_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._
We have endeavoured in the preceding pages to ascertain, from Plutarch’s
own account of his views, the principles, the method and the character of
his Religion; to learn in what manner he conceives the supernatural world
and its relation to the human mind and to human interests; to discover
and illustrate the processes by which these results are attained; to
note their philosophic bearing and tendency; and to exemplify their
application in the sphere of practical ethics. We have seen how clearly
he recognizes the existence, and demonstrates the attributes, of a
Supreme Being, and have observed how he raises the humility of mankind
nearer to the Majesty of the Highest by admitting the activities of an
intermediate and mediatory race of supernatural beings, whose mingled
nature allies them equally to God and Man, and forms a channel of
communication between human wants and divine benevolence. These are
the two fundamental truths of the religion of Plutarch. The whole of
his exegesis, in whatsoever direction operating, whether examining the
doctrines of Philosophy, the legends of popular Myth, or the traditions
embodied in ceremonial observances, is involved with a recognition of
this twofold conception as the essential characteristic of a religious
attitude of mind. Those, indeed, who have emphasized too exclusively
that element in Plutarch’s Religion which he owes to Philosophy, have
concluded that his religious beliefs were purely Monotheistic: just as
a misunderstanding of his Dæmonology has resulted in the assertion that
he was trammelled in the meshes of a superstitious Polytheism.[372]
It could, if necessary, be plausibly argued, against those who have
maintained this latter view, that the elaboration of the belief in
Dæmons, and the multiplication of the functions of these lesser divine
beings, are factors which tend to emphasize the unity and purity of
the Supreme God; and that Plutarch’s Monotheism is no more destroyed
by the recognition of a Dæmonic Race than is the Catholic Trinity
overthrown by the Church’s acceptance of the Celestial Hierarchy of
Dionysius “the Areopagite,” with its thrice-repeated triplets of Thrones,
Cherubim, Seraphim; Powers, Dominions, Mights; Angels, Archangels,
Principalities. But, in the first place, Plutarch does not keep his
Religion and his Philosophy in separate mental compartments: they are
fused into one operation in his thought; and we should adopt a false
method of interpretation were we to separate the result as expounded in
his writings. Further, we should obtain a totally misleading view of
Plutarch’s teaching were we to insist that he was fully conscious of
all the conclusions that by a strict use of logic could conceivably be
deduced from his tenets. An examination of the opinions and beliefs which
he states that he actually maintained leads inevitably to the conviction
that his Dæmonology was as sincere as his Theology. There can, we think,
be no doubt that his reverence for the national tradition gave him as
real a belief in the polytheistic activities of the Dæmons as his love of
Philosophy gave him in the Unity, Perfection and Eternity of the Deity.
The strength of this belief was increased by his recognition of the
important part it might play, in one direction by solving perplexities
and removing stumbling-blocks from the national tradition, in another by
responding to that eternal craving of humanity for a god-man, a mediator,
which had already begun to receive a purer, a simpler, and a more perfect
satisfaction. The conscious expression, therefore, which Plutarch gives
in his writings to the belief in Dæmons, we are bound to accept as
corresponding with a conviction actually existing in his mind, quite as
much as we admit the sincerity of his reiterated belief in a Supreme and
Universal Deity.
But it is one of the most interesting suspects of Plutarch’s Theology—not
the less interesting, perhaps, because it has a certain inconsistency
with other parts of his Religion—that, even were we to confine our
investigations to the philosophic elements of his idea of the Divine
Nature: even if we could totally exclude from consideration all the
functions which he ascribes to the Dæmonic character: we should still
find ourselves face to face with a God different, in one of the qualities
now regarded as essential to a complete conception of Deity, from any
of the theological representations current in the schools of Greek
Philosophy. The essential basis of all these representations is the God
of Plato, partly regarded as the creative Demiurgus of the “Timæus;”
partly as the World-Soul, that “blessed god” produced by the operation of
the Creator’s “Intelligence”; and partly as that ultimate ideal Unity,
the final abstraction reached by a supreme effort of dialectic subtlety.
The last of these three conceptions is essentially and truly that of
Plato; it is the native and unalloyed product of Dialectic, owing naught
of its existence to the illustrative or ironical use of Myth, out of
which the other two conceptions spring. The element of personality is
totally absent from this conception,[373] nor did the Stoics introduce
this element into their adoption of the Soul of the Universe as
Deity.[374] But Plutarch’s God is a personal God. The God of the “De Sera
Numinis Vindicta” approaches nearer to the Christian conception of God
as a Father than the Deity as conceived by any Faith which has not been
permeated by Christian feeling, and the God of the “De Superstitione”
presents the same characteristics as the God of the “De Sera Numinis
Vindicta.” Plutarch’s feeling of the intimate relation existing between
the Divine Knowledge and the secret weaknesses and sins, and the feeble
strivings after virtue in the human heart, does not require an elaborate
and contentious process of ratiocination before we can discern its
presence. It is the basis of his finest arguments, and the inspiration of
his most earnest and fruitful teachings. This weakness of Plutarch on the
side of Metaphysics, this revolt of his nature against the coldness and
distance of the Deity of the Platonic Dialectic, constitutes his strength
as a religious and moral teacher. This inconsistency makes him the type
of certain modern theologians who will expound to a formal Congregation
the Eternity, Self-Existence, Necessity, and Unity of God the First
Cause, while in their private devotions their hearts and their lips turn
naturally to the simple and touching petitions of “Our Father, which
art in Heaven;” or, while composing a sermon in which the particular
attributes of the Persons of the Trinity and their mutual relationships
are defined and enumerated with more than scholastic precision, will
turn and teach their children to pray to God as the “gentle Jesus.” In
a similar manner, there is the Plutarch of the “De Ε apud Delphos,” the
Plutarch of the “De Sera Numinis Vindicta,” and the Plutarch of the
Dæmonology. He contributes his share to the discussions of philosophic
theologians; he depicts God in direct spiritual relationship with his
human children; and he describes the Dæmons as aiding mankind in their
internal struggles towards perfection of moral character. He will allow
neither Reason nor Emotion to run away with him; he is as far removed
from the dialectic severities of Plato, as he is from the superstitious
beliefs and practices of the later Platonists. He has no special and
peculiar message either to the theologian in the pulpit, or to the child
at its mother’s knee. He appeals to humanity at large; to the people who
have work to do, and who want to get it done with honesty and dignity; to
students, teachers, politicians, members of a busy society; to people who
are liable to all the temptations, and capable of all the virtues, which
naturally arise in the ordinary life of highly civilized communities.
He analyses and illustrates such common vices as anger, avarice, envy,
hate, flattery;[375] he penetrates and exposes such ordinary failings
as garrulity, _gaucherie_, personal extravagance, and interfering
curiosity.[376] His sympathetic pen, as of one who knows the value of
such things, depicts with rare charm the loveliness of friendship, and
of affection for brother, child, and wife; while he applies a more
religious consolation to those who are suffering under the bitterness of
exile, the sadness of bereavement by death.[377] To connect Plutarch’s
Religion with his Ethics at all these points of contact would carry us
beyond the natural limits of our present aim.[378] As an illustration of
his method as operating in this direction, we may recall how intimately
Plutarch’s conception of the Divine Nature is interwoven with his ethical
aim in face of so serious a moral evil as Superstition. We may also add
that he is consistent with himself in constructing no scientifically
accurate system of Ethics any more than he maintains a dialectically
impeccable scheme of Theology. He criticizes the ethical results attained
by various Schools of Philosophy, and selects from this one and that
one such elements as promise to give greater clearness and strength to
his own convictions.[379] He quotes Plato and Aristotle to show that
Reason and Passion are both necessary elements in the production of
practical virtue. Superior power as Reason is in the constitution of
man, she cannot act by herself towards the accomplishment of her own
virtuous aims. Although he refuses to agree with Aristotle that all
Virtue is a mean between two extremes, since the virtue of Intelligence
as employed, for example, in the contemplation of a mathematical problem,
being an activity of the pure and dispassionate part of the soul, needs
no admixture of the unreasoning element to make it effective; he yet
insists that the virtues of practical life demand for their realization
the instrumental agency of the passions, and are thus, in effect, a mean,
correcting excess or defect of either of the co-operating agencies.[380]
Referring to a favourite illustration, he maintains that the passions are
not to be uprooted and destroyed as Lycurgus uprooted and destroyed the
vineyards of Thracia, but are to be treated with the fostering gentleness
of a god who would prune the wild, trim the rank, and carefully cultivate
the healthy and productive portions of the plant.[381] If we wish to
avoid drunkenness we need not throw our wine away; we must temper it
with water. In like manner, Reason will not act “by harsh and obstinate
methods, but by gentle means, which convey persuasion and secure
submission more effectively than any sort of compulsion.”[382] It is
quite in harmony with this essentially practical view of life that he
holds that Virtue can be taught, and that it is through the persuasion,
and by the guidance, of Reason and Philosophy that a happy life can be
secured, inasmuch as their efforts are directed at counterbalancing the
exaggerated picture which passion draws of all the circumstances of life,
whether they are fortunate or the reverse.[383] It is this principle
which he applies to the discussion of topics of practical morality, as
he applies it to the discussion of questions of Religion. The practice
of the virtues based upon this principle is most vividly exhibited in
his “Symposiacs,” a work which is of considerable value for the light it
throws upon the family and private habits of the Græco-Roman empire of
that age, but which is chiefly interesting because it shows to what an
extent the simple and humane moralities of Epicureanism had permeated
Society, and brought a calm and gentle happiness in their train.
It may be admitted that the positive additions made by Plutarch to the
intellectual and moral wealth of his age were small and unimportant. He
made no great discoveries in any of the great branches of philosophical
activity which had so long been the special pride and prerogative of the
Hellenic Race. There was not a tendency of Greek Philosophy with whose
history and results he was not familiarly acquainted; there was not a
School from which he did not borrow something for introduction into the
texture of his own thought. It is in this sense that he is, as he has
been called, an Eclectic; but his teaching surrounds his appropriated
thoughts with none of the weakness so often attaching to great and
original utterances when torn out of the systems in which they were
originally embodied. Nor was his Eclecticism that spurious Eclecticism
of the later Platonists, which imagined it had harmonized discordant
systems when it had tied them together with the withes of an artificial
classification. Plutarch’s Eclecticism was unified by the Ethical
aim which constantly inspired his choice, and gave to old sayings of
philosophers, old lines of verse, old notions of the people, a new and
richer significance in his application of them to the uses of practical
life. Thus, if Plutarch did not add to the gathered wealth of Hellas, he
taught his countrymen new ways of passing their ancient acquisitions into
the currency. There are periods in the intellectual and moral progress
of humanity when the world is exhausted with the accumulation of its
riches; when its appetite for acquisition is satiated; when it needs to
find what its possessions are, and how best they can be put to their
legitimate uses. At these periods the cultivation of a mental attitude
is of greater service to humanity than the accumulation of mental
stores. Plutarch came at such a period in the history of the Hellenic
race; and we, who are once again beginning to recognize that the end of
education should not be the mere accumulation of facts, but rather the
strengthening of the intellect and the formation of the character, can
properly estimate the value of the work accomplished by one who, on the
side of intellect, inculcated the necessity of sympathetically watching
for signs of a rational basis in beliefs however _primâ facie_ strange
and abhorrent, and on the side of character, that a man could become
virtuous by learning what his faults were, and endeavouring to check them
by practice and habit. In him Religion and Philosophy went hand in hand,
operating on the same body of truth, and directing their energies to the
realization of the same end. That rational influence which we saw working
in the sphere of early Roman Religion: which subsequently gave Roman
Morality a source of inspiration in Greek Philosophy: which associated
Greek Religion and Greek Philosophy as factors in Ethics, until the
latter became the predominating power: this influence had its final
classical expression in Plutarch and in the other thinkers and workers of
his epoch and that immediately succeeding, in Seneca, in Dion, in Marcus
Aurelius. These men avoided extravagance in Religion, as they avoided
it in their philosophical studies and in the practical affairs of life.
They are the last legitimate outcome of the Greek spirit in Pagan times.
Plutarch collected the wisdom, and fixed the emotions, of Antiquity, in a
manner which the best men of many Christian ages have found efficacious
for goodness. In his own more immediate age his spirit predominated for
a century, and was then absorbed to form a thin vein of common sense in
that mingled mass of Oriental mystery and Hellenic metaphysics which was
known as Neo-Platonism.[384]
Neo-Platonism, which claimed to represent the perfect harmony of Religion
and Philosophy, substantiated its claim by annihilating the historic
foundations of both, and by thus compelling Christianity to dispense
with the accumulated wisdom of ages in its reorganization of human
relationships with the eternal. In Plutarch’s teaching, each element
of the combination was at once assisted and restrained by the other,
and the fusion was natural and effective. In Neo-Platonism, Reason,
the principle of Philosophy, and Emotion, the inspiration of Religion,
were each carried to an impossible extent of extravagance; and it was
only the existence of the two elements in the minds of a few strenuous
and original characters, who were assisted in their attempts at unity
by the refinements of an ultra-Platonic Dialectic, which secured even
the appearance of harmony between the discrepant conceptions which they
borrowed from various differing and even mutually hostile schools.
Even in Plato the conspicuousness of the Ethical element compensates
to some extent for the abstractness of his conception of the Deity.
But Neo-Platonism forced the idealism of Plato to a more extravagant
metaphysic; and, although upon Dialectics the rational part of their
doctrine was nominally based, the abstractness of its processes lent
itself to mysticism as effectively as the purely religious element which
lost itself in the vagaries of Oriental rapture, and debased itself by
its miraculous methods of intercourse with the spiritual world. Reason,
in the pursuit of the One, was attenuated to Mathematics. Mathematics,
having arrived at the conception of the One, and finding it without any
qualities, gave way to the raptures of the “perfect vision.”
How far this twofold extravagance was due to the personality of the
founders of the new System, and how far to its express object of
rivalling Christianity, is a doubtful problem. Maximus was a Tyrian;
Numenius came from Apamea in Syria; Ammonius Saccas, the first great
Neo-Platonist, was of Alexandria. Plotinus came from Lycopolis in Egypt,
and was perhaps a Copt; Porphyry and Iamblichus were Syrians. Plutarch,
as Bishop Theodoret said, was a Hellene of the Hellenes.[385] But the
necessity of competing with the rising Faith doubtless operated very
strongly in developing the mystical tendencies always tacitly inherent in
Platonism, and proclaimed by the Neo-Platonists at the very commencement.
This rivalry emphasized that out-Platonizing of Plato which culminated
in the Alexandrian Trinity, and that competition with the Christian
miracles which issued in the triple folly of Magic, Theurgy, and
Theosophy. Plutarch, knowing that the necessity of confuting an adversary
is liable to cause exaggeration and distortion, removed his Epicurean
from the scene when he wished to discuss the providential dispensation
of human affairs. The circumstances of his time, and the bent of his own
character, which inclined him to seek points of agreement rather than to
emphasize points of difference, saved him from the prejudices of the
_odium theologicum_. But in the third century Christianity could not be
disposed of by contemptuous phrases, or equally contemptuous silence.
The Neo-Platonists came into direct contact with the new Religion, both
in its literature and in its practice. Ammonius Saccas, the teacher
who satisfied all the yearning aspirations of Plotinus, had been a
Christian in the days when he was young and carried a porter’s knot on
the quays.[386] Porphyry informs us that he had met Origen, and Socrates,
the Church historian, asserts that Porphyry had himself been a Christian.
The evidence of Bishop Theodoret, which cannot be accepted as regards
Plutarch, may easily be admitted as regards Plotinus.[387] Porphyry wrote
fifteen books against the Christians, which were publicly burned by
Theodosius 200 years later. He demonstrated that the prophecies of Daniel
were composed after the event, and in the Third Book of his _Collection
of Oracles_, he devotes a chapter to “the foolishness of the Christians,”
and finds a place for Christ in his lowest rank of supernatural beings.
Plutarch’s thoughts were not disturbed either by anti-Christian polemic,
or by the necessity of finding a place for Christ in his spiritual world.
The modifications which these influences wrought in that body of
Hellenic wisdom which had been the material of Plutarch’s work were
most conspicuous in the Theology and Dæmonology of the Neo-Platonists.
Plutarch had been content to state the Unity, Eternity, Absoluteness of
God. He needed such a conception to make the world intelligible; but
he defined his conception with a rare simplicity which satisfies the
practical mind as well as meets the essential requirements of Philosophy.
But the Neo-Platonist theology refines and subdivides and abstracts to
an extent which puzzles and bewilders its most earnest students, and
removes God infinitely further from mankind than even the Ideas of Plato
are removed. “According to Plotinus, God is Goodness without Love. Man
may love God, but God cannot love man.” Even the “Divine Soul,” the
third Hypostasis of the Neo-Platonist Trinity, that which lies nearest
the comprehension of the common intellect, “is of little intellectual
or religious significance in the mind of Plotinus.” Dogmatism would be
unbecoming on a subject where Kirchner and Zeller are at variance, and
where the French lucidity of Vacherot and Saisset casts little more
light than the close and careful analysis of Dr. Bigg.[388] But it is
necessary to a full understanding of Plutarch’s position to consider
his relation to his successors as well as to his predecessors, and we
are therefore compelled to a brief analysis of the Neo-Platonic Theology
and Dæmonology, putting ourselves under more competent guidance than we
can ourselves hope to supply. “The Supreme Cause,” says Dr. Bigg, “God,
in the proper sense of the word, ... embraces in Himself a unity of
Three Hypostases.... Hypostasis signifies the underlying cause of the
phenomenal manifestation. Hence it can be applied to all three Persons of
the Platonic Trinity, while Being could only be used of the second and
third.—Each Hypostasis is a person, but a purely intellectual person.
All three are one, like three mutually enfolding thoughts, and where
one is there is the All in the fullness of its power. All are eternal,
but the second is inferior to the first, because ‘begotten,’ and the
third to the second, for the same reason.” “God,” says M. Saisset, “is
threefold, and yet a whole. The divine nature, conceived as absolutely
simple, admits of division; at the pinnacle of the scale soars Unity;
beneath it Intelligence, identical with Being, or the Logos; in the third
rank, the Universal Soul, or the Spirit. We have not here three gods,
but three hypostases of the same God. An Hypostasis is not a substance,
it is not an attribute, it is not a mode, it is not a relation. Unity is
above Intelligence and Being, it is above Reason; it is incomprehensible
and ineffable; without Intelligence itself, it generates Intelligence;
it gives birth to Being, and is not itself Being. Intelligence, in its
turn, without motion or activity as it is, produces the Soul, which is
the principle of activity and motion. God conceived as a perfect type of
which the human soul is a copy, the infinite and universal Soul, is the
third hypostasis. God conceived as absolute, eternal, simple, motionless
Thought, superior to space and time, is the second hypostasis.” But soul
and thought and being are terms relative to the human mind. “God is above
thought, above Being: He is, therefore, indivisible and inconceivable. He
is the One, the Good, grasped by Ecstasy. This is the third hypostasis.”
M. Saisset continues: “Such are the three terms which compose this
obscure and profound Trinity. Human reason, reason still imperfectly free
from the meshes of sense, stops with the conception of the Universal
Soul, the active principle of motion; the reason of the Philosophers
rises higher, to the Motionless Intelligence, the depository of the
essences and types of all things; it is love and ecstasy alone that can
carry us to the conception of Absolute Unity.”
Almost the only thing that is easy to understand in the Neo-Platonic
theology is its adoption of the conceptions of various schools of Greek
Philosophy. This Eclecticism has a superficial resemblance to that of
Plutarch: but it is Eclecticism formally enumerating and classifying
its results, not harmonizing and unifying them. The third hypostasis
is the λόγος ὁ ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ of the Stoics; the second hypostasis is the
Intelligence, the eternal, absolute, and motionless Νοῦς of Aristotle,
while the first has striking affinities with the Pythagorean One. But, by
a forced process of interpretation, all the three Hypostases are found in
Plato. In the “Laws” and the “Phædrus” Plato stopped with the conception
of the Third Hypostasis, the World Soul, the origin and cause of movement
in the created world, which in the “Timæus” is represented as a creation
of the Demiurgus. In the God of the “Banquet” and the “Republic,” who is
the source of Being and Intelligence, Plato was anticipating the Second
Hypostasis; while in the “Parmenides” he describes the First Hypostasis,
that absolute Unity which has no relation with either Being or Reason,
or with anything else either actual or conceivable. The placing of these
three different conceptions of God in three different compartments of
thought, in three different Scales of Existence, is not to unify them:
nor is that process made any the more feasible by the invention of the
term Emanation, by which the Second Hypostasis proceeds from the First,
and the Third from the Second.[389] Plutarch’s Eclecticism is based
upon the needs of the moral life: that of Neo-Platonism was actuated
by a desire for formal harmony, and was steeped in a mysticism which
operated in drawing the soul away from action to a divine contemplation.
The Perfect Vision, the revelation of the First Hypostasis, is the
culmination of the soul’s progress. The Second and Third Hypostases,
being subject to relations and conditions, are susceptible of approach
through the Reason; but the First Hypostasis, being unconditioned,
cannot be grasped by Reason, which moves in the sphere of conditions and
relations. Hence, the Perfect Vision repudiates that Reason of which it
is the culmination: “for thought is a kind of movement, but in the Vision
is no movement.” In the Revelation of the Perfect Vision, as well as in
the formal development of the Trinity, we see the influence of a desire
to compete with Christianity.
This ecstatic contemplation of the highest conception of their Theology
exhibited a mysticism which had a more degrading side, one which is
specially conspicuous in the Neo-Platonist Dæmonology. There also the
Mysticism is in combination with refinements of logical definition.
Plotinus takes the floating conceptions of Dæmonology and makes them
submit to a rigid classification in formal harmony with the tripartite
character of the Divine Nature. Divine Powers he divides into three
classes. The first Power is that which dwells in the world of Ideas,
apart from the perception of man and in close touch with the Divine
Intelligence. The next is the race of visible Gods, the Stars, Nature,
Earth: the third is that of the Dæmons. The Dæmons are again subdivided
into three ranks: Gods, Loves, and Dæmons. Porphyry insists on a similar
classification. In one of the oracles collected by him and preserved by
Eusebius, the beings of the Dæmonic hierarchy are classified with equal
strictness, but with greater simplicity than that shown by Plotinus.
His highest rank corresponds with that of his Master. The second rank
corresponds with Plotinus’ third class, but does not here undergo a
tripartite subdivision. His third class, unlike the first, which moves in
the presence of God, is far away from communion with Him, and corresponds
with the created and visible gods in the second class of Plotinus. He
is not always faithful to this simplicity. In the third book of his
“De Philosophia ex Oraculis” he admits another class of Dæmons called
Heroes, admitting Christ to their number. Elsewhere he divides the Dæmons
into archangels, angels, and dæmons. Proclus will have six ranks: and
Dionysius the Areopagite, who classified this Dæmonlore for the Christian
Church, will have nine. We can equally discern here the operation of
that spurious Eclecticism which fits its thefts into the clamps of a
preconceived system. The simple notion of Beings intermediate between
God and Man, breaking the distance between the two by participating
in the Divine and Human nature, is rendered absurd and impossible by
its compulsory harmonizing with the demand of the Alexandrine Trinity.
Plotinus thought he had made Aristotle agree with Plato, but the harmony
was of the same character as that secured between Christianity and
Neo-Platonism by making the Christian God-man a Neo-Platonist Dæmon. The
Ideas of Plato, the νόησις τῆς νοήσεως of Aristotle, and the World Soul
of the Stoics: how easy to reconcile these different conceptions of the
Deity, if they are placed in different spheres of thought, and connected
by the mysterious process of Emanation! The Neo-Platonist school was
damned by its fatal proclivity for trinities. There were three kinds
of gods, three kinds of dæmons, and three methods of approach to the
supernatural world. These three methods were of course systematic, almost
scientific, constructions. Before Porphyry there were Magic (γοητεία) and
Theosophy (θεοσοφία). That philosopher introduced a third and middle term
Theurgy (θεουργία). Theosophy was the process by which the philosopher
attained the Perfect Vision, arrived at the consummation of ἕνωσις. Magic
was the process by which the evil Dæmons, whom Porphyry puts under the
dominion of Serapis and Hecate, were approached. The object of Theurgy
was communion with the good Dæmons. Aided by Oriental fervour, we know
the absurdities which these systems developed in the world of practice.
But the development of these sciences on the theoretical side was enough
to drag them down with their own weight. In Proclus the practical and
the theoretic sides of Neo-Platonism are both driven to a culmination
which passes the intelligence of humanity. “From the Incommunicable One
spring—one knows not how—a host of Henads. Each has the character of
absolute being, yet each has distinctive qualities. The Henads run down
in long lines; the Intelligible are followed by the Intellectual, these
by the Overworldly, these again by the Inworldly. From the Intelligible
springs the family of Being, from the Intellectual that of Intelligence,
from the Overworldly that of Soul, from the Inworldly that of Nature.
These principal ‘chains’ are mainly like brooks falling into one river;
that which has a body may also have a soul and an intelligence; but they
subdivide as they go down, there are different kinds of intelligences
and different kinds of souls dependent on them, so that the river is
perpetually branching off into other rivers. Yet, further, the principal
chains have to be multiplied by the number of Henads, for each chain is a
family depending on a God, and exhibiting throughout the characteristic
of that God. It includes not only Angels, Heroes, Demons, and human
beings, but stones, plants, animals, which bear the signature of the
deity, and have sacramental virtues with respect to him.”
If Proclus believed all this, we can understand his being a victim to
the grossest superstition, both in belief and in practice. In the life
of Proclus, second Aristotle as he was, we see the natural culmination
of that excess of Reason and that exaggeration of Emotion which had
marked the Neo-Platonic attitude from the beginning. When Justinian
closed the School of Athens in the Sixth Century its professors, the last
representatives of Neo-Platonism, were being hunted down as practitioners
of magic of the meanest description. The “De Superstitione” of Plutarch
marked a stage in the history of the human mind which the Neo-Platonists
left behind, and which the European world has only just attained
again after centuries of horrible crimes born of a sincere belief in
witchcraft.[390]
It is a natural subject of speculation to those who are interested in
the history of this period, how far the character of modern civilization
would have been modified, had not the free and tolerant traditions of
Greece been clamped into the systematized absurdities of Neo-Platonism.
The struggle for social and political ascendancy reacted also upon the
liberal and gentle spirit of the Man of Nazareth, whose teachings were
thus embedded in a theological formalism which robbed them of half their
meaning and all their inspiration. Christianity fought the enemy with its
own weapons, and the scientific terminology of the Neo-Platonists gave
definiteness to the Christian conception of the Trinity and the celestial
hierarchy, while the whole system of Dæmonology, which has played so
sinister a part in modern civilization, was to be found entire in the
works of Porphyry and Proclus. It has even been asserted that the chief
merit of the Neo-Platonist school lay in the fact that it prepared the
educated circles of Pagan Society for the acceptance of the Gospel, and
laid the foundations for the construction of Christian Theology.[391]
But it is conceivable that had Christianity come face to face with the
calm rationalism and gentle piety of Pagan Religion and Philosophy as
they appear in Plutarch, more of the spirit, if less of the form, of the
old tradition might have passed into the teachings of the new Faith. We
should, perhaps, then have been spared the martyrdom of Christians at the
hands of Christians, the Inquisition, and the whole terrible consequences
of the _Odium Theologicum_. Plutarch suggested a frame of mind rather
than inculcated a body of dogma, and in that he resembled the founder
of Christianity a great deal more than the most honoured theologians
of the Church have done. But Paganism girt on its armour in direct
hostility to the new Creed, and from these clenched antagonisms sprang
that accentuation of points of difference which broke the continuity of
civilization, and separated the modern from the classical world by a
chasm which the efforts of four centuries have not succeeded in bridging
over.[392] Is it not possible that Paganism, which out of the multitude
of separate gods had evolved the idea of the One Pure and Perfect
Deity, might also, out of the many-sided activities of the half-human,
half-divine Dæmons, have arrived at the belief in a single mediatory
power, and, with a perception unblinded by polemic bitterness, have been
prepared to merge this conception in the Divine Man of the Catholic
Church?[393]
But though the spirit of Plutarch was not destined in this way to pass
directly on to the believer in Christianity, the time was to come when,
among the best and purest adherents of that faith, his teachings would be
regarded as efficacious for the sincerest goodness. “The works of Jeremy
Taylor,” says Archbishop Trench, “contain no less than two hundred and
fifty-six allusions or direct references made by him to the writings of
Plutarch.” But direct indebtedness of this kind does not necessarily
imply similarity of spirit, and fortunately the mental attitude of
Plutarch is one which appears essential to human progress, and does not
depend upon the continuity of a tradition. “Plutarch,” wrote Emerson,
“will be perpetually rediscovered from time to time as long as books
last.”[394] He will be perpetually rediscovered because there will be a
perpetually recurring necessity to look at life from his point of view.
But he will be perpetually rediscovered because he is perpetually allowed
to disappear. There will always be those among the disciples of Religion
and the followers of Science who maintain that there can be no truce,
no toleration between the two, and the history of the human race will
be formulated into an indictment against the Superstition of the one,
and the most terrible anathemas of the Church will be fulminated against
the Atheism of the other. Meanwhile those who take a middle course and
recognize the “immortal vitality of Philosophy and the eternal necessity
of Religion,”[395] and would leave the individual mind to select its
appropriate support from the dogmas of the one or the discoveries of the
other, without dressing Philosophy in the fantastic garb of Religion, as
the Neo-Platonists did, or turning Religion into a matter of rules and
regulations as the Clerical Rationalists of the Eighteenth Century did,
will be regarded by the extremists as traitors at once to the cause of
progress and the cause of morality, and will be placed among the—
“Anime triste di coloro
Che visser senza infamia, e senza lodo.
Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro
Degli Angeli, che non furon ribelli
Nè fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sè foro.”[396]
But so long as human nature is composite: so long as it is compelled
to feel an interest in the home joys of earth, and is endowed with an
imagination which soars beyond the actual realities of life to the
possibilities that lie beyond its limits: so long will the spirit which
dominated Plutarch operate in inducing men “to borrow Reason from
Philosophy, making it their Mystagogue to Religion:” so long will it be
recognized that the most subtle Dialectic and the most spiritualized
rapture are dangerous at once to Reason and Religion unless they are
brought into contact with the necessities of daily life, and made to
subserve the ends of practical goodness in the sphere of man’s natural
and immediate interests. This recognition of Ethics as the dominating
end of all Thought and Emotion will lead men on that firm path of
reasonable happiness which, in Plutarch’s own favourite expression,
lies midway between the headlong precipice of Atheism and the engulfing
quagmire of Superstition.
FINIS.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
FOOTNOTES
[1] See the Heading of the Lamprian Catalogue: BERNARDAKIS. vol. vii. p.
473.
[2] PLUTARCHI CHÆRONENSIS _Moralia_ recognovit GREGORIUS N. BERNARDAKIS
(Leipzig. Teubner. 7 vols. and Appendix).
[3] _Classical Review_, vol. iv. (1890), p. 306.
[4] (Then of Goettingen.) See the _Præfatio_ to BERNARDAKIS’ Second
Volume.
[5] The Treatise of PLUTARCH, _De Cupiditate Divitiarum_, edited by W. R.
PATON. (David Nutt. 1896.) We have also consulted Mr. Paton’s _Plutarchi
Pythici Dialogi tres_ (Berlin, 1893). (An emendation of Mr. Paton’s is
noted _infra_, p. 90.)
[6] _Leben, Schriften und Philosophie des Plutarch von Chæronea_, von R.
VOLKMANN (Berlin, 1869).
[7] _De la Morale de Plutarque_, par OCTAVE GRÉARD (Paris, 1866).
[8] _Plutarch, his Life, his Parallel Lives, and his Morals._ Five
Lectures by RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., &c. (London, 1873).
[9] _The Greek World under Roman Sway, from Polybius to Plutarch_, by J.
P. MAHAFFY, D.D., &c. (London, 1890).
[10] MAHAFFY, p. 321. How Plutarch could possibly have “_taken pains
to understand_” Christianity when, in Professor Mahaffy’s own words
(p. 349), he “_seems never to have heard of it_,” we must leave it to
Professor Mahaffy to explain.
[11] _Ibid._ p. 321.
[12] _Ibid._ p. 349.
[13] VOLKMANN, vol. ii. cap. 1.
[14] GRÉARD, Preface to Third Edition, p. iii.
[15] _De Apologetica Plutarchi Chæronensis Theologia_ (Marburg, 1854).
Seibert refers to two other authors who had dealt with some aspects of
his own subject—Absolute demum opusculo _Schreiteri_ commentationem _de
doctrina Plutarchi theologica et morali_ scriptam ... _necnon Nitzchii
Kiliensis de Plutarcho theologo et philosopho populari_ disquisitionem
1849 editam conferre licuit.—We have been unable to see a copy of either
of these dissertations, although Trench also alludes to Schreiter’s work.
They did not, in Seibert’s opinion, render his work unnecessary; but _he_
enjoyed the inestimable advantage of the friendship of Zeller, who helped
him “libris consilioque.”
[16] _Politik und Philosophie in ihrem Verhältniss, &c._, by H. W. J.
THIERSCH (Marburg, 1853).—Damals stand Plutarch, dem bereits Trajan
consularische Ehren bewilligt hatte, auf der höchsten Stufe des
Ansehens. (For M. Gréard’s destruction of this Legend see his first
chapter.—_Légende de Plutarque._)
[17] _The Essays of Plutarch_, by W. J. BRODRIBB. _Fortnightly Review_,
vol. 20, p. 629.
[18] “_He cared not for the name of any sect or leader, but pleaded
the cause of moral beauty in the interests of truth only._”—Merivale’s
“_Romans under the Empire_,” cap. 60, where there is an excellent, but
unfortunately too brief, account of our author.
[19] _Œuvres Morales de Plutarque_, traduites du grec par DOMINIC
RICARD (1783-1795).—“Rapprochée un texte, la version de Ricard est,
dans sa teneur générale, d’une élégance superficielle et d’une fidélité
peu approfondie.”—GRÉARD. TRENCH also severely condemns some of the
translations in the edition issued in Dryden’s name.
[20] _Plutarch’s Morals_, translated from the Greek by several hands,
corrected and revised by W. W. GOODWIN, Ph.D. (London, 1870).—“It may
have been a fortunate thing for some of our translators that Bentley
was too much occupied with the wise heads of Christ Church to notice
the blunders of men who could write notes saying that the Parthenon
is a ‘Promontory shooting into the Black Sea, where stood a chappel
dedicated to some virgin godhead, and famous for some Victory thereabout
obtain’d.’”—Editor’s Preface.
[21] Plutarch’s Morals. _Theosophical Essays._ Translated by the late
C. W. KING, M.A. (London, 1889). _Ethical Essays_ translated by A. R.
SHILLETO, M.A. (London, 1888).
[22] TERTULLIAN: _De Carne Christi_, 5.—“Crucifixus est Dei filius; non
pudet, quia pudendum est. Et mortuus est Dei filius; prorsus credibile
est, quia ineptum est. Et sepultus resurrexit; certum est, quia
impossibile est.”
[23] ST. AUGUSTINE: _Confessiones_, vi. 5.—“Ex hoc tamen quoque jam
præponens doctrinam Catholicam, modestius ibi minimeque fallaciter
sentiebam juberi _ut crederetur quod non demonstrabatur_ (sive esset
quid demonstrandum, sed cui forte non esset, sive nec quid esset), quam
illic temeraria pollicitatione scientiæ credulitatem irrideri; et postea
tam multa fabulosissima et absurdissima, quia demonstrari non poterant,
credenda imperari.”—The principle inherent in the five italicized words
is identical with that which the writer exposes as an example of the
absurd credulity of the Manichæans. The difference is merely one of
degree.
[24] Attempts have, of course, been made at various times to rationalize
a Religion whose cardinal principle is Faith. Paley and Butler are
conspicuous examples in the history of Anglican Christianity but neither
the one nor the other supplied any widespread inspiration to the
religious life of the day. Butler, “who had made it his business, ever
since he thought himself capable of such sort of reasoning, to _prove_
to himself the being and attributes of God,” who “found it impossible to
dissociate philosophy from religion in his own mind,” and “would have
agreed with South that what is nonsense upon a principle of Reason will
never be sense upon a principle of Religion,” was yet compelled to admit
that “it was too late for him to try to support a falling Church;” and it
is a matter of national history that Wesley, with his direct appeal to
the principle of “justification by _faith_,” did more to reinvigorate the
religious life of England than all the cultured rationalists who adorned
the English Church in those days. And in these later days Butler has not
escaped the charge of “having furnished, with a design directly contrary,
one of the most terrible of the persuasives to Atheism that has ever been
produced.” (_Butler_, by the Rev. W. Lucas Collins, M.A.) Paley likewise
thought it a just opinion “that whatever renders religion more rational
renders it more credible,” and devoted his genius to the task of making
religion more rational, but has done little more than furnish a school
text-book for theological students. Further, what Christian, in his heart
of hearts, and at those moments which he would regard as his best, does
not respond more readily to the sublime sentiment of Tertullian than to
the ratiocinations of the _Analogy_ or the _Evidences_?
[25] M. CONSTANT MARTHA’S _Études morales sur l’Antiquité_, from which
we have taken this just and striking phrase of Bossuet, gives an
interesting account of the passionate and anguished manner in which the
calm precepts of the famous “Golden Verses of Pythagoras” were applied
by Christianity:—“Le philosophe, si sévère qu’il fût, se traitait
toujours en ami; ... le chrétien au contraire, ... passe souvent par des
inquiétudes inconnues à la sereine antiquité.” (_L’Examen de Conscience
chez les Anciens._)
[26] “Belief is a virtue, Doubt is a sin.”—Quoted by J. A. Froude, _Short
Studies_, vol. i. p. 243.
[27] Certain emotional aspects of Greek Religion are dealt with in the
subsequent analysis of Plutarch’s teaching.
[28] HORACE: _Epist._ i. 6, 15, 16.
[29] GASTON BOISSIER: _De la Religion Romaine_, vol. i. p. 21. Cf.
CICERO: _De Natura Deorum_, ii. 28.
[30] Cf. the remark of SENECA: _Epistolæ ad Lucilium_, i. 21.—“Quod
fieri in senatu solet, faciendum ego in philosophia quoque existimo.
Quum censuit aliquis, quod ex parte mihi placeat, jubeo illum dividere
sententiam, et sequor.”—For a summary of interesting examples of the
manner in which this spirit of compromise worked out in practical
religious questions, see Boissier, pp. 22, sqq.
[31] VIRGIL: _Georgics_, 1. 268-272.—Cf. the note of Servius on this
passage: “Scimus necessitati religionem cedere.” On the general character
of Roman Religion, cf. CONSTANT DE REBECQUE: _Du Polythéisme Romain_.—“On
dirait que les dieux ont abjuré les erreurs d’une jeunesse fougueuse pour
se livrer aux occupations de l’âge mûr. La religion de Rome est l’âge mûr
des dieux, comme l’histoire de Rome est la maturité de l’espèce humaine.”
[32] MACROBIUS: _Saturnalia_, iii. 9.—“Si deus, si dea est, cui populus
civitasque Carthaginiensis est in tutela, teque maxime ille,” etc.
[33] PLUTARCH: _De Iside et Osiride_. (Passages subsequently quoted.) Cf.
DION CHRYSOSTOM: _De Cognitione Dei_. (Vol. i. p. 225, Dindorf’s Text.)
[34] DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS: _De Antiquitatibus Romanorum_, ii.
18.—Though Livy’s account of the administrative measures of Numa is
written in a totally different spirit from that of Dionysius, it may
be noted that Numa is depicted as introducing religion as an aid to
political stability.—“Ne luxuriarentur otio animi, quos metus hostium
disciplinaque militaris continuerat, _omnium primum_, rem ad multitudinem
imperitam et illis sæculis rudem efficacissimam Deorum metum injiciendum
ratus est.” (LIVY, i. 19.) Cicero confesses that the auspices had been
retained for the same reason. (_De Div._, ii. 33.)
[35] The indignant phrases with which Horace scathes the degeneracy of
his own times in this respect clearly indicate the religious aspect of
the patriotic self-immolation of Regulus:—
“Milesne Crassi conjuge barbara
Turpis maritus vixit et hostium
(Proh curia inversique mores!)
Consenuit socerorum in armis
Sub rege Medo Marsus et Apulus
_Anciliorum et nominis et togæ_
_Oblitus æternæque Vestæ_
_Incolumi Jove et urbe Roma?_” (_Od._, iii. 5.)
[36] Cf. BOISSIER: _De la Religion Romaine_, vol. i. p. 17.—“Nonseulement
la religion romaine n’encourage pas la dévotion, mais on peut dire
qu’elle s’en méfie. C’est un peuple fait pour agir; la rêverie, la
contemplation mystique lui sont étrangères et suspectes. Il est avant
tout ami du calme, de l’ordre, de la regularité; tout ce qui excite
et trouble les âmes lui déplaît.” Boissier quotes as the remark of
Servius on _Georgics_, 3. 456, the words, “_Majores religionem totam in
experientia collocabant_;” but what Servius really wrote was, “_Majores
enim expugnantes religionem, totum in experientia collocabant_,” and he
gives an apt reference to Cato’s speech on the Catilinarian conspiracy
as reported by Sallust:—“Non votis neque suppliciis muliebribus auxilia
deorum parantur: vigilando, agendo, _bene consulendo_, prospere omnia
cedunt.” Propertius (iii. 22) boasts that Rome is free from the more
extravagantly emotional legends of Greek mythology.
[37] CICERO: _De Nat. Deor._ lib. iii.—Cf. the “theory of Twofold Truth,”
which was “accepted without hesitation by all the foremost teachers in
Italy during the sixteenth century,” who “were careful to point out, they
were philosophers, and not theologians.”—_The Skeptics of the Italian
Renaissance_, by John Owen (p. 186, second edition).
[38] CICERO: _Tusc. Disp._ i. 1.—“Iam illa quæ natura, non literis,
adsecuti sunt, neque cum Græcia neque ulla cum gente sunt conferenda; quæ
enim tanta gravitas, quæ tanta constantia, magnitudo animi, probitas,
fides, quæ tam excellens in omni genere virtus in ullis fuit, ut sit cum
majoribus nostris comparanda?”
[39] A situation forecast in the well-known passage of Plato’s
_Republic_, 619 C, in reference to the soul who has chosen for his lot in
life “the most absolute despotism he could find.”—“He was one of those
who had lived during his former life under a well-ordered constitution,
and hence a measure of virtue had fallen to his share, _through the
influence of habit, unaided by philosophy_.” (Davis and Vaughan’s
translation.) What could more accurately describe the character of early
Roman morality than these words?
[40] It was inability to grasp this truth that explained the “patriotic”
opposition of the Elder Cato to the lectures of Carneades, Critolaus,
and Diogenes. He was “unwilling that the public policy of Rome, which
for the Roman youth was the supreme norm of judgment and action, and
was possessed of unconditional authority, should, through the influence
of foreign philosophers, become subordinated, in the consciousness of
these youths, to a more universal ethical norm.” UEBERWEG: _Grundriss der
Geschichte der Philosophie_ (Morris and Porter’s translation, p. 189,
vol. i.). (Cf. M. MARTHA: _Le Philosophe Carnéade à Rome_.)
[41] CICERO: _De Officiis_, i. 43.—“_Princepsque omnium virtutum illa
sapientia quam σοφίαν Græci vocant_—prudentiam enim, quam Græci φρόνησιν,
aliam quandam intellegimus, quæ est rerum expetendarum fugiendarumque
scientia; illa autem sapientia quam principem dixi rerum est divinarum
et humanarum scientia, in qua continetur deorum et hominum communitas et
societas inter ipsos—ea si maxima est, ut est certe, necesse est quod a
communitate ducatur officium id esse maximum.”—He is here emphasizing the
social duties of the individual man.
[42] _De Divinatione_, ii. 2.—“Quod enim munus reipublicæ afferre majus
meliusve possumus, quam si docemus atque erudimŭs juventutem? his
præsertim moribus atque temporibus, quibus ita prolapsa est, ut omnium
opibus refrænenda ac coërcenda sit.”—We shall venture to believe that
personally Cicero was not a religious man, in spite of the religious
usefulness of his philosophic work, and also notwithstanding Trollope’s
contention that “had Cicero lived a hundred years later I should
have suspected him of some hidden knowledge of Christian teaching.”
(TROLLOPE’S _Life of Cicero_, chapter on “Cicero’s Religion.”) Cicero’s
Letters have as much religion in them as Lord Chesterfield’s—and no more.
[43] HEROD. ii. 53.
[44] HESIOD: _Works and Days_, 280 sqq. (cf. 293-326). Here also is to be
found that famous description of the hard and easy roads of Virtue and of
Vice. The reward held out to progress in Virtue is that this road, too,
becomes pleasant and easy at last.
[45] Οὗτος μὲν πανάριστος ὃς αὐτῷ πάντα νοήσῃ. (HESIOD: _Works and
Days_, 293.)—It is not surprising that Aristotle quotes this verse with
approval, or that it commended itself to the genius of Roman writers.
(Cf. LIVY, xxii. 29; CICERO: _Pro Cluentio_, c. 31.)
[46] Pindar: _Olymp._, 1, v. 28, sqq. (Christ’s _Teubner_ Edition).
[47] PLUTARCH: _De Ε apud Delphos_, 385 B.D.
[48] See _The Ethics of Aristotle_, by Sir ALEXANDER GRANT, Essay II.
[49] Horace’s “Mutatus Polemon” is well known. The details of the story
are given in practically the same form by Diogenes Laertius, Valerius
Maximus (vi. 6. 15), and by Lucian in his dramatic version in the _Bis
Accusatus_ (16, 17). Philostratus—_Lives of the Sophists_, i. 20—gives an
intensely _modern_ account of the conversion of the sophist Isæus. (See
also _Note_ on p. 28.)
[50] PLATO: _Laws_, 642 C. (Jowett’s translation.)
[51] BROWNING’S _Asolando_, “Development.” (P. 129, first edition.)
[52] For the influence of the Greek Myths in this direction, cf.
PROPERTIUS, Book iii. 32.
“Ipsa Venus, quamvis corrupta libidine Martis,
Nec minus in cælo semper honesta fuit,
Quamvis Ida palam pastorem dicat amasse
Atque inter pecudes accubuisse deam.
...
Dic mihi, quis potuit lectum servare pudicum,
Quæ dea cum solo vivere sola deo?”
St. Augustine’s criticism of the famous passage in the _Eunuchus_ of
Terence (Act iii. sc. 5), where Chærea is encouraged in his clandestine
amour by a picture of Jupiter and Danaë, is, of course, painfully
justified by the facts as reported by the dramatist. (_Confessiones_,
lib. i.)
[53] PLATO: _Phædo_, 69 B.
[54] “Before the fifth century, philosophy had been _entirely_ physical
or metaphysical.”—Sir A. GRANT: _Aristotle_. (Essay already quoted.) The
word italicized is surely too sweeping. (The thought is repeated with
some qualification on page 67.) Cf. DIOGENES LAERTIUS: i. 18, and i. 13.
CICERO: _Tusc. Quæst._, v. 4; _Acad._, i. 4, 15. ARISTOTLE speaks with
greater truth and moderation.—_Metaph._, i. 6. The distinction between
Socrates and previous philosophers lies not so much in the fact that they
were not ethical philosophers as that he was not a physical philosopher.
[55] HEROD. i. 75. Cf. the amusing story told by Plutarch (_De Sollertia
Animalium_, 971 B, C), in which a mule laden with salt lightens its load
in crossing a river by soaking its packages well under the water. Thales
enters the ranks against the clever mule, and comes off easy winner by
giving him a load of _sponges and wool_.
[56] HEROD. i. 170. Cf. PLUTARCH: _Cum Principibus Viris Philosopho esse
disserendum_, 779 A.
[57] RITTER and PRELLER, p. 10. (Quoting SIMPLICIUS: _Physica_, 6, a.)
[58] SIMPLICIUS: _Physica_. (Quoted by RITTER and PRELLER, p. 10.)
[59] “Heraclitus used to say that Homer, and Archilochus as well, ought
to be expelled from the Contests and cudgelled.”—_D. L._, ix. 1.
[60] See PLUTARCH: _Adversus Coloten_, 118 C; and STOBÆUS: _Anthologion_,
v. 119, and iii. 84. (Vol. i. pp. 94 and 104.—_Tauchnitz_ Edition.)
[61] PLUTARCH: _De Exilio_, 604 A.
[62] DIOGENES LAERTIUS, ii. 6.
[63] ALEX. APHROD: _De Fato_, ii., quoted by RITTER and PRELLER, p. 28.
Cf. PSEUDO-PLUTARCH: _De Placitis Philosophorum_, 885 C, D.
[64] ARISTOTLE: _Metaphysics_, i. 3.
[65] RITTER and PRELLER, p. 52.—Cf. UEBERWEG on Leucippus and Democritus,
“The ethical end of man is happiness, which is attained through justice
and culture.”
[66] _Magna Moralia_, i. 1, and i. 34. Cf. ARISTOTLE: _Eth. Nich._,
v. 5.—“The Pythagoreans defined the just to be simply retaliation—and
Rhadamanthus (in Æschylus) appears to assert that justice is this: ‘that
the punishment will be equitable when a man suffers the same thing as he
has done.’” (Thomas Taylor’s translation of _The Works of Aristotle_.)
[67] UEBERWEG, p. 47. See also citations in last note.
[68] _How_ fruitful, the whole Attic Tragedy demonstrates.
[69] RITTER and PRELLER, p. 79 (from CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS).
[70] Cf. MARLOWE’S _Dr. Faustus_:—
“Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
Ah, Pythagoras’ metempsychosis, were that true
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Unto some brutish beast! All beasts are happy,
For when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.”
[71] MARTHA: _L’Examen de Conscience chez les Anciens_ (“études morales
sur l’Antiquité”).—“Ce poème, attribué par les uns à Pythagore lui-même,
par d’autres à Lysis, son disciple, par d’autres encore ou à Philolaüs
ou à Empédocle, ne remonte pas sans doute à une si haute antiquité, mais
il est certainement antérieur au christianisme, puisque des écrivains
qui ont vécu avant notre ère, entre autres le Stoïcien Chrysippe, y ont
fait quelquefois allusion ... Hieroclès dit formellement que les _Vers
d’or_ ne sont pas l’œuvre d’un homme, mais celle de tout le sacré collège
pythagoricien.”—The author of the verses is, doubtless, unknown, but
their general attribution in antiquity to a Pythagorean source is in
harmony with the universal recognition that they cohere with the ethical
doctrine of the school. M. Martha subjects ancient philosophers and
critics to a severe reprehension on the ground that they saw in these
verses a mere inculcation of the practice of the memory—“Un certain
nombre d’anciens sont tombés dans la plus étrange méprise. Ils ont cru
qu’il s’agissait ici d’un exercice de mémoire.” But, giving all the force
which M. Martha assigns to the passages he quotes in support of this
view, we must not leave out of consideration the important part which
a good memory was believed to subserve in practical ethics. See the
pseudo-Plutarchic tract _De Educatione Liberorum_, 9 F. Cf. EPICTETUS,
lib. iii. cap x.
SENECA (_De Ira_, 3, cap. 36) learned the practice inculcated by the
golden verses from Sextus, who was claimed as a Pythagorean (RITTER and
PRELLER, 437).
[72] PLATO: _Republic_, 600 B.
[73] PLUTARCH: _Adversus Coloten_, 1126; cf. _D. L._, ix. 23. See also
PLATO’S _Parmenides_, and cf. UEBERWEG on Parmenides.
[74] LESLIE STEPHEN: _The Science of Ethics_ (concluding sentence).
[75] For a brief expression of this identity, see DION. CH. _De Exilio_,
xiii. p. 249.—“_To seek and strive earnestly after Virtue—that is
Philosophy._” Cf. SENECA: _Epist._, i. 37; _et passim_.
[76] See MARTHA: _La prédication morale populaire_ (“Les moralistes sous
l’empire romain,” pp. 240, 241).—“A cette époque la philosophie était
une espèce de religion qui imposait à ses adeptes au moins l’extérieur
de la vertu. Les sophistes se reconnaissent à leur mœurs licencieuses
et à leurs manières arrogantes, les philosophes à la dignité de leur
conduite et de leur maintien. On entrait dans la philosophie par une
sorte de conversion édifiante: on ne pouvait en sortir que par une
apostasie scandaleuse.” See the passages referred to by M. MARTHA, and,
in addition, DION’S account of his “conversion” in _Oratio_ xiii. (_De
Exilio_), and his comparisons between the sophist and the peacock, and
the philosopher and the owl, in _Oratio_ xii. (_De Dei Cognitione_).
[77] CICERO: _Acad. Poster._, i. 4. (Reid’s translation.) Cf. RITTER
and PRELLER: sec. 204, note “a” on XENOPHON: _Memorabilia_, iv. 3.
1, and i. 4. 4.—“Socratem quodam modo naturæ studuisse vel ex nostro
loco luculenter cernitur, ubi deprehendis eum teleologicam quæ dicitur
viam ingressum, quæ ratio transiit ad Socraticos. Inde corrigendus
Cicero _Acad. Poster._, i. 4.” Cf. BENWELL’S Preface to his edition of
the _Memorabilia_: “Quam graviter de Dei providentia et de admirabili
corporis humani structura Socratem disserentem inducit!”—It must be
conceded, however, that in Xenophon’s account Socrates is described as
discussing natural phenomena still with a view to ethical edification.
(_Memorab._, iv. 3.)
[78] PLATO: _Timæus_, 59 C.
[79] W. S. LANDOR: _Diogenes and Plato (Imaginary Conversations)_.—“Draw
thy robe around thee; let the folds fall gracefully, and look majestic.
That sentence is an admirable one, but not for me. I want sense, not
stars.” Cf. Dr. MARTINEAU: _Plato (Types of Ethical Theory)_.—“The
perfection which consists in contemplation of the absolute, or the
attempt to copy it, may be the consummation of Reason, but not of
character.”
[80] Cf. LANDOR: _loc. cit._—“The bird of wisdom flies low, and seeks her
food under hedges; the eagle himself would be starved if he always soared
aloft and against the sun. The sweetest fruit grows near the ground, and
the plants that bear it require ventilation and lopping.”
[81] ARCHER-HIND: _The Phædo of Plato_, Appendix I.
[82] Cf. MARTINEAU: “Types of Ethical Theory”: _Plato_, p. 97, vol.
i.—“For the soul in its own essence, and for great and good souls among
mankind, Plato certainly had the deepest reverence; but he had no share
in the religious sentiment of democracy which dignifies man _as man_, and
regards with indifference the highest personal qualities in comparison
with the essential attributes of common humanity.—He rated so high the
difficulty of attaining genuine insight and goodness that he thought
it much if they could be realized even in a few; and had no hope that
the mass of men, overborne by the pressure of material necessity and
unchastened desires, could be brought, under the actual conditions of
this world, to more than the mere beginnings of wisdom.”
[83] ARISTOTLE: _Ethics_, i. cap. 3. Cf. i. 6 and i. 8.
[84] _Ethics_, i. 3, 4, where also the verse from the _Works and Days_ is
quoted; cf. sec. 6.
[85] _Ethics_, i. 8.
[86] GRANT’S _Aristotle_, vol. i. p. 155.
[87] See RITTER and PRELLER, sec. 392, for the authorities on this head.
[88] _A Voice from the Nile_, by JAMES THOMSON. An Epicurean would have
heartily responded to the verse following those quoted in the text from
this fine poem—“And therefore Gods and Demons, Heaven and Hell.”
[89] DIOGENES LAERTIUS (RITTER and PRELLER, 380. Cf. CIC.: _De Finibus_,
i. 7).
[90] Cf. PSEUDO-PLUTARCH: _De Placitis Philosophorum_. 877 D.
[91] DIOGENES LAERTIUS, x. 142. Cf. CIC.: _De Finibus_, i. 19.—“Denique
etiam _morati melius erimus_ quum didicerimus _quid natura desideret_.”
(RITTER and PRELLER, p. 343).
[92] Cf. the statement of SENECA (_Epist._, 89, 9).—“Epicurei duas
partes philosophiæ putaverunt esse, naturalem atque moralem: rationalem
removerunt.”
[93] “Through the great weight which, both in theory and in their
actual life with each other, was laid by the Epicureans on Friendship
(a social development which only became possible after the dissolution
of the bond which had so closely united each individual citizen to the
Civil Community), Epicureanism aided in softening down the asperity
and exclusiveness of ancient manners, and in cultivating the social
virtues of companionableness, compatibility, friendliness, gentleness,
beneficence, and gratitude, and so performed a work whose merit we should
be careful not to under-estimate.”—UEBERWEG: _Grundriss_. Cf. HORACE:
_Sat._, I. iv. 135—“dulcis amicis.” The other elements of the Epicurean
ideal are also realized in Horace’s character, as his writings have left
it to us.
[94] This breaking away of the barriers between the teaching of various
schools was, doubtless, largely due to the increasing importance
which they universally attached to Ethics. The fact, at any rate,
is indisputable. Every history of Greek philosophy, from the Third
Century onward, is freely scattered with such phrases as these from
Ueberweg:—“The new Academy returned to Dogmatism. It commenced with
Philo of Larissa, founder of the Fourth School.... His pupil, Antiochus
of Ascalon, founded a Fifth School, by combining the doctrines of Plato
with certain Aristotelian, and more particularly with certain Stoic
theses, thus preparing the way for the transition to Neo-Platonism.”—“In
many of the Peripatetics of this late period we find an approximation to
Stoicism.”
[95] As regards Epicureanism, see the _Adversus Coloten_, the _De
latenter vivendo_, and the _Non posse suaviter viri secundum Epicurum_.
Plutarch’s polemic against Stoicism is specially developed in the three
tracts, _Stoicos absurdiora Poetis dicere_, _De Stoicorum Repugnantiis_,
and _De communibus Notitiis_. Plutarch’s attitude is purely critical: he
is by no means constructive. His criticism has been severely dealt with
by H. Bazin in his dissertation, _De Plutarcho Stoicorum Adversario_. It
is worthy of note that Plutarch deals entirely with the founders of the
two schools, not with the later developments of their teachings.
[96] Thiersch, who regards Plutarch as the inaugurator of that moral
reformation which, as we attempt to show in the next chapter, was
operating before he was born, asserts that at the time when Plutarch
began his work, the prevailing manner of life was based upon an
Epicurean ideal. (_Der Epikureismus war die Popularphilosophie des
Tages, denn in ihr fand die herrschende Lebensweise ihren begrifflichen
Ausdruck._—THIERSCH: _Politik und Philosophie in ihrem Verhältniss,
etc._, Marburg, 1853.) If this be so, and we willingly make the
admission, there was little need for reform here, although, as Seneca
found (_Ad Lucilium_, xxi. 9), it may have been necessary to explain to a
misunderstanding world what Epicureanism really was. Whatever Plutarch,
as nominal Platonist, may polemically advance against Epicureanism, the
ideal of Epicurus and Metrodorus is realized in the conduct of the group
of people whose manner of life is represented in the _Symposiacs_.
[97] For some considerations on this subject see the concluding chapter.
[98] _E.g._, Dr. August Tholuck.—At the termination of an article,
“_Ueber den Einfluss des Heidenthums aufs Leben_,” in which he ransacks
classical authors and Christian fathers for anything which may serve
to exhibit the degradation of Pagan society, he quotes the words of
Athanasius to give expression to the conclusion referred to in the text.
The whole of Champagny’s brilliant and fascinating work on the Cæsars is
dominated by the same spirit, a spirit utterly inconsistent with that
attitude of philosophical detachment in which history should be written,
(_Études sur l’Empire Romain_, tome iii., “_Les Césars_.”) Archbishop
Trench, too, says of our period that it “was the hour and power of
darkness; of a darkness which then, immediately before the dawn of a new
day, was the thickest.” (_Miracles_, p. 162.) Prof. Mahaffy, in the same
uncritical spirit, refers to the “singular” and “melancholy” spectacle
presented by Plutarch in his religious work, “_clinging to the sinking
ship, or rather, trying to stop the leak and declare her seaworthy_.”
(_Greeks under Roman Sway_, p. 321.)
[99] See Dean Merivale, _Romans under the Empire_, vol. vii.
[100] See “St. Paul and Seneca” (Dissertation ii. in Lightfoot on
“Philippians”) for a full account of the question from the historical and
critical standpoints. The learned and impartial Bishop has no difficulty
in proving that the resemblances between Stoicism and Christianity were
due to St. Paul’s acquaintance with Stoic teaching, and not to Seneca’s
knowledge of the Christian faith.
Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, in Syria (consecrated A.D. 420), appears
to have been the first to assert the operation of Christian influences
on Plutarch:—“_Plotinus, Plutarch, and Numenius, and the rest of their
tribe, who lived after the Manifestation of our Saviour to the Gentiles,
inserted into their own writings many points of Christian Theology._”
(Theodoretus, _Græcarum affectionum curatio_—Oratio ii., De Principio.)
In another place he makes a still more definite assertion: “_Plutarch and
Plotinus undoubtedly heard the Divine Gospel._” (Oratio x., De Oraculis.)
Rualdus, in the ninth chapter of his _Vita Plutarchi_, given towards
the end of the first volume of the Paris edition of 1624, dare not be
so emphatic as Theodoret:—“_There are, in the writings of Plutarch,
numerous thoughts, drawn from I cannot say what hidden source, which,
from their truth and importance, could be taken for the utterances of
a Christian oracle. I do not hesitate, therefore, to say of him, as
Tertullian said of Seneca, that he is ‘often our own man.’_” And he
even goes so far as to admit that, though Plutarch never attacked the
Christian faith, and might have read the New Testament as well as the
Old, it is quite impossible to claim him as a believer.—Brucker, in a
slight account of Plutarch in his _Historia Critica Philosophiæ_, takes
a more critical view.—“The fact that Plutarch, in his numerous writings,
nowhere alludes to the Christians, I do not know whether to attribute to
his sense of fairness, or even to actual favour, or whether to regard it
as an indication of mere neglect and contempt.” That Brucker is inclined
to the alternative of contempt is shown by a comment in a footnote on
Tillemont’s assertion (_Histoire des Empereurs_), that Plutarch ignored
the Christians, “not daring to speak well, not wishing to speak ill.” “It
appears to me,” says Brucker, “that the real reason was contempt for the
Christians, who were looked upon as illiterate.”
Of modern examples of this tendency one may be sufficient. In the
introduction to an American translation of the _De Sera Numinis
Vindicta_, the editor, after enumerating the arguments against any
connexion between Plutarch and Christianity, concludes:—“Yet I cannot
doubt that an infusion of Christianity had somehow infiltrated itself
into Plutarch’s ethical opinions and sentiment, _as into those of
Seneca_.” (“Plutarch on the Delay of the Divine Justice,” translated,
with an introduction and notes, by ANDREW P. PEABODY, Boston, 1885.)
[101] See DION: _Ad Alexandrinos_, p. 410 (Dindorf). See also p. 402. Cf.
PHILOSTRATUS: _Vitæ Sophistarum_, i. 6.
[102] E.g., _Conjugalia Præcepta_, 140 A.—“_Those who do not associate
cheerfully with their wives, nor share their recreations with them, teach
them to seek their own pleasures apart from those of their husbands._”
[103] TIBULLUS: _Eleg._, i. 1. Cf. PROPERTIUS: _Eleg._, iii. 15. “Dum nos
fata sinunt, oculos satiemus amore: Nox tibi longa venit, nec reditura
dies.”
[104] TIBULLUS: _Eleg._, i. 3. “Quod si fatales iam nunc explevimus
annos,” to the end of the Elegy.
[105] TIB. i. 3 (sub finem).
[106] PROPERTIUS: _Eleg._, ii. 13, 28; iv. 5, 23 sqq.; iv. 4.
[107] TIB., i. 10.
[108] LUCAN: _Pharsalia_, i. 670.
[109] The basis of the work of Augustus, and of the religious reforms
inaugurated or developed by him, is laid in the recognition of a fact
noted by Balbus in CIC., _De Nat. Deorum_, lib. ii. 3. “Eorum imperiis
rempublicam amplificatam qui religionibus paruissent. Et si conferre
volumus nostra cum externis, ceteris rebus aut pares aut etiam inferiores
reperiemur; religione, id est, cultu deorum, multo superiores.” Cf.
HORACE: _Od._, iii. 6, vv. 1-4; LIVY, xlv. 39.
[110] HOR.: _Od._, iii. 6.
[111] See BOISSIER: _Religion Romaine_, vol. i. cap. 5.—_Le Sixième
Livre de l’Enéide_. St. Augustine must surely have felt the _religious_
influence of the Æneid when he experienced the emotion which he describes
in the well-known passage in the First Book of the Confessions—_plorare
Didonem mortuam (cogebar), quia se occidit ob amorem: cum interea meipsum
morientem, Deus Vita mea, siccis occulis ferrem miserrimus_. (Lib. i.
cap. xiii.)
[112] OVID: _Fasti_, 4, 203; cf. _Meta._, i. sec. 8.
[113] See the Life of Persius, included, with the Lives of Terence,
Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, and Pliny the Elder, in the writings of Suetonius.
[114] MACLEANE’S _Persius_.—Introduction.
[115] PERSIUS: _Sat._, v. 62-64.—_At te nocturnis juvat impallescere
chartis, Cultor enim juvenum purgatas inseris aures Fruge Cleanthea._
[116] _Pharsalia_, ix. 554-555.
[117] _Pharsalia_, ix. 570. We have not been able to refrain from quoting
these—as other—well-known verses in the text. They are the highest
expression of the Stoic Pantheism. “_Virtus_” has the appearance of a
rhetorical climax; but has it been noticed that the great modern poet of
Pantheism—for what else was Wordsworth?—also makes humanity the highest
embodiment of that “presence ... Whose dwelling is the light of setting
suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, _and in
the mind of man_?”
[118] _Quis labor hic superis_, &c., vi. 490, _et passim_.
[119] _Felices errore suo_, &c., i. 459.
[120] Scrutabitur scholas nostras, et obiiciet philosophis congiaria,
amicas, gulam: ostendet mihi alium in adulterio, alium in popina, alium
in aula.—SENECA: _Epist._, i. 29.
[121] PHILOSTRATUS, i. 7. The quaint turn of the version in the text is
from BLOUNT’S 1681 translation of the _Life of Apollonius_.
[122] DION: _Oratio_ 32, pp. 402-3 (Dindorf).
[123] See DION: _De Cognitione Dei_ (pp. 213-4) for an interesting
comparison between the owl and the philosopher on the one hand, and the
sophist and the peacock on the other. (Cf. _Ad Alexandrinos_, p. 406,
where the sufferings of the faithful philosopher are in implied contrast
to the rewards that await the brilliant sophist.)
[124] _Iliad_, ix. 312-3 (Chapman’s translation). This actual text is
quoted in PHILOSTRATUS’ _Lives of the Sophists_ (i. 25) as a criticism on
some of the false and fantastic exercises of the Sophists. The “distant
lapse” referred to in the text is constantly evident in the dramas of the
best Athenian period. And history shows that there was a strong tendency
in the Hellenic character agreeing with that indicated by the evidence of
the dramatists, notwithstanding the outcry raised when Euripides summed
up the whole matter in his famous line in the Hippolytus (_Hipp._ 612).
[125] PHILOSTRATUS: _Vitæ Sophistarum_, lib. i. sec. 24.
[126] E.g., _De Stoic. Repug._, 1033 A, B; _De Audiendo_, 43 F.
[127] See frequent passages in Seneca’s letters to Lucilius, e.g. _Ep._
i. 16, 20. Cf. _De Vita Beata_, cap. 18, where Seneca defends himself and
other philosophers against the charge “_aliter loqueris: aliter vivis_.”
He will not be deterred from the pursuit of virtue by any truth human
weakness may have to admit in the charge.
This note is well marked in both Aurelius and Epictetus (ii. 19. Cf.
AULUS GELLIUS, xvii. 19). The praise of Ulysses at the end of the _De Deo
Socratis_ of Apuleius is couched in the same strain.
[128] CATULLUS, xvi. 4, 5; OVID: _Tristia_, ii. 353-4; MARTIAL, i. 5.
[129] PLINY: _Ep._ v. 3. Plutarch, also, is legitimately offended at
the loose language of the founders of Stoicism (see _De Stoic. Repug._,
1044 B), and his expressions, as are those of Pliny’s friends, are quite
in harmony with the modern attitude on the question. Apuleius defends
himself against a similar charge to that brought against Pliny by a
similar display of great names.—“Fecere tamen et _alii talia_” (De Deo
Socratis).
[130] HORACE: _Ep._ i. 1, 14.
[131] EPICTETUS: _Encheir._, 49; _Discourses_, iii. 2; i. 17.
[132] SENECA: _Epist. ad Lucilium_, i. 21. Here are a few of the _egregia
dicta_ which Seneca takes from the teachings of Epicurus, or Metrodorus,
or _alicujus ex illa officina_.—“_Honesta res est læta paupertas_,”
“_Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus_,” “_Philosophiæ servias
oportet ut tibi contingat vera libertas_,” “_Si cui sua non videntur
amplissima, licet totius mundi dominus sit, tamen miser est_,” “_Quid est
turpius, quam senex vivere incipiens?_” “_Is maxime divitiis fruitur,
qui minime divitiis indiget_,” “_Immodica ira gignit insaniam_,” “_Sic
fac omnia, tanquam spectet Epicurus_,” “_Initium est salutis, notitia
peccati_,” &c. Yet Seneca was the _acerrimus Stoicus_ of Lactantius
(_Div. Inst._, i. 5).
[133] Fragment 120 in Bergk’s third edition, 144 in his fourth edition,
and 107 in Böckh’s edition. W. Christ includes it in his selections—ἐξ
ἀδήλων εἰδῶν (No. 4).
[134] _Iliad_, ix. 498; xi. 3, 73; iv. 440.
[135] _Amatorius_, 763 C, sqq.; cf. _De Placitis Philosoph._, lib. i.
879-880 A. This tract cannot be quoted as authority for Plutarch’s views;
it is in several places distinctly, even grossly, anti-Platonic, and
in other places even more distinctly Epicurean. As an example of the
reverence with which Plutarch constantly alludes to Plato, the first
conversation in the Eighth Book of the _Symposiacs_ may be quoted.
The conversation arises out of a celebration of Plato’s birthday, and
Plutarch gives a sympathetic report of the remarks of Mestrius Florus,
who is of opinion that those who impute the philosopher’s paternity
to Apollo do not dishonour the God. Cf. this and hundreds of other
similar examples with the bitterly contemptuous expressions in the _De
Placitis_, 881 A, a section which concludes with an emphatic exposition
of that Epicurean view which Plutarch exerts himself so strenuously to
confute in the _De Sera Numinis Vindicta_. Bernardakis “stars” the _De
Placitis_, though Zimmerman quotes it as evidence against the sincerity
of Plutarch’s piety (_Epistola ad Nicolaum Nonnen_, cap. 7: “aperte
negat providentiam”). Wyttenbach says the _De Placitis_ was “e perditis
quibusdam germanis libris compilatum.” Christopher Meiners (_Historia
Doctrinæ de Vero Deo_, p. 246) attacks the boldness of the writer, “quâ
deorum numen et providentiam impugnavit, quæque a Plutarchi pietate et
moribus longe abhorret.” Corsini seems to think that the incredible
labour involved in the compilation makes it worthy of Plutarch. His
edition, with notes, translation, and dissertations, makes a very
handsome quarto, which is a monument of combined industry and simplicity.
He makes no comment on the anti-Platonic expressions alluded to above
(CORSINUS: _Plutarchi De Placitis Philosophorum_, libri v., Florence,
1759), nor does Mahaffy either, who regards the _De Placitis_ as genuine,
though he calls it jejune. I have been unable to see a copy of Beck’s
1787 edition, which Volkmann highly praises. It may be observed with
regard to the passage referred to at the head of this note that Plutarch
would never have limited the contribution of philosophy to the knowledge
of God to τὸ φυσικόν. Dion Chrysostom (_De Dei Cognitione_, 393, sqq.)
mentions the same three sources of the knowledge of the Divine nature as
Plutarch, but also postulates a primeval and innate cognition of God.
[136] Cf. the Pseudo-Plutarchic _De Placit. Phil._, 880 A.
[137] Λόγον ἐκ φιλοσοφίας μυσταγωγὸν ἀναλαβόντες. _De Iside et Osiride_,
378 A, B. “_Un lien pieux se formait entre le myste et son mystagogue,
lien qui ne pouvait plus se rompre sans crime._”—Maury, vol. ii. cap.
xi. For the saying of Theodorus about “taking with the left hand what is
offered with the right,” see _De Tranquillitate Animi_, 467 B.
[138] _De Iside et Osiride_, and _De Superstitione_, passim.
[139] Cf. DIOG. LAERT. vii. 134 (RITTER and PRELLER, sect. 404).—“God, by
transformation of His own essence, makes the world.”—Grant’s _Aristotle_,
Essay vi., “_The Ancient Stoics._” Cf. PLUT: _De Stoic. Repugn._ 1053.
[140] _De Ε apud Delphos_, 388 F.
[141] _Quomodo Adulator_, 78 E. Cf. EUNAPIUS on _Historians of
Philosophy_. “No one has written any careful account of the lives of
philosophers, among whom we count not only Ammonius, teacher of divinest
Plutarch, but also Plutarch himself, the darling and delight of all
Philosophy.” Eunapius thinks that the _Parallel Lives_ were Plutarch’s
finest work, but adds that “all his writings are thickly sown with
original thoughts of his own, as well as with the teachings of his
Master.”
[142] 393 E.
[143] Plutarch elsewhere comments upon the εὑρησιλογία of the Stoics
in finding explanations of the various names of the popular Deities
(_Quomodo Adolescens_, 31 E). CICERO (_De Natura Deorum_, iii. 24)
represents Cotta as charging the Stoics with supporting the crudest
superstitions of the popular faith by the skill which they displayed
in finding a mysterious significance in the current names and
legends:-“Atque hæc quidem et ejusmodi ex vetere Græcia fama collecta
sunt; quibus intelligis resistendum esse, ne perturbentur religiones.
Vestri autem non modo hæc non repellunt, verum etiam confirmant,
interpretando quorsum quidque pertineat.”
[144] _Iliad_, xv. 362-4.
[145] In another place Plutarch expresses the view that the original
Creator of the world bestowed upon the stuff of the phenomenal world a
principle of change and movement by which that stuff often dissolves
and reshapes itself under the operation of natural causes without the
intervention of the original Creator (_De Defectu Orac._, 435-6).
[146] Plutarch, in this Essay, distinctly places himself in opposition to
Plato, whose views, for the purposes of contrast, may be summarized from
two well-known passages of the Republic. In 337 B, C, the greater part
of the myths current in the popular poets are repudiated. Then, after
that famous series of criticisms applied to particular passages taken
from Homer and Hesiod and other poets, after his analysis of the various
kinds of “narration,” and his implicit inclusion of the great poets of
Greece among the masters of that kind of imitative narration which a man
will the more indulge in, the more contemptible he is, Plato concludes
with that ironical description of the reception which a Homer or a Hesiod
would have to meet in a state founded on the Platonic ideal. “_We shall
pay him reverence as a sacred, admirable, and charming personage; we
shall pour perfumed oil upon his head and crown him with woollen fillets;
but we shall tell him that our laws exclude such characters as he, and
shall send him away to some other city than ours._”—398 A, B (Davies and
Vaughan’s translation). Plutarch, however, takes the world as it is.
He admits that poetry is a siren, but refuses to stop the ears of the
young people who listen to her fascinating strains. Lycurgus was mad
in thinking he could cure drunkenness by cutting down the vineyards;
he should rather have brought the water-springs nearer to the vines.
It is better to utilize the vine of poetry by checking and pruning its
“fanciful and theatrical exuberance” than to uproot it altogether. We
must mingle the wine with the pure water of philosophy, or, to use
another image, poetry and philosophy must be planted in the same soil,
just as the mandragora, which moderates the native strength of the wine,
is planted in vineyards (_Quomodo Adolescens_, 15 E).