powers are still in many cases masters over us, and we lie like babes
in the lap of their strength and vastness. It does not appear clear why
we should consider the worship of that which is more highly organized,
and which comes half-way to intelligence, as essentially more shameful
than the worship of inferior organizations without life or instinct
of any kind. If it be said that, by its negations, inanimate Nature
becomes a fitter shrine of deity than the brutes, the same argument
applied to the brutes, compared with man, might equally avail to give
claims to brute-worship as compared with anthropophuism, against which,
notwithstanding, nature summarily revolts.
SECT. VIII.
_The Morals of the Homeric Age._
We have now considered at some length the state and tendencies of
religion, both objective and subjective, among the Greeks of the heroic
age: let us proceed to attempt a sketch of their morality; which rested
in part upon acknowledged relations to the Olympian deities, but which,
it is clear, had likewise other supports and sanctions.
In general outline it may be thus summed up. An high spirited,
energetic, adventurous, and daring people, they show themselves prone
to acts of hasty violence, and their splendid courage occasionally even
degenerates, under the influence of strong passion, into ferocity,
while their acuteness and sagacity sometimes, though more rarely, take
a decided tinge of cunning. Yet they are neither selfish, cruel, nor
implacable. At the same time, self-command is scarcely less conspicuous
among them than strong, and deep, and quick emotion. They are in the
main a people of warm affections and high honour, commonly tender,
never morbid: they respect the weak and the helpless; they hold
authority in reverence; domestic purity too is cherished and esteemed
among them more than elsewhere, and they have not yet fallen into the
depths of sensual excess.
The Greek thanks the gods in his prosperity; witness Laertes. In his
adversity he appeals to them for aid; or, if he is discontented, he
complains of them; for he harbours no concealed dissatisfaction. Ready
enough to take from those who have, he is at least as ready to give to
those who need. He represents to the life the sentiment which another
great master of manners has given to his Duke of Argyle, in the ‘Heart
of Midlothian;’ ‘It is our Highland privilege to take from all what
_we_ want, and to give to all what _they_ want[783].’ Distinctions
of class are recognised, but they are mild and genial: there is no
arrogance on the one side, nor any servility on the other. Reverence is
paid to those in authority; and yet the Greek thinks in the spirit, and
moves in the sphere, of habitual freedom. Over and above his warmth and
tenacity in domestic affections, he prizes highly those other special
relations between man and man, which mitigate and restrain the law of
force in societies as yet imperfectly organized. He thoroughly admires
the intelligence displayed in stratagem; whether among the resources of
self-defence, or by way of jest upon a friend, or for the hurt or ruin
of an enemy; but life in a mask he cannot away with, and holds it a
prime article of his creed, that the tongue should habitually represent
the man[784].
[783] Scott’s Novels and Tales, 8vo Ed., x. 238.
[784] Il. ix. 312.
~_The moral sense in the heroic age._~
Before proceeding, however, to examine the morality of the Greek heroic
age, as to its particular sanctions, or in any of its applications to
the regulation of human conduct, we are met by a preliminary question:
had the Greeks any idea of a fixed and substantive rule of morals at
all? were they believers in goodness as apart from strength? did they
recognise a law of right as between man and man, or were their notions
of relative duty entirely founded on a more or less far-sighted
self-love, and on a prudential calculation of the consequences which
would follow to society, and to each individual, if the rights of
others were to be held in universal or in general disregard?
When we consider how hard it is to keep the moral standard high, even
after religion has placed before our view a Divine pattern for man to
follow, and how among the Greeks religion, first corrupted itself, had
already begun to pour out its own corruption upon morals, we shall not
venture to pitch our expectations very high: optimism and pessimism are
here alike out of place: we want the clear, dispassionate, and direct
discernment of the facts. And when we observe how, down to this day,
the epithets which ought to designate virtue only, and in particular
the word _good_, tend irresistibly to attach themselves to other gifts,
such as genius, rank, wealth, skill, and power, we must not hastily
conclude, from finding a similar use in Homer, that there was no idea
or standard of goodness except that belonging to preeminence in the
particular kind, according to which a clever thief is a good thief;
good, that is, by doing effectually what he professes to do, or good,
like the unjust steward of the parable, in respect of the intelligence
he displays, though evil in respect of the direction which he gives to
it[785].
[785] Luke xvi. 1-9.
Homer, in speaking of different classes of society, uses the line[786],
[786] Od. xv. 323.
οἷά τε τοῖς ἀγαθοῖσι παραδρώωσι χέρηες.
But after all we can translate this, without much verbal change, or any
departure from our own idiom, ‘such services as the lower orders render
to good society,’ or ‘to the better classes.’
Mr. Grote[787] says, that ‘the primitive import’ of the words ἀγαθὸς,
ἐσθλὸς, and κακὸς relates ‘to power and not to worth;’ and that the
ethical meaning of them is a later growth, which ‘hardly appears until
the discussions raised by Socrates, and prosecuted by his disciples.’
I ask permission to protest against whatever savours of the idea that
any Socrates whatever was the patentee of that sentiment of right and
wrong, which is the most precious part of the patrimony of mankind. The
movement of Greek morality with the lapse of time was chiefly downward,
and not upward. It is admitted, that what we may call the dynamical
sense of the epithets has held its ground in later times along with
their ethical signification: the important question to be determined
is, whether the latter signification was an improvement introduced by
civilization into the code of barbarism, or whether it indicates a
principle of human nature on its better, which is also its weaker side,
and one which we see, all along the course of history, struggling to
assert itself against the tyrannous invasion of other propensities and
powers.
[787] Grote’s Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 88 n.
The word ἐσθλὸς is found in combination with what is absolutely
vicious, in the remarkable case of Autolycus:
μητρὸς ἑῆς πατέρ’ ἐσθλὸν, ὃς ἀνθρώπους ἐκέκαστο
κλεπτοσύνῃ θ’ ὅρκῳ τε[788].
[788] Od. xix. 395.
But the meaning of ἐσθλὸς appears to be, one who excels; the
application of it to Autolycus is not at all unlike the commendation of
the unjust steward; and the epithet did not in the later Greek acquire
any essentially different force, or any exclusive appropriation to
moral excellence. Its use in Homer may be compared with his application
of δῖα to Clytemnestra. Yet it leans peculiarly to moral excellence.
For the ἀμύμων is opposed to the ἀπηνὴς, who is certainly a moral
delinquent; and the highest honour of the ἀμύμων is, that men proclaim
him ἐσθλός (Od. xix. 329-34).
Again, with respect to χείρων and its opposite κρείσσων, with other
words similar to both. In searching for the signs of a standard in its
own nature absolute, we can expect little from a class of terms, which
by their very structure bear witness that they are simply comparative.
Especially the etymology of χείρων, directing us to the word χεὶρ as
its root, exhibits force as its most commanding and essential idea.
Yet, when the aristocracy of Ithaca are called (Od. xxi. 325) πολὺ
χείρονες ἄνδρες, must we not admit that even in this word there inheres
a strong moral element?
~_Use of the words ἀγαθὸς and κακός._~
But as to the words ἀγαθὸς and κακὸς, the case is far more clear: and
here I ask, can it be shown that Homer ever applies the word ἀγαθὸς to
that which is morally bad? or the word κακὸς to that which is morally
good? If it can, _cadit quæstio_; if it cannot, then we have advanced
a considerable way in proving the ethical signification. For it is on
all hands admitted, that besides their proper sense, ἀγαθὸς and κακὸς,
like our _good_ and _bad_, have a derivative meaning, in which they
are employed to denote what is agreeable, or what is preeminent in its
kind, and the reverse respectively; qualities which bear an analogy
to goodness on the one hand, and to badness on the other, according
to the universal testimony of human speech. Now, if the use of this
derivative sense stops short, in the case of ἀγαθὸς, when it comes to
border on what is positively bad, and in the case of κακὸς, when it
comes to touch upon what is positively good, there must be a reason
for the abrupt cessation, at that point, of the function of the words;
and it can be none other than that nature herself revolts from a
contradiction in terms; as we never say a good villain, or a bad saint.
But the contradiction would not exist, unless the ethical sense were
inherent in the words.
Now, I venture to state, with as much confidence as can well exist in
the case of a negative embracing such a number of instances, that we do
find this limitation throughout the poems of Homer, in the secondary
use both of ἀγαθὸς and of κακός. In one passage there is at first sight
some obscurity in the meaning of the latter term, κακὸς δ’ αἰδοῖος
ἀλήτης[789]. Here however the context plainly shows it to be, ‘it will
not do for a mendicant to be shy.’
[789] Od. xvii. 578.
But the positive sense of both words can be clearly and indisputably
made out from a number of passages, of which I will quote a portion.
Although it is true, that in Homer the word ἀγαθὸς very often refers
more to the ideas of particular excellences and of power, than to that
of moral worth; yet in some passages we find a latent bias, as it were,
towards the last named idea, and in others we have a clear and full
expression of it.
As an example of the first, I quote the description of Agamemnon[790],
ἀμφότερον, βασιλεύς τ’ ἀγαθὸς κρατερός τ’ αἰχμητής, ‘A good king, and
a brave warrior.’ Now the word ἀγαθὸς here evidently has a special
regard to the moral element. Homer surely intends to describe, by
the epithets he applies to each of the two substantives, a special
excellence suitable to each character respectively. The goodness, so
to speak, of a warrior consisted in bravery: the goodness of a king,
partly indeed in prudence, but chiefly in justice, in mildness, and in
liberality. If ἀγαθὸς in this place meant merely ‘good in the virtue of
its kind,’ then it might as well stand with αἰχμητής as with βασιλεὺς,
and therefore the antithesis would be a bad and pointless one.
[790] Il. iii. 179.
In other cases the moral colouring of the term is full and indubitable.
Bellerophon[791], when he resists the seduction of the wife of Prœtus,
is ἀγαθὰ φρονέων. Jupiter, when incensed, is described by Minerva
thus, φρεσὶ μαίνεται οὐκ ἀγαθῇσιν[792]. To follow good advice is ὁ
δὲ πείσεται εἰς ἀγαθόν περ[793]. A man who is ἀγαθὸς καὶ ἐχέφρων,
is also the one who must necessarily have regard and affection for
his wife[794]. And Clytemnestra, before she was corrupted, had good
dispositions; φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσιν[795].
[791] Il. vi. 162.
[792] Il. viii. 360.
[793] Il. xi. 788.
[794] Il. ix. 341.
[795] Od. iii. 266.
The word κακὸς again, in a majority of cases, refers to defect or
calamity in things, or to poltroonery, or other baseness of that kind,
in persons: but it directly indicates moral badness in such passages
as the following. Leiodes pleads that he tried to keep the Suitors
from doing wrong, κακῶν ἄπο χεῖρας ἔχεσθαι[796]. Telemachus warns the
Suitors that the gods will turn upon them in wrath, ἀγασσάμενοι κακὰ
ἔργα[797]. Jupiter views such deeds with indignation, νεμεσσᾷται κακὰ
ἔργα[798]. And Juno reproaches Apollo for giving countenance to the
Trojans, as κακῶν ἕταρ’ αἰὲν ἄπιστε, where our finding faithlessness in
the immediate context, points to moral depravity as the signification
of the word κακῶν[799].
[796] Od. xxii. 316.
[797] Od. ii. 67.
[798] Od. xiv. 284.
[799] Il. xxiv. 63.
~_Use of the word δίκαιος._~
In the word δίκαιος, however, we have an instance of an epithet never
employed except in order to signify a moral or a religious idea. Like
the word _righteous_ among ourselves, it is derived from a source which
would make it immediately designate duty as between man and man, and
also as it arises out of civil relations. But it is applied in Homer to
both the great branches of duty. And surely there cannot be a stronger
proof of the existence of definite moral ideas among a people, than the
very fact that they employ a word founded on the observance of relative
rights to describe also the religious character. It is when religion
and morality are torn asunder, that the existence of moral ideas is
endangered.
Minerva, in the form of Mentor, is pleased with Telemachus for handing
the cup first to her at the festival in Pylos, because it is a tribute
of reverence to superior age. For this he is called πεπνυμένος
ἀνὴρ[800] δίκαιος, and the idea is that of relative duty. Again, when
she advises him for a while to let the Suitors alone, it is ἐπεὶ οὔτι
νοήμονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι[801]; and they do not know the retribution that
hangs over them. In this case the meaning must be either ‘just’ or
‘pious.’
[800] Od. iii. 52.
[801] Od. ii. 282.
In another case, where the very same phrase is employed, δίκαιος can
only mean ‘pious.’ ‘Jupiter,’ says Nestor, ‘ordained calamities for the
Greeks on their return, because they were not all either intelligent or
righteous[802]:
[802] Od. iii. 132-6.
ἐπεὶ οὔτι νοήμονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι
πάντες ἔσαν.
‘Wherefore many of them perished’ (he continues) ‘through the wrath of
Minerva, who set the two Atridæ at variance.’ Now here it appears that
the original offence of the Greeks could only have consisted in the
omission of the usual sacrifices, while the passage has no reference
whatever to relative duties: δίκαιος therefore must refer simply to
duty towards the gods. And, however imperfect may be that notion of
divine duty which made it consist in sacrifice wholly or mainly, yet
plainly the neglect to sacrifice was for the Greeks of the heroic age
a moral offence, although it consisted only in the breach of a law
of the class termed positive. A passage yet more fatally adverse to
the position of Mr. Grote is, I think, that where Homer describes the
Ἄβιοι[803] as δικαιότατοι ἀνθρώπων. For there he appears to be speaking
of persons clearly less advanced in civilization, more rude, less
wealthy and intelligent, than the Greeks; and yet he applies to them an
epithet which proclaims them to have been, in his opinion, either the
most just, or the most pious of mankind.
[803] Il. xiii. 6.
~_Religion and morals not dissociated._~
Moreover, it does not appear that anywhere among the Greeks were
religion and morals as yet effectually dissociated. It is true that
the language of mere mythology treats the religious character of man
as established by bounty in sacrifice. But this is one of the points,
and a very vital one, in which the theistic system of the Greeks was
worse than their ethical instinct, and became, therefore, a positive
source of corruption. While the Scriptures of the Old Testament rigidly
controlled the propensity of man to substitute perfunctory observances
for the service of the heart, by saying, ‘to obey is better than
sacrifice,’ the Jupiter of the Greeks tells them, that to sacrifice
is better than to obey. And it is only in the mouth of a traditive
deity that we find any more elevated sentiment. To a certain extent,
indeed, yet not effectually, this representation may be qualified, if
we recollect that in these passages the deities of Olympus, conceived
according to the laws of anthropophuism, when they have occasion to
speak of human piety, speak of it in that aspect under which it was
peculiarly beneficial to themselves, but do not on that account intend
wholly to set aside its other parts, while they undoubtedly disturb
the scale of relative importance in the moral order.
But man, the handiwork of God, was less depraved than the idols which
were the handiwork of man. Among the Greeks, the pious man is nowhere
separated from the just or moral man. Not in words, for the question
of a stranger always is, whether men are, on the one hand, insolent,
fierce, _and_ unrighteous, or, on the other, hospitable _and_ pious to
the gods[804];
[804] Od. vi. 120.
ἦ ῥ’ οἵγ’ ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄγριοι οὐδὲ δίκαιοι,
ἠὲ φιλόξεινοι, καί σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής;
Nor are they in any instance separated in deeds. We hear of no
religious observances by the Suitors in Ithaca; but Nestor and Menelaus
are both found engaged in them. The wicked Ægisthus, having corrupted
Clytemnestra and gained the throne, then offered many sacrifices to the
gods in the hope of keeping it, and suspended many decorations in their
honour[805]; but he is not on this account spoken of with less horror,
nor indeed did this extorted profession save him from divine vengeance,
sent by the hand of Orestes. Nor does it appear that he had ever been
liberal in sacrifice before. The persons who are extolled, obviously
or expressly, on this ground in the Odyssey are, the illustrious
Ulysses[806], and the trusty Eumæus in his humble cottage[807]. So
that on the whole, as between Greek and Greek, regularity in divine
worship by sacrifice was neither taken for the substance of morality,
nor allowed as a substitute for it, but was a test of it, and was
habitually found in union with it. The connection is clearly set out in
the case of Eumæus[808]:
[805] Od. iii. 272-5.
[806] Od. i. 65-7.
[807] Od. xiv. 420.
[808] Ibid.
οὐδὲ συβώτης
λήθετ’ ἄρ’ ἀθανάτων· φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσιν.
~_Moral elements in Sacrifice._~
Nor must we forget that, had it been otherwise, a constant moral
profanation, abhorred by the feeling of the time, would have been
involved. For sacrifice, as ought to be the case with all ritual, had a
moral character and adjuncts. It was either ordinary, as at the common
meal, or solemn. In the former case the surrender by man of a portion
of his food was a witness to God as the giver, and an expression of
thankfulness intelligible to an unsophisticated age. In the latter
case, and even in the former[809], prayer or thanksgiving were commonly
combined with the rite. The spirit of man, when he approached the
altar, was bowed down before the powers of heaven; and though it was a
heavy sin in nations who had a clear knowledge of God to lapse into the
practices of those who could but feebly grope (to use the language of
saint Paul[810]) for Him, yet the use of religious observances, when
it is ordinarily combined, as we find it combined in Greece, with the
possession in other respects of virtuous character, is in effect one of
the strongest testimonies to the existence of a substantive standard
of morals, which it associates at once with the unseen world, and not
with any mere reckoning of results, drawn from the life and experience
of man.
[809] Od. xiv. 423.
[810] Acts xvii. 27.
If then the Greeks of the heroic age recognised a real type of good and
evil in human action, the next question is, what were the motive powers
by which they were drawn towards the practice of virtue?
These powers proceeded from three sources.
One was a regard to the gods; to their rewarding the good, and
punishing the bad. Of this we have already treated in regard to some
of the most important points. The general proof rests upon almost every
page of the poems, especially as regards the punishment of the unkind,
unjust, and cruel. The Homeric representations of a future state
obscurely, but sensibly, add strength to the same class of sanctions.
The second was the voice of conscience, speaking for each man within
his own breast[811].
[811] Nägelsbach Hom. Theol. vi. 15.
The third was a sentiment ranging between reverence and fear, which
led to the performance of duty, and to the avoidance of crime, in
consideration of the general authority and established opinion of
mankind.
We may consider those examples from bygone days, which are so often
adduced either for warning or for imitation, as belonging to this third
division of moral powers.
The finer forms of this third class of sentiments pass by imperceptible
shades into the second.
~_The principle of conscience._~
After his conquest of Hypoplacian Thebes, Achilles would not despoil
the body of the slain Eetion, σεβάσσατο γὰρ τόγε θυμῷ: accordingly
he burnt him, with his precious armour on. Now it would have been no
crime to strip him of this valuable booty, and therefore would have
drawn down no vengeance: but the high standard of his own chivalrous
feelings would not suffer the act. We have no reason to suppose that in
this instance he had any regard to the general opinion of the Greeks.
For as when they gathered round the corpse of Hector, every one of
them inflicted a wound upon it, and as it was the common custom of
the war to strip the dead of their arms, nothing can be more unlikely
than that the army would have resented a similar proceeding on the
part of Achilles towards Eetion. It was therefore to his own mind that
he deferred. Here there was a conscience not only taking notice of
the broader and, so to speak, coarser, outlines of duty, but likewise
exhibiting a refined and tender sense of it.
Again, Telemachus says, by way of appeal to the good feeling of the
Suitors themselves (Od. ii. 138.),
ὑμέτερος δ’ εἰ μὲν θυμὸς νεμεσίζεται αὐτῶν,
ἔξιτέ μοι μεγάρων.
In this place he seems to refer to the sense of right within each man,
and by no means to their regard for appearances as before each other;
while that, from which he exhorts them to abstain, is a purely moral
wrong. So Glaucus appears to aim at the individual conscience, when he
impresses on Hector and the Trojans the duty of recovering the body
of Sarpedon, lest the Myrmidons should deface his remains (Il. xvi.
544-6). Again, Menelaus addresses a similar exhortation to the Greeks,
and here expressly exhorts each person to feel and act for himself (Il.
xvii. 254),
ἀλλά τις αὐτὸς ἴτω, νεμεσιζέσθω δ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ
Πάτροκλον Τρωῇσι κυσὶν μέλπηθρα γενέσθαι.
In one passage particularly, Telemachus distinguishes with great
clearness the three kinds of motive by the terms proper to them
respectively (Od. ii. 64-7);
(1) νεμεσσήθητε καὶ αὐτοὶ,
(2) ἄλλους τ’ αἰδεσθῆτε περικτίονας ἀνθρώπους,
οἳ περιναιετάουσι· (3) θεῶν δ’ ὑποδείσατε μῆνιν.
That is νέμεσις, for the self-judging conscience: αἰδὼς, for human
opinion: and lastly, fear, in regard to the divine wrath.
The existence of the moral standard within a man is also, I think,
very strongly implied in the word ἀτασθαλίη, which is applied to deep,
deliberate, habitual, or audacious wickedness. For when it is intended
to let in any allowance for mere weakness, or for solicitation from
without, or for a foolish blindness, then the word ἄτη is used. And
I doubt whether, in any one instance throughout the poems, these two
designations are ever applied to one and the same misconduct. It is
certainly contrary to the general and almost universal rule. The
ἀτασθαλίη is something done with clear sight and knowledge, with the
full and conscious action of the will: it is something regarded as
wholly without excuse, as tending to an entire moral deadness, and as
entailing final punishment alike without notice and without mercy.
Nothing can account for the introduction into a moral code of a form
of offence conceived with such intensity, and ranked so high, except
the belief that the man committing it had deliberately set aside that
inward witness to truth and righteousness, supplied by the law of our
nature, in the repudiation of which the universal and consentient
voice of mankind has always placed the most awful responsibility, the
extremest degree of guilt that the human being can incur.