is absolutely _repulsive_. I must first briefly premise that
the Dionysiac mystery cult was not sectarian. It was orthodox,
believing in the plurality and the profligacy of the gods. Its
adherents had no more idea of morality or purity than other
Greeks. Its rites were indecent. The so-called “purification
rites,” including regulations regarding continence, were
simply _training rules_ preparatory to their hideous orgies.
The essential rite of the cult was practised by the Maenads
or Bacchantes. They tore to pieces live animals (and at one
time human beings) and devoured their raw, quivering flesh.
As stated above, these horrible women are Professor Murray’s
“Saints.” He now proceeds to _draw an analogy between their
loathsome god Dionysus and Jesus Christ_! Thus Dionysus is born
of God (Zeus) and a human mother. He is the “twice-born”—having
been hidden in Zeus’s thigh after birth! He “_comes to his
own_ people of Thebes, _and—his own receive him not_.”
Again “It seemed to Euripides in that favourite metaphor of
his, which was always a little more than a metaphor, that
a _God had been rejected by the world_ that he came from.”
Dionysus “_gives his Wine to all men_.... It is a mysticism
which includes democracy, as it includes _the love of your
neighbour_.” Dionysus “_has given man Wine, which is his Blood
and a religious symbol_.” In the translation Dionysus is called
“_God’s son_” and even “_God’s true son_.” Reading this and
such statements as Miss Jane Harrison’s (see p. 292, n.), one
stands amazed. Apparently this fanatical enthusiasm destroys
the critical faculties, so that the enthusiast becomes utterly
incapable of appreciating the beauty and value of Our Lord’s
ethical teaching and its exemplification in His life.
For my last illustration of how enthusiasm affects our leading
classical authorities (and, therefore, leads to _perversion of
the truth_) I take Mr. A. E. Zimmern’s _Greek Commonwealth_.
This, like Mr. Livingstone’s work, is a very excellent book,
which should be in all libraries.
Mr. Zimmern quotes and _definitely endorses_ the well-known
statement in Galton’s _Hereditary Genius_ (1869), which is as
follows:—“The average ability of the Athenian race is, _on
the lowest possible estimate_, very nearly two grades higher
than our own, that is, _about as much as our race is above
that of the African Negro_.” (The italics are mine.) Here I
have happened by chance[70] upon an excellent illustration of
classical enthusiasm, which is worth while dwelling upon at
some length. In the first place Galton’s statement is perhaps
the most absurd utterance ever made by an important thinker; in
the second place _it appears to have been accepted by English
and European authorities for nearly half a century_.
Galton bases his argument on the number of great men produced
by a nation in proportion to its population. He states that
between 530 and 430 B.C. the Athenian Greeks produced fourteen
highly illustrious men:—Themistocles, Miltiades, Aristides,
Cimon, and Pericles (statesmen and commanders), Thucydides,
Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato (literary and scientific men),
Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes (poets),
and Pheidias (sculptor). I take the minor objections to his
statement first.
He estimates the population of free-born Greeks in Attica at
90,000. In this instance he was misled by the authorities of
his time and is not to blame; _but I take Mr. Zimmern’s own
figures, as he endorses Galton’s statement_. The 90,000 should
have been, according to Mr. Zimmern’s more correct figures,
180,000 to 200,000. _This alone cuts down Galton’s estimate
of the “average ability” of the Greeks to at least one-half._
Galton also excludes the resident aliens who, according to him,
numbered 40,000, but according to Mr. Zimmern 96,000. Yet both
these and the outside aliens must be considered, for there
were intermarriages. Themistocles and Cimon had alien mothers,
Thucydides also probably had an alien mother, or at any rate
was partly of Thracian descent, and there would be _some_
ground for the charge of usurping citizenship repeatedly made
by Cleon against Aristophanes. Galton also takes no account of
the slaves, the number of whom he estimates at 400,000, but
Zimmern at about 112,000. These cannot be entirely omitted when
we consider the life of the Greek women and the habits of the
men. It should be remembered that the slaves were often Greeks
of other States and also by reason of the practice of exposing
children some would be Athenians and even of the best families
(Plato’s _Laws_, 930, deals with children of slaves and Greek
men and women). However, on these figures, it will be seen that
Galton’s estimate has to be enormously reduced.
Next, the _greatest_ of all the names in his list, Plato, has
to be _struck out_. There can be no reasonable doubt that he
was not born until 428 or 427 B.C. (This appears to have been
well recognised in 1869 and it is unaccountable that Galton
and his reviewers should not have known it.) However, there is
_some_ evidence that he was born in 430, and let us assume that
this is so. But, if we are to include in the 100 (or rather
101) years everyone who _is born_ or _died_ in that time,
we are actually taking a period of 200, not 100, years, and
_doubling_ the proper estimate! Besides Plato, I may mention
that Aristophanes and Xenophon could have been only about
fourteen years of age in 430, Thucydides had not then begun
to write, and of the eighteen plays extant of Euripides two
only were written before 430. Here again is another enormous
reduction of Galton’s estimate.
Again let us take Galton’s opinion of the ability of these
fourteen men. It is amazingly high. It will be seen that there
are only _two grades_ between ourselves and the African negro.
Again, in Galton’s table, “eminent men” are _two grades_ above
“the mass of men who obtain the ordinary prizes of life.” _He
now places the whole of these fourteen Greeks two grades above
the eminent men!_ To what starry height he means to raise them,
it is impossible to say, for the whole statement is exceedingly
vague; but he tells us that two of the fourteen, Socrates and
Pheidias, _stand alone as the greatest men that ever lived_.
It is clear then that the fourteen Greeks have to be placed at
a tremendous height in our estimation. It is impossible here to
take each man and discuss his ability, but let us inquire what
qualifications Galton had _as a critic_. We turn to his list
of great modern English and European literary men. Although
he goes back as far as the Fifteenth Century and his list
comprises _only fifty-two_ writers, he finds room among them
for such names as John Aikin and Maria Edgeworth! Again his
ten great English poets are Milton, Byron, Chaucer, _Milman_,
Cowper, _Dibdin_(!), Dryden, _Hook_, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.
(Some names would no doubt be omitted because they did not
throw light on questions of heredity, but these lists in any
case are highly absurd.)
We need not greatly prolong this part of the discussion. We
might ask, however, what ground had Galton, for example, to
place such men as Miltiades, Aristides, or Cimon even _on an
equality with_, say, Cæsar, Alexander, or Marlborough. How can
he class Xenophon as even _equal_ to our great writers? It
is the interesting _facts_ he tells us of, not his literary
ability, that makes this somewhat monotonous writer so very
interesting. (The important point to remember is that Greek
literature has a very special interest and value for us, quite
apart from its great intrinsic _literary_ value. Taking De
Quincey’s classification, see p. 227, it is both “literature of
power” and “literature of knowledge.”)
Now take another point which I might illustrate from Galton’s
own pages. He tells us (in another connection) that about sixty
years before the time he is writing (1869) there were Senior
Wranglers in Cambridge who also obtained first classes in the
Classical Tripos—and even at a later date men could take high
rank in both departments. Is it then to be argued that the
earlier men were the greater? Not so, but, as Galton says,
knowledge had become so far advanced that it was no longer
possible for a man to gain such a distinction in more than
one of the two subjects. Here we have the point—the world of
knowledge and activity is infinitely wider to-day than when it
formed the subject of Greek speculation. Their great men were
very original thinkers—but _in a very few subjects_. Moreover,
they had no books to read, no foreign languages to learn. Even
their social and political life was far less complicated and
involved than our own.
Again, where we speak of “average ability,” it is not correct
to compare large populous countries, where great talents are
often submerged (see Gray’s “Elegy”) with smaller communities
that afford far ampler scope. Take my own State, South
Australia, with its huge territory and a population of under
half a million, less than that of one of the larger English
towns. We have our Premier, Government, Parliament, Town
Councils, Heads of Departments, University, schools, judges,
lawyers, journalists and literary men, financiers, merchants,
men who design and construct railways, irrigation and other
important works, mining men, heads of institutions and so
on—which means a large number of men of ability and resource
in all departments of life. If we compare ourselves with an
average half-million of Englishmen, how great our superiority
would apparently be! And yet, we know that we are not actually
more capable—our ability has been simply brought into play.
Mr. W. M. Hughes might himself have been a “flower to blush
unseen,” if he had not emigrated to Australia.
We have so far dealt with minor matters, which have
nevertheless reduced Galton’s arithmetical estimate by, say,
75 per cent. at the very least. Let us now take the one great
misrepresentation that must have immediately flashed upon the
minds of all reviewers of Galton’s book, if they had not been
blinded by classical enthusiasm. It is truly remarkable that
not a single one of them seems to have called attention to the
obvious fact that Galton takes the one great Athenian period,
_as though it were an average period in their history_! From
Homer’s time to the Fifth Century, B.C., would probably be
about as long as from the Norman Conquest to the present time,
or from King Alfred to Shakespeare—and there are again the many
centuries that followed. Is the “average ability” of the Greeks
during hundreds or thousands of years to be estimated on their
one most brilliant period? The question needs no discussion.
Galton might in the same way have taken our Elizabethan period
when London had a population of 150,000, and Great Britain of
about three millions—and proved _that our own ancestors_ were
as far above ourselves as we are above the negro.[71]
Mr. C. T. Whiting, of the Adelaide Public Library, knowing
how my time was limited, very kindly volunteered to make
an extensive search for references to Galton’s statement
in such of the literature of the time as is available in
Adelaide. In addition to a number of books, he has searched
through _thirty-eight_ journals. He finds reviews of Galton’s
book in the following:—_Athenæum_, _British Quarterly_,
_Saturday Review_, _Edinburgh Review_, _Fortnightly Review_,
_Chambers’ Journal_, _Journal of Anthropology_, _Atlantic
Monthly_, _Frazer’s Magazine_, _Nature_, _Times_, _and
Westminster Review_. The first seven do not refer at all to
the statement—they apparently accept it as a matter of course.
Of the last five _Frazer’s_ mentions the statement, and says
vaguely that the chapter in which it is contained “offers
several vulnerable points to the critic;” the _Westminster_
states the fact without taking any exception to it; the
_Atlantic Monthly_ raises the question whether Miltiades,
Aristides, Cimon, and Xenophon were so very illustrious, and
enters into an argument on Galton’s figures; the _Times_
considers that we have had other men in different fields of
human effort, who could be named with Socrates and Pheidias,
and lays stress on the enormous increase of knowledge and
activity in modern life; in _Nature_ A. R. Wallace, misreading
Galton as referring only to the age of Pericles[72] admits the
truth of the statement as applied to the Athenians of that
time. None of them refer to the fact that Galton takes the most
brilliant period of Greek history as a normal period—and the
arguments, taken together, amount to very little. As regards
the twenty-six journals which appear to have taken no notice
of so startling a statement in an important book, the fact
seems to indicate that to the writers for those journals
the statement contained nothing of a remarkable or dubious
character! (Even _Punch_ missed the chance of an amusing
cartoon!)
It may be objected that the reviewers of the book would not
be classical men. But _first_ it must be remembered that the
writers of 1869 would practically all have had a classical
education and _secondly_ it needed no special classical
knowledge to see the absurdity of the statement. Every one
without exception would know, for example, that the period
taken by Galton was the one great Greek period. The statement
must also have excited interest on all sides. I myself remember
how it was talked of when I was a boy in Melbourne, and I have
heard it repeated as an acknowledged fact up to the present
time—and, therefore, comment would have been expected _in
every direction_. But apparently the statement was generally
accepted. Mr. Whiting finds that in 1892, twenty-three years
after, Galton calmly repeated the statement word for word,
_without reference to any criticisms_. Again we find Mr.
Zimmern accepting it as a matter of course in his _second_
edition in 1915. As it was in his first edition, which would be
reviewed in the classical journals, it must presumably have met
with no adverse comments.
But we have to go even further than this. Galton’s was one
of those important books that are studied by _all Europe_.
Seeing that he makes no mention of adverse criticism in his
second edition, and Mr. Zimmern sees no reason to qualify the
statement, it is fair to assume that no serious objection has
been made in England or Europe during nearly half a century.
So amazingly does classical enthusiasm pervade the thought of
the world! I do not think I need say anything further on this
subject.[73]
Mr. Zimmern heads one of his chapters “Happiness or _the
Rule of Love_,” the “Rule of Love” being his translation of
εὐδαιμονία! This chapter is occupied exclusively by the famous
Funeral Speech of Pericles. I invite the reader to look through
that terribly hard speech, and see how much _love_ it contains!
Again to another chapter the heading is “Gentleness or the Rule
of Religion,” followed by two quotations which are evidently
intended to be read as parallel passages:
στέργοι δέ με σωφροσύνα
δώρημα κάλλιστον θεῶν.[74]—Eur. _Medea_, 638.
Give unto us made lowly wise
The spirit of self-sacrifice.—Wordsworth.
Apart from the question whether the proud Greek could ever
by any possibility have become “lowly wise,” the word
σωφροσύνη “temperance,” “moderation”—or perhaps better still,
“commonsense”—becomes not only a “Rule of _Religion_” but even
the highest conception of Christianity, self-sacrifice. It is
very extraordinary. Imagine the _Greeks_—as we know them, and
as Mr. Zimmern knows them—having the faintest conception of
what we mean by self-sacrifice! It reminds one very much of
Humpty Dumpty in _Through the Looking Glass_: “When _I_ use a
word” (εὐδαιμονία or σωφροσύνη) “it means just what I choose it
to mean—neither more nor less.”
As this is my last note I am giving myself great latitude, but
I must not prolong it into a treatise. I shall, as briefly
as I can, refer to only one other matter, the Greek sense of
beauty. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that we are
given to believe that in this respect the Greeks are exalted
high as gods above the rest of mankind. What is the fact?
_They saw beauty in only one natural object, the human body._
In a land of clear skies, wonderful sunsets, starry nights,
remarkable for its ranges of mountains and extent of sea-coast,
they were (with some tiny exceptions not worth mentioning)
absolutely blind to any beauty in inanimate nature. Nor did any
bird or beast or insect, tree or flower appeal to them to any
appreciable extent as a thing of beauty. They admired only what
was useful or added to their comfort—the laden fruit tree, the
shady grove, the clear spring, the soft water-meadows.
Various explanations have been given for the Greek failure to
appreciate beauty in nature. Ruskin’s theory is most often
quoted, that the Greeks were _so familiar_ with beautiful
scenes that they could not appreciate them. In the first place
he forgot that it was not always the bright tourist-season in
Greece; they had their dark and wintry times. In the second
place, I have lived all my life in the southern part of
Australia, which has much the same climate as Greece, and I
do not think there are any greater lovers of nature than the
Australians.
Is not the love of nature, as it came later,[75] also _higher_
than love of the human form (omitting that facial expression
which is an index of the soul)? Our ideals of human beauty
appear to be purely _relative_ and depend on our surroundings,
while the same beauty in nature appeals to the most diverse
nations. Take for example the Japanese and Dutch artists who
both loved nature much as we do—yet they admired very different
types of the human figure. I understand that the Japanese,
originally at least, regarded with positive disgust our tall
English beauties.
The beauty the Greeks saw in one object only, the human body,
they reproduced in statues which have never been equalled in
grace and charm, and are the admiration of the world. Their
pure white marble statues and temples seem to be always present
in our minds and to transfigure our conceptions of the
Greeks. We unconsciously picture them as a race of glorious
men and beautiful women moving in a city of marble.[76] We
find ourselves forgetting what we know of their character and
habits—and also forgetting the fact that both statues and
temples were _painted_.
With the disappearance of colour through the effect of time,
the flesh effect has disappeared from their statues, and
the chaste white marble gives an idealized and spiritual
conception of the utmost purity. As stated before, this would
be a conception quite alien to the Greek mind, which saw no
beauty in physical purity. If, when we stand in admiring
awe before that calm, majestic and exceedingly graceful and
beautiful Venus of Milo, we imagine her as the Greeks saw
her, how different is the picture! To begin with, the Greeks
had little sense of colour, as is seen from their limited
colour-vocabulary. For example, one word _porphureos_ was
used for dark-purple, red, rose, sea-blue, violet, and other
shades even to a shimmery white. Their colours were harsh,
glaring, and put together in shockingly bad taste (from our
point of view). In temples and sculpture reds and blues were
the main colours used. In the Venus of Milo we must, therefore,
picture the hair painted red or red-brown, the lips a hard
red, eyebrows black, the eyes red or red-brown with black
pupils, the dress with borders and patterns of crude reds and
greens or reds and blues. As regards the flesh surfaces, we
know they were wax-polished, but there is no literary record
or actual trace of any tinting or colouring. The effect of the
white marble would have been so horrible to us against the
living eyes and face, that Mr. Kaines Smith (being one of our
enthusiasts) suggests that the artist “might quite well” have
used some colouring matter for the nude parts of the figure!
We must further picture the statue standing in a temple, which
must of course also have been painted. The structure would
have its borders generally of harsh reds and blues, and the
decorative sculpture of the pediments, metopes and friezes
would be painted in most inconceivable colours. Thus in the
metope relief of the slaying of the Hydra at Olympia, the hydra
is blue, the background red, and the hair, lips, and eyes of
Hercules are coloured. I might go on to the Elgin marbles, the
greatest sculptures that we possess in the world, and show
them gorgeous in bronze and colour. (Armour, horse-trappings,
etc., were attached to the marble in bronze or other metal.)
The two masterpieces of Pheidias, forty and sixty feet high
respectively, which have not survived to us, were much more
admired by the Greeks than the sculptures of the Parthenon.
These were in barbaric ivory and gold, with the same living
eyes, red lips, and so on. The fact is that the Greek, “builded
better than he knew.” He unintentionally produced objects
whose _spiritual_ beauty he was incapable of appreciating and,
therefore, he gave them a grosser form that appealed to his own
primitive sensual nature.
(Apart from this the Greek sculptor was very limited by the
paucity of his subjects. How tiresome are the never-ending
Centaurs and Amazons!)[77]
As regards Greek architecture, its ornament is a question of
sculpture, its structure is the result of intellect combined
with a certain amount of design due to their artistic sense of
proportion. The Greeks did great service to humanity in working
out the principles of building—but, thereafter, there was no
scope for originality. Apart from its sculptural ornament,
nothing more monotonous could well be imagined than a series of
Greek temples, all of the same type and subject to definite,
rigid rules of measurement.[78]