With Socrates and his successors the whole question of the relation of
Greek thought to popular belief enters upon a new phase. The Socratic
philosophy is in many ways a continuation of sophistic. This is involved
already in the fact that the same questions form the central interest in
the two schools of thought, so that the problems stated by the sophists
became the decisive factor in the content of Socratic and Platonic
thought. The Socratic schools at the same time took over the actual
programme of the sophists, namely, the education of adolescence in the
highest culture. But, on the other hand, the Socratic philosophy was in
the opposite camp to sophistic; on many points it represents a reaction
against it, a recollection of the valuable elements contained in earlier
Greek thought on life, especially human life, values which sophistic
regarded with indifference or even hostility, and which were threatened
with destruction if it should carry the day. This reactionary tendency in
Socratic philosophy appears nowhere more plainly than in the field of
religion.
Under these circumstances it is a peculiar irony of fate that the very
originator of the new trend in Greek thought was charged with and
sentenced for impiety. We have already mentioned the singular prelude to
the indictment afforded by the comedy of Aristophanes. We have also
remarked upon the futility of looking therein for any actual enlightenment
on the Socratic point of view. And Plato makes Socrates state this with
all necessary sharpness in the _Apology_. Hence what we may infer from the
attack of Aristophanes is merely this, that the general public lumped
Socrates together with the sophists and more especially regarded him as a
godless fellow. Unless this had been so, Aristophanes could not have
introduced him as the chief character in his travesty. And without doubt
it was this popular point of view which his accusers relied on when they
actually included atheism as a count in their bill of indictment. It will,
nevertheless, be necessary to dwell for a moment on this bill of
indictment and the defence.
The charge of impiety was a twofold one, partly for not believing in the
gods the State believed in, partly for introducing new “demonic things.”
This latter act was directly punishable according to Attic law. What his
accusers alluded to was the _daimonion_ of Socrates. That they should have
had any idea of what that was must be regarded as utterly out of the
question, and whatever it may have been—and of this we shall have a word
to say later—it had at any rate nothing whatever to do with atheism. As to
the charge of not believing in the gods of the State, Plato makes the
accuser prefer it in the form that Socrates did not believe in any gods at
all, after which it becomes an easy matter for Socrates to show that it is
directly incompatible with the charge of introducing new deities. As
ground for his accusation the accuser states—in Plato, as before—that
Socrates taught the same doctrine about the sun and moon as Anaxagoras.
The whole of the passage in the _Apology_ in which the question of the
denial of gods is dealt with—a short dialogue between Socrates and the
accuser, quite in the Socratic manner—historically speaking, carries
little conviction, and we therefore dare not take it for granted that the
charge either of atheism or of false doctrine about the sun and moon was
put forward in that form. But that something about this latter point was
mentioned during the trial must be regarded as probable, when we consider
that Xenophon, too, defends Socrates at some length against the charge of
concerning himself with speculations on Nature. That he did not do so must
be taken for certain, not only from the express evidence of Xenophon and
Plato, but from the whole nature of the case. The accusation on this point
was assuredly pure fabrication. There remains only what was no doubt also
the main point, namely, the assertion of the pernicious influence of
Socrates on the young, and the inference of irreligion to be drawn from
it—an argument which it would be absurd to waste any words upon.
The attack, then, affords no information about Socrates’s personal point
of view as regards belief in the gods, and the defence only very little.
Both Xenophon and Plato give an account of Socrates’s _daimonion_, but
this point has so little relation to the charge of atheism that it is not
worth examination. For the rest Plato’s defence is indirect. He makes
Socrates refute his opponent, but does not let him say a word about his
own point of view. Xenophon is more positive, in so far as in the first
place he asserts that Socrates worshipped the gods like any other good
citizen, and more especially that he advised his friends to use the
Oracle; in the second place, that, though he lived in full publicity, no
one ever saw him do or heard him say anything of an impious nature. All
these assertions are assuredly correct, and they render it highly
improbable that Socrates should have secretly abandoned the popular faith,
but they tell us little that is positive about his views. Fortunately we
possess other means of getting to closer grips with the question; the way
must be through a consideration of Socrates’s whole conduct and his mode
of thought.
Here we at once come to the interesting negative fact that there is
nothing in tradition to indicate that Socrates ever occupied himself with
theological questions. To be sure, Xenophon has twice put into his mouth a
whole theodicy expressing an elaborate teleological view of nature. But
that we dare not base anything upon this is now, I think, universally
acknowledged. Plato, in the dialogue _Euthyphron_, makes him subject the
popular notion of piety to a devastating criticism; but this, again, will
not nowadays be regarded as historical by anybody. Everything we are told
about Socrates which bears the stamp of historical truth indicates that he
restricted himself to ethics and left theology alone. But this very fact
is not without significance. It indicates that Socrates’s aim was not to
alter the religious views of his contemporaries. Since he did not do so we
may reasonably believe it was because they did not inconvenience him in
what was most important to him, _i.e._ ethics.
We may, however, perhaps go even a step farther. We may venture, I think,
to maintain that so far from contemporary religion being a hindrance to
Socrates in his occupation as a teacher of ethics, it was, on the
contrary, an indispensable support to him, nay, an integral component of
his fundamental ethical view. The object of Socrates in his relations with
his fellow-men was, on his own showing—for on this important point I think
we can confidently rely upon Plato’s _Apology_—to make clear to them that
they knew nothing. And when he was asked to say in what he himself
differed from other people, he could mention only one thing, namely, that
he was aware of his own ignorance. But his ignorance is not an ignorance
of this thing or that, it is a radical ignorance, something involved in
the essence of man as man. That is, in other words, it is determined by
religion. In order to be at all intelligible and ethically applicable, it
presupposes the conception of beings of whom the essence is knowledge. For
Socrates and his contemporaries the popular belief supplied such beings in
the gods. The institution of the Oracle itself is an expression of the
recognition of the superiority of the gods to man in knowledge. But the
dogma had long been stated even in its absolute form when Homer said: “The
gods know everything.” To Socrates, who always took his starting-point
quite popularly from notions that were universally accepted, this basis
was simply indispensable. And so far from inconveniencing Socrates, the
multiplicity and anthropomorphism of the gods seemed an advantage to
him—the more they were like man in all but the essential qualification,
the better.
The Socratic ignorance has an ethical bearing. Its complement is his
assertion that virtue is knowledge. Here again the gods are the necessary
presupposition and determination. That the gods were good, or, as it was
preferred to express it, “just” (the Greek word comprises more than the
English word), was no less a popular dogma than the notion that they
possessed knowledge. Now all Socrates’s efforts were directed towards
goodness as an end in view, towards the ethical development of mankind.
Here again popular belief was his best ally. To the people to whom he
talked, virtue (the Greek word is at once both wider and narrower in sense
than the English term) was no mere abstract notion; it was a living
reality to them, embodied in beings that were like themselves, human
beings, but perfect human beings.
If we correlate this with the negative circumstance that Socrates was no
theologian but a teacher of ethics, we can easily understand a point of
view which accepted popular belief as it was and employed it for working
purposes in the service of moral teaching. Such a point of view, moreover,
gained extraordinary strength by the fact that it preserved continuity
with earlier Greek religious thought. This latter, too, had been ethical
in its bearing; it, too, had employed the gods in the service of its
ethical aim. But its central idea was felicity, not virtue; its
starting-point was the popular dogma of the felicity of the gods, not
their justice. In this way it had come to lay stress on a virtue which
might be termed modesty, but in a religious sense, _i.e._ man must
recognise his difference from the gods as a limited being, subject to the
vicissitudes of an existence above which the gods are raised. Socrates
says just the same, only that he puts knowledge or virtue, which to him
was the same thing, in the place of felicity. From a religious point of
view the result is exactly the same, namely, the doctrine of the gods as
the terminus and ideal, and the insistence on the gulf separating man from
them. We are tempted to say that, had Socrates turned with hostile intent
against a religion which thus played into his hands, the more fool he. But
this is putting the problem the wrong way up—Socrates never stood
critically outside popular belief and traditional religious thought
speculating as to whether he should use it or reject it. No, his thought
grew out of it as from the bosom of the earth. Hence its mighty religious
power, its inevitable victory over a school of thought which had severed
all connexion with tradition.
That such a point of view should be so badly misunderstood as it was in
Athens seems incomprehensible. The explanation is no doubt that the whole
story of Socrates’s denial of the gods was only included by his accusers
for the sake of completeness, and did not play any great part in the final
issue. This seems confirmed by the fact that they found it convenient to
support their charge of atheism by one of introducing foreign gods, this
being punishable by Attic law. They thus obtained some slight hold for
their accusation. But both charges must be presumed to have been so
signally refuted during the trial that it is hardly possible that any
great number of the judges were influenced by them. It was quite different
and far weightier matters which brought about the conviction of Socrates,
questions on which there was really a deep and vital difference of opinion
between him and his contemporaries. That Socrates’s attitude towards
popular belief was at any rate fully understood elsewhere is testified by
the answer of the Delphic Oracle, that declared Socrates to be the wisest
of all men. However remarkable such a pronouncement from such a place may
appear, it seems impossible to reject the accounts of it as unhistorical;
on the other hand, it does not seem impossible to explain how the Oracle
came to declare itself as reported. Earlier Greek thought, which insisted
upon the gulf separating gods and men, was from olden times intimately
connected with the Delphic Oracle. It hardly sprang from there; more
probably it arose spontaneously in various parts of Hellas. But it would
naturally feel attracted toward the Oracle, which was one of the religious
centres of Hellas, and it was recognised as legitimate by the Oracle.
Above all, the honour shown by the Oracle to Pindar, one of the chief
representatives of the earlier thought, testifies to this. Hence there is
nothing incredible in the assumption that Socrates attracted notice at
Delphi as a defender of the old-fashioned religious views approved by the
Oracle, precisely in virtue of his opposition to the ideas then in vogue.
If we accept this explanation we are, however, excluded from taking
literally Plato’s account of the answer of the Delphic Oracle and
Socrates’s attitude towards it. Plato presents the case as if the Oracle
were the starting-point of Socrates’s philosophy and of the peculiar mode
of life which was indissolubly bound up with it. This presentation cannot
be correct if we are to regard the Oracle as historical and understand it
as we have understood it. The Oracle presupposes the Socrates we know: a
man with a religious message and a mode of life which was bound to attract
notice to him as an exception from the general rule. It cannot, therefore,
have been the cause of Socrates’s finding himself. On the other hand, it
is difficult to imagine a man choosing a mode of life like that of
Socrates without a definite inducement, without some fact or other that
would lead him to conceive himself as an exception from the rule. If we
look for such a fact in the life of Socrates, we shall look in vain as
regards externals. Apart from his activities as a religious and ethical
personality, his life was that of any other Attic citizen. But in his
spiritual life there was certainly one point, but only one, on which he
deviated from the normal, namely, his _daimonion_. If we examine the
accounts of this more closely the only thing we can make of them is—or so
at least it seems to me—that we are here in the presence of a
form—peculiar, no doubt, and highly developed—of the phenomena which are
nowadays classed under the concept of clairvoyance. Now Plato makes
Socrates himself say that the power of avoiding what would harm him, in
great things and little, by virtue of a direct perception (a “voice”),
which is what constituted his _daimonion_, was given him from childhood.
That it was regarded as something singular both by himself and others is
evident, and likewise that he himself regarded it as something
supernatural; the designation _daimonion_ itself seems to be his own. I
think that we must seek for the origin of Socrates’s peculiar mode of life
in this direction, strange as it may be that a purely mystic element
should have given the impulse to the most rationalistic philosophy the
world has ever produced. It is impossible to enter more deeply into this
problem here; but, if my conjecture is correct, we have an additional
explanation of the fact that Socrates was disposed to anything rather than
an attack on the established religion.
A view of popular religion such as I have here sketched bore in itself the
germ of a further development which must lead in other directions. A
personality like Socrates might perhaps manage throughout a lifetime to
keep that balance on a razor’s edge which is involved in utilising to the
utmost in the service of ethics the popular dogmas of the perfection of
the gods, while disregarding all irrelevant tales, all myths and all
notions of too human a tenor about them. This demanded concentration on
the one thing needful, in conjunction with deep piety of the most genuine
antique kind, with the most profound religious modesty, a combination
which it was assuredly given to but one man to attain. Socrates’s
successors had it not. Starting precisely from a Socratic foundation they
entered upon theological speculations which carried them away from the
Socratic point of view.
For the Cynics, who set up virtue as the only good, the popular notions of
the gods would seem to have been just as convenient as for Socrates. And
we know that Antisthenes, the founder of the school, made ample use of
them in his ethical teaching. He represented Heracles as the Cynical ideal
and occupied himself largely with allegorical interpretation of the myths.
On the other hand, there is a tradition that he maintained that “according
to nature” there was only one god, but “according to the law” several—a
purely sophistic view. He inveighed against the worship of images, too,
and maintained that god “did not resemble any thing,” and we know that his
school rejected all worship of the gods because the gods “were in need of
nothing.” This conception, too, is presumably traceable to Antisthenes. In
all this the theological interest is evident. As soon as this interest
sets in, the harmonious relation to the popular faith is upset, the
discord between its higher and lower ideas becomes manifest, and criticism
begins to assert itself. In the case of Antisthenes, if we may believe
tradition, it seems to have led to monotheism, in itself a most remarkable
phenomenon in the history of Greek religion, but the material is too
slight for us to make anything of it. The later Cynics afford interesting
features in illustration of atheism in antiquity, but this is best left to
a later chapter.
About the relations of the Megarians to the popular faith we know next to
nothing. One of them, Stilpo, was charged with impiety on account of a bad
joke about Athene, and convicted, although he tried to save himself by
another bad joke. As his point of view was that of a downright sceptic, he
was no doubt an atheist according to the notions of antiquity; in our day
he would be called an agnostic, but the information that we have about his
religious standpoint is too slight to repay dwelling on him.
As to the relation of the Cyrenaic school to the popular faith, the
general proposition has been handed down to us that the wise man could not
be “deisidaimon,” _i.e._ superstitious or god-fearing; the Greek word can
have both senses. This does not speak for piety at any rate, but then the
relationship of the Cyrenaics to the gods of popular belief was different
from that of the other followers of Socrates. As they set up pleasure—the
momentary, isolated feeling of pleasure—as the supreme good, they had no
use for the popular conceptions of the gods in their ethics, nay, these
conceptions were even a hindrance to them in so far as the fear of the
gods might prove a restriction where it ought not to. In these
circumstances we cannot wonder at finding a member of the school in the
list of _atheoi_. This is Theodorus of Cyrene, who lived about the year
300. He really seems to have been a downright denier of the gods; he wrote
a work _On the Gods_ containing a searching criticism of theology, which
is said to have exposed him to unpleasantness during a stay at Athens, but
the then ruler of the city, Demetrius of Phalerum, protected him. There is
nothing strange in a manifestation of downright atheism at this time and
from this quarter. More remarkable is that interest in theology which we
must assume Theodorus to have had, since he wrote at length upon the
subject. Unfortunately it is not evident from the account whether his
criticism was directed mostly against popular religion or against the
theology of the philosophers. As it was asserted in antiquity that
Epicurus used his book largely, the latter is more probable.
Whereas in the case of the “imperfect Socratics” as well as of all the
earlier philosophers we must content ourselves with more or less casual
notes, and at the best with fragments, and for Socrates with second-hand
information, when we come to Plato we find ourselves for the first time in
the presence of full and authentic information. Plato belongs to those few
among the ancient authors of whom everything that their contemporaries
possessed has been preserved to our own day. There would, however, be no
cause to speak about Plato in an investigation of atheism in antiquity,
had not so eminent a scholar as Zeller roundly asserted that Plato did not
believe in the Greek gods—with the exception of the heavenly bodies, in
the case of which the facts are obvious. On the other hand, it is
impossible here to enter upon a close discussion of so large a question; I
must content myself with giving my views in their main lines, with a brief
statement of my reasons for holding them.
In the mythical portions of his dialogues Plato uses the gods as a given
poetic motive and treats them with poetic licence. Otherwise they play a
very inferior part in the greater portion of his works. In the
_Euthyphron_ he gives a sharp criticism of the popular conception of
piety, and in reality at the same time very seriously questions the
importance and value of the existing form of worship. In his chief ethical
work, the _Gorgias_, he subjects the fundamental problems of individual
ethics to a close discussion without saying one word of their relation to
religion; if we except the mythic part at the end the gods scarcely appear
in the dialogue. Finally, in his _Republic_ he no doubt gives a detailed
criticism of popular mythology as an element of education, and in the
course of this also some positive definitions of the idea of God, but
throughout the construction of his ideal community he entirely disregards
religion and worship, even if he occasionally takes it for granted that a
cult of some sort exists, and in one place quite casually refers to the
Oracle at Delphi as authority for its organisation in details. To this may
further be added the negative point that he never in any of his works made
Socrates define his position in regard to the sophistic treatment of the
popular religion.
In Plato’s later works the case is different. In the construction of the
universe described in the _Timaeus_ the gods have a definite and
significant place, and in the _Laws_, Plato’s last work, they play a
leading part. Here he not only gives elaborate rules for the organisation
of the worship which permeate the whole life of the community, but even in
the argument of the dialogue the gods are everywhere in evidence in a way
which strongly suggests bigotry. Finally, Plato gives the above-mentioned
definitions of impiety and fixes the severest punishment for it—for
downright denial of the gods, when all attempts at conversion have failed,
the penalty of death.
On this evidence we are tempted to take the view that Plato in his earlier
years took up a critical attitude in regard to the gods of popular belief,
perhaps even denied them altogether, that he gradually grew more
conservative, and ended by being a confirmed bigot. And we might look for
a corroboration of this in a peculiar observation in the _Laws_. Plato
opens his admonition to the young against atheism by reminding them that
they are young, and that false opinion concerning the gods is a common
disease among the young, but that utter denial of their existence is not
wont to endure to old age. In this we might see an expression of personal
religious experience.
Nevertheless I do not think such a construction of Plato’s religious
development feasible. A decisive objection is his exposition of the
Socratic point of view in so early a work as the _Apology_. I at any rate
regard it as psychologically impossible that a downright atheist, be he
ever so great a poet, should be able to draw such a picture of a deeply
religious personality, and draw it with so much sympathy and such
convincing force. Add to this other facts of secondary moment. Even the
close criticism to which Plato subjects the popular notions of the gods in
his _Republic_ does not indicate denial of the gods as such; moreover, it
is built on a positive foundation, on the idea of the goodness of the gods
and their truth (which for Plato manifests itself in immutability).
Finally, Plato at all times vigorously advocated the belief in providence.
In the _Laws_ he stamps unbelief in divine providence as impiety; in the
_Republic_ he insists in a prominent passage that the gods love the just
man and order everything for him in the best way. And he puts the same
thought into Socrates’s mouth in the _Apology_, though it is hardly
Socratic in the strict sense of the word, _i.e._ as a main point in
Socrates’s conception of existence. All this should warn us not to
exaggerate the significance of the difference which may be pointed out
between the religious standpoints of the younger and the older Plato. But
the difference itself cannot, I think, be denied; there can hardly be any
doubt that Plato was much more critical of popular belief in his youth and
prime than towards the close of his life.
Even in Plato’s later works there is, in spite of their conservative
attitude, a very peculiar reservation in regard to the anthropomorphic
gods of popular belief. It shows itself in the _Laws_ in the fact that
where he sets out to _prove_ the existence of the gods he contents himself
with proving the divinity of the heavenly bodies and quite disregards the
other gods. It appears still more plainly in the _Timaeus_, where he gives
a philosophical explanation of how the divine heavenly bodies came into
existence, but says expressly of the other gods that such an explanation
is impossible, and that we must abide by what the old theologians said on
this subject; they being partly the children of gods would know best where
their parents came from. It is observations of this kind that induced
Zeller to believe that Plato altogether denied the gods of popular belief;
he also contends that the gods have no place in Plato’s system. This
latter contention is perfectly correct; Plato never identified the gods
with the ideas (although he comes very near to it in the _Republic_, where
he attributes to them immutability, the quality which determines the
essence of the ideas), and in the _Timaeus_ he distinguishes sharply
between them. No doubt his doctrine of ideas led up to a kind of divinity,
the idea of the good, as the crown of the system, but the direct inference
from this conception would be pure monotheism and so exclude polytheism.
This inference Plato did not draw, though his treatment of the gods in the
_Laws_ and _Timaeus_ certainly shows that he was quite clear that the gods
of the popular faith were an irrational element in his conception of the
universe. The two passages do not entitle us to go further and conclude
that he utterly rejected them, and in the _Timaeus_, where Plato makes
both classes of gods, both the heavenly bodies and the others, take part
in the creation of man, this is plainly precluded. The playful turn with
which he evades inquiry into the origin of the gods thus receives its
proper limitation; it is entirely confined to their origin.
Such, according to my view, is the state of the case. It is of fundamental
importance to emphasise the fact that we cannot conclude, because the gods
of popular belief do not fit into the system of a philosopher, that he
denies their existence. In what follows we shall have occasion to point
out a case in which, as all are now agreed, a philosophical school has
adopted and stubbornly held to the belief in the existence of gods though
this assumption was directly opposed to a fundamental proposition in its
system of doctrine. The case of Plato is particularly interesting because
he himself was aware and has pointed out that here was a point on which
the consistent scientific application of his conception of the universe
must fail. It is the outcome—one of many—of what is perhaps his finest
quality as a philosopher, namely, his intellectual honesty.
An indirect testimony to the correctness of the view here stated will be
found in the way in which Plato’s faithful disciple Xenocrates developed
his theology, for it shows that Xenocrates presupposed the existence of
the gods of popular belief as given by Plato. Xenocrates made it his
general task to systematise Plato’s philosophy (which had never been set
forth publicly by himself as a whole), and to secure it against attack. In
the course of this work he was bound to discover that the conception of
the gods of popular belief was a particularly weak point in Plato’s
system, and he attempted to mend matters by a peculiar theory which became
of the greatest importance for later times. Xenocrates set up as gods, in
the first place, the heavenly bodies. Next he gave his highest principles
(pure abstracts such as oneness and twoness) and the elements of his
universe (air, water and earth) the names of some of the highest
divinities in popular belief (Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Demeter). These gods,
however, did not enter into direct communication with men, but only
through some intermediate agent. The intermediate agents were the
“demons,” a class of beings who were higher than man yet not perfect like
the gods. They were, it seems, immortal; they were invisible and far more
powerful than human beings; but they were subject to human passions and
were of highly differing grades of moral perfection. These are the beings
that are the objects of the greater part of the existing cult, especially
such usages as rest on the assumption that the gods can do harm and are
directed towards averting it, or which are in other ways objectionable;
and with them are connected the myths which Plato subjected to so severe a
criticism. Xenocrates found a basis for this system in Plato, who in the
_Symposium_ sets up the demons as a class of beings between gods and men,
and makes them carriers of the prayers and wishes of men to the gods. But
what was a passing thought with Plato serving only a poetical purpose was
taken seriously and systematised by Xenocrates.
It can hardly be said that Xenocrates has gained much recognition among
modern writers on the history of philosophy for his theory of demons. And
yet I cannot see that there was any other possible solution of the problem
which ancient popular belief set ancient philosophy, if, be it understood,
we hold fast by two hypotheses: the first, that the popular belief and
worship of the ancients was based throughout on a foundation of reality;
and second, that moral perfection is an essential factor in the conception
of God. The only inconsistency which we may perhaps bring home to
Xenocrates is that he retained certain of the popular names of the gods as
designations for gods in his sense; but this inconsistency was, as we
shall see, subsequently removed. In favour of this estimate of
Xenocrates’s doctrine of demons may further be adduced that it actually
was the last word of ancient philosophy on the matter. The doctrine was
adopted by the Stoics, the Neo-Pythagoreans, and the Neo-Platonists. Only
the Epicureans went another way, but their doctrine died out before the
close of antiquity. And so the doctrine of demons became the ground on
which Jewish-Christian monotheism managed to come to terms with ancient
paganism, to conquer it in theory, as it were.
This implies, however, that the doctrine of demons, though it arose out of
an honest attempt to save popular belief philosophically, in reality
brings out its incompatibility with philosophy. The religion and worship
of the ancients could dispense with neither the higher nor the lower
conceptions of its gods. If the former were done away with, recognition,
however full, of the existence of the gods was no good; in the long run
the inference could not be avoided that they were immoral powers and so
ought not to be worshipped. This was the inference drawn by Christianity
in theory and enforced in practice, ultimately by main force.
Aristotle is among the philosophers who were prosecuted for impiety. When
the anti-Macedonian party came into power in Athens after the death of
Alexander, there broke out a persecution against his adherents, and this
was also directed against Aristotle. The basis of the charge against him
was that he had shown divine honour after his death to the tyrant Hermias,
whose guest he had been during a prolonged stay in Asia Minor. This seems
to have been a fabrication, and at any rate has nothing to do with
atheism. In the writings of Aristotle, as they were then generally known,
it would assuredly have been impossible to find any ground for a charge of
atheism.
Nevertheless, Aristotle is one of the philosophers about whose faith in
the gods of popular religion well-founded doubts may be raised. Like
Plato, he acknowledged the divinity of the heavenly bodies on the ground
that they must have a soul since they had independent motion. Further, he
has a kind of supreme god who, himself unmoved, is the cause of all
movement, and whose constituent quality is reason. As regards the gods of
popular belief, in his _Ethics_ and his _Politics_ he assumes public
worship to be a necessary constituent of the life of the individual and
the community. He gave no grounds for this assumption—on the contrary, he
expressly declared that it was a question which ought not to be discussed
at all: he who stirs up doubts whether honour should be paid to the gods
is in need not of teaching but of punishment. (That he himself took part
in worship is evident from his will.) Further, in his ethical works he
used the conceptions of the gods almost in the same way as we have assumed
that Socrates did, _i.e._ as the ethical ideal and determining the limits
of the human. He never entered upon any elaborate criticism of the lower
elements of popular religion such as Plato gave. So far everything is in
admirable order. But if we look more closely at things there is
nevertheless nearly always a little “but” in Aristotle’s utterances about
the gods. Where he operates with popular notions he prefers to speak
hypothetically or to refer to what is generally assumed; or he is content
to use only definitions which will also agree with his own philosophical
conception of God. But he goes further; in a few places in his writings
there are utterances which it seems can only be interpreted as a radical
denial of the popular religion. The most important of them deserves to be
quoted _in extenso_:
“A tradition has been handed down from the ancients and from the
most primitive times, and left to later ages in the form of myth,
that these substances (_i.e._ sky and heavenly bodies) are gods
and that the divine embraces all nature. The rest consists in
legendary additions intended to impress the multitude and serve
the purposes of legislation and the common weal; for these gods
are said to have human shape or resemble certain other beings
(animals), and they say other things which follow from this and
are of a similar kind to those already mentioned. But if we
disregard all this and restrict ourselves to the first point, that
they thought that the first substances were gods, we must
acknowledge that it is a divinely inspired saying. And as, in all
probability, every art and science has been discovered many times,
as far as it is possible, and has perished again, so these
notions, too, may have been preserved till now as relics of those
times. To this extent only can we have any idea of the opinion
which was held by our fathers and has come down from the beginning
of things.”
The last sentences, expressing Aristotle’s idea of a life-cycle and
periods of civilisation which repeat themselves, have only been included
in the quotation for the sake of completeness. If we disregard them, the
passage plainly enough states the view that the only element of truth in
the traditional notions about the gods was the divinity of the sky and the
heavenly bodies; the rest is myth. Aristotle has nowhere else expressed
himself with such distinctness and in such length, but then the passage in
question has a place of its own. It comes in his _Metaphysics_ directly
after the exposition of his philosophical conception of God—a position
marked by profound earnestness and as it were irradiated by a quiet inner
fervour. We feel that we are here approaching the _sanctum sanctorum_ of
the thinker. In this connexion, and only here, he wished for once to state
his opinion about the religion of his time without reserve. What he says
here is a precise formulation of the result arrived at by the best Greek
thinkers as regards the religion of the Greek people. It was not, they
thought, pure fabrication. It contained an element of truth of the
greatest value. But most of it consisted of human inventions without any
reality behind them.
A point of view like that of Aristotle would, I suppose, hardly have been
called atheism among the ancients, if only because the heavenly bodies
were acknowledged as divine. But according to our definition it is
atheism. The “sky”-gods of Aristotle have nothing in common with the gods
of popular belief, not even their names, for Aristotle never names them.
And the rest, the whole crowd of Greek anthropomorphic gods, exist only in
the human imagination.
Aristotle’s successors offer little of interest to our inquiry.
Theophrastus was charged with impiety, but the charge broke down
completely. His theological standpoint was certainly the same as
Aristotle’s. Of Strato, the most independent of the Peripatetics, we know
that in his view of nature he laid greater stress on the material causes
than Aristotle did, and so arrived at a different conception of the
supreme deity. Aristotle had severed the deity from Nature and placed it
outside the latter as an incorporeal being whose chief determining factor
was reason. In Strato’s view the deity was identical with Nature and, like
the latter, was without consciousness; consciousness was only found in
organic nature. Consequently we cannot suppose him to have believed in the
divinity of the heavenly bodies in Aristotle’s sense, though no direct
statement on this subject has come down to us. About his attitude towards
popular belief we hear nothing. A denial of the popular gods is not
necessarily implied in Strato’s theory, but seems reasonable in itself and
is further rendered probable by the fact that all writers seem to take it
for granted that Strato knew no god other than the whole of Nature.
We designated Socratic philosophy, in its relation to popular belief, as a
reaction against the radical free-thought of the sophistic movement. It
may seem peculiar that with Aristotle it develops into a view which we can
only describe as atheism. There is, however, an important difference
between the standpoints of the sophists and of Aristotle. Radical as the
latter is at bottom, it is not, however, openly opposed to popular
belief—on the contrary, to any one who did not examine it more closely it
must have had the appearance of accepting popular belief. The very
assumption that the heavenly bodies were divine would contribute to that
effect; this, as we have seen, was a point on which the popular view laid
great stress. If we add to this that Aristotle never made the existence of
the popular gods matter of debate; that he expressly acknowledged the
established worship; and that he consistently made use of certain
fundamental notions of popular belief in his philosophy—we can hardly
avoid the conclusion that, notwithstanding his personal emancipation from
the existing religion, he is a true representative of the Socratic
reaction against sophistic. But we see, too, that there is a reservation
in this reaction. In continuity with earlier Greek thought on religion, it
proceeded from the absolute definitions of the divine offered by popular
belief, but when criticising anthropomorphism on this basis it did not
after all avoid falling out with popular belief. How far each philosopher
went in his antagonism was a matter of discretion, as also was the means
chosen to reconcile the philosophical with the popular view. The theology
of the Socratic schools thus suffered from a certain half-heartedness; in
the main it has the character of a compromise. It would not give up the
popular notions of the gods, and yet they were continually getting in the
way. This dualism governs the whole of the succeeding Greek philosophy.