truth in the wine, where the proverb says it may be found. I shall talk
no more."
"Well, then, I shall ask my question of Euripides, if you will allow
me."
"Ask, by all means!" said Philip; "but if your questions are to be about
knowledge and virtue I shall go and sit with the flute-girls, and we
shall talk of something that we can understand."
Socrates settled himself more comfortably upon the couch, and, taking up
one of the ribbons which Lysis had brought, turned it about his fingers.
"Protagoras is going to tell us whether we can have any knowledge of the
gods or not," he said; "but let us enquire into their nature, assuming
that we know them, for the present. Shall we examine your own conception
of God, Euripides? It will clear matters up if we are able to say what
the gods whom we seek to know are like."
"Very well, Socrates," said Euripides.
"You live at the centre of things, Euripides," said Socrates; "and every
aspect of our modern thought is clearly reflected in your work. This is
one reason why I have always been an admirer of your plays; but it has
its drawbacks, for sometimes you reflect two distinct and opposed
theories, so that your meaning is not quite clear. Your treatment of the
myths is, in reality, a criticism of the myths, is it not?"
"Yes."
"The dramatist takes a myth as his material, and by working upon it,
criticising it, rejecting some features, and developing others, he will
make it into a play, and not only does he deal with the myth itself in
this way, but he also examines and criticises each character in it,
using the same method, so that his play is not only a representation of
the myths but a criticism of them as well. Now I have lately been
reading your Hippolytus again, so that we shall take that as an example.
The myth is very simple: Aphrodite wishes to be avenged upon Hippolytus,
who neglects her worship in preference for the worship of Artemis; and
in order to compass the death of the young man she stirs up an unholy
passion in Phædra. Hippolytus refuses the love of Phædra, and, in
despair, she kills herself, leaving a writing behind which accuses
Hippolytus of having forced her. Theseus, discovering this writing,
calls down upon Hippolytus one of the three curses which Poseidon has
promised him to fulfil, and Hippolytus is slain. Then Artemis reveals
the truth to Theseus, and before Hippolytus dies Theseus is forgiven by
him.
"This story is full of improbable and supernatural conditions, the
jealousy of Aphrodite, the apparition of Artemis, and the intervention
of Poseidon. We no longer imagine the gods as beings with the same
passions as men; but the passions and strife of the gods are the
essential feature of some myths. Do you think, Euripides, that the
makers of myths in the old days simply dragged in the gods, in order to
explain any tragedy which was quite inexplicable in itself, and that
they attempted to alleviate in this way the sense of waste with which a
tragedy fills us?"
"It seems a plausible supposition, Socrates. If men cannot relate an
event to any known cause, they consider it sufficiently explained if it
be attributed to a deity."
"And so it happens," said Socrates, "that many evil deeds are attributed
to the gods; the death of Hippolytus, for instance, to the jealousy of
Aphrodite. Do you think, Euripides, that the makers of myths and the
common people believe that evil is not inherent in the action itself,
but depends upon the quality and nature of the agent?"
"Yes," answered Euripides; "they imagine that actions are permissible in
gods which would not be permissible in man; that the gods have a right
to do evil, since they have the power. On the contrary, I maintain, that
a god is all goodness, and that if he revenged himself on man, or were
guilty of jealousy and hatred, he would cease, by that fact, to be a
god."
"And is it because you hold this opinion that you make the action in
your play of Hippolytus, as far as possible, move independently of the
gods?"
"How do you mean, Socrates?"
"I mean, Euripides, that your play seems to present two sides: the
action as it is presented in the original myth, and the action which is
the result of your criticism. There are some people who say that if you
are not content with the myths, you should invent your own stories; but
this would defeat your object which is purely critical, and which aims
at presenting another version of the story. You seem to say to yourself:
the myth presents the gods as beings with the same appetites, passions,
and desires as mortals, and so I shall treat them. They are to you mere
characters in the play, and even subordinate characters at that. You
introduce Aphrodite to speak the prologue, and thus, ostensibly
following the myth, make her responsible for the catastrophe. But at the
same time you show that the catastrophe is directly precipitated by the
hastiness of Theseus; a fatal flaw which he himself recognises, and
laments when it is too late. He was over-hasty to use the gift of
Poseidon, he says; but Hippolytus answers that if he had not used that
method of revenge, he would have found another. Theseus implicitly
agrees to this, when he says that some lying spirit had blinded him to
the truth, and thus the guilt is flung back upon Aphrodite, whom Artemis
promises to punish by slaying Adonis. In reality, Euripides, the lying
spirit is not Aphrodite, but Phædra; and you take care that Artemis
should point this out. Thus, at every part of the myth where the action
of the divinities is supposed to be clearly visible, you present us with
another version and another cause; and, by this means, not only do you
make the development of the plot more plausible, and fill us with
admiration for your genius, but ultimately you remove the responsibility
from the gods, by showing that the action of the play is not dependent
upon them. Aphrodite seems to be only the incarnation of Phædra's
desire, and Poseidon of a father's curse. Artemis, it is true, has a
separate existence, and is not merely the personification of a mortal
passion; she exists in order that she may reveal the truth to Theseus,
and for that purpose, had you not been bound by tradition, the nurse
would have done as well. You say, too, in one of the choruses that the
thought of the gods consoles your grief, and that your hope clings to
the belief in a supreme reason; but that when you consider the deeds and
the fate of men you are confounded. Do you think, Euripides, that the
whole evil of life comes from man alone, and that the gods are not
implicated in it?"
Protagoras smiled. Euripides leaned forward, looking at Socrates with
bright eyes from beneath his bent brows.
"The words of the chorus, Socrates, mean that when I consider the
wretchedness and the doom of men, I doubt the existence of a supreme
reason, or at least waver in my belief."
"Of course I see that," answered Socrates; "but if you accept the idea
of a universal mind animating all things, why should the misery and
wretched conditions of the life of men dissipate this idea? Your play
shows that it is man's own folly, and not the anger of the gods, that
punishes him with misfortune. Theseus in ignorance calls down the doom
of death upon Hippolytus, and thus brings evil upon himself. It is the
lust of Phædra, and the blind anger of Theseus, which are responsible
for the death of the innocent; but is it better to have suffered
unjustly as Hippolytus suffered, or to die in shame, despised, as Phædra
died, or to live as Theseus lived in misery, though forgiven?"
"I agree to what you have said of my play," answered Euripides, his
worn, melancholy face illuminated with a smile; "and I agree, also, that
it was my purpose to deny that the gods do evil, and to make people
dissatisfied with the myths. I misunderstood the reason for your use of
what the chorus says about the Supreme Mind; the doings of men seem to
me to be more the result of the conditions of life than of their own
wickedness. If men err it is through ignorance; but they suffer quite
independently of their deserts. It is through my sympathy with mankind
that I am led into doubt. Man struggles all his life with the
fluctuations and vicissitudes of fortune; his pleasures are but phantoms
and visions which elude his grasp; the one certainty before him is
death: an unknown terror. Why has he been set among this play of
circumstance, over which he has no control, but which whirls him away
like a dead leaf upon the ripples and eddies of a river? The best
happiness we can find in life is resignation, a folding of the hands, a
withdrawal into the interior peace of our own minds, the serene heights
which the Muses inhabit. Those who have gained that sanctuary have at
least the happiness which comes from a knowledge of the limitations of
life; they have learned to desire little, to delight in natural and
simple things, the bright air, the coolness of forests, wind rippling
the waves of corn and setting the poplar leaves a-tremble; but, alas!
behind even this serenity of mind is the shadow of human suffering. So
few are the wise, and so many the miserable! We would not, if we could,
cut ourselves off from the dumb herd of humanity, with its obscure
sufferings, its vague desires, its inarticulate and eternal pain."
"I should not ask it of you, Euripides," said Socrates gently.
He had a real love for Euripides, a real admiration for the mind which
through its own tumult and discord had come at last into the possession
of peace, and to the vision of a clear hope.
"If mankind with its blind follies makes me doubt the existence of a
God," continued Euripides, "its miseries make me believe in one. I am
not an enemy of knowledge; I have sought it with diligence all the days
of my life; but we have other needs. We suffer with one another; there
is a trouble and perplexity in the world from which we cannot escape,
and to which we cannot refuse sympathy, pity, and love. Religion does
not take into sufficient account the fact, that however diverse are the
activities of men, all suffer alike. We have the corporate religious
unity of the State, and it presents to us the noble and lofty ideas of
the Olympian deities. Do you remember, Socrates, the fable which
Protagoras made for you, describing how at first men had only the arts,
and warred among themselves until Zeus sent them the gifts of justice
and reverence?"
"Yes; I remember it. I cannot, of course, remember all that Protagoras
said," answered Socrates. "Long speeches puzzle me. But I remember that
it was beautiful."
"It was at my house," said Callias, with some pride.
"Well, Socrates, it seems to me that justice and reverence were not
enough. Man needed something more. So the worship of Demeter and
Dionysos was revealed to him. I have sometimes meditated writing a play
about Dionysos, the enthusiasm of wine, of poetry, the Deliverer, who
uplifts the heart of man; or about Demeter, the Earth, the herbage and
the ripe corn, through whom we are kin, not only with each other but
with the beasts of the field, the cattle grazing in their fat pasture,
and the young fawn couched among the briars and thickets of the forest.
These divinities seem closer to us than the ruler of the sun or the lord
of the sea. They move gently among us, coming and going with the
seasons, filling our granaries and wine-jars with their mystical gifts;
corn and wine, their very bodies and blood, through which we enter into
a close and intimate communion with them, and become indeed their
children, or even themselves, as when their spirit possesses us
entirely, and with a wild enthusiasm we range through the wooded hills,
clothed in spotted fawn-skins, crowned with dark ivy, shaking the
thyrsus in the air, and leaping to the sound of timbrels and pipes, and
the brazen cymbals of the Great Mother.
"The Olympian divinities have given to man the knowledge of the arts,
and instilled into him the principles of justice and of reverence; they
are untouched by the sense of our human mortality.
"Of old, the poets say, they visited mortals; and coming to a house at
dusk in the guise of huntsmen or travellers would rest that night to
share the evening meal, and at dawn depart again, leaving behind them
strange gifts. Now they come among us no more. But these divinities of
our own delightful earth, how different they are! Our mortality, our
labours, and our desires are part of their ritual. They have shown man
that he is one with that earth from which he derives his being, and
which receives him again, after the toils and vicissitudes of life, as
with the gentle enfolding arms of a mother; and that through it he is
one also with them. They give him, in the recurrence of seed-time and
harvest, the symbolism of the vine and the vintage, the return of
Spring, coming with frail, delicate flowers, and troops of swallows, in
the first flush of green over the ploughlands, hints and foreshadowings
of some such resurrection for himself; until death ceases to be a
nameless terror to him, but is like a little interval of sleep not
entirely barren of dreams. How natural they are too!
"We should not be surprised if we met with Demeter, clad in blue
raiment, in a cornfield, as the dawn was breaking. It would not seem
strange to see her, plucking the golden ears, and weaving them into a
garland for her head; or resting beside a well of bright water, and
looking over the misty fields with quiet, thoughtful eyes. It would not
seem strange if Dionysos appeared suddenly to us, coming through the
shadowy woods between the straight stems of the pines, light in his
eyes, and the wind lifting the hair from his cool brow; or to meet him
leading his troop of delirious worshippers by the banks of Asopus, or up
the steep glens of Cithæron. If she, Earth, be a mother to us, he is
like an elder brother, born of a mortal woman, and so closer to us. It
is true, Socrates, that the myths dealing with him contain much that is
revolting, and are full of tragic and sinister episodes; but behind the
veil of man's weaving is a figure of singular beauty, wild but gentle; a
divinity who promises to the restless and troubled spirit of man joy in
life and peace after death."
His words made an impression upon the company. There was silence for the
moment.
"Well, Euripides, I shall not question you any further to-night," said
Socrates. "We have agreed that the idea of divinity is exclusive of all
evil; and now Protagoras will probably tell us that the philosophic
question of the present time is not whether the gods are good or evil,
but whether they exist at all."
Protagoras made no further delay. He had a roll of parchment in his
hand, but scarcely referred to it. There was a movement among the guests
as he began, for all were curious to hear what he had to say.
* * * * *
"We cannot know whether the gods exist or do not exist; the matter is
too obscure, and man's life too short. If they exist, it must be in some
manner peculiar to themselves, for we cannot find any trace of their
presence in the world. They are not present to us as objects to be
perceived by the senses; if they move among us at all it is by stealth,
and without leaving so much trace as a ship leaves upon the waves. But
man has always believed that they are close to him, and has come to
imagine them as haunting every green corner of the earth, each well, and
wood, and hill, the blue depths of the sea and the wide regions of the
air. We have a God to preside at our sowing and at our harvest, at our
setting-forth and at our home-coming; there are gods of flocks and
herds, of vineyards and olive groves, of rivers and of the sea. Poetry
has peopled the air with them, and given to Aphrodite a team of
sparrows, and to Hera a team of peacocks, and to grey-eyed Athene an
owl. Indeed, it is strange, so familiar and frequent are they in our
thoughts, that we should ever question their existence; yet the moment
we seek for any tangible evidence of their presence in the world we are
at fault, and the more we consider them the more shadowy and elusive
they become. The whole notion of divinity is constantly changing in our
minds, adapting itself to new conditions of life, varying its form as
our knowledge becomes deeper; but always becoming more spiritual, less
tangible, until it seems to be nothing but that wandering breath which
quickens all things into life.
"At first we imagined the gods as the incarnation of some natural force,
like Aphrodite, the foam-born, whom all living creatures obey; or
Demeter, the Earth-mother, who produces all the fruits and harvests, and
the grass and flowers of the field. Stripped of the mystery and beauty
with which the poets have clothed them, these are but the conditions of
man's life, his begetting and sustenance; we must seek behind them for
that idea of the supreme reason, who is not only the cause but the end
of all things, not only the source of existence but the principle from
which spring our notions of truth, of wisdom, of justice, and all those
ideals which reconcile us to life and bid us hope in the ultimate
realisation of the good. It is not sufficient for us to find a cause
from which existence is derived, for even if that were laid bare to us
we could not find in it our ultimate satisfaction, unless it conformed
to the idea of divinity, which, as Socrates and Euripides have agreed,
is exclusive of all elements of evil. Is it possible to have this
knowledge? There are two insuperable difficulties.
"The first is in the nature of man's knowledge, which is not constant or
common, but variable and peculiar to each individual. Each man is the
measure of all things. To him, things are what they seem; truth, what he
thinks true; justice, what he thinks just; good, what he thinks good.
Coldness or heat, light or darkness, colour, sound, smell, touch, taste,
are all equally matters of opinion. There is no truth external to the
individual. The second difficulty is that even if all men had a fixed
and common standard of truth, we can find no evidence of the action of
any divinity in the world, no evidence of a supreme reason dominating
all things. The world seems to obey certain blind and unreasonable laws;
but the life of man, the life of all things, outside the mere routine of
tides and seasons, seems to be subject only to chance: and whether we
live or die, our fate is the result of an accident. We are merely the
idle foam upon the surface of the waves of being; an accident, and not
the reason of the waves. Perhaps the whole reason of life is unconcerned
with us; having a different aim to what we imagine, we ourselves being
only the dust of a sculptor's workshop, the superfluous marble which he
chips off from the hidden image of his desire.
"It is certain, that if there be a God he is careless of the fate of
man. For, if there were a God, since he must be just and good, we should
find the prayers of the good man answered, and evil would be punished in
the world. As it is the evil men prosper, and the good gain no reward;
evil and good, what are they but our points of view? It is for this
reason that we doubt the existence of any but a mechanical cause for the
universe; because we have had no experience of good triumphing in the
external world. Diagoras of Melos, being taken into the Temple of
Poseidon and shown the offerings dedicated there as memorials of
answered prayers and in fulfilment of vows, looked at them with tears:
'They reckon those who were saved,' he said; 'they forget those who
perished.' Yes; one is more touched by the thought of what was not hung
in the temple, than by the sight of what was. We think of the smallness
of the temple, and of the largeness of the sea.
"Let us state our position with clearness. We are not concerned with the
existence of the gods, but with our knowledge of their existence. It
would be equally foolish in us to deny, as to affirm, their existence.
There may be a supreme reason acting upon the world, whose ends we
cannot understand, whose action we cannot comprehend. It may be that the
world exists for some other purpose than for the realisation of our own
dreams. Perhaps we are only the superfluities, the parings of ivory, the
winnowed husks from the threshing, by-products in the creation of
something more perfect; and perhaps the confused and obscure sense of an
ideal, which works in us and is at once our desire and our despair, is a
dim consciousness of the growth of this beauty, a desire and a despair
of being one with it. But, if we could escape for a moment from the
tyranny of our own selves, the illusion of our own momentary existence,
we might learn to rejoice in the knowledge, that beauty exists, if not
in us, at least somewhere in the world. If that knowledge were ever
present with us, I think that we might be content. Content even to
suffer, to realise that everything that ever lived has died for an idea,
that all life is a martyrdom; but, alas! we have not even this
knowledge. Our life is a dream of shadows. Our knowledge is but a focus
of wandering ideas, burning a moment in a white heat, ere they pass
again, diffused widely, into the unknown.
"The sense of divinity, which moves in us, may be but a hope born of
this trouble and perplexity, a desire that at some future time the
fragments of our being shall be collected again and fashioned into a
whole. We cry out that we need not be wasted, to drift forever as dust,
blind, dumb, and inarticulate, yet with a dim consciousness of a life
stirring beyond us and alien to us. Let us share in it. Let us have a
share in the world's sunlight and the sweet air. We have personified
this hope, and given it an extended significance which seems to breathe
and move in all things. Each individual finds his justification in God;
and it follows that his God must be merciful, just, and good; but, at
the same time, the notions of justice and good are entirely peculiar to
the individual. God is thus a realisation of self, a self who triumphs
and will be justified, even through his misery. The very practice of
virtue is an accusation against the gods, an affirmation that if the
good perish then God is evil.
"I am a maker of myths, one who fashions out of perishable things a
thought which, through its informing truth, exists independently of
time. I think of man as of one who is blind, dumb, and without hands.
Sitting alone in this physical darkness a thought comes to him of what
his life might have been if he had been born whole; and he imagines
himself as a man with hands, a voice, and sight, creating a whole world
out of his pleasure. This other man, who moves like a creature of light
through the dim passages of his mind, becomes, as it were another self;
but through his greater power, a being of joy living eternally, a
strong, triumphant, beautiful figure; and consequently external from,
and different to, the man. And the blind, dumb, handless man, bowing his
head in the darkness, says: 'It is God.'
"For the gods which we have imagined are immortal men, and man a mortal
God. They differ from us in nothing but the gladness and eternity of
their actions. They move delightfully on the wings of the wind; through
the great tumult of waters their feet are swift and sure; their voices
have a music that is like the fierce motion of dancing, yellow flames.
God is simply our own selves, made whole, and removed from the devouring
years. God is our weakness searching after strength, our blindness,
thirsting after light; our desire seeking for a voice, and we worship
him. We worship him because he is ourselves; but we seek him, always, as
if conscious of our own weakness and worthlessness, beyond ourselves, in
the external world, Our God is hidden in the deeps of the sea; in the
shadows of the forests; in that blue heaven beyond the stars. He is very
subtile, moving on stealthy feet, through unknown ways. We seek him, but
we find him not. He is swifter than we are, and when we pursue him he
flies away into the darkness; and when we cry out that we have lost him
he comes close to us again, filling our hearts with a silent sweetness.
So it is ever with us; when we seek to clasp him he eludes us; but in
the silence of night we imagine that he is not very far away and that a
little thing would suffice to allure him to us, to reveal him to sight.