the idea of Plato slowly suffused with its light and
warmth the current of human aspirations. Meantime, the later Jewish
belief in a hereafter--in its form a much cruder conception of a physical
revival from the grave--flamed up in a passionate ardor, as the sequence
of the life and teaching of Jesus. The Platonic and the Christian belief
sprang from a like source. Each was born from the death of a man so
great and so beloved as to give the impression of some imperishable
quality.
Socrates, with his noble character and aim, was put to death as a
criminal. Was that the end of it all? Impossible--monstrous--never, if
this world be indeed a cosmos. The one firm certainty which Socrates
seems to have held, "No evil can happen to a good man in life or
death,"--flashes in Plato's mind into a glorious hope of immortality,
embodied in his loftiest passage, the picture of the dying Socrates.
The soul when withdrawn from all outward objects and rapt in
contemplation is nearest to the divine,--this is the central thought of
the Phaedo. It is pursued with much subtle argumentation, of which the
essential residuum is this: the soul's action is purest and most intense
when farthest withdrawn from the visible and tangible world,--and hence
we guess that her true and eternal home is in that invisible realm of
which all this material universe is but the veil and symbol.
But more impressive than the argument, more moving to the human heart, is
the picture which is given of Socrates himself as the hour of death comes
on,--the exaltation of all his familiar traits, the playfulness so
exquisitely blent with seriousness, the searching thought, the frank
human desire to be convinced by his own argument,--the charm of his
friendly ways, the hand playing with Phaedo's hair, the taking of the cup
"in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of
color, looking at the man with all his eyes as his manner was,"--the last
word, of calm reminder of a trivial obligation,--the whole scene of
majestic and tender peace, like a sunset. It is a scene which reconciles
us to life, and makes us no longer impatient even of our uncertainties.
It speaks with a voice like that of Landor's verse:--
"Death stands above me, whispering low,
I know not what into my ear,
Of his strange language all I know
Is,--there is not a word of fear."
To the modern reader there is a singular contradiction between the
doctrine of Lucretius and his temper. The denial of any divine
supervision of human life, or any hereafter for man; the dominion over
all existence of purely material law,--this seems to us to destroy man's
dearest faith and hope. This is the teaching of Lucretius, yet on this
road he marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all
beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the
energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion
against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of
Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an
outworn mythology in which this world was ruled by capricious and
unworthy despots, and the next world was gloomy with terrors and almost
unlighted by hopes. Such had become the popular mythology in its later
day, and as contrasted with this the view and temper of Lucretius are
rational and manly. His message went far beyond a negation; he announced
one of the greatest discoveries of the human spirit--the uniformity of
nature. Well might the genius of poetry and the vigor of manhood unite
to make the message impressive and splendid. Not caprice, but
order,--not conflict, but harmony,--not deified partialities and spites
and lusts, but exalted and unchanging law, rules the universe!
When Lucretius essayed to define in what this law consists, he fell
hopelessly short of the mark. In his revulsion from the chaos and
pettiness of man-like divinities, he fixed on material forces,--clearly
to be seen and permanent in their operation,--as the only and sufficient
cause and order. Those forces, by a brilliant guess, he resolved into an
interplay of atoms. From this basis he projected a physical theory,
which we know now was quite inadequate even for material phenomena, while
the application of it to human thought and will was hopelessly
insufficient. Viewed from this standpoint, the spectacle of human life
takes on a sadness which the poet's genius cannot dispel, and sometimes
intensifies. To man's inner world Lucretius has no serviceable key. But
he is to be judged not by what he missed but by what he gained. He above
all others stands as the discoverer of one of the few cardinal truths by
which to-day we interpret the universe,--the constancy of nature.
The genius of Lucretius did for the realm of thought what Roman
statesmanship did for the nations,--it brought peace and order among
warring elements, by the imposition of a rule which was often narrow and
harsh, but which was firm, stable, and the foundation for fairer and
freer growths.
Already in Lucretius, and now again in Epictetus, we have passed from the
Greek into the Roman world. It is a change partly of race, partly of
time, and it is in close analogy with the successive phases of the human
spirit. The mythology which satisfied the youth of the world had grown
unlovely and unreal. Plato's splendid imaginings had yielded neither a
secure basis to the thinker nor a moral guidance to the common man.
Lucretius's interpretation of all events as the product of material law
had small power to sustain or cheer when the intellectual glow of the
bold innovator had subsided. Thoughtful men sought as their one supreme
necessity an adequate and worthy rule of life. So there was wrought out,
or grew, the Stoic philosophy. Based on an intellectual theory, its
working strength lay in its consonance with the best habits and aptitudes
engendered in the world's actual experience. The Greek type was beauty,
pleasure, thought, freedom; the Roman type was law, obedience,
self-mastery. The legion was the school of discipline and fidelity. The
forum was the theatre where classes and parties, through rude jostling,
worked out an efficient political order. A Greek thinker gave the mould,
and Roman virtue gave the metal, of the Stoic type.
We may best study that type in Epictetus,--once a slave, afterward a
teacher; so careless of fame that he left no written work, and we have
only the priceless notes taken down by a faithful scholar, making a book
whose stamp of heroic manhood twenty centuries have not dimmed.
"Man is master of his fate." The true aim of life is goodness, and
goodness is within the command of the will. The lawgiver is Nature, and
Nature bids us to be just, strong, pure, and to seek the good of our
fellows. Such was the essence of Stoicism. As to deity, providence, or
a hereafter,--belief and hope varied, according to the individual; but to
the true Stoic the all-important matter was, Act well your part, here and
now.
In Epictetus is always the note of reality and of victory. While
actually a slave, he has learned the secret of inward freedom. His
essential doctrine is that good and evil reside wholly in the will, and
the will is free. As we choose, so we are. And by the right choice we
find ourselves in harmony with the universe.
Though Epictetus continually appeals to reason, his basal word is to the
will. Be constant to duty--accept the order of things as good, and be
true to the highest law--revere "nature," the established order; obey
"nature," the ideal law. Take all for the best, and you make all for the
best.
Most practical and inspiring are his counsels. The war must be waged in
the inmost thoughts. The images that rise to seduce, the images that
rise to dismay, are to be fought down and driven away. "Be not hurried
away by the rapidity of the appearance, but say, Appearances, wait for me
a little; let me see who you are and what you are about; let me put you
to the test. And then do not allow the appearance to lead you on and
draw lively pictures of the things which will follow, for if you do, it
will carry you off wherever it pleases. But rather bring to oppose it
some other beautiful and noble appearance, and cast out this base
appearance. And if you are accustomed to be exercised in this way, you
will see what shoulders, what sinews, what strength you have." [2]
"Be willing at length to be approved by yourself, be willing to appear
beautiful to God, desire to be in purity with your own pure self and with
God. Then, when any such appearance visits you, Plato says, Have
recourse to expiations, go a suppliant to the temples of the averting
Deities. It is even sufficient if you resort to the society of noble and
just men, and compare yourself with them, whether you find one who is
living or dead."