But there is nothing so misleading as generalisation, specially on the
subject of the Greeks. Again and again when we think we have laid hold
of their characteristic view we are confronted with some new aspect of
their life which we cannot fit into harmony with our scheme. There is no
formula which will sum up that versatile and many-sided people. And so,
in the case before us, we have no sooner made what appears to be the
safe and comprehensive statement that the Greeks conceived the relation
of man to the gods mechanically, than we are reminded of quite another
phase of their religion, different from and even antithetic to that with
which we have hitherto been concerned. Nothing, we might be inclined to
say on the basis of what we have at present ascertained, nothing could
be more opposed to the clear anthropomorphic vision of the Greek, than
that conception of a mystic exaltation, so constantly occurring in the
history of religion, whose aim is to transcend the limits of human
personality and pass into direct communion with the divine life. Yet of
some such conception, and of the ritual devised under its influence, we
have undoubted though fragmentary indications in the civilization of the
Greeks. It is mainly in connection with the two gods Apollo and Dionysus
that the phenomena in question occur; gods whose cult was introduced
comparatively late into Greece and who brought with them from the north
something of its formless but pregnant mystery; as though at a point the
chain of guardian deities was broken, and the terror and forces of the
abyss pressed in upon the charmed circle of Hellas. For Apollo, who in
one of his aspects is a figure so typically Hellenic, the ever-young and
beautiful god of music and the arts, was also the Power of prophetic
inspiration, of ecstasy or passing out of oneself. The priestess who
delivered his oracle at Delphi was possessed and mastered by the god.
Maddened by mephitic vapours streaming from a cleft in the rock,
convulsed in every feature and every limb, she delivered in semi-
articulate cries the burden of the divine message. Her own personality,
for the time being, was annihilated; the wall that parts man from god
was swept away; and the Divine rushed in upon the human vessel it
shattered as it filled. This conception of inspiration as a higher form
of madness, possessed of a truer insight than that of sanity, was fully
recognised among the Greeks. "There is a madness," as Plato puts it,
"which is the special gift of heaven, and the source of the chiefest
blessings among men. For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at
Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona when out of their senses have
conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public and private life, but
when in their senses few or none.... And in proportion as prophecy is
higher and more perfect than divination both in name and reality, in the
same proportion, as the ancients testify, is madness superior to a sane
mind, for the one is only of human, but the other of divine origin."
[Footnote: Plato, Phaedrus, 244.--Jowett's translation.]
Here then, in the oracle at Delphi, the centre of the religious life
of the Greeks, we have an explicit affirmation of that element of
mysticism which we might have supposed to be the most alien to their
genius; and the same element re-appears, in a cruder and more barbaric
form, in connection with the cult of Dionysus. He, the god of wine,
was also the god of inspiration; and the ritual with which he was
worshipped was a kind of apotheosis of intoxication. To suppress for a
time the ordinary work-a-day consciousness, with its tedium, its
checks, its balancing of pros and cons, to escape into the directness
and simplicity of mere animal life, and yet to feel in this no
degradation but rather a submission to the divine power, an actual
identification with the deity-such, it would seem, was the intention
of those extraordinary revels of which we have in the "Bacchae" of
Euripides so vivid a description. And to this end no stimulus was
omitted to excite and inspire the imagination and the sense. The
influence of night and torches in solitary woods, intoxicating drinks,
the din of flutes and cymbals on a bass of thunderous drums, dances
convulsing every limb and dazzling eyes and brain, the harking-back,
as it were, to the sympathies and forms of animal life in the dress of
fawnskin, the horns, the snakes twined about the arm, and the
impersonation of those strange half-human creatures who were supposed
to attend upon the god, the satyrs, nymphs, and fauns who formed his
train--all this points to an attempt to escape from the bounds of
ordinary consciousness and pass into some condition conceived, however
confusedly, as one of union with the divine power. And though the
basis, clearly enough, is physical and even bestial, yet the whole
ritual does undoubtedly express, and that with a plastic grace and
beauty that redeems its frank sensuality, that passion to transcend
the limitations of human existence which is at the bottom of the
mystic element in all religions.
But this orgy of the senses was not the only form which the worship of
Dionysus took in Greece. In connection with one of his legends, the myth
of Dionysus Zagreus, we find traces of an esoteric doctrine, taught by
what were known as the orphic sects, very curiously opposed, one would
have said, to the general trend of Greek conceptions. According to the
story, Zagreus was the son of Zeus and Persephone. Hera, in her
jealousy, sent the Titans to destroy him; after a struggle, they managed
to kill him, cut him up and devoured all but the heart, which was saved
by Athene and carried to Zeus. Zeus swallowed it, and produced therefrom
a second Dionysus. The Titans he destroyed by lightning, and from their
ashes created Man. Man is thus composed of two elements, one bad, the
Titanic, the other good, the Dionysiac; the latter being derived from
the body of Dionysus, which the Titans had devoured. This fundamental
dualism, according to the doctrine founded on the myth, is the perpetual
tragedy of man's existence; and his perpetual struggle is to purify
himself of the Titanic element. The process extends over many
incarnations, but an ultimate deliverance is promised by the aid of the
redeemer Dionysus Lysius.
The belief thus briefly described was not part of the popular religion
of the Greeks, but it was a normal growth of their consciousness, and it
is mentioned here as a further indication that even in what we call the
classical age there were not wanting traces of the more mystic and
spiritual side of religion. Here, in the tenets of these orphic sects,
we have the doctrine of "original sin," the conception of life as a
struggle between two opposing principles, and the promise of an ultimate
redemption by the help of the divine power. And if this be taken in
connection with the universal and popular belief in inspiration as
possession by the god, we shall see that our original statement that the
relation of man to the gods was mechanical and external in the Greek
conception, must at least be so far modified that it must be taken only
as an expression of the central or dominant point of view, not as
excluding other and even contradictory standpoints.
Still, broadly speaking and admitting the limitations, the statement may
stand. If the Greek popular religion be compared with that of the
Christian world, the great distinction certainly emerges, that in the
one the relation of God to man is conceived as mechanical and external,
in the other as inward and spiritual. The point has been sufficiently
illustrated, and we may turn to another division of our subject.