THE RELIGION OF PLUTARCH
THE RELIGION OF
PLUTARCH
_A PAGAN CREED OF APOSTOLIC TIMES_
AN ESSAY
BY
JOHN OAKESMITH, D.LITT., M.A.
Διὸ καὶ φιλόμυθος ὁ φιλόσοφός τώς ἐστιν.
ARIST., _Meta._, i. 2.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1902
_All rights reserved_
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The following pages are practically a reprint of a volume which was
issued for private circulation some twelve months ago, under the title
“The Religion of Plutarch as expounded in his ‘Ethics.’” The main
difference between the present volume and its predecessor consists in the
translation or removal of various quotations from Greek and Latin sources
which were given in full in the first edition of the book. The references
to these sources have, of course, been retained. Verbal corrections
have been made here and there, and a few pages of new matter have been
introduced into the “Preface.” In other respects the two impressions are
substantially the same.
I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without expressing my gratitude
to J. E. Sandys, Esq., Litt.D., Public Orator in the University of
Cambridge, and Examiner in Greek at the University of London, who kindly
placed at my disposal his own copy of the original essay, in which he
had made numerous suggestions on points of style, and on questions of
scholarship in general. These suggestions have, for the most part, been
adopted in the preparation of the present edition. My thanks are also
owing to my colleagues in the Civil Service, especially to those in the
General Post Office, London, to whose encouragement it is largely due
that this essay, in its present form, is able to see the light.
As the _Athenæum_, in reviewing the original edition (_Athenæum_, 2nd
of August, 1902), suggested that “the present essay is probably the
forerunner of a larger and more elaborate book,” it may be desirable to
explain that the following pages do not constitute “the larger and more
elaborate book” which the _Athenæum_ is right in forecasting.
JOHN OAKESMITH.
PREFACE
When the student of Plutarch leaves the familiar ground of the “Parallel
Lives,” and turns, for the first time, to the less thoroughly explored
region of the “Ethics,” he is struck with wonder at the many-sided
excellence of the writer whose special gift he has been accustomed to
regard as consisting in the composition of biographies more remarkable
for the presentation of moral truths than for the accurate narration of
historical facts. He learns with surprise that Plutarch has bequeathed
to posterity a mine of information respecting the period in which he
himself lived, as valuable and as interesting as the view presented in
his “Lives” of that higher antiquity in which his classic heroes moved
and worked. Even the actual bulk of Plutarch’s contribution to what may
be called “general literature” is noteworthy. Apart from the “Lives,”
the so-called “Catalogue of Lamprias” contains the titles of nearly two
hundred works attributed, ostensibly by his son, to Plutarch,[1] and some
fourscore of these have been handed down to our time under the general,
but somewhat misleading, title of “Ethica” or “Moralia.”
Among these surviving essays are to be found contributions, of a
surprising vitality and freshness, to the discussion of Education,
Politics, Art, Literature, Music, Hygiene; serious and studied criticisms
and appreciations of the great philosophic schools of Greece and their
founders; short sermons on minor morals, illustrated by vivid sketches
of character both typical and individual; conversations on Love and
Marriage, and on other topics perpetually interesting to civilized
societies. The longest work of all, the “Symposiacs,” or “Table Talk,”
besides containing a wealth of material used by Plutarch and his friends
in the discussion of current problems of scientific, literary, and social
interest, gives a picture of Græco-Roman Society in the first Christian
century, which, both from its general character and from the multitude
of details it contains on matters of fact, is of the utmost importance
for the accurate study of the period and its complicated problems. All
these various works are interpenetrated with the character of the writer
to such a vivid degree of personality that their study, from this point
of view alone, would probably cast more light upon Plutarch’s methods
as a writer of history than innumerable minute and difficult inquiries
into his “sources,” and the manner in which he used them in writing his
“Lives.”
Fascinating, however, as is the study of the “Ethics” in these various
aspects, it soon becomes evident that the point of paramount importance
for a proper appreciation of Plutarch’s attitude towards life and its
problems in general, is to be found in the position which he assumed in
face of the religious questions which perplexed the thinking men of his
time and country. What was Plutarch’s view of that ancient and hereditary
faith which was not only the official creed of the Empire, but which was
still accepted as a sufficient spiritual satisfaction by many millions
of the Empire’s subjects? Was it possible that a man so steeped in the
best literature, so keen a student of the greatest philosophies, could
be a believer, to any serious extent, in those traditions which appear
so crude and impossible in the light of our higher modern ideals? And if
he could think them worthy of credit, by what method of interpretation
was this consummation facilitated? How could he persuade himself and
others to find in them at once the sanction and the inspiration of
virtuous conduct? These are some of the questions which are constantly
before the mind of the reader as he turns the pages of the “Ethics,” and
they are constantly before the mind of the reader because the author is
constantly supplying materials for answering them. The most important
of Plutarch’s general writings are devoted to the full discussion, from
a variety of standpoints, of religious questions, not only those handed
down by the popular tradition, or embodied in ceremonial observances and
legalized worships, but also those more purely theological conceptions
presented in the various systems of Greek Philosophy. Around Plutarch’s
Religion revolves his conception of life; his numerous contributions to
the discussion of other subjects of human interest unfold their full
significance only when regarded in the light supplied by a knowledge of
his religious beliefs.
Such, at any rate, is the experience of the present writer after a close
study of the “Ethics” during several years; and it is with the hope of
contributing in some degree to the clearer appreciation of Plutarch’s
manifold activities in other directions, that an investigation into his
religious views has been made the special object of the following pages.
The text which has been used for the purposes of this essay is that
issued at intervals between the years 1888 and 1896 by Mr. G. N.
Bernardakis, the director of the Gymnasium at Mytilene.[2] The editor has
postponed, for discussion in a subsequent work, many questions bearing
upon the authority of his MSS., and the principles which he has applied
to them in the choice of his readings; his efforts in the _editio minor_
having been almost wholly confined to presenting the results of his
labours in the shape of a complete and coherent text. Although, as Dr.
Holden has said, “until the appearance of the promised _editio major_ it
is premature to pronounce an opinion on the editor’s qualifications as a
textual critic,”[3] yet Mr. Bernardakis has exhibited so much combined
accuracy and acumen in the preliminary discussion of various questions
connected with his collation of MSS., and has disposed so completely,
as Dr. Holden admits, of the charges of inaccuracy brought against
him by Professor von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff of Berlin,[4] that the
more general student of Classical Literature may, perhaps, feel some
amount of confidence that in this edition he sees the actual work of
Plutarch himself, and not the ingenious and daring conjectures of some
too brilliant critic. This feeling of confidence will not be diminished
by the evident anxiety displayed by Mr. W. R. Paton, an English scholar
working in the same field, “to induce Mr. Bernardakis to assist and
correct” him in editing a text of the “De Cupiditate Divitiarum,”[5] and
it will be increased by the discovery that, greatly different as the text
of Bernardakis is from that of any other previous edition, the difference
frequently consists in the substitution of plain sense for undiluted
absurdity, or total want of meaning.
Indebtedness to other sources of criticism and information is, the writer
hopes, fully acknowledged in the footnotes as occasion arises. There has
yet been published no work in English dealing with Plutarch’s “Ethics” at
all similar in scope and character either to Volkmann’s “Leben, Schriften
und Philosophie des Plutarch von Chæronea,”[6] or to Gréard’s “La Morale
de Plutarque.”[7] Archbishop Trench, who speaks slightingly of Gréard’s
interesting study, has himself contributed one or two “Lectures” to some
general observations on this sphere of Plutarch’s activity,[8] while the
Rev. J. P. Mahaffy has given two chapters to the subject in his “Greek
World under Roman Sway.”[9] Chap. xiii., which is headed “Plutarch and
His Times—Public Life,” is devoted partly to Apuleius, and partly to
Plutarch himself, and exhibits, in continuous form, a number of that
author’s best-known and most frequently quoted statements and opinions on
the subjects of Politics and Religion, some ten pages being set apart for
the presentation and criticism of his views on the latter topic. Chap.
xiv. is entitled “Plutarch and His Times—Private Life,” and intersperses
with comments a number of extracts from the evidence furnished by
Plutarch on various matters appertaining to the social and domestic life
of his epoch, giving the gist of passages selected from the “Table Talk,”
from various essays on Education, and from several tracts on Minor Morals
and other themes of general interest.
Although Professor Mahaffy’s prolonged and extensive researches into
every available sphere of Greek life and thought occasionally enable
him to help out his author’s descriptions by aptly chosen illustrations
from other sources, yet, in dealing with a writer at once so voluminous
and so full of interest as Plutarch, the historian is hampered by the
necessary limits of his appointed task, no less than by his own diffusive
and gossiping style. Mr. Mahaffy’s Clio has always appeared to us in the
light of an amiable and cultured hostess presiding at Afternoon Tea,
gliding graciously hither and thither among her guests, and introducing
topics of conversation which have only a superficial interest, or
which she presents only in their superficial aspects; while, perhaps
unconsciously, conveying the impression that she reserves for discussion
among a few chosen intimates the more profound and sacred issues of human
life. These two chapters on Plutarch furnish an excellent example of
Professor Mahaffy’s method. They are entertaining in the sense that all
well-conducted gossip is entertaining. A trait of character is chosen
here; a smart saying, or a foolish one, is selected there; a piquant
anecdote is retold elsewhere: but the searchlight is never stationary,
and the earnest student who trusts solely to its assistance will vainly
attempt to see Plutarch steadily and see him whole.
It is, of course, the fact, as already suggested, that, in these
chapters, Professor Mahaffy is dealing with Plutarch only so far as he
furnishes material illustrative of the conception which the historian
has formed as to the character of the age in which his subject lived.
This fact is conspicuously evident in the brief account of Plutarch’s
Religion given in the ten pages from page 311 onwards, where Professor
Mahaffy accepts the belief of so many of his predecessors, that the age
was an age of religious decadence, and not an age of religious revival;
and that, moreover, it was blameworthy in Plutarch that “he never took
pains to understand” Christianity.[10] Further, it must be added, that
the historian’s natural desire to illustrate Plutarch’s times, rather
than to display Plutarch himself, has led him to commit serious injustice
by his uncritical acceptance of certain spurious tracts as the genuine
workmanship of Plutarch.
The conclusion at which Professor Mahaffy arrives, that Plutarch was “a
narrow and bigoted Hellene,”[11] is intelligible enough to those who
accept the view which we have endeavoured to combat in Chapter III. of
the following essay, a view which is simply a belated survival of the
ancient prejudice which consigns to eternal perdition the followers
of other Religions, because they are wilfully blind to the light with
which our own special Belief has been blessed in such splendour. But
the man who, after even the most casual study of Plutarch’s utterances
on Religion, can seriously describe him as “narrow and bigoted” will
maintain, with equal serenity, that it is the practice of the sun to
shine at midnight. Professor Mahaffy, indeed, in using such expressions,
is at variance with his own better judgment, inasmuch as he elsewhere
concedes that, “had Plutarch been at Athens when St. Paul came there, he
would have been the first to give the Apostle a respectful hearing.”[12]
The subject of Plutarch’s “Moralia” has also been touched in a few
contributions to the current Literature of the Reviews. The article
on “Plutarch” appearing over Paley’s initials in the “Encyclopædia
Britannica,” and giving a brief statement of the subjects dealt with in
the different tracts in the “Moralia,” almost entirely exhausts the short
list of English literary contributions to the treatment of this portion
of Plutarch’s work. Paley declared in the article in question that the
“Moralia” were “practically almost unknown to most persons in Britain,
even to those who call themselves scholars.” This sweeping assertion is
not by any means true to-day, although it is still the case that, so far
as the literary presentment of results is concerned, the “Ethics” of
Plutarch are a neglected field of research.
Volkmann, in the “Leben und Schriften” part of his work, carefully
discusses the authenticity of each tract in the generally recognized
list of Plutarch’s writings, while in the volume dealing with the
“Philosophie” he gives an exhaustive analysis of the greater portion of
them. Recognizing that Plutarch had no special philosophical system of
his own, Volkmann endeavours to remedy this deficiency by the application
of a systematic method of treatment with regular branches of “synthetic”
and “analytic” investigation. The “synthetic” branch of Volkmann’s
method is devoted to a discussion of Plutarch’s philosophic standpoint;
to an examination of his polemic against the Stoics and Epicureans; and
to the consideration of his relation to Plato, which Volkmann regards
as the foundation of Plutarch’s Philosophy. The function of Volkmann’s
“analytic” method is to discover how, on the philosophic basis thus
laid down by the “synthetic” method, Plutarch arranges his positive
conclusions in a coherent relationship with his negative polemic. It
is, according to Volkmann, a natural result of the successful operation
of this twofold system, that the circumstances of Plutarch’s life lose
their external character, and attain to an essential connexion with
his philosophical conceptions. This last assertion is made by way of
criticism directed against Gréard’s “natural and simple” method of
arranging Plutarch’s philosophical utterances under headings descriptive
of the various spheres of life to which they seem appropriate—“_la vie
domestique_,” “_la cité_,” “_le temple_,” &c. Volkmann thinks that under
this arrangement the sense of internal unity is lost; that Plutarch’s
views are presented in it as goodnatured and benevolent, but somewhat
rambling, reflections on the separate aspects of human life, instead
of being treated as the outcome of a consistent philosophy taking
ethical phenomena into systematic consideration.[13] This criticism has
considerable force, though it does not detract from the truth and charm
of M. Gréard’s book. Volkmann himself undoubtedly errs in the opposite
direction. Gréard was quite justified in retorting on his critic, “_Il
arrive même qu’en voulant établir trop_ rationellement _la philosophie
de Plutarque, M. Volkmann se trouve conduit à lui prêter une sorte de
système, bien qu’il sache comme personne que nul moins que le sage
de Chéronée n’a porté dans ses écrits une pensée systématique_.”[14]
Volkmann, in our opinion, attaches far too much importance both to
Plutarch’s discipular relation to Plato, and to his polemic against the
Stoics and Epicureans. Plutarch’s opposition to Plato is frequently as
strongly marked as his opposition to Stoics and Epicureans; and his
indebtedness to Stoics and Epicureans is frequently as strongly marked as
his indebtedness to Plato.
Volkmann’s work had been preceded in 1854 by an interesting and
well-written Thesis, entitled “De Apologetica Plutarchi Chæronensis
Theologia.”[15] The author, C. G. Seibert, gives a brief review of Greek
Philosophy, with the object of showing the attitude assumed by each of
the great schools to the gods of the national tradition. He demonstrates
conclusively, and Volkmann follows in his steps, that Plutarch owed
something to all the Schools, to Stoics, to Peripatetics, and to
Epicureans. Yet he, too, insists that Plutarch’s attitude towards the
popular religion was identical with that assumed by Plato—_eadem ratione
(qua Plato) Platonis discipuli theologiam tractarunt, e quibus præ
cœteris Plutarchus magistri divini vestigia secutus est_. This, indeed,
is the orthodox tendency in the appreciation of Plutarch, and it has
been carried to the extent of claiming Plutarch as the founder of that
special kind of Platonism distinguished by the epithet “New.” “Plutarch,”
says Archbishop Trench, “was a Platonist with an oriental tinge, and
thus a forerunner of the New Platonists.”—“He might be described with
greater truth than Ammonius as the Founder of Neo-Platonism,” wrote Dr.
H. W. J. Thiersch, who, however, had not freed himself from the idea
(the truth of which even so early a writer as Dacier had doubted, and
the legendary character of which M. Gréard has proved beyond a doubt)
that Plutarch received consular honours at the hands of Trajan.[16]—“In
this essay” (the _De Oraculorum Defectu_), thinks Mr. W. J. Brodribb,
“Plutarch largely uses the Neo-Platonic Philosophy.”[17] Even those who
do not insist that Plutarch is a Neo-Platonist, or a “forerunner” of
Neo-Platonism, are so anxious to label him with some designation, that
they will hardly allow him to speak for himself. It may, perhaps, argue
presumption on the part of an _homo incognitus nulliusque auctoritatis_
to suggest that Plutarch faces the teaching of his predecessors with an
independent mind; that he is _nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri_;
that he tries Plato’s teachings, not from Plato’s point of view, but from
his own.[18]
Such, however, is the view maintained in the pages of the following
essay. It seems to us that, in order to discover the principle which
gives coherence and internal unity to Plutarch’s innumerable philosophic
utterances, it is not necessary to start with the assumption that he
belongs to any particular school. Philosophy is to him one of the
recognized sources of Religion and Morality. Tradition is another source,
and Law or recognized custom another. Plutarch assumes that these three
sources conjointly supply solid sanctions for belief and conduct. They
are the three great records of human experience, and Plutarch will
examine all their contributions to the criticism of life with a view to
selecting those parts from each which will best aid him and his fellow
citizens to lead lives of virtue and happiness. The great philosophical
schools of Greece are regarded from this point of view—from the point
of view of a moralist and a philosopher, not from the point of view of
a Platonist, an anti-Stoic, or an anti-Epicurean. Plutarch is indebted,
as even Volkmann himself shows, to all the Schools alike. Then why
call him a Platonist, or a Neo-Pythagorizing Platonist, as Zeller has
done? Plutarch’s teaching is too full of logical inconsistencies to be
formalized into a system of Philosophy. But the dominating principle
of his teaching, the paramount necessity of finding a sanction and an
inspiration for conduct in what the wisdom of the past had already
discovered, is so strikingly conspicuous in all his writings that his
logical inconsistencies appear, and are, unimportant. It is this desire
of making the wisdom and traditions of the past available for ethical
usefulness which actuates his attempt to reconcile the contradictions,
and remove the crudities and inconsistencies, in the three sources of
religious knowledge. This is the principle which gives his teaching
unity, and not any external circumstances of his life, or his attitude in
favour of or in opposition to the tenets of any particular school.
There is no English translation of Plutarch’s “Ethics” which can claim
anything approaching the character of an authorized version. Almost
every editor of Plutarch has felt it necessary to find fault with his
predecessors’ attempts to express Plutarch’s meaning through the medium
of another language. Amyot’s translation is, in the opinion of the Comte
Joseph de Maistre, repellent to “ladies and foreigners.” Wyttenbach,
who makes numerous alterations of Xylander’s Latin version, also says
of Ricard’s French translation, that “it skips over the difficulties
and corruptions in such a manner as to suggest that the translator was
content merely to produce a version which should be intelligible to
French readers.”[19] Wyttenbach himself is reprehended in the following
terms by the editor of the Didot text of the “Moralia”—“Of the Latin
version, in which we have made numerous corrections, it must be admitted
that Xylander and Wyttenbach, in dealing with corrupt passages, not
infrequently translated conjectures of their own, or suggested by other
scholars, which we have been unable to adopt into the Greek Text.” In
the preface to his English translation of the “De Iside et Osiride,”
the Rev. Samuel Squire, Archdeacon of Bath in 1744, has some excellent
critical remarks on the style of previous translators of Plutarch, and he
somewhat pathetically describes the difficulties awaiting the author who
endeavours to translate that writer—“_To enter into another man’s Soul
as it were, who lived several hundred years since, to go along with his
thoughts, to trace, pursue, and connect his several ideas, to express
them with propriety in a language different from that they were conceived
in, and lastly to give the copy the air and spirit of an original,
is not so easy a task as it may be perhaps deemed by those who have
never made the attempt. The very few good translations of the learned
authors into our own language, will sufficiently justify the truth of
the observation—but if any one still doubts it, let him take the first
section of the book before him, and make the experiment himself._” M.
Gréard is briefer but equally emphatic—“_Toute traduction est une œuvre
délicate, celle de Plutarque plus que toute autre peut-être_.”
Whatever may be the cause of the perpetuation of this ungracious
tradition of fault-finding, whether the general difficulty specified by
Archdeacon Squire, or the more particular obstacle of a corrupt text
described by other commentators, we do not feel that we are called upon
to make any departure from so long-established a custom. The quaint
charm of most of the translations forming the basis of Dr. Goodwin’s
revision no one will be inclined to deny, although the reviser’s own
remarks make it clear that little dependence is to be placed upon their
accuracy in any instance of difficulty.[20] The two volumes contained
in the well-known “Bohn” series of translations are utterly misleading,
not only as regards the colour which they infuse into Plutarch’s style,
but also as regards their conspicuous incorrectness in many particular
instances.[21] To other translations of individual tracts reference has
been occasionally made in the notes.
In view of the fact that no dependence was to be placed upon the accuracy
of any translation yet furnished of that portion of our author’s work
with which we were dealing, it was necessary, before undertaking this
essay, to make full translations of considerable portions of the “Ethics”
from the text of Bernardakis; and these translations, or paraphrases
based upon them, are largely employed in the following pages. Mere
references to the text in support of positions assumed, or statements
made, would have been useless and misleading in the absence of clear
indications as to the exact interpretation placed upon the words of the
text. The writer cannot hope to have succeeded where, in the opinion of
competent judges, there have been so many failures. But he has, at any
rate, made a conscientious attempt to understand his author, and to give
expression to his view of his author’s meaning, without any prejudice
born of the assumption that Plutarch belonged to a particular school, or
devoted his great powers of criticism and research to the exposition and
illustration of the doctrines of any single philosopher.
JOHN OAKESMITH.
BATTERSEA, _September, 1902_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
_General character of Modern European Religions: their cardinal
appeal to Emotion—Roman Religion: its sanctions chiefly
rational: the causes of its failure: its place as a factor
in Morality taken by Greek Philosophy—Early Greek Morality
based partly on Religion, partly on Reason, which, in the form
of Philosophy, eventually supplies the main inspiration to
Goodness—Gradual limitation of Philosophy to Ethics_ 1
CHAPTER II.
_Importance of the ethical tendency in pre-Socratic Philosophy
generally under-estimated—Development of this tendency from
Thales to the Sophists, and from the Sophists to the Stoics and
Epicureans—Special influence of these two Schools, aided by the
failure of political interest, in establishing a practicable
ideal of PERSONAL virtue—This ideal, conspicuous in Plutarch’s
“Ethics,” and inculcated by the philosophers of the early
Græco-Roman Empire generally_ 20
CHAPTER III.
_Ethical aspect of Græco-Roman Society in the period
of Plutarch: difficulty of obtaining an impartial view
of it—Revival of moral earnestness concurrent with the
establishment of the Empire: the reforms of Augustus a
formal expression of actual tendencies—Evidences of this in
philosophical and general literature—The differences between
various Schools modified by the importance of the ethical end
to which all their efforts were directed—Endeavour made to base
morality on sanctions already consecrated by the philosophies
and religious traditions of the Past—Plutarch’s “Ethics” the
result of such an endeavour_ 43
CHAPTER IV.
_Plutarch’s attitude towards Pagan beliefs marked by a
spirit of reverent rationalism—The three recognized sources
of Religion: Poetry, Philosophy, and Law or Custom—The
contribution of each to be examined by Reason with the
object of avoiding both Superstition and Atheism: Reason the
“Mystagogue” of Religion—Provisional examples of Plutarch’s
method in the three spheres—His reluctance to press rationalism
too far—His piety partly explained by his recognition of the
divine mission of Rome—Absence of dogmatism in his teaching_ 62
CHAPTER V.
_Plutarch’s Theology—His conception of God not a pure
metaphysical abstraction, his presentment of it not
dogmatic—General acceptance of the attributes recognized
by Greek philosophy as essential to the idea of God—God
as UNITY, ABSOLUTE BEING, ETERNITY—God as INTELLIGENCE:
PERSONALITY of Plutarch’s God intimately associated with
his Intelligence—God’s Intelligence brings him into contact
with humanity: by it he knows the events of the Future and
the secrets of the human heart—From his knowledge springs
his Providence—God as Father and Judge—the DE SERA NUMINIS
VINDICTA—Immortality of the Soul_ 87
CHAPTER VI.
_Plutarch’s Dæmonology—Dæmonology as a means of reconciliation
between the traditional Polytheism and Philosophic
Monotheism—Dæmonlore in Greek philosophers and in the popular
faith—Growth of a natural tendency to identify the gods of the
polytheistic tradition with the Dæmons—Emphasis thus given to
the philosophic conception of the Deity—Dæmons responsible for
all the crude and cruel superstitions attaching to the popular
gods—Function of the Dæmons as mediators between God and man_ 120
CHAPTER VII.
_Necessity for a Mediator between God and Man partly met by
Oracular Inspiration—General failure of Oracles in the age of
Plutarch—Plutarch’s “Delphian Essays”—The DE PYTHIÆ ORACULIS:
nature of Inspiration: oracles not verbally inspired—The DE
DEFECTU ORACULORUM—Various explanations of Inspiration—Plutarch
inclines to accept that which assumes an original Divine
afflatus placed under the superintendence of Dæmons, whose
activities are subject to the operation of natural causes_ 138
CHAPTER VIII.
_Sincerity of Plutarch’s belief in Dæmons—Function
of the Dæmons as Mediators not confined to oracular
inspiration—Dæmons in their personal relationship with the
human soul—The DE DÆMONIO SOCRATIS—This tract not a formal
treatise on Dæmonology—Various explanations of the Socratic
“Dæmon”—Ethical value of the conception of Dæmons as spiritual
guardians of individual men—“Men may rise on stepping-stones
of their dead selves to higher things”—Dangers of the
conception—Superstition: Plutarch’s general attitude towards
that Vice_ 163
CHAPTER IX.
_Relation between Superstition and Atheism: Atheism an
intellectual error: Superstition an error involving the
passions: the DE SUPERSTITIONE—Moral fervour of Plutarch’s
attack on Superstition—His comparative tolerance of
Atheism—The greatest safeguard against both alike consists
in an intellectual appreciation of the Truth—The DE ISIDE ET
OSIRIDE—The Unity underlying national differences of religious
belief_ 179
CHAPTER X.
_Conclusions respecting the general character of Plutarch’s
Religion—Monotheism and Dæmonology both essential parts
of his Theodicy—His strong belief in the personality
of God—Metaphysical weakness but Moral strength of his
Teaching—Close connexion between his Religion and his
Ethics—Plutarch not an “Eclectic,” nor a Neo-Platonist—Contrast
between Plutarch’s Religion and Philosophy and the Religion
and Philosophy of the Neo-Platonists—Christianity and
Neo-Platonism—The struggle between them and its probable effect
on later religious history—Conclusion_ 201
THE RELIGION OF PLUTARCH
CHAPTER I.
_General character of Modern European Religions: their cardinal
appeal to Emotion—Roman Religion: its sanctions chiefly
rational: the causes of its failure: its place as a factor
in Morality taken by Greek Philosophy—Early Greek Morality
based partly on Religion, partly on Reason, which, in the form
of Philosophy, eventually supplies the main inspiration to
Goodness—Gradual limitation of Philosophy to Ethics._
The various religious revivals which the European world has witnessed
during the prolonged course of the Christian era; the great attempts
which the modern conscience has made from time to time to bring itself
into a more intimate and fruitful relation with the principles that
make for goodness of character and righteousness of life: have, in
general, taken the form less of reasoned invocations to the cultivated
intelligence than of emotional appeals to the natural passions and
prepossessions of humanity. The hope of reward, the fear of punishment, a
spontaneous love of certain moral qualities, and of certain personalities
imagined as embodying these qualities; a heartfelt hatred of certain
moral defects, and of certain personalities imagined as embodying these
defects:—such are the feelings that have formed the strength of every
movement which has in turn agitated the religious life of the Western
world from St. Paul to Wesley, from St. Augustine to Cardinal Newman.
What is felt to be goodness is loved with a personal adoration which is
convinced that nothing in the world is of import compared with the hope
of one day touching the mere hem of that garment of holiness, the mystic
effluence of which has already power to irradiate life with a strange
beauty and meaning. Any sanction which imaginative piety or legendary
authority can lend to Virtue is credited, not because it makes Virtue
natural, intelligible, and human, but because it places her on a pedestal
beyond the reach of unaided mortal effort, and thus compels a still more
determined recourse to emotional and supernatural sanctions in order
to ensure her fruitful cultivation. Hence Tertullian will glory in the
Crucifixion of Christ, because in the eyes of reason it is shameful; and
he will proclaim the Resurrection as certain, because reason condemns it
as impossible.[22] Hence Augustine will believe first, postponing the
grave question whether belief is likely to be supported by proof.[23]
Hence that conception of saintliness which the world owes to Catholic
Christianity, a type of character which, while maintaining a marvellous
purity of life, is devoid of that robust intelligence without which
purity runs into asceticism; which carries virtue to such an extravagant
pitch that its results may be more disastrous than those of extravagant
vice, inasmuch as the latter may serve morality by demonstrating the
repulsiveness of iniquity, while the former tends to evil by exhibiting
the impossibility of goodness.[24]
This “_extravagance du christianisme_”[25] is, of course, utterly at
variance with the general character of the efforts by which either a
Greek or a Roman directed his steps in the ways of goodness. Neither
Aristotle nor Horace, neither Plato nor Seneca, would have admitted many
of the most lauded virtues of modern ethical systems to be virtues at
all. Least of all would they have hailed as a virtue that passionate
excess of enthusiasm which makes Virtue independent of Reason, and greets
intellectual impossibilities as the trials and tests of the “virtue” of
Belief.[26] Speaking in a general sense, and with a tacit recognition
of certain exceptions to be noticed in their proper place, it may be
premised that Pagan goodness of character found its inspiration, not in
any kind of emotional enthusiasm, but in methods of thought and action
selected and controlled by the operation of reason and intelligence.[27]
Horace’s opinion respecting the viciousness of the man who indulges in
a too excessive love of virtue is the opinion, if not of a Greek, at
any rate of a Roman who is saturated with Greek philosophy;[28] but the
early character of the poet’s countrymen, as evinced not less in their
Religion than in their general outlook on life, is as little disposed
to extravagance as the strongest advocate of _aurea mediocritas_ could
well desire. Roman Religion, influenced to some extent as it was by
the gloomy terrors of Etruscan superstition, found its value and its
meaning, from the gods of the Indigitamenta downwards, in the fact that
it was an appeal to the intelligence of the citizen. That this appeal
operated in a narrow sphere of duties and was not unaffected by mean and
sordid considerations does not militate against its general character
as an address to the reason rather than an invocation to the passions.
Ancient critics found for the word “_Religio_” a derivation which pointed
to carefulness and regularity as qualities inherent in its essential
meaning;[29] and that avoidance of disordered excess, which tends to
compromise, was as conspicuous in early Roman religious practice as it
was in the sternest of Greek philosophies when transplanted to Roman
soil, and interpenetrated with the Roman character.[30] This spirit of
compromise was based upon a recognition that the actual demands of
practical life were of greater importance than the maintenance of a
rigid conformity to the letter of religious precepts. Virgil, who was a
participant in the work of religious reform inaugurated by Augustus, and
who everywhere breathes a spirit of the most careful reverence towards
the ancient traditions of the national faith, gives emphatic expression
to this view of the dominant claims of practical life, and of the
tolerant attitude which Religion assumes with regard to them:—
“Quippe etiam festis quædam exercere diebus
Fas et jura sinunt; rivos deducere nulla
Relligio vetuit, segeti prætendere sæpem,
Insidias avibus moliri, incendere vepres,
Balantumque gregem fluvio mersare salubri.”[31]
This recognition of the principle that Duty has claims which even
Religion must concede is prominently written on every page of Roman
History. It indicates the operation, in one direction, of that influence
of Reason on Religion which, in another direction, leads to the
admission of a real divinity in the gods adored by foreign peoples.
The famous formula of Roman Religion, which appealed to the protecting
gods of Carthage and its people to leave that city to its fate, is an
early anticipation of that hospitable tolerance, so strange to modern
sects, which welcomed Greek and barbarian deities to the Roman Pantheon,
and never persecuted from religious motives.[32] This spirit had its
apotheosis in the endeavours of the reformers of the age of Plutarch to
establish the triumph of Reason in a general recognition of the Unity
of God beneath the different names which expressed Him to different
peoples.[33]
Although we cannot accept as actual history the particulars given
by Dionysius Halicarnassensis respecting the manner in which
Romulus established the principles of Roman religious and political
administration, considerable value may be conceded to such an account,
because it is calculated to explain, from the writer’s point of view, the
existence of certain actual characteristics of Roman civic and sacred
polity.[34] Romulus is recorded as subjecting Religion to the selective
power of reason and good taste. Reason decides what it is becoming for
the Divine Nature to be, and everything inconsistent with this salutary
notion is rigidly excluded from the State Religion. Romulus teaches the
Romans that the gods are good, and that their goodness is the cause
of man’s happiness and progress; he instructs them in Temperance and
Justice, as the bases of civic concord, and of the advantages resulting
therefrom; he inculcates military Fortitude as the best means of
securing the undisturbed practice of the other virtues, and the social
blessings springing from such practice; and he concludes that Virtue is
not a matter of chance, or the result of supernatural inspirations, but
the product of reasonable laws when zealously and faithfully carried
into practice by the citizens. Reason is here clearly represented as
the lawgiver of Religion, and the cause and origin of the practical
virtues. Dionysius may, as we have suggested, be endeavouring to explain,
by an _ex post facto_ piece of history, the existence of certain
characteristics of the Roman constitution as exhibited in its later
developments, but these features are not the less evident and essential
parts of the system because we cannot accept any particular account of
the time and manner in which they were incorporated with it.
Further, the Roman administrative authority deliberately repressed the
exhibition of religious enthusiasm as dangerous to the stability of
the Republic; the State could brook no rival in her affections: the
devotion of Regulus[35] and the suppression of the Bacchanalia bear
equal witness to a firm insistence on the control of personal emotion
as a cardinal principle of Roman administration.[36] The apparently
paradoxical and casuistical position assigned in the “De Natura Deorum”
to Cotta, who believes in the national religion as a Roman while denying
it as a philosopher, is sufficiently lucid and rational when regarded
in the light of the religious administration of Rome, which had never
claimed to enslave the intelligences of men, so long as that elaborate
ritual, with which the safety of the State was involved, received due and
reverential attention.[37]
The ancient Roman Religion, revolving round the State in this way,
and moulding the life of every individual citizen into rigid external
conformity with the official ideal, showed its strength in the
production of a type of moral character which was perfect within the
iron limits fixed by the civic authority.[38] It was dignified, austere,
self-controlled, self-reverent. In the absence of great temptations, such
as assail the secret strongholds of the human heart and lie beyond the
influence of any external power, the ancient _Virtus Romana_ was equal
to all the demands which a somewhat restricted code of ethics made upon
it. But, when a wider knowledge of the world brought with it a weakening
of the chain which bound the citizen to the central power; when, at the
same time, a wider possession of the world and a richer enjoyment of
its pleasures increased to an enormous extent the temptations directed
against the purity and completeness of the moral character:[39] then it
became alarmingly clear to thoughtful men that, unless the moral life
was to run to seed in vicious weeds of self-indulgence, it was necessary
to invoke the aid of a subtler and stronger influence than that of the
State, an influence capable of varying its appeal in accordance with
the infinitely varying moral needs of individual men.[40] It was with
the hope of finding inspiration of this character that Lucretius and
Cicero turned the attention of their countrymen to Greek Philosophy; it
was there that they wished to find an ampler and more direct sanction
in reason for cultivating a life of virtue. Reason, which had not been
devoid of effect in the narrow sphere of Roman Religion, was now to be
made the basis of morality in general; but it was reason directed to
the purification and enlargement of the springs of personal conduct,
and calling into play qualities which had lain dormant, or had been
restricted, during the long dominance of the State over the individual
citizen. To Regulus, his religion was the State; to Cicero, the State
and its demands form but a small fraction of the moral life. A revival
of Religion was to Cicero a revival of Philosophy; Reason, the parent
of Philosophy, was also to be the parent of Conduct; the first of all
virtues is the virtue of Knowledge, of intelligent discrimination
between the things that make for morality and happiness and the things
that make for immorality and misery.[41] Starting from this standpoint,
Cicero, though approaching Greek Philosophy more in the spirit of the
student than in that of the religious reformer, though participating,
as his Letters show, in that general carelessness on religious matters
which marked Roman Society during the later years of the Republic, was,
nevertheless, the means of giving a powerful stimulus to that movement in
the direction of deliberate personal morality, which became conspicuous
in the Græco-Roman world of the Early Empire, and culminated under the
fostering care of Trajan and the Antonines. It then became clear that
Cicero had not looked in vain to Greek Philosophy to save his countrymen
from that moral degradation and disorder which, in his own words, it
demanded the most earnest endeavours of every individual citizen to check
and restrain.[42]
In Greece, Religion and Philosophy had early enjoyed mutual relations
of an intimate character. The force of the weighty invocations which
the poet of the “Works and Days”[43] addresses to his dishonourable
brother Perses lies less in the conventional theology which alludes
to the wrath of “broad-sighted Zeus” as tracking the footsteps of the
wicked, than in the reasoned choice which the sinner is invited to make
between Injustice as leading inevitably to ruin, and Virtue leading as
inevitably to prosperity;[44] and the claims of individual judgment,
the right of every man to subject everything to the test of his own
intelligence, never found finer expression than in the verse which
assigns the palm of moral perfection to him who has the courage to think
for himself.[45] Pindar, the most religious poet of antiquity, applies
the test of reason to the established myths of Hellas when he refuses
to credit such legends as depict the gods in unseemly situations, or
under the influence of degrading passions.[46] Xenophanes thought that
the claims of Religion and Morality could be best advanced by cleansing
the moral atmosphere of the gods whose recorded lives were so flagrantly
in opposition to the dictates of purity, reason, and honour; a strain
of criticism which found its most striking and notorious expression in
the famous Second and Third Books of Plato’s “Republic,” but which had
not been without its exponents among more whole-hearted adherents of the
national Religion. But, meanwhile, the national Religion, as embodied,
at least, in the national liturgy, had been coming to terms with the
growing strength of Philosophy, and the vestibules of the Temple at
Delphi were inscribed with those famous philosophical apophthegms, whose
presence there subsequently enabled Plutarch to claim that Apollo was
not only a God and a Seer, but a Philosopher.[47] The popular morality
of the days of Socrates, which supplied his cross-examinees with
ready-made answers to questions on the nature of Vice and Virtue, and
of the vices and the virtues, was composed as much of Philosophy as
of Religion in the narrower sense of the term.[48] The Theogonies of
Homer and Hesiod furnished the external machinery of the supernatural
world, but the moral utterances of these two poets, and not of these
only, but of Simonides and Solon, of Theognis and the “Seven Sages,”
contained many striking lessons, and many emphatic warnings, touching the
necessity and advantages of a life of virtue. It became, in fact, quite
evident, though not, of course, explicitly asserted, or perhaps even
consciously admitted, that the gods, as represented in the Homeric poems
and as existing in the popular imagination, were quite impossible as a
foundation for Morality, though surpassingly splendid as the material
of Art. It is hardly too much to say that, after the establishment of
the great philosophic schools in the fourth century, all the conscious
inspiration to a life of Virtue, and all the consolations which it is
the more usual function of Religion to administer, were supplied by
Philosophy. Sudden conversions from Vice to Philosophy mark the history
of the philosophic movement in Greece as religious movements have been
marked among other peoples and in other periods. An edifying discourse
under a Stoic Portico, or in an Academic School, has been as effective
in its practical results as a religious oration by Bossuet, or a village
preaching by Whitfield.[49] Religion and Philosophy are identified,
because both are identical with Morality; the lives of some Greek
Philosophers furnish the nearest parallel attained in antiquity to the
modern ideal of saintliness.
This application of Philosophy to the spiritual requirements of the
individual man, this independence of supernatural sanctions for
goodness, was aided by the almost purely liturgical character of
the Greek Religion. Greek Religion made no special appeal to the
individual conscience with a view to awakening that sense of personal
responsibility for every part of one’s life and conduct which is the
very soul and centre of Religion as understood in modern days. To attend
the traditional religious festivals; to fulfil the rites prescribed for
certain occasions by the sacerdotal laymen who represented the State on
its religious side; to hold a vague conventional notion respecting the
existence of the gods and of their separate personalities; to listen
quietly, and respond reverently, while the purple-robed, myrtle-crowned,
altar-ministrant intoned with solemn resonance the ancient formulæ
embalming the sacred legends of some deity whose “Mysteries” were
specially fostered and honoured by the State; to aid in giving effect to
the dreadful imprecations pronounced against those guilty of sacrilege
or parricide; to respond, in a word, to all the external demands of the
national faith as a political institution: represented the religious
duty of a good and patriotic citizen. A beautiful and impressive liturgy
is, indeed, not without effect in surrounding with a quiet atmosphere of
goodness a class of minds whose temptations are mercifully proportioned
to their weakness; but real moral worth must spring from internal
sources, and these internal sources were not to be found in the Greek
national Religion. Hence a wider field for Philosophy in the lives of a
people whose eagerness in the pursuit of virtue was as marked, if not so
successful, as their aspirations after perfection of art and profundity
of knowledge.
We do not ignore, in attributing this importance to Philosophy as the
inspiration of goodness, either that fortunate class of people who, in
Plato’s beautiful expression, are “good by the divine inspiration of
their own nature,”[50] or that more numerous section of society who
were directed into a certain common conventional goodness by the moral
influence of the purer myths, and who were taught, like the youth in
Browning’s poem, “whose Father was a scholar and knew Greek,” that
“Their aim should be to loathe, like Peleus’ son,
A lie as Hell’s Gate, love their wedded wife,
Like Hector, and so on with all the rest.”[51]
But there was another side to the myths, a side less favourable to
the development of morals, and one which had been brought forward so
conspicuously in the adverse criticisms of the philosophers that no
one could pretend to ignore its existence.[52] The prevailing tendency
of Greek myth was not moral, and it was only after the most careful
pruning, such, for example, as that which Plutarch applies to it in his
educational essays, that myth became safely available as a factor in
ethical progress. The mainsprings of Conduct, of personal and private
Morality, are to be found in Philosophy, and so great an importance did
Philosophy acquire as the instrument of goodness, that that particular
branch of Philosophy which exercised surveillance over the realm of
Conduct became eventually recognized as Philosophy _par excellence_;
the overwhelming significance attached by Greek philosophers, from the
Sophists onwards, to the practical element in their teaching, led to a
restriction of the terms “Philosophy” and “Philosopher” to an almost
purely ethical connotation. The argument in the “Phædo” that, without
Philosophy, Virtue is nothing more than a mere rough sketch, is so
strongly emphasized in other quarters that there is formed a general
conviction that the sole sphere of Philosophy is the sphere of human
conduct.[53]