OF EUROPE: ITS TOPOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY.
ITS PRIMITIVE MODES OF THOUGHT, AND THEIR PROGRESSIVE VARIATIONS,
MANIFESTED IN THE GREEK AGE OF CREDULITY.
_Description of Europe: its Topography, Meteorology, and
secular Geological Movements.--Their Effect on its
Inhabitants._
_Its Ethnology determined through its Vocabularies._
_Comparative Theology of Greece; the Stage of Sorcery, the
Anthropocentric Stage.--Becomes connected with false Geography
and Astronomy.--Heaven, the Earth, the Under World.--Origin,
continuous Variation and Progress of Greek Theology.--It
introduces Ionic Philosophy._
_Decline of Greek Theology, occasioned by the Advance of
Geography and Philosophical Criticism.--Secession of Poets,
Philosophers, Historians.--Abortive public Attempts to sustain
it.--Duration of its Decline.--Its Fall._
Europe is geographically a peninsula, and historically a dependency of
Asia.
[Sidenote: Description of Europe.]
[Sidenote: The great path-zone.]
It is constructed on the western third of a vast mountain axis, which
reaches in a broken and irregular course from the Sea of Japan to the
Bay of Biscay. On the flanks of this range, peninsular slopes are
directed toward the south, and extensive plateaus to the north. The
culminating point in Europe is Mont Blanc, 16,000 feet above the level
of the sea. The axis of elevation is not the axis of figure; the incline
to the south is much shorter and steeper than that to the north. The
boundless plains of Asia are prolonged through Germany and Holland. An
army may pass from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of more
than six thousand miles, without encountering any elevation of more than
a few hundred feet. The descent from Asia into Europe is indicated in a
general manner by the mean elevation of the two continents above the
level of the sea; that for Asia being 1132 feet, that for Europe 671.
Through the avenue thus open to them, the Oriental hordes have again and
again precipitated themselves on the West. With an abundance of springs
and head-waters, but without any stream capable of offering a serious
obstacle, this tract has a temperature well suited to military
movements. It coincides generally with the annual isothermal line of
50°, skirting the northern boundary beyond which the vine ceases to
grow, and the limiting region beyond which the wild boar does not pass.
[Sidenote: Exterior and interior accessibility.]
Constructed thus, Europe is not only easily accessible from Asia, a fact
of no little moment in its ancient history, but it is also singularly
accessible interiorly, or from one of its parts to another. Still more,
its sea-line is so broken, it has so many intrusive gulfs and bays,
that, its surface considered, its maritime coast is greater than that of
any other continent. In this respect it contrasts strikingly with
Africa. Europe has one mile of coast-line for every 156 square miles of
surface, Africa has only one for every 623. This extensive maritime
contact adds, of course, greatly to its interior as well as exterior
accessibility.
[Sidenote: Distribution of heat in Europe.]
The mean annual temperature of the European countries on the southern
slope of the mountain axis is from 60° to 70° F., but of those to the
north the heat gradually declines, until, at the extreme limit on the
shores of Zembla, the ground is perpetually frozen. As on other parts of
the globe, the climate does not correspond to the latitude, but is
disturbed by several causes, among which may be distinguished the great
Atlantic current--the Gulf Stream coming from America--and the Sahara
Desert. The latter gives to the south of Europe an unduly high heat, and
the former to Ireland, England, and the entire west a genial
temperature. Together they press into higher latitudes the annual
isothermal lines. If in Europe there are no deserts, there are none of
those impenetrable forests seen in tropical countries. From the westerly
shores of Portugal, France, and Ireland, the humidity diminishes as we
pass to the east, and, indeed, if we advance into Asia, it disappears in
the desert of Gobi. There are no vast homogeneous areas as in Asia, and
therefore there is no widespread uniformity in the races of men.
[Sidenote: And the quantity of rain.]
But not only is the temperature of the European continent elevated by
the Gulf Stream and the south-west wind, its luxuriance of vegetation
depends on them; for luxuriance of vegetation is determined, among other
things, by the supply of rain. A profusion of water gives to South
America its amazing forests; a want inflicts on Australia its shadeless
trees, with their shrunken and pointed leaves. With the diminished
moisture the green gardens of France are replaced in Gobi by ligneous
plants covered with a gray down. Physical circumstances control the
vegetable as well as the animal world.
The westerly regions of Europe, through the influence of the south-west
wind, the Gulf Stream, and their mountain ranges, are supplied with
abundant rains, and have a favourable mean annual temperature; but as we
pass to the eastern confines the number of rainy days diminishes, the
absolute annual quantity of rain and snow is less, and the mean annual
temperature is lower. On the Atlantic face of the mountains of Norway it
is perpetually raining: the annual depth of water is there 82 inches;
but on the opposite side of those mountains is only 21 inches. For
similar reasons, Ireland is moist and green, and in Cornwall the laurel
and camellia will bear a winter exposure.
There are six maximum points of rain--Norway, Scotland, South-western
Ireland and England, Portugal, North-eastern Spain, Lombardy. They
respectively correspond to mountains. In general, the amount of rain
diminishes from the equator toward the poles; but it is greatly
controlled by the disturbing influence of elevated ridges, which in many
instances far more than compensate for the effects of latitude. The Alps
exercise an influence over the meteorology of all Europe.
[Sidenote: The number of rainy days;]
Not only do mountains thus determine the absolute quantity of rain, they
also affect the number of rainy days in a year. The occurrence of a
rainy season depends on the amount of moisture existing in the air; and
hence its frequency is greater at the Atlantic sea-board than in the
interior, where the wind arrives in a drier state, much of its moisture
having been precipitated by the mountains forcing it to a great
elevation. Thus, on the eastern coast of Ireland it rains 208 days in a
year; in England, about 150; at Kazan, 90; and in Siberia only 60 days.
[Sidenote: and of snowy days.]
When the atmospheric temperature is sufficiently low, the condensed
water descends under the form of snow. In general, the annual depth of
snow and the number of snowy days increase toward the north. In Rome the
snowy days are 1-1/2; in Venice, 5-1/2; in Paris, 12; in St.
Petersburgh, 171. Whatever causes interfere with the distribution of
heat must influence the precipitation of snow; among such are the Gulf
Stream and local altitude. Hence, on the coast of Portugal, snow is of
infrequent occurrence; in Lisbon it never snowed from 1806 to 1811.
Such facts teach us how many meteorological contrasts Europe presents,
how many climates it contains. Necessarily it is full of modified men.
[Sidenote: Vibrations of the isothermal lines.]
If we examine the maps of monthly isothermals, we observe how strikingly
those lines change, becoming convex to the north as summer approaches,
and concave as winter. They by no means observe a parallelism to the
mean, but change their flexures, assuming new sinuosities. In their
absolute transfer they move with a variable velocity, and through spaces
far from insignificant. The line of 50° F., which in January passes
through Lisbon and the south of the Morea, in July has travelled to the
north shore of Lapland, and incloses the White Sea. As in some grand
musical instrument, the strings of which vibrate, the isothermal lines
of Europe and Asia beat to and fro, but it takes a year for them to
accomplish one pulsation.
[Sidenote: Europe is full of meteorological contrasts, and therefore of
modified men.]
All over the world physical circumstances control the human race. They
make the Australian a savage; incapacitate the negro, who can never
invent an alphabet or an arithmetic, and whose theology never passes
beyond the stage of sorcery. They cause the Tartars to delight in a
diet of milk, and the American Indian to abominate it. They make the
dwarfish races of Europe instinctive miners and metallurgists. An
artificial control over temperature by dwellings, warm for the winter
and cool for the summer; variations of clothing to suit the season of
the year, and especially the management of fire, have enabled man to
maintain himself in all climates. The invention of artificial light has
extended the available term of his life; by giving the night to his use,
it has, by the social intercourse it encourages, polished his manners
and refined his tastes, perhaps as much as any thing else has aided in
his intellectual progress. Indeed, these are among the primary
conditions that have occasioned his civilization. Variety of natural
conditions gives rise to different national types, artificial inventions
occasion renewed modifications. Where there are many climates there will
be many forms of men. Herein, as we shall in due season discover, lies
the explanation of the energy of European life, and the development of
its civilization.
Would any one deny the influence of rainy days on our industrial habits
and on our mental condition even in a civilized state? With how much
more force, then, must such meteorological incidents have acted on the
ill-protected, ill-clad, and ill-housed barbarian! Would any one deny
the increasing difficulty with which life is maintained as we pass from
the southern peninsulas to the more rigorous climates of the north?
There is a relationship between the mean annual heat of a locality and
the instincts of its inhabitants for food. The Sicilian is satisfied
with a light farinaceous repast and a few fruits; the Norwegian requires
a strong diet of flesh; to the Laplander it is none the less acceptable
if grease of the bear, or train oil, or the blubber of whales be added.
Meteorology to no little extent influences the morals; the instinctive
propensity to drunkenness is a function of the latitude. Food, houses,
clothing, bear a certain relation to the isothermal lines.
[Sidenote: But, through artificial inventions, it tends to
homogeneousness in modern times.]
For similar reasons, the inhabitants of Europe each year tend to more
complete homogeneity. Climate and meteorological differences are more
and more perfectly equalized by artificial inventions; nor is it alone
a similarity of habits, a similarity of physiological constitution also
ensues. The effect of such inventions is to equalize the influences to
which men are exposed; they are brought more closely to the mean typical
standard, and--especially is it to be remembered--with this closer
approach to each other in conformation, comes a closer approach in
feelings and habits, and even in the manner of thinking.
[Sidenote: The Mediterranean peninsulas.]
On the southern slope of the mountain axis project the historic
peninsulas, Greece, Italy, Spain. To the former we trace unmistakably
the commencement of European civilization. The first Greeks
patriotically affirmed that their own climate was the best suited for
man; beyond the mountains to the north there reigned a Cimmerian
darkness, an everlasting winter. It was the realm of Boreas, the
shivering tyrant. In the early ages man recognized cold as his mortal
enemy. Physical inventions have enabled him to overcome it, and now he
maintains a more difficult and doubtful struggle with heat.
[Sidenote: The Mediterranean Sea.]
Beyond these peninsulas, and bounding the continent on the south, is the
Mediterranean, nearly two thousand miles in length, isolating Europe
from Africa socially, but uniting them commercially. The Black Sea and
that of Azof are dependencies of it. It has, conjointly with them, a
shore-line of 13,000 miles, and exposes a surface of nearly a million
and a quarter of square miles. It is subdivided into two basins, the
eastern and western, the former being of high interest historically,
since it is the scene of the dawn of European intelligence; the western
is bounded by the Italian peninsula, Sicily, and the African promontory
of Cape Bon on one side, and at the other has as its portal the Straits
of Gibraltar. The temperature is ten or twelve degrees higher than the
Atlantic, and, since much of the water is removed by evaporation, it is
necessarily more saline than that ocean. Its colour is green where
shallow, blue where deep.
[Sidenote: Secular geological movement of Europe and Asia, and its
social consequences.]
For countless centuries Asia has experienced a slow upward movement, not
only affecting her own topography, but likewise that of her European
dependency. There was a time when the great sandy desert of Gobi was
the bed of a sea which communicated through the Caspian with the Baltic,
as may be proved not only by existing geographical facts, but also from
geological considerations. It is only necessary, for this purpose, to
inspect the imperfect maps that have been published of the Silurian and
even tertiary periods. The vertical displacement of Europe, during and
since the latter period, has indisputably been more than 2000 feet in
many places. The effects of such movements on the flora and fauna of a
region must, in the course of time, be very important, for an elevation
of 350 feet is equal to one degree of cold in the mean annual
temperature, or to sixty miles on the surface northward. Nor has this
slow disturbance ended. Again and again, in historic times, have its
results operated fearfully on Europe, by forcibly precipitating the
Asiatic nomades along the great path-zone; again and again, through such
changes of level, have they been rendered waterless, and thus driven
into a forced emigration. Some of their rivers, as the Oxus and
Jaxartes, have, within the records of history, been dry for several
years. To these topographical changes, rather than to political
influences, we must impute many of the most celebrated tribal invasions.
It has been the custom to refer these events to an excessive
overpopulation periodically occurring in Central Asia, or to the
ambition of warlike chieftains. Doubtless those regions are well adapted
to human life, and hence liable to overpopulation, considering the
pursuits man there follows, and doubtless there have been occasions on
which those nations have been put in motion by their princes; but the
modern historian cannot too carefully bear in mind the laws which
regulate the production of men, and also the body of evidence which
proves that the crust of the earth is not motionless, but rising in one
place and sinking in another. The grand invasions of Europe by Asiatic
hordes have been much more violent and abrupt than would answer to a
steady pressure resulting from overpopulation, and too extensive for
mere warlike incitement; they answer more completely to the experience
of some irresistible necessity arising from an insuperable physical
cause, which could drive in hopeless despair from their homes the young
and the old, the vigorous and feeble, with their cattle, and waggons,
and flocks. Such a cause is the shifting of the soil and disturbance of
the courses of water. The tribes compelled to migrate were forced along
the path-zone, their track being, therefore, on a parallel of latitude,
and not on a meridian; and hence, for the reasons set forth in the
preceding chapter, their movements and journey of easier accomplishment.
[Sidenote: Rate and extent of these movements.]
These geological changes then enter as an element in human history, not
only for Asia, of which the great inland sea has dwindled away to the
Caspian, and lost its connection with the Baltic, but for Europe also.
The traditions of ancient deluges, which are the primitive facts of
Greek history, refer to such movements, perhaps the opening of the
Thracian Bosphorus was one of them. In much later times we are
perpetually meeting with incidents depending on geological disturbances;
the caravan trade of Asia Minor was destroyed by changes of level and
the accumulation of sands blown from the encroaching deserts; the Cimbri
were impelled into Italy by the invasion of the sea on their
possessions. There is not a shore in Europe which does not give similar
evidence; the mouths of the Rhine, as they were in the Roman times, are
obliterated; the eastern coast of England has been cut away for miles.
In the Mediterranean the shore-line is altogether changed; towns, once
on the coast, are far away inland; others have sunk beneath the sea.
Islands, like Rhodes, have risen from the bottom. The North Adriatic,
once a deep gulf, has now become shallow; there are leaning towers and
inclining temples that have sunk with the settling of the earth. On the
opposite extremity of Europe, the Scandinavian peninsula furnishes an
instance of slow secular motion, the northern part rising gradually
above the sea at the rate of about four feet in a century. This
elevation is observed through a space of many hundred miles, increasing
toward the north. The southern extremity, on the contrary, experiences a
slow depression.
These slow movements are nothing more than a continuation of what has
been going on for numberless ages. Since the tertiary period two-thirds
of Europe have been lifted above the sea. The Norway coast has been
elevated 600 feet, the Alps have been upheaved 2000 or 3000, the
Apennines 1000 to 2000 feet. The country between Mont Blanc and Vienna
has been thus elevated since the adjacent seas were peopled with
existing animals. Since the Neolithic age, the British Islands have
undergone a great change of level, and, indeed, have been separated from
the continent through the sinking of England and the rising of Scotland.
[Sidenote: Early inhabitants of Europe.]
At the earliest period Europe presents us with a double population. An
Indo-Germanic column had entered it from the east, and had separated
into two portions the occupants it had encountered, driving one to the
north, the other to the south-west. These primitive tribes betray,
physiologically, a Mongolian origin; and there are indications of
considerable weight that they themselves had been, in ancient times,
intruders, who, issuing from their seats in Asia, had invaded and
dislocated the proper autochthons of Europe. In the Pleistocene age
there existed in Central Europe a rude race of hunters and fishers,
closely allied to the Esquimaux. Man was contemporary with the cave
bear, the cave lion, the amphibious hippopotamus, the mammoth. Caves
that have been examined in France or elsewhere have furnished for the
stone age, axes, knives, lance and arrow points, scrapers, hammers. The
change from what has been termed the chipped, to the polished stone
period, was very gradual. It coincides with the domestication of the
dog, an epoch in hunting life. The appearance of arrow heads indicates
the invention of the bow, and the rise of man from a defensive to an
offensive mode of life. The introduction of barbed arrows shows how
inventive talent was displaying itself; bone and horn tips, that the
huntsman was including smaller animals, and perhaps birds, in his chase;
bone whistles, his companionship with other huntsmen, or with his dog.
The scraping knives of flint, indicate the use of skin for clothing, and
rude bodkins and needles, its manufacture. Shells perforated for
bracelets and necklaces, prove how soon a taste for personal adornment
was acquired, the implements necessary for the preparation of pigments
suggest the painting of the body, and perhaps, tattooing; and batons of
rank bear witness to the beginning of a social organization.
We have thus as our starting-point a barbarian population, believers in
sorcery, and, in some places, undoubtedly cannibals, maintaining, in the
central and northern parts of Europe, their existence with difficulty by
reason of the severity of the climate. In the southern, more congenial
conditions permitted a form of civilization to commence, of which the
rude Cyclopean structures here and there met with, such as the ruins of
Orchomenos, the lion gate of Mycenæ, the tunnel of Lake Copais, are
perhaps the vestiges.
[Sidenote: Their social condition.]
At what period this intrusive Indo-Germanic column made its attack
cannot be ascertained. The national vocabularies of Europe, to which we
must resort for evidence, might lead us to infer that the condition of
civilization of the conquering people was not very advanced. They were
acquainted with the use of domestic animals, farming implements, carts,
and yokes; they were also possessed of boats, the rudder, oars, but were
unacquainted with the movement of vessels by sails. These conclusions
seem to be established by the facts that words equivalent to boat,
rudder, oar, are common to the languages of the offshoots of the stock,
though located very widely asunder; but those for mast and sails are of
special invention, and differ in adjacent nations.
[Sidenote: Their civil state deduced from their vocabularies.]
In nearly all the Indo-Germanic tongues, the family names, father,
mother, brother, sister, daughter, are the same respectively. A similar
equivalence may be observed in a great many familiar objects, house,
door, town, path. It has been remarked, that while this holds good for
terms of a peaceful nature, many of those connected with warfare and the
chase are different in different languages. Such facts appear to prove
that the Asiatic invaders followed a nomadic and pastoral life. Many of
the terms connected with such an avocation are widely diffused. This is
the case with ploughing, grinding, weaving, cooking, baking, sewing,
spinning; with such objects as corn, flesh, meat, vestment; with wild
animals common to Europe and Asia, as the bear and the wolf. So, too, of
words connected with social organization, despot, rex, queen. The
numerals from 1 to 100 coincide in Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian,
Gothic; but this is not the case with 1000, a fact which has led
comparative philologists to the conclusion that, though at the time of
the emigration a sufficient intellectual advance had been made to invent
the decimal system, perhaps from counting upon the fingers, yet that it
was very far from perfection. To the inhabitants of Central Asia the sea
was altogether unknown; hence the branches of the emigrating column, as
they diverged north and south, gave it different names. But, though
unacquainted with the sea, they were familiar with salt, as is proved by
the recurrence of its name. Nor is it in the vocabularies alone that
these resemblances are remarked; the same is to be said of the grammar.
M. Max Müller shows that in Sanscrit, Zend, Lithuanian, Doric, Slavonic,
Latin, Gothic, the forms of the auxiliary verb _to be_ are all varieties
of one common type, and that "the coincidences between the language of
the Veda and the dialect spoken at the present day by the Lithuanian
recruits at Berlin are greater by far than between French and Italian,
and that the essential forms of grammar had been fully framed and
established before the first separation of the Aryan family took place."
But it should not be overlooked that such interesting deductions founded
on language, its vocabularies and grammar, must not be pressed too
closely. The state of civilization of the Indo-Germanic column, as thus
ascertained, must needs have been inferior to that of the centre from
which it issued forth. Such we observe to be the case in all migratory
movements. It is not the more intellectual or civilized portions of a
community which voluntarily participate therein, but those in whom the
physical and animal character predominates. There may be a very rough
offshoot from a very polished stock. Of course, the movement we are here
considering must have taken place at a period chronologically remote,
yet not so remote as might seem to be indicated by the state of
civilization of the invaders, used as an indication of the state of
civilization of the country from which they had come. In Asia, social
advancement, as far back as we can discover, has ever been very slow;
but, at the first moment that we encounter the Hindu race historically
or philologically, it is dealing with philosophical and theological
questions of the highest order, and settling, to its own satisfaction,
problems requiring a cultivated intellect even so much as to propose.
All this implies that in its social advancement there must have already
been consumed a very long period of time.
[Sidenote: Commingling of blood and of ideas.]
But what chiefly interests us is the relation which must have been
necessarily maintained between the intrusive people and those whom they
thus displaced, the commingling of the ideas of the one with those of
the other, arising from their commingling of blood. It is because of
this that we find coexisting in the pre-Hellenic times the sorcery of
the Celt and the polytheism of the Hindu. There can be no doubt that
many of the philosophical lineaments displayed by the early European
mythology are not due to indigenous thought, but were derived from an
Asiatic source.
[Sidenote: Climate-modification of Asiatic intruders.]
Moreover, at the earliest historic times, notwithstanding the
disturbance which must have lasted long after the successful and perhaps
slow advance of the Asiatic column, things had come to a state of
equilibrium or repose, not alone socially, but also physiologically. It
takes a long time for the conqueror and conquered to settle together,
without farther disturbance or question, into their relative positions;
it takes a long time for the recollection of conflicts to die away. But
far longer does it take for a race of invaders to come into unison with
the climate of the countries they have seized, the system of man
accommodating itself only through successive generations, and therefore
very slowly, to new physical conditions. It takes long before the skin
assumes its determinate hue, and the skull its destined form. A period
amply sufficient for all such changes to be accomplished in Europe had
transpired at the very dawn of history, and strands of population in
conformity with meteorological and geographical influences, though of
such origin as has been described, were already distributed upon it. A
condition of ethnical equilibrium had been reached. Along each
isothermal or climatic band were its correspondingly modified men,
spending their lives in avocations dictated by their environment. These
strands of population were destined to be dislocated, and some of them
to become extinct, by inventing or originating among themselves new and
unsuitable artificial physical conditions.
[Sidenote: First gleams of civilization]
Already Europe was preparing a repetition of those events of which Asia
from time immemorial has been the scene. Already among the nations
bordering on the Mediterranean, inhabitants of a pleasant climate, in
which life could be easily maintained--where the isothermal of January
is 41° F., and of July 73-1/2° F.--civilization was commencing. There
was an improving agriculture, an increasing commerce, and, the necessary
consequence thereof, germs of art, the accumulation of wealth. The
southern peninsulas were offering to the warlike chieftains of middle
Europe a tempting prize.
[Sidenote: and first religious opinions.]
Under such influences Europe may be considered as emerging from the
barbarian state. It had lost all recollection of its ancient relations
with India, which have only been disclosed to us by a study of the
vocabularies and grammar of its diverse tongues. Upon its indigenous
sorcery an Oriental star-worship had been ingrafted, the legends of
which had lost their significance. What had at first been feigned of the
heavenly bodies had now assumed an air of personality, and had become
attributed to heroes and gods.
The negro under the equinoctial line, the dwarfish Laplander beyond the
Arctic Circle--man everywhere, in his barbarous state, is a believer in
sorcery, witchcraft, enchantments; he is fascinated by the
incomprehensible. Any unexpected sound or sudden motion he refers to
invisible beings. Sleep and dreams, in which one-third of his life is
spent, assure him that there is a spiritual world. He multiplies these
unrealities; he gives to every grotto a genius; to every tree, spring,
river, mountain, a divinity.
[Sidenote: Localization of the invisible.]
Comparative theology, which depends on the law of continuous variation
of human thought, and is indeed one of its expressions, universally
proves that the moment man adopts the idea of an existence of invisible
beings, he recognizes the necessity of places for their residence, all
nations assigning them habitations beyond the boundaries of the earth. A
local heaven and a local hell are found in every mythology. In Greece,
as to heaven, there was a universal agreement that it was situated above
the blue sky; but as to hell, much difference of opinion prevailed.
There were many who thought that it was a deep abyss in the interior of
the earth, to which certain passages, such as the Acherusian cave in
Bithynia, led. But those who with Anaximenes considered the earth to be
like a broad leaf floating in the air, and who accepted the doctrine
that hell was divided into a Tartarus, or region of night on the left,
and an Elysium, or region of dawn on the right, and that it was equally
distant from all parts of the upper surface, were nearer to the original
conception, which doubtless placed it on the under or shadowy side of
the earth. The portals of descent were thus in the west, where the sun
and stars set, though here and there were passages leading through the
ground to the other side, such as those by which Hercules and Ulysses
had gone. The place of ascent was in the east, and the morning twilight
a reflection from the Elysian Fields.
[Sidenote: The anthropocentric stage of thought.]
The picture of Nature thus interpreted has for its centre the earth; for
its most prominent object, man. Whatever there is has been made for his
pleasure, or to minister to his use. To this belief that every thing is
of a subordinate value compared with himself, he clings with tenacity
even in his most advanced mental state.
Not without surprise do we trace the progress of the human mind. The
barbarian, as a believer in sorcery, lives in incessant dread. All
Nature seems to be at enmity with him and conspiring for his hurt. Out
of the darkness he cannot tell what alarming spectre may emerge; he may,
with reason, fear that injury is concealed in every stone, and hidden
behind every leaf. How wide is the interval from this terror-stricken
condition to that state in which man persuades himself of the human
destiny of the universe! Yet, wonderful to be said, he passes that
interval at a single step.
In the infancy of the human race, geographical and astronomical ideas
are the same all over the world, for they are the interpretation of
things according to outward appearances, the accepting of phenomena as
they are presented, without any of the corrections that reason may
offer. This universality and homogeneity is nothing more than a
manifestation of the uniform mode of action of human organization.
[Sidenote: From homogeneous ideas the comparative sciences emerge.]
But such homogeneous conclusions, such similar pictures, are strictly
peculiar to the infancy of humanity. The reasoning faculty at length
inevitably makes itself felt, and diversities of interpretation ensue.
Comparative geography, comparative astronomy, comparative theology thus
arise, homogeneous at first, but soon exhibiting variations.
[Sidenote: Introduction of personified forms.]
To that tendency for personification which marks the early life of man
are due many of the mythologic conceptions. It was thus that the Hours,
the Dawn, and Night with her black mantle bespangled with stars,
received their forms. Many of the most beautiful legends were thus of a
personified astronomical origin; many were derived from terrestrial or
familiar phenomena. The clouds were thus made to be animated things; a
moving spirit was given to the storm, the dew, the wind. The sun setting
in the glowing clouds of the west became Hercules in the fiery pile; the
morning dawn extinguished by the rising sun was embodied in the story of
Orpheus and Eurydice. These legends still survive in India.
[Sidenote: The gradual and affiliated advance of Greek theological
ideas.]
[Sidenote: The composite nature of the resulting mythology.]
But it must not be supposed that all Greek mythology can be thus
explained. It is enough for us to examine the circumstances under which,
for many ages, the European communities had been placed, to understand
that they had forgotten much that their ancestors had brought from Asia.
Much that was new had also spontaneously arisen. The well-known
variations of their theogony are not merely similar legends of different
localities, they are more frequently the successive improvements of one
place. The general theme upon which they are based requires the
admission of a primitive chaotic disturbance of incomprehensible
gigantic powers, brought into subjection by Divine agency, that agency
dividing and regulating the empire it had thus acquired in a harmonious
way. To this general conception was added a multitude of adventitious
ornaments, some of which were of a rude astronomical, some of a moral,
some, doubtless, of a historical kind. The primitive chaotic conflicts
appear under the form of the war of the Titans; their end is the
confinement of those giants in Tartarus; whose compulsory subjection is
the commencement of order: thus Atlas, the son of Iapetos, is made to
sustain the vault of heaven in its western verge. The regulation of
empire is shadowed forth in the subdivision of the universe between Zeus
and his brothers, he taking the heavens, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the
under world, all having the earth as their common theatre of action. The
moral is prefigured by such myths as those of Prometheus and Epimetheus,
the fore-thinker and the after-thinker; the historical in the deluge of
Deucalion, the sieges of Thebes and of Troy. A harmony with human nature
is established through the birth and marriage of the gods, and likewise
by their sufferings, passions, and labours. The supernatural is
gratified by Centaurs, Gorgons, Harpies, and Cyclops.
It would be in vain to attempt the reduction of such a patchwork system
to any single principle, astronomical or moral, as some have tried to
do--a system originating from no single point as to country or to time.
The gradual growth of many ages, its diversities are due to many local
circumstances. Like the romances of a later period, it will not bear an
application of the ordinary rules of life. It recommended itself to a
people who found pleasure in accepting without any question statements
no matter how marvellous, impostures no matter how preposterous. Gods,
heroes, monsters, and men might figure together without any outrage to
probability when there was no astronomy, no geography, no rule of
evidence, no standard of belief. But the downfall of such a system was
inevitable as soon as men began to deal with facts; as soon as history
commenced to record, and philosophy to discuss. Yet not without
reluctance was the faith of so many centuries given up. The extinction
of a religion is not the abrupt movement of a day, it is a secular
process of many well-marked stages--the rise of doubt among the candid;
the disapprobation of the conservative; the defence of ideas fast
becoming obsolete by the well-meaning, who hope that allegory and new
interpretations may give renewed probability to what is almost
incredible. But dissent ends in denial at last.
[Sidenote: Primitive astronomy and geography.]
[Sidenote: The under world and its spectres.]
Before we enter upon the history of that intellectual movement which
thus occasioned the ruin of the ancient system, we must bring to
ourselves the ideas of the Greek of the eighth century before Christ,
who thought that the blue sky is the floor of heaven, the habitation of
the Olympian gods; that the earth, man's proper abode, is flat and
circularly extended like a plate beneath the starry canopy. On its rim
is the circumfluous ocean, the source of the rivers, which all flow to
the Mediterranean, appropriately in after ages so called, since it is in
the midst, in the centre of the expanse of the land. "The sea-girt disk
of the earth supports the vault of heaven." Impelled by a celestial
energy, the sun and stars, issuing forth from the east, ascend with
difficulty the crystalline dome, but down its descent they more readily
hasten to their setting. No one can tell what they encounter in the land
of shadows beneath, nor what are the dangers of the way. In the morning
the dawn mysteriously appears in the east, and swiftly spreads over the
confines of the horizon; in the evening the twilight fades gradually
away. Besides the celestial bodies, the clouds are continually moving
over the sky, for ever changing their colours and their shape. No one
can tell whence the wind comes or whither it goes; perhaps it is the
breath of that invisible divinity who launches the lightning, or of him
who rests his bow against the cloud. Not without delight men
contemplated the emerald plane, the sapphire dome, the border of silvery
water, ever tranquil and ever flowing. Then, in the interior of the
solid earth, or perhaps on the other side of its plane--under world, as
it was well termed--is the realm of Hades or Pluto, the region of
Night. From the midst of his dominion, that divinity, crowned with a
diadem of ebony, and seated on a throne framed out of massive darkness,
looks into the infinite abyss beyond, invisible himself to mortal eyes,
but made known by the nocturnal thunder which is his weapon. The under
world is also the realm to which spirits retire after death. At its
portals, beneath the setting sun, is stationed a numerous tribe of
spectres--Care, Sorrow, Disease, Age, Want, Fear, Famine, War, Toil,
Death and her half-brother Sleep--Death, to whom it is useless for man
to offer either prayers or sacrifice. In that land of forgetfulness and
shadows there is the unnavigable lake Avernus, Acheron, Styx, the
groaning Cocytus, and Phlegethon, with its waves of fire. There are all
kinds of monsters and forms of fearful import: Cerberus, with his triple
head; Charon, freighting his boat with the shades of the dead; the
Fates, in their garments of ermine bordered with purple; the avenging
Erinnys; Rhadamanthus, before whom every Asiatic must render his
account; Æacus, before whom every European; and Minos, the dread arbiter
of the judgment-seat. There, too, are to be seen those great criminals
whose history is a warning to us: the giants, with dragons' feet
extended in the burning gulf for many a mile; Phlegyas, in perpetual
terror of the stone suspended over him, which never falls; Ixion chained
to his wheel; the daughters of Danaus still vainly trying to fill their
sieve; Tantalus, immersed in water to his chin, yet tormented with
unquenchable thirst; Sisyphus despairingly labouring at his
ever-descending stone. Warned by such examples, we may learn not to
contemn the gods. Beyond these sad scenes, extending far to the right,
are the plains of pleasure, the Elysian Fields; and Lethe, the river of
oblivion, of which whoever tastes, though he should ascend to the
eastern boundary of the earth, and return again to life and day, forgets
whatever he has seen.
[Sidenote: The Argonautic voyage.]
If the interior or the under side of the earth is thus occupied by
phantoms and half-animated shades of the dead, its upper surface,
inhabited by man, has also its wonders. In its centre is the
Mediterranean Sea, as we have said, round which are placed all the known
countries, each full of its own mysteries and marvels. Of these how
many we might recount if we followed the wanderings of Odysseus, or the
voyage of Jason and his heroic comrades in the ship _Argo_, when they
went to seize the golden fleece of the speaking ram. We might tell of
the Harpies, flying women-birds of obscene form; of the blind prophet;
of the Symplegades, self-shutting rocks, between which, as if by
miracle, the Argonauts passed, the cliffs almost entrapping the stern of
their vessel, but destined by fate from that portentous moment never to
close again; of the country of the Amazons, and of Prometheus groaning
on the rock to which he was nailed, of the avenging eagle for ever
hovering and for ever devouring; of the land of Æêtes, and of the bulls
with brazen feet and flaming breath, and how Jason yoked and made them
plough, of the enchantress Medea, and the unguent she concocted from
herbs that grew where the blood of Prometheus had dripped; of the field
sown with dragons' teeth, and the mail-clad men that leaped out of the
furrows; of the magical stone that divided them into two parties, and
impelled them to fight each other; of the scaly dragon that guarded the
golden fleece, and how he was lulled with a charmed potion, and the
treasure carried away; of the River Phasis, through whose windings the
_Argo_ sailed into the circumfluous sea, of the circumnavigation round
that tranquil stream to the sources of the Nile; of the Argonauts
carrying their sentient, self-speaking ship on their shoulders through
the sweltering Libyan deserts, of the island of Circe, the enchantress;
of the rock, with its grateful haven, which in the height of a tempest
rose out of the sea to receive them; of the arrow shot by Apollo from
his golden bow; of the brazen man, the work of Hephæstos, who stood on
the shore of Crete, and hurled at them as they passed vast fragments of
stone; of their combat with him and their safe return to Iolcos; and of
the translation of the ship _Argo_ by the goddess Athene to heaven.
[Sidenote: Union of the geographical and the marvellous.]
Such were some of the incidents of that celebrated voyage, the story of
which enchanted all Greece before the Odyssey was written. I have not
space to tell of the wonders that served to decorate the geography of
those times. On the north there was the delicious country of the
Hyperboreans, beyond the reach of winter; in the west the garden of the
Hesperides, in which grew apples of gold; in the east the groves and
dancing-ground of the sun; in the south the country of the blameless
Ethiopians, whither the gods were wont to resort. In the Mediterranean
itself the Sirens beguiled the passers-by with their songs near where
Naples now stands; adjoining were Scylla and Charybdis; in Sicily were
the one-eyed Cyclops and cannibal Læstrygons. In the island of Erytheia
the three-headed giant Geryon tended his oxen with a double-headed dog.
I need not speak of the lotus-eaters, whose food made one forget his
native country; of the floating island of Æolus; of the happy fields in
which the horses of the sun were grazing; of bulls and dogs of immortal
breed; of hydras, gorgons, and chimeras; of the flying man Dædalus, and
the brazen chamber in which Danae was kept. There was no river, no
grotto that had not its genius; no island, no promontory without its
legend.
[Sidenote: Earliest Greek theological ideas indicate a savage state.]
It is impossible to recall these antique myths without being satisfied
that they are, for the most part, truly indigenous, truly of European
growth. The seed may have been brought, as comparative philologists
assert, from Asia, but it had luxuriantly germinated and developed under
the sky of Europe. Of the legends, many are far from answering to their
reputed Oriental source; their barbarism and indelicacy represent the
state of Europe. The outrage of Kronos on his father Uranos speaks of
the savagism of the times; the story of Dionysos tells of man-stealing
and piracy; the rapes of Europa and Helen, of the abduction of women.
The dinner at which Itys was served up assures us that cannibalism was
practised; the threat of Laomedon that he would sell Poseidon and Apollo
for slaves shows how compulsory labour might be obtained. The polygamy
of many heroes often appears in its worst form under the practice of
sister-marriage, a crime indulged in from the King of Olympus downward.
Upon the whole, then, we must admit that Greek mythology indicates a
barbarian social state, man-stealing, piracy, human sacrifice,
polygamy, cannibalism, and crimes of revenge that are unmentionable. A
personal interpretation, such as man in his infancy resorts to, is
embodied in circumstances suitable to a savage time. It was not until a
later period that allegorical phantasms, such as Death, and Sleep, and
Dreams were introduced, and still later when the whole system was
affected by Lydian, Phrygian, Assyrian, and Egyptian ideas.
[Sidenote: Their gradual improvement in the historic times.]
[Sidenote: The inevitable tendency is to the Ionic philosophy.]
Not only thus from their intrinsic nature, but also from their recorded
gradual development, are we warranted in imputing to the greater part of
the myths an indigenous origin. The theogony of Homer is extended by
Hesiod in many essential points. He prefixes the dynasty of Uranos, and
differs in minor conceptions, as in the character of the Cyclops. The
Orphic theogony is again another advance, having new fictions and new
personages, as in the case of Zagreus, the horned child of Jupiter by
his own daughter Persephone. Indeed, there is hardly one of the great
and venerable gods of Olympus whose character does not change with his
age, and, seen from this point of view, the origin of the Ionic
philosophy becomes a necessary step in the advance. That philosophy, as
we shall soon find, was due not only to the expansion of the Greek
intellect and the necessary improvement of Greek morals; an extraneous
cause, the sudden opening of the Egyptian ports, 670 B.C., accelerated
it. European religion became more mysterious and more solemn. European
philosophy learned the error of its chronology, and the necessity of
applying a more strict and correct standard of evidence for ancient
events.
It was an ominous circumstance that the Ionian Greeks, who first began
to philosophize, commenced their labours by depersonifying the elements,
and treating not of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, but of Air, Water, Fire.
The destruction of theological conceptions led irresistibly to the
destruction of religious practices. To divinities whose existence he
denied, the philosopher ceased to pray. Of what use were sacrificial
offerings and entreaties directed to phantasms of the imagination? but
advantages might accrue from the physical study of the impersonal
elements.
[Sidenote: Inevitable destruction of Greek religious ideas]
Greek religion contained within itself the principles of its own
destruction. It is for the sake of thoroughly appreciating this that I
have been led into a detail of what some of my readers may be disposed
to regard as idle and useless myths. Two circumstances of inevitable
occurrence insured the eventual overthrow of the whole system; they were
geographical discovery and the rise of philosophical criticism. Our
attention is riveted by the fact that, two thousand years later, the
same thing again occurred on a greater scale.
[Sidenote: by geographical discovery.]
As to the geographical discovery, how was it possible that all the
marvels of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the sorcerers, enchanters,
giants, and monsters of the deep, should survive when those seas were
daily crossed in all directions? How was it possible that the notion of
a flat earth, bounded by the horizon and bordered by the circumfluous
ocean, could maintain itself when colonies were being founded in Gaul,
and the Phoenicians were bringing tin from beyond the Pillars of
Hercules? Moreover, it so happened that many of the most astounding
prodigies were affirmed to be in the track which circumstances had now
made the chief pathway of commerce. Not only was there a certainty of
the destruction of mythical geography as thus presented on the plane of
the earth looking upward to day; there was also an imminent risk, as
many pious persons foresaw and dreaded, that what had been asserted as
respects the interior, or the other face looking downward into night,
would be involved in the ruin too. Well, therefore, might they make the
struggle they did for the support of the ancient doctrine, taking the
only course possible to them, of converting what had been affirmed to be
actual events into allegories, under which, they said, the wisdom of
ancient times had concealed many sacred and mysterious things. But it is
apparent that a system forced to this necessity is fast hastening to its
end.
[Sidenote: Fictitious marvels replaced by grand actualities.]
Nor was it maritime discovery only that thus removed fabulous prodigies
and gave rise to new ideas. In due course of time the Macedonian
expedition opened a new world to the Greeks and presented them with real
wonders; climates in marvellous diversity, vast deserts, mountains
covered with eternal snow, salt seas far from the ocean, colossal
animals, and men of every shade of colour and every form of religion.
The numerous Greek colonies founded all over Asia gave rise to an
incessant locomotion, and caused these natural objects to make a
profound and permanent impression on the Hellenic mind. If through the
Bactrian empire European ideas were transmitted to the far East, through
that and other similar channels Asiatic ideas found their way to Europe.
[Sidenote: Development of Mediterranean commerce.]
At the dawn of trustworthy history, the Phoenicians were masters of
the Mediterranean Sea. Europe was altogether barbarous. On the very
verge of Asiatic civilization the Thracians scalped their enemies and
tattooed themselves; at the other end of the continent the Britons
daubed their bodies with ochre and woad. Contemporaneous Egyptian
sculptures show the Europeans dressed in skins like savages. It was the
instinct of the Phoenicians everywhere to establish themselves on
islands and coasts, and thus, for a long time, they maintained a
maritime supremacy. By degrees a spirit of adventure was engendered
among the Greeks. In 1250 B.C. they sailed round the Euxine, giving rise
to the myth of the Argonautic voyage, and creating a profitable traffic
in gold, dried fish, and corn. They had also become infamous for their
freebooting practices. From every coast they stole men, women, and
children, thereby maintaining a considerable slave-trade, the relic of
which endures to our time in the traffic for Circassian women. Minos,
King of Crete, tried to suppress these piracies. His attempts to obtain
the dominion of the Mediterranean were imitated in succession by the
Lydians, Thracians, Rhodians, the latter being the inventors of the
first maritime code, subsequently incorporated into Roman law. The
manner in which these and the inhabitants of other towns and islands
supplanted one another shows on what trifling circumstances the dominion
of the eastern basin depended. Meantime Tyrian seamen stealthily sailed
beyond the Pillars of Hercules, visiting the Canaries and Azores, and
bringing tin from the British Islands. They used every precaution to
keep their secret to themselves. The adventurous Greeks followed those
mysterious navigators step by step; but in the time of Homer they were
so restricted to the eastern basin that Italy may be said to have been
to them an unknown land. The Phocæans first explored the western basin;
one of their colonies built Marseilles. At length Coleus of Samos passed
through the frowning gateway of Hercules into the circumfluous sea, the
Atlantic Ocean. No little interest attaches to the first colonial
cities; they dotted the shores from Sinope to Saguntum, and were at once
trading depôts and foci of wealth. In the earliest times the merchant
was his own captain, and sold his commodities by auction at the place to
which he came. The primitive and profitable commerce of the
Mediterranean was peculiar--it was for slaves, mineral products, and
articles of manufacture; for, running coincident with parallels of
latitude, its agricultural products were not very varied, and the wants
of its populations the same. But tin was brought from the Cassiterides,
amber from the Baltic, and dyed goods and worked metals from Syria.
Wherever these trades centred, the germs of taste and intelligence were
developed; thus the Etruscans, in whose hands was the amber trade across
Germany, have left many relics of their love of art. Though a
mysterious, they were hardly a gloomy race, as a great modern author has
supposed, if we may judge from their beautiful remains.
[Sidenote: Effect of philosophical criticism.]
Added to the effect of geographical discovery was the development of
philosophical criticism. It is observed that soon after the first
Olympiad the Greek intellect very rapidly expanded. Whenever man reaches
a certain point in his mental progress, he will not be satisfied with
less than an application of existing rules to ancient events. Experience
has taught him that the course of the world to-day is the same as it was
yesterday; he unhesitatingly believes that this will also hold good for
to-morrow. He will not bear to contemplate any break in the mechanism of
history; he will not be satisfied with a mere uninquiring faith, but
insists upon having the same voucher for an old fact that he requires
for one that is new. Before the face of History Mythology cannot stand.
[Sidenote: Secession of literary men from the public faith.]
The operation of this principle is seen in all directions throughout
Greek literature after the date that has been mentioned, and this the
more strikingly as the time is later. The national intellect became more
and more ashamed of the fables it had believed in its infancy. Of the
legends, some are allegorized, some are modified, some are repudiated.
The great tragedians accept the myths in the aggregate, but decline them
in particulars; some of the poets transform or allegorize them; some use
them ornamentally, as graceful decorations. It is evident that between
the educated and the vulgar classes a divergence is taking place, that
the best men of the times see the necessity of either totally abandoning
these cherished fictions to the lower orders, or of gradually replacing
them with something more suitable. Such a frittering away of sacred
things was, however, very far from meeting with public approbation in
Athens itself, although so many people in that city had reached that
state of mental development in which it was impossible for them to
continue to accept the national faith. They tried to force themselves to
believe that there must be something true in that which had been
believed by so many great and pious men of old, which had approved
itself by lasting so many centuries, and of which it was by the common
people asserted that absolute demonstration could be given. But it was
in vain; intellect had outgrown faith. They had come into that condition
to which all men are liable--aware of the fallacy of their opinions, yet
angry that another should remind them thereof. When the social state no
longer permitted them to take the life of a philosophical offender, they
found means to put upon him such an invisible pressure as to present him
the choice of orthodoxy or beggary. Thus they disapproved of Euripides
permitting his characters to indulge in any sceptical reflections, and
discountenanced the impiety so obvious in the 'Prometheus Bound' of
Æschylus. It was by appealing to this sentiment that Aristophanes added
no little to the excitement against Socrates. They who are doubting
themselves are often loudest in public denunciations of a similar state
in others.
[Sidenote: Secession of the philosophers.]
If thus the poets, submitting to common sense, had so rapidly fallen
away from the national belief, the philosophers pursued the same course.
It soon became the universal impression that there was an intrinsic
opposition between philosophy and religion, and herein public opinion
was not mistaken; the fact that polytheism furnished a religious
explanation for every natural event made it essentially antagonistic to
science. It was the uncontrollable advance of knowledge that overthrew
Greek religion. Socrates himself never hesitated to denounce physics for
that tendency; and the Athenians extended his principles to his own
pursuits, their strong common sense telling them that the philosophical
cultivation of ethics must be equally bad. He was not loyal to science,
but sought to support his own views by exciting a theological odium
against his competitors--a crime that educated men ought never to
forgive. In the tragedy that ensued the Athenians only paid him in his
own coin. The immoralities imputed to the gods were doubtless strongly
calculated to draw the attention of reflecting men, but the essential
nature of the pursuit in which the Ionian and Italian schools were
engaged bore directly on the doctrine of a providential government of
the world. It not only turned into a fiction the time-honoured dogma of
the omnipresence of the Olympian divinities--it even struck at their
very existence, by leaving them nothing to do. For those
personifications it introduced impersonal nature or the elements.
Instead of uniting scientific interpretations to ancient traditions, it
modified and moulded the old traditions to suit the apparent
requirements of science. We shall subsequently see what was the
necessary issue of this--the Divinity became excluded from the world he
had made, the supernatural merged in natural agency; Zeus was superseded
by the air, Poseidon by the water; and while some of the philosophers
received in silence the popular legends, as was the case with Socrates,
or, like Plato, regarded it as a patriotic duty to accept the public
faith, others, like Xenophanes, denounced the whole as an ancient
blunder, converted by time into a national imposture.
[Sidenote: Antagonism of science and polytheism.]
As I shall have occasion to speak of Greek philosophy in a detailed
manner, it is unnecessary to enter into other particulars here. For the
present purpose it is enough to understand that it was radically opposed
to the national faith in all countries and at all times, from its origin
with Thales down to the latest critic of the Alexandrian school.
[Sidenote: Secession of historians.]
As it was with philosophers, so it was with historians; the rise of true
history brought the same result as the rise of true philosophy. In this
instance there was added a special circumstance which gave to the
movement no little force. Whatever might be the feigned facts of the
Grecian foretime, they were altogether outdone in antiquity and wonder
by the actual history of Egypt. What was a pious man like Herodotus to
think when he found that, at the very period he had supposed a
superhuman state of things in his native country, the ordinary passage
of affairs was taking place on the banks of the Nile? And so indeed it
had been for untold ages. To every one engaged in recording recent
events, it must have been obvious that a chronology applied where the
actors are superhuman is altogether without basis, and that it is a
delusion to transfer the motives and thoughts of men to those who are
not men. Under such circumstances there is a strong inducement to
decline traditions altogether; for no philosophical mind will ever be
satisfied with different tests for the present and the past, but will
insist that actions and their sequences were the same in the foretime as
now.
[Sidenote: Universal disbelief of the learned.]
Thus for many ages stood affairs. One after another, historians,
philosophers, critics, poets, had given up the national faith, and lived
under a pressure perpetually laid upon them by the public, adopting
generally, as their most convenient course, an outward compliance with
the religious requirements of the state. Herodotus cannot reconcile the
inconsistencies of the Trojan War with his knowledge of human actions;
Thucydides does not dare to express his disbelief of it; Eratosthenes
sees contradictions between the voyage of Odysseus and the truths of
geography; Anaxagoras is condemned to death for impiety, and only
through the exertions of the chief of the state is his sentence
mercifully commuted to banishment. Plato, seeing things from a very
general point of view, thinks it expedient, upon the whole, to prohibit
the cultivation of the higher branches of physics. Euripides tries to
free himself from the imputation of heresy as best he may. Æschylus is
condemned to be stoned to death for blasphemy, and is only saved by his
brother Aminias raising his mutilated arm--he had lost his hand in the
battle of Salamis. Socrates stands his trial, and has to drink hemlock.
Even great statesmen like Pericles had become entangled in the obnoxious
opinions. No one has anything to say in explanation of the marvellous
disappearance of demigods and heroes, why miracles are ended, or why
human actions alone are now to be seen in the world. An ignorant public
demands the instant punishment of every suspected man. In their
estimation, to distrust the traditions of the past is to be guilty of
treason to the present.
[Sidenote: Attempts at a reformation.]
But all this confusion and dissent did not arise without an attempt
among well-meaning men at a reformation. Some, and they were, perhaps,
the most advanced intellectually, wished that the priests should abstain
from working any more miracles; that relics should be as little used as
was consistent with the psychical demands of the vulgar, and should be
gradually abandoned; that philosophy should no longer be outraged with
the blasphemous anthropomorphisms of the Olympian deities. Some, less
advanced, were disposed to reconcile all difficulties by regarding the
myths as allegorical; some wished to transform them so as to bring them
into harmony with the existing social state; some would give them
altogether new interpretations. With one, though the fact of a Trojan
War is not to be denied, it was only the eidolon of Helen whom Paris
carried away; with another expressions, perhaps once intended to
represent actual events, are dwindled into mere forms of speech.
Unwilling to reject the attributes of the Olympian divinities, their
human passions and actions, another asserts that they must once have all
existed as men. While one denounces the impudent atheists who find
fault with the myths of the Iliad, ignorant of its allegorical meaning,
another resolves all its heroes into the elements; and still another,
hoping to reconcile to the improved moral sense of the times the
indecencies and wickednesses of the gods, imputes them all to demons; an
idea which found much favour at first, but became singularly fatal to
polytheism in the end.
[Sidenote: Inveterate superstition of the vulgar.]
[Sidenote: Their jealous intolerance of doubts.]
In apparent inconsistency with this declining state of belief in the
higher classes, the multitude, without concern, indulged in the most
surprising superstitions. With them it was an age of relics, of weeping
statues, and winking pictures. The tools with which the Trojan horse was
made might still be seen at Metapontum, the sceptre of Pelops was still
preserved at Chæroneia, the spear of Achilles at Phaselis, the sword of
Memnon at Nicomedia; the Tegeates could still show the hide of the
Calydonian boar, very many cities boasted their possession of the true
palladium from Troy. There were statues of Athene that could brandish
spears, paintings that could blush, images that could sweat, and
numberless shrines and sanctuaries at which miracle-cures were
performed. Into the hole through which the deluge of Deucalion receded
the Athenians still poured a customary sacrifice of honey and meal. He
would have been an adventurous man who risked any observation as to its
inadequate size. And though the sky had been proved to be only space and
stars, and not the firm floor of Olympus, he who had occasion to refer
to the flight of the gods from mountain tops into heaven would find it
to his advantage to make no astronomical remark. No adverse allusions to
the poems of Homer, Arctinus, or Lesches were tolerated; he who
perpetrated the blasphemy of depersonifying the sun went in peril of
death. It was not permitted that natural phenomena should be substituted
for Zeus and Poseidon; whoever was suspected of believing that Helios
and Selene were not gods, would do well to purge himself to public
satisfaction. The people vindicated their superstition in spite of all
geographical and physical difficulties, and, far from concerning
themselves with the contradictions which had exerted such an influence
on the thinking classes, practically asserted the needlessness of any
historical evidence.
[Sidenote: Slowness of the decline and fall of Polytheism.]
[Sidenote: The secondary causes of its downfall.]
It is altogether erroneous to suppose that polytheism maintained its ground
as a living force until the period of Constantine and Julian. Its downfall
commenced at the time of the opening of the Egyptian ports. Nearly a
thousand years were required for its consummation. The change first
occurred among the higher classes, and made its way slowly through the
middle ranks of society. For many centuries the two agencies--geographical
discovery, arising from increasing commerce and the Macedonian expedition,
and philosophical criticism--silently continued their incessant work, and
yet it does not appear that they could ever produce a change in the lowest
and most numerous division of the social grade. In process of time, a third
influence was added to the preceding two, enabling them to address
themselves even to the humblest rank of life; this influence was the rise
of the Roman power. It produced a wonderful activity all over the
Mediterranean Sea and throughout the adjoining countries. It insured
perpetual movements in all directions. Where there had been only a single
traveller there were now a thousand legionaries, merchants, government
officials, with their long retinues of dependents and slaves. Where
formerly it was only the historian or philosopher in his retirement who
compared or contrasted the laws and creeds, habits and customs of different
nations incorrectly reported, now the same things were vividly brought
under the personal observation of multitudes. The crowd of gods and
goddesses congregated in Rome served only to bring one another into
disrepute and ridicule.
[Sidenote: The alarm of good and religious men.]
[Sidenote: Plato's remedy for the evil.]
Long, therefore, previous to the triumph of Christianity, paganism must
be considered as having been irretrievably ruined. Doubtless it was the
dreadful social prospect before them--the apparent impossibility of
preventing the whole world from falling into a totally godless state,
that not only reconciled so many great men to give their support to the
ancient system, but even to look without disapprobation on that
physical violence to which the uneducated multitude, incapable of
judging, were so often willing to resort. They never anticipated that
any new system could be introduced which should take the place of the
old, worn-out one; they had no idea that relief in this respect was so
close at hand; unless, perhaps, it might have been Plato, who,
profoundly recognizing that, though it is a hard and tedious process to
change radically the ideas of common men, yet that it is easy to
persuade them to accept new names if they are permitted to retain old
things, proposed that a regenerated system should be introduced, with
ideas and forms suited to the existing social state, prophetically
asserting that the world would very soon become accustomed to it, and
give to it an implicit adhesion.
[Sidenote: The Greek movement has been repeated on a greater scale by
all Europe.]
In this description of the origin and decline of Greek religion I have
endeavoured to bring its essential features into strong relief. Its fall
was not sudden, as many have supposed, neither was it accomplished by
extraneous violence. There was a slow, and, it must be emphatically
added, a spontaneous decline. But, if the affairs of men pass in
recurring cycles--if the course of events with one individual has a
resemblance to the course of events with another--if there be analogies
in the progress of nations, and circumstances reappear after due periods
of time, the succession of events thus displayed before us in the
intellectual history of Greece may perhaps be recognised again in
grander proportions on the theatre of all Europe. If there is for the
human mind a predetermined order of development, may we not reasonably
expect that the phenomena we have thus been noticing on a small scale in
a single nation will reappear on the great scale in a continent; that
the philosophical study of this history of the past will not only serve
as an interpretation of many circumstances in the history of Europe in
the Dark and Middle Ages, but will also be a guide to us in pointing out
future events as respects all mankind? For, though it is true that the
Greek intellectual movement was anticipated, as respects its completion,
by being enveloped and swallowed up in the slower but more gigantic
movements of the southern European mind, just as a little expanding
circle upon the sea may be obliterated and borne away by more imposing
and impetuous waves, so even the movement of a continent may be lost in
the movement of a world. It was criticism and physical discovery, and
intellectual activity, arising from political concentration, that so
profoundly affected the modes of Grecian thought, and criticism and
discovery have within the last four hundred years done the same in all
Europe. To one who forms his expectations of the future from the history
of the past--who recalls the effect produced by the establishment of the
Roman empire, in permitting free personal intercommunication among all
the Mediterranean nations, and thereby not only destroying the ancient
forms of thought which for centuries had resisted all other means of
attack, but also replacing them by a homogeneous idea--it must be
apparent that the wonderfully increased facilities for locomotion, the
inventions of our own age, are the ominous precursors of a vast
philosophical revolution.
[Sidenote: The organization of hypocrisy.]
Between that period during which a nation has been governed by its
imagination and that in which it submits to reason, there is a
melancholy interval. The constitution of man is such that, for a long
time after he has discovered the incorrectness of the ideas prevailing
around him, he shrinks from openly emancipating himself from their
dominion, and, constrained by the force of circumstances, he becomes a
hypocrite, publicly applauding what his private judgment condemns. Where
a nation is making this passage, so universal do these practices become
that it may be truly said hypocrisy is organized. It is possible that
whole communities might be found living in this deplorable state. Such,
I conceive, must have been the case in many parts of the Roman empire
just before the introduction of Christianity. Even after ideas have
given way in public opinion, their political power may outlive their
intellectual vigour, and produce the disgraceful effect we here
consider.
It is not to be concealed, however, that, to some extent, this evil is
incident to the position of things. Indeed, it would be unfortunate if
national hypocrisy could not find a better excuse for itself than in
that of the individual. In civilized life, society is ever under the
imperious necessity of moving onward in legal forms, nor can such forms
be avoided without the most serious disasters ensuing. To absolve
communities too abruptly from the restraints of ancient ideas is not to
give them liberty, but to throw them into political vagabondism, and
hence it is that great statesmen will authorize and even compel
observances the essential significance of which has disappeared, and the
intellectual basis of which has been undermined. Truth reaches her full
action by degrees, and not at once; she first operates upon the reason,
the influence being purely intellectual and individual; she then extends
her sphere, exerting a moral control, particularly through public
opinion; at last she gathers for herself physical and political force.
It is in the time consumed in this gradual passage that organized
hypocrisy prevails. To bring nations to surrender themselves to new
ideas is not the affair of a day.