Reason, and Progress. I could not find words and phrases trenchant
enough to express my disdain for sentiments and ideas discountenanced
by Apollo. I persecuted and fiercely attacked all those dark, chthonic,
and mysterious passions of which man is replete to overflowing. I hated
Imperialism, I adored Liberty; I extolled Philosophy, and execrated
Orphic ideas.
"But at last, when I had gone through the fearful experiences of the
Peloponnesian War, with all its supreme glories and its unrelieved
shames, I learned to think otherwise. I learned to see that as man
has two souls in his breast, one celestial or Apollinic, the other
terrestrial or Dionysiac, so there are two gods, and not one, that
govern this sub-lunar world.
"The two are Apollo and Dionysus.
"One rules the world of light, of political power, of scientific
reason, and of harmonious muses. The other is the god of unreason, of
passion, and wild enthusiasm, of that unwieldy Heart of ours which is
fuller of monsters, and also of precious pearls, than is the wide ocean.
"Unless in a given commonwealth the legislator wisely provides for the
cult of both gods, in an orderly and public fashion, Dionysus or Apollo
will take fearful revenge for the neglect they suffer at the hands of
short-sighted statesmen and impudent unbelievers.
"In the course of our Great War we have come into contact and
conflict with many a non-Greek nation, or people whom we rightly term
Barbarians. For while some of them sedulously, perhaps over-zealously,
worship Dionysus, they all ignore or scorn Apollo. The consequence is
that the great god blinds them to their own advantages, robs them of
light and moderation, and they prosper enduringly neither as builders
of States nor as private citizens in their towns.
"For Apollo, like all the gods, is a severe god, and his bow he uses as
unerringly as his lyre.
"It is even so with Dionysus.
"The nation that affects to despise him, speedily falls a wretched
victim to his awful revenge. Instead of worshipping him openly and
in public fashion, such a nation falls into grotesque and absurd
eccentricities, that readily degenerate into poisonous vices,
infesting every organ of the body politic and depriving social
intercourse of all its charms. The Spartans, although they allowed
their women a temporary cult of the god Dionysus, yet did not pay
sufficient attention to him, worshipping mainly Apollo. They had, in
consequence, to do much that tends to de-humanisation, and, while many
admired them, no one loved them.
"It was this, my late and hard-won insight into the nature of man,
which I wanted to articulate in the strongest fashion imaginable in
my drama called the _Bacchæ_. I see with bitterness how little my
commentators grasped the real mystery of my work. If Dionysus was to me
only the symbol of wine and merrymaking, why should I have indulged in
the gratuitous cruelty of punishing the neglect of Bacchus by the awful
murder of a son-king at the hands of his own frenzied mother-queen?
All my Hellenic sentiment of moderation shudders at such a ghastly
exaggeration.
"Neither the myth nor my drama refers to wanton, barbarous bloodshed;
and such scholars as assume archaic human sacrifices in honour of
Dionysus, and 'survivals' thereof in Dionysiac rites, ought to be taken
in hand by the god's own Mænads and suffer for their impudence.
"Human sacrifices indeed, but not such as are made by stabbing people
with knives and bleeding them to physical death. Human sacrifices in
the sense of a terrible loss of human capital, of a de-humanisation
caused by the browbeating of the Heart--this and nothing else was the
meaning of my drama.
"And what country is a fuller commentary on the truth of my _Bacchæ_
than England?
"Here is a country that, had Dionysus been properly worshipped by its
people, might be the happiest, brightest of all nations, a model for
all others, and living like the gods in perpetual bliss--that is,
in perfect equilibrium of thought and action, reason and sentiment,
beauty and moderation. They have done much and successfully for Pythian
Apollo; they have established a solid fabric of Liberty and Imperial
Power; various intellectual pursuits they have cultivated with glory;
and in their pæans to Apollo they have shown exquisite beauties of
expression and feeling.
"But Dionysus they persistently want to neglect, to discredit, to oust.
"Instead of bowing humbly and openly to the god of enthusiasm, of
unreasoned lilt of sentiment and passion, and of the intense delight
in all that lives and throbs and vibrates with pleasure and joy; they
affect to suppress sentiments, to rein in all pleasures, and to cast a
slur on joy.
"And then the god, seeing the scorn with which they treat him, avenges
himself, and blinds and maddens them, as he did King Pentheus of
Thebes, King Perseus of Argos, the daughters of Minyas of Orchomenos,
Proitos of Tiryns, and so many others. The god Dionysus puts into their
hearts absurd thoughts and fantastic prejudices, and some of them spend
millions of money a year to stop the use of the Bacchic gifts in a
country which has long been the least drinking country in the white
world, and as a matter of fact drinks far too little good and noble
wine.
"Others again are made by angry Dionysus to μαἱνεσθαι or rage by adding
to the 250 unofficial yearly fogs of the country, fifty-two official
ones, which they call Sundays.
"Again others, instigated by the enraged god Dionysus, drive people
to furor by their intolerable declamations against alleged cruelties
to animals, while they are themselves full of cruel boredom to human
beings.
"There is, I note with satisfaction, one among them who seems to have
an inkling of the anger of the god, and who has tried to restore, in a
fashion, the cult of Dionysiac festivals.
"He calls his Orphic Association the Salvation Army.
"They imitate not quite unsuccessfully the doings of the legs and feet
of the true worshippers of Dionysus; but the spirit of the true cult is
very far off from them.
"And so Dionysus, ignored and looked down upon by the people of this
country, avenges himself in a manner the upshot and sum of which is not
inadequately represented in my _Bacchæ_.
"And yet the example of the Hellas of Hellas, or of the town of Athens,
which all of them study in their schools, might have taught them better
things.
"When, by about the eighth or seventh century B.C. (as they say), the
cult of Dionysus began to spread in Greece, the various States opposed
it at first with all their power. All these States were Apollinic
contrivances. They were ordered by reasoned constitutions, generally by
one man. In them everything was deliberately arranged for light, order,
good rhythm, clearness, and system. It was all in honour of Apollo,
the city-builder. Naturally the leaders of those States hated Dionysus.
"However, they were soon convinced of the might of the new god, and,
instead of scorning, defying or neglecting him, the wise men at the
head of affairs resolved to adopt him officially. In this they followed
(O Trichas, did they not?) the example of Delphi, which, although
formerly purely Apollinic, now readily opened its holy halls to the new
god Dionysus, so that ever after Delphi was as much Dionysiac as it was
Apollinic.
"At Athens they honoured the new god so deeply and fully that, not
content with the ordinary rural sports and processions given in his
honour, the Athenians created the great Tragedy and Comedy as a fit
cult of the mighty god. The Athenians were paid to go to those wondrous
plays, where their Dionysiac soul could and did find ample food,
and was thereby purged and purified, or, in other words, prevented
from falling into the snares of silly faddists of religious or other
impostures. But for those Dionysiac festivals in addition to the cult
of Apollo, the Greeks would have become the Chinese of Europe.
"Why, then, do not the English do likewise? Why do they not build a
mighty, State-kept theatre, or several of them? Why does their State
try to pension decrepit persons, and not rather help to balance young
minds? Why have they no public _agones_ or competitions in singing,
reciting, and dancing? They do officially, next to nothing for music;
and if one of their _strategi_ or ministers was known to be a good
pianist or violinist, as they call their instruments, they would scorn
him as unworthy of his post. Yet few of such _strategi_ are the equals
of Epaminondas, who excelled both in dancing and playing our harp.
"But while they ignore music--that is, Dionysus' chief gift--they
crouch before the unharmonious clamour of any wretched Orphic
teetotaller, vegetarian, or Sabbatarian.
"This is how Dionysus avenges himself.
"I see how uneasy they are with regard to the great might of the
Germans. Why, then, do they not learn to respect Dionysus, who was the
chief help to the powerful consolidation of the German Empire? German
music kept North and South Germans intimately together; it saved them
from wasting untold sums of money, of time, of force, on arid fads; it
paved the way to political intimacy.
"Had the English not neglected Dionysus, had they sung in his honour
those soul-attaching songs which once learned in youth can never be
forgotten, they might have retained the millions of Irishmen, who have
left their shores, by the heart-melting charm of a common music. From
the lack of such a delicate but enduring tie, the Irish had to be held
by sterile political measures only.
"In music there is infinitely more than a mere tinkling of rhythm;
there is Dionysus in it. Their teachers of politics sneer at Aristotle
because he treats solemnly of music in his 'Politics.' But Aristotle
told me himself that he sneers at them, seeing what absurd socialistic
schemes they discuss because they do not want to steady the souls of
their people by a proper cult of Dionysus.
"Socialism is doomed to the fate of Pentheus at the terrible hands of
Dionysus. Socialism despises Dionysus; the god will speedily drive it
to madness.
"See, friends, we must leave--yonder Apollo is rising; he wants to join
Dionysus, who passed us a little while ago. Should both stay in this
country, and should they both be properly worshipped, we might from
time to time come back again. At present I propose to leave forthwith
for the Castalian springs."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Reprinted, with permission, from the _Nineteenth Century
and After_ for July 1908.]
THE SEVENTH NIGHT
SOCRATES, DIOGENES, AND PLATO ON RELIGION
During the seventh night the gods and heroes met again at Rome in the
Coliseum. The splendid moon hung deep from the sky like a huge lantern,
and shed her mild and plaintive rays over all the immense building.
The immortals, in their light dresses and lighter movements, formed a
gorgeous contrast to the sombre stones of the vast edifice. When all
had taken their seats, Zeus rose in all his majesty and spake:
"Gods and heroes! We have derived much exquisite distraction from the
stories of Alcibiades, Diogenes, Plato, Aristotle, Columbus and Cæsar
about the various features of lay-life in England. If now I call upon
you, Socrates, to tell us something about the religious life of the
English, it is, I need hardly assure you, not in a spirit of mockery
that I do so. What we here think about it all, we know, and need not
utter it. When Athena in her indignation more than once asked me to
hurl my lightning into her former abode at Athens, into the remains of
the Parthenon, I told her something in secret--she knows what,--and did
not touch the holy temple. Even so shall I deal with the temples of
the little ones. We shall listen to you, Socrates, with sympathy and
attention."
Up rose the sturdy figure of the sage. His features had become even
more illuminated with humanity, and thus more divine, and over his face
erred a mild smile. He spoke as follows:
"O Zeus and the other gods and heroes! In my mortal time I frequently
listened to the marvellous stories of Herodotus, and while I never
permitted myself to question his honesty, as later on Plutarch did, yet
I could not help doubting some of his tales about the religions of the
various peoples he describes. Had I then known and learnt what I have
learnt since in England, I should not have felt the slightest doubt
regarding his statements.
"I had been in England for some time before I began to understand
something of their curious religions. For, they have not one religion,
but quite a number of such. At first I thought they had different
religions according to the boundaries of their different counties. I
fancied that such a neat geographical distribution might render the
whole matter more methodic. But I found that that was not the case.
In the same way I tried to find out whether their religions were not
distributed according to their sixty different social classes. This too
did not work. I then tried their professions; after that, their dress;
after that, their income-tax; then, their private games.
"In that way I finally came to reach the true lines of cleavage between
their numerous religions. For, to put it briefly, their religions are
parallel to and dependent on each man's hobbies.
"If, for instance, an Englishman dislikes wine, and thus leans towards
Puritanic ideas, he will be much inclined to adopt the religion of one
Calvin, who taught to enjoy life by killing all its joys.
"Another Englishman, being very partial to tobacco and to smoking, will
have a natural bent towards the High Church, in which much incense is
burnt and much smoke produced.
"Another, being very methodical and punctilious, will regard Methodism
with much sympathy.
"A fourth, being afflicted with great susceptibility to moral shocks,
goes among the Quakers.
"In that way I began to feel my way through the maze of their
religions. The strangest thing, however, was that all these
multifarious believers staunchly maintained that they took their
divergent creeds from one and the same book: from the Bible. In that
respect they reminded me of my whilom adversaries at Athens, the
Sophists, who could prove the pro and con of any given assertion with
equal volubility.
"In order to imbue myself fully with the spirit of their beliefs, I
frequently went to church on Sundays.
"To be quite frank, I do not very well see why in England they call
that day a Sunday. There is no sun in it, and otherwise it resembles
night more than anything else. It ought to be called Un-day. I
concluded that everything arranged for that day was done in order to
bring out its resemblance to night ever so strongly. Thus, lest people
should forego sleep on that drowsy day, the people of England have
introduced thousands of soporifics in the shape of sermons. What other
use that drug may have I could never see.
"To me as an old Hellene it seemed a thing quite beyond comprehension,
why people should go out of their way to salary a person for making
them feel creepy at the same place, and on the same day of the week,
by repeating the same admonitions in nearly the same words hundreds
of times a year. Evidently their lives on the other days of the week
are so spiritless, dull and dry, that they want to get at least on
Sundays some moral hair-friction with spiritual _eau de Cologne_. We
Hellenes never thought of doing such things. It would have struck us as
a personal insult to suppose that we needed such perpetual moralisation
at stated times.
"Hippocrates told me that some constitutions do need the constant use
of purgative waters. But do all people suffer from ethical constipation?
"I could not help smiling at the idea of my preaching like that to the
Athenians of my time. They would have handed me the goblet with hemlock
long before they did do it. Each householder would have considered my
pretensions to moralise them as a slander on his private life. Each of
them tried to make his own house a chapel full of constantly practised
piety, dutifulness, and humanity. What need had he of my sermons? When
he joined the great festivals of the city, it was to do his duty by the
other Athenians, just as he joined the army on land, or the navy on
sea, for the same purpose.
"We knew of no dogmas. We did not think that a man need stake all his
soul on the belief in certain abstract dogmas. If he did not feel
inclined to linger on one story told of Zeus, he might lovingly dwell
on any other of the numberless stories told of him. If some said that
Zeus was born in Crete, others maintained that he was born elsewhere.
It seemed to us immaterial whether this fact or that was or was not
historically exact.
"Not so the little ones. For them religion is viewed as a matter of
documentary evidence, like a bill of sale. They constantly clamour
for 'evidence,' 'proofs' and 'verifications.' Their theologians are
solicitors and barristers, but not religious men. If I had asked
Pericles for 'evidences' of the religious cult practised by his family
or _gens_, the Alcmæonidæ, he would have indignantly told his slaves
to put me out of the house, just as if I had asked him to give me
'evidences' of his wife's virtue.
"We held that Religion is not a matter of 'evidences,' any more than
Life, Health, Sleep, or Dreams stand in need of being 'proved' by
'evidences.' We know that we live, or that we are in good health; we do
not care to listen to long-winded arguments proving it.
"On my rambles in England I met many a clergyman. I remember one who
occupied a high position at Canterbury, and was a very learned man.
I was rather curious to learn what he thought of the religion of the
Greeks. He treated me to the following remarks:
"'The Religion of the Greeks? Why, my dear sir, they had none. The
Greeks were pagans, heathens. They believed in all sorts of immoral
stories about immoral gods and goddesses; they were sunk in wholesale
corruption and rottenness. Their vices smelt to heaven. Did ever any
Greek say that he who smiteth you on your left cheek, ought to be
offered your right cheek too?'
"'No,' I said, continued Socrates, 'we never said that, because we knew
that nobody would ever do it. We did so many noble actions at home
and in war that we never felt the urgency of exaggerating actions in
words, that we never did in fact.'
"'Is that it?' he answered. 'Do you mean to say that we only say such
things, because we never practise them?'
"'Precisely,' said I. '"Incapable of the deed, you try to embrace its
shadow, the word," as Democritus said.'
"'Even if we never practised them, is it not sublime to say them? Is
it not increasing our moral worth when we profess to be gentle and
generous and superhumanly good, not exactly on the day when we make
such professions, but possibly on some subsequent day?'
"'I am afraid,' said I, 'this we used to call the talk of sycophants
and hypocrites.'
"'But for my Religion, sir, I should reply in very offensive terms. We
are no hypocrites. We believe what we say, and all that is required is
to believe. We do not trouble about the application of our beliefs, any
more than the mathematician troubles about the practical application of
his theorems.'
"'This is my very objection to your belief. Religion is not a theorem
but an action, an active sentiment. Our religion was like our language:
all active verbs, all movement and energy, all expression and
sentiment, but no theorems.'
"'But just look at the superstition and downright fiction in all your
mythology! Who has ever seen Apollo, Dionysus, the Graces, Aphrodite,
or any other of your numberless gods? They are all mere phantasies,
meant to amuse, but not to elevate. They belong to the infancy of the
religious sentiment, and are only a more artistic form of Fetishism.'
"'I quite believe you,' I said, 'that you never met the Graces, nor
Aphrodite. Perhaps they avoided you as carefully as you did them.'
"'Sir, this is frivolous. In our Religion there is nothing frivolous.
Allow me to be quite frank with you. It is stated that you confessed to
having felt the touch of some Phryne's beautiful hand on your shoulder
for several days. Sir, this characterises you, and all the heathen
Greeks. My mind staggers at the idea that one of our bishops should
ever confess to such a frivolous sentiment. We too have shoulders; and
there are still alas! Phrynes amongst us. But none of our class would
ever confess to having felt what you admitted to have felt. There you
have precisely the difference between you and us.'
"'You are ashamed of your humanity, and we were not; this is the whole
difference. We were so full of our humanity, that we humanised even our
gods. You are so ashamed of your humanity, that you de-humanise and
supra-humanise your god.'
"'Disgraceful, sir, most disgraceful. Our humanity is _in_ God!'
"'And only in Him; so that none is left in you.'
"At these words," continued Socrates, "the man left me.
"A few days later I was at a place which they call Oxford, and where
dwell and teach many of their Sophists. A young man is there taught to
assume that callous look which is very imposing to Hindoos and negroes.
Nothing surprises him, as nothing stirs him, except the latest shape of
a cuff or a collar. He becomes in due time a curious blend of a monk, a
fop, and a pedant.
"I was led to one of the most renowned of their theologians, whose name
in our language means a coachman. He received me with a curious smile.
Before I could say anything he spoke as follows:
"'I understand, sir, that you pose as the late Socrates. Well,
well--come, come! I must tell you in confidence that I, being a higher
critic, am a perfect adept in the great science of the vanishing trick.
Suppose you bring forward a famous personage of history, and want him
to disappear. Nothing is easier to me. I ask the man first of all very
simple questions, such as:
"'Who asked him to exist?
"'Why did he choose his mother in preference to many other able women?
"'What made him prefer his father to so many other capable men?
"'For what reason did he fix his particular place of birth, let alone
the time of the year, month, week and day where and when he was born?
"'What motive had he in filling the air with his screamings soon after
his birth?
"'Could he give any satisfactory explanation of his various illnesses
as a child? That is, whether he had measles and whooping-cough out of
malice prepense, out of cussedness, or out of any hopes of receiving
more attention?
"'When the man cannot satisfactorily answer these clear and positive
questions, I put him down first as a suspect. Then I proceed to further
questions.
"'If he is said to have won a battle, I ask him why he fought it on
land and not on sea? Or _vice versâ_.
"'Why he did not, while fighting the battle, accurately determine the
degrees of longitude and latitude of the locality of the battle?
"'Or why his chief general's name began with an L and not with an S?
"'If he is said to have been an ancient legislator, I ask him why he
took his laws from his neighbours?
"'What mode of registration and publication of the law he observed?
"'Whether the paper of his code was hand-made, or wood-pulp?
"'Whether the water-marks on it were original or were imitations?
"'Whether he used ink or paint?
"'Whether he wrote them standing or sitting?
"'Whether he used the same pen for writing his nouns and verbs? Or
whether he had different pens for the different parts of speech?
"'Whether he really knew what a noun was? Whether he liked male
terminations, or preferred to revel in female endings? Whether he was
not prejudiced against pronouns, or felt an idiosyncracy against the
letters b, k, and z?
"'If the man cannot satisfactorily answer all these pertinent
questions, I declare him to be a fraud. I tell him straight into his
face that he never existed, and then I revile him as a low character
for pretending an existence that is totally unfounded. Now, as to your
case. You say, you are Socrates. Can you answer any of the questions I
enumerated? Let us take the first question: "Who asked you to exist?"'
"'Athens, I presume,' said Socrates.
"'Athens? To dispose of this answer, we must first of all see whether
Athens existed. I put it to you, sir, can you prove that Athens
existed?'
"'I can; for, it still exists.'