In all the loveliest representations in central Greek art of the birth
of Athena, Apollo stands close to the sitting Jupiter, singing, with a
deep, quiet joyfulness, to his lyre. The sun is always thought of as the
master of time and rhythm, and as the origin of the composing and
inventive discovery of melody; but the air, as the actual element and
substance of the voice, the prolonging and sustaining power of it, and
the symbol of its moral passion. Whatever in music is measured and
designed belongs therefore to Apollo and the Muses; whatever is impulsive
and passionate, to Athena; hence her constant strength a voice or cry (as
when she aids the shout of Achilles) curiously opposed to the dumbness of
Demeter. The Apolline lyre, therefore, is not so much the instrument
producing sound, as its measurer and divider by length or tension of
string into given notes; and I believe it is, in a double connection with
its office as a measurer of time or motion and its relation to the
transit of the sun in the sky, that Hermes forms it from the
tortoise-shell, which is the image of the dappled concave of the cloudy
sky. Thenceforward all the limiting or restraining modes of music belong
to the Muses; but the more passionate music is wind music, as in the
Doric flute. Then, when this inspired music becomes degraded in its
passion, it sinks into the pipe of Pan, and the double pipe of Marsyas,
and is then rejected by Athena. The myth which represents her doing so
is that she invented the double pipe from hearing the hiss of the
Gorgonian serpents; but when she played upon it, chancing to see her face
reflected in water, she saw that it was distorted, whereupon she threw
down the flute which Marsyas found. Then, the strife of Apollo and
Marsyas represents the enduring contest between music in which the words
and thought lead, and the lyre measures or melodizes them (which Pindar
means when he calls his hymns "kings over the lyre"), and music in which
the words are lost and the wind or impulse leads,--generally, therefore,
between intellectual, and brutal, or meaningless, music. Therefore, when
Apollo prevails, he flays Marsyas, taking the limit and external bond of
his shape from him, which is death, without touching the mere muscular
strength, yet shameful and dreadful in dissolution.
42. And the opposition of these two kinds of sound is continually dwelt
upon by the Greek philosophers, the real fact at the root of all music is
the natural expression of a lofty passion for a right cause; that in
proportion to the kingliness and force of any personality, the expression
either of its joy or suffering becomes measured, chastened, calm, and
capable of interpretation only by the majesty of ordered, beautiful, and
worded sound. Exactly in proportion to the degree in which we become
narrow in the cause and conception of our passions, incontinent in the
utterance of them, feeble of perseverance in them, sullied or shameful in
the indulgence of them, their expression by musical sound becomes broken,
mean, fatuitous, and at last impossible; the measured waves of the air of
heaven will not lend themselves to expression of ultimate vice, it must
be forever sunk into discordance or silence. And since, as before
stated, every work of right art has a tendency to reproduce the ethical
state which first developed it, this, which of all the arts is most
directly in power of discipline; the first, the simplest, the most
effective of all instruments of moral instruction; while in the failure
and betrayal of its functions, it becomes the subtlest aid of moral
degradation. Music is thus, in her health, the teacher of perfect order,
and is the voice of the obedience of angels, and the companion of the
course of the spheres of heaven; and in her depravity she is also the
teacher of perfect disorder and disobedience, and the Gloria in Excelsis
becomes the Marseillaise. In the third section of this volume, I reprint
two chapters from another essay of mine ("The Cestus of Aglaia"), on
modesty or measure, and on liberty, containing further reference to music
in her two powers; and I do this now, because, among the many monstrous
and misbegotten fantasies which are the spawn of modern license, perhaps
the most impishly opposite to the truth is the conception of music which
has rendered possible the writing, by educated persons, and, more
strangely yet, the tolerant criticism, of such words as these: "This so
persuasive art is the only one that has no didactic efficacy, that
engenders no emotions save such as are without issue on the side of moral
truth, that expresses nothing of God, nothing of reason, nothing of human
liberty." I will not give the author's name; the passage is quoted in
the "Westminster Review" for last January [1869].
43. I must also anticipate something of what I have to say respecting
the relation of the power of Athena to organic life, so far as to note
that her name, Pallas, probably refers to the quivering or vibration of
the air; and to its power, whether as vital force, or communicated wave,
over every kind of matter, in giving it vibratory movement; first, and
most intense, in the voice and throat of the bird, which is the air
incarnate; and so descending through the various orders of animal life to
the vibrating and semi-voluntary murmur of the insect; and, lower still,
to the hiss or quiver of the tail of the half-lunged snake and deaf
adder; all these, nevertheless, being wholly under the rule of Athena as
representing either breath or vital nervous power; and, therefore, also,
in their simplicity, the "oaten pipe and pastoral song," which belong to
her dominion over the asphodel meadows, and breathe on their banks of
violets.
Finally, is it not strange to think of the influence of this one power of
Pallas in vibration (we shall see a singular mechanical energy of it
presently in the serpent's motion), in the voices of war and peace? How
much of the repose, how much of the wrath, folly, and misery of men, has
literally depended on this one power of the air; on the sound of the
trumpet and of the bell, on the lark's song, and the bee's murmur!
44. Such is the general conception in the Greek mind of the physical
power of Athena. The spiritual power associated with it is of two kinds:
first, she is the Spirit of Life in material organism; not strength in
the blood only, but formative energy in the clay; and, secondly, she is
inspired and impulsive wisdom in human conduct and human art, giving the
instinct of infallible decision, and of faultless invention.
It is quite beyond the scope of my present purpose--and, indeed, will
only be possible for me at all after marking the relative intention of
the Apolline myths--to trace for you the Greek conception of Athena as
the guide of moral passion. But I will at least endeavor, on some near
occasion,* to define some of the actual truths respecting the vital force
in created organism, and inventive fancy in the works of man, which are
more or less expressed by the Greeks, under the personality of Athena.
You would, perhaps, hardly bear with me if I endeavored further to show
you--what is nevertheless perfectly true--the analogy between the
spiritual power of Athena in her gentle ministry, yet irresistible anger,
with the ministry of anther Spirit whom we also, holding for the
universal power of life, are forbidden, at our worst peril, to quench or
to grieve.
* I have tried to do this in mere outline in the two following sections
of this volume.
45. But, I think, to-night, you should not let me close without
requiring of me an answer on one vital point, namely, how far these
imaginations of gods--which are vain to us--were vain to those who had
no better trust? and what real belief the Greek had in these creations
of his own spirit, practical and helpful to him in the sorrow of earth?
I am able to answer you explicitly in this. The origin of his thoughts
is often obscure, and we may err in endeavoring to account or their form
of realization; but the effect of that realization on his life is not
obscure at all. The Greek creed was, of course, different in its
character, as our own creed is, according to the class of persons who
held it. The common people's was quite literal, simple, and happy; their
idea of Athena was as clear as a good Roman Catholic peasant's idea of
the Madonna. In Athens itself, the centre of thought and refinement,
Pisistratus obtained the reins of government through the ready belief of
the populace that a beautiful woman, armed like Athena, was the goddess
herself. Even at the close of the last century some of this simplicity
remained among the inhabitants of the Greek islands; and when a pretty
English lady first made her way into the grotto of Antiparos, she was
surrounded, on her return, by all the women of the neighboring village,
believing her to be divine, and praying her to heal them of their
sicknesses.
46. Then, secondly, the creed of the upper classes was more refined and
spiritual, but quite as honest, and even more forcible in its effect on
the life. You might imagine that the employment of the artifice just
referred to implied utter unbelief in the persons contriving it; but it
really meant only that the more worldly of them would play with a popular
faith of their own purposes, as doubly-minded persons have often done
since, all the while sincerely holding the same ideas themselves in a
more abstract form; while the good and unworldly men, the true Greek
heroes, lived by their faith as firmly as St. Louis, or the Cid, or the
Chevalier Bayard.
47. Then, thirdly, the faith of the poets and artists was, necessarily,
less definite, being continually modified by the involuntary action of
their own fancies; and by the necessity of presenting, in clear verbal or
material form, things of which they had no authoritative knowledge.
Their faith was, in some respects like Dante's or Milton's: firm in
general conception, but not able to vouch for every detail in the forms
they gave it; but they went considerably farther, even in that minor
sincerity, than subsequent poets; and strove with all their might to be
as near the truth as they could. Pindar says, quite simply, "I cannot
think so-and-so of the gods. It must have been this way--it cannot have
been that way--that the thing was done." And as late among the Latins as
the days of Horace, this sincerity remains. Horace is just as true and
simple in his religion as Wordsworth; but all power of understanding any
of the honest classic poets has been taken away from most English
gentlemen by the mechanical drill in verse-writing at school. Throughout
the whole of their lives afterwards, they never can get themselves quit
of the notion that all verses were written as an exercise, and that
Minerva was only a convenient word for the last of a hexameter, and
Jupiter for the last but one.
48. It is impossible that any notion can be more fallacious or more
misleading in its consequences. All great song, from the first day when
human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song. With deliberate
didactic purpose the tragedians--with pure and native passion the lyrists
--fitted their perfect words to their dearest faiths. "Operosa parvus
carmina fingo." "I, little thing that I am, weave my laborious songs" as
earnestly as the bee among the bells of thyme on the Matin mountains. Yes,
and he dedicates his favorite pine to Diana, and he chants his autumnal
hymn to the Faun that guards his fields, and he guides the noble youth and
maids of Rome in their choir to Apollo, and he tells the farmer's little
girl that the gods will love her, though she has only a handful of salt
and meal to give them--just as earnestly as ever English gentleman taught
Christian faith to English youth in England's truest days.
49. Then, lastly, the creed of the philosophers of sages varied
according to the character and knowledge of each; their relative
acquaintance with the secrets of natural science, their intellectual and
sectarian egotism, and their mystic or monastic tendencies, for there is
a classic as well as a mediæval monasticism. They end in losing the life
of Greece in play upon words; but we owe to their early thought some of
the soundest ethics, and the foundation of the best practical laws, yet
known to mankind.
50. Such was the general vitality of the heathen creed in its strength.
Of its direct influence on conduct, it is, as I said, impossible for me
to speak now; only, remember always, in endeavoring to form a judgment of
it, that what of good or right the heathens did, they did looking for no
reward. The purest forms of our own religion have always consisted in
sacrificing less things to win greater, time to win eternity, the world
to win the skies. The order, "Sell that thou hast," is not given without
the promise, "Thou shalt have treasure in heaven;" and well for the
modern Christian if he accepts the alternative as his Master left it, and
does not practically read the command and promise thus: "Sell that thou
hast in the best market, and thou shalt have treasure in eternity also."
But the poor Greeks of the great ages expected no reward from heaven but
honor, and no reward from earth but rest; though, when, on those
conditions, they patiently, and proudly, fulfilled their task of the
granted day, an unreasoning instinct of an immortal benediction broke
from their lips in song; and they, even they, had sometimes a prophet to
tell them of a land "where there is sun alike by day and alike by night,
where they shall need no more to trouble the earth by strength of hands
for daily bread; but the ocean breezes blow around the blessed islands,
and golden flowers burn on their bright trees for evermore."