brutes. ‘Elephants worship the sun, stretching out their trunks to it
like hands when it rises while men doubt the existence of the gods,
or at least their care for us.’ ‘There is an island in the Black Sea,
sacred to Heracles, where the mice touch nothing that belongs to the
god. When the grapes which are intended to be used for his sacrifices
begin to ripen, they quit the island in order to escape the temptation
of nibbling at them, coming back when the vintage is over. Hippo,
Diagoras, Herostratus, and other enemies of the gods would, no doubt,
spare these grapes just as little as anything else that was consecrated
to their use.’[353]
It is, perhaps, characteristic of the times that Aelian’s stories
should redound more especially to the credit of Asclêpius and Heracles,
who were not gods of the first order, but demi-gods or deified mortals.
Their worship, like that of the Nature-powers connected with earth
rather than with heaven, belongs particularly to the popular religion,
and seems to have been repressed or restrained in societies organised
on aristocratic principles. And as more immediate products of the
forces by which supernaturalist beliefs are created and maintained,
such divinities would profit by the free scope now given to popular
predilections. In their case also, as with the earth-goddesses
Dêmêtêr and Isis, a more immediate and affectionate relation might be
established between the believer and the object of his worship than
had been possible in reference to the chief Olympian gods. Heracles
had lived the life of a man, his activity had been almost uniformly
beneficent, and so he was universally invoked, as a helper and healer,
in the sick-chamber no less than on the storm-tost ship.[354]
Asclêpius was still more obviously the natural refuge of those who were
afflicted with any bodily disease, and, in a time of profound peace,
this was of all calamities the most likely to turn men’s thoughts
towards a supernatural protector. Hence we find that where, apart from
Christianity, the religious enthusiasm of the second century reaches
its intensest expression, which is in the writings of the celebrated
rhetor Aristeides, Asclêpius comes in for the largest share of
devotional feeling. During an illness which continued through thirteen
years, Aristeides sought day and night for help and inspiration
from the god. It came at last in the usual form of a prescription
communicated through a dream. Both on this and on other occasions, the
excitement of an overwrought imagination combined with an exorbitant
vanity made the sophist believe himself to be preferred above all other
men as an object of the divine favour. At one time he would see himself
admitted in his dreams to an exchange of compliments with Asclêpius;
at other times he would convert the most ordinary incidents into signs
of supernatural protection. Thus his foster-sister having died on the
day of his own recovery from a dangerous epidemic, it was revealed
to him in a dream that her life had been accepted as a ransom for
his. We are told that the monks of the Middle Ages could not refrain
from expressing their indignant contempt for the insane credulity of
Aristeides, in marginal notes on his orations; but the last-mentioned
incident, at least, is closely paralleled by the well-known story that
a devout lady was once permitted to redeem the life of Pius IX. by the
sacrifice of her own.[355]
Besides this increasing reverence paid to the deified mortals
of ancient mythology, the custom of bestowing divine honours on
illustrious men after or even before their death, found new scope
for its exercise under the empire. Among the manifestations of this
tendency, the apotheosis of the emperors themselves, of course, ranks
first. We are accustomed to think of it as part of the machinery of
despotism, surrounded by official ceremonies and enforced by cruel
punishments; but, in fact, it first originated in a spontaneous
movement of popular feeling; and in the case of Marcus Aurelius at
least, it was maintained for a whole century, if not longer, by the
mere force of public opinion. And many prophecies (which, as usual,
came true) were made on the strength of revelations received from him
in dreams.[356] But a much stronger proof of the prevalent tendency
is furnished by the apotheosis of Antinous. In its origin this may be
attributed to the caprice of a voluptuous despot; but its perpetuation
long after the motives of flattery or of fear had ceased to act, shows
that the worship of a beautiful youth, who was believed to have given
his life for another, satisfied a deep-seated craving of the age. It
is possible that, in this and other instances, the deified mortal may
have passed for the representative or incarnation of some god who was
already believed to have led an earthly existence, and might therefore
readily revisit the scene of his former activity. Thus Antinous
constantly appears with the attributes of Dionysus; and Apollonius
of Tyana, the celebrated Pythagorean prophet of the first century,
was worshipped at Ephesus in the time of Lactantius under the name of
Heracles Alexicacus, that is, Heracles the defender from evil.[357]
VII.
We now pass to a form of supernaturalism more characteristic than any
other of the direction which men’s thoughts were taking under the
Roman empire, and more or less profoundly connected with all the other
religious manifestations which have hitherto engaged our attention.
This is the doctrine of immortality, a doctrine far more generally
accepted in the first centuries of the Christian era, but quite apart
from Christian influence, than is supposed by most persons. Here our
most trustworthy information is derived from the epigraphic monuments.
But for them, we might have continued to believe that public opinion on
this subject was faithfully reflected by a few sceptical writers, who
were, in truth, speaking only for themselves and for the numerically
insignificant class to which they belonged. Not that the inscriptions
all point one way and the books another way. On the contrary, there
are epitaphs most distinctly repudiating the notion of a life beyond
the grave, just as there are expressions let fall by men of learning
which show that they accepted it as true. As much might be expected
from the divisions then prevailing in the speculative world. Of all
philosophical systems, Epicureanism was, at this time, the most widely
diffused: its adherents rejected the belief in another world as a
mischievous delusion; and many of them seem to have carefully provided
that their convictions should be recorded on their tombs. The monument
of one such philosopher, dedicated to eternal sleep, is still extant;
others are dedicated to safe repose; others, again, speak of the
opposite belief as a vain imagination. A favourite epitaph with persons
of this school runs as follows:—‘I was nothing and became, I was and am
no more, so much is true. To speak otherwise is to lie, for I shall be
no more.’[358] Sometimes, from the depths of their unconsciousness,
the dead are made to express indifference to the loss of existence.
Sometimes, in what was popularly believed to be the spirit of
Epicureanism, but was, in reality, most alien to it, they exhort the
passer-by to indulge his appetites freely, since death is the end of
all.
It must further be noted that disbelief in a future life, as a
philosophical principle, was not confined to the Epicureans. All
philosophers except the Platonists and Pythagoreans were materialists;
and no logical thinker who had once applied his mind to the subject
could accept such an absurdity as the everlasting duration of a
complex corporeal substance, whether consisting of gaseous or of fiery
matter. A majority of the Stoics allowed the soul to continue its
individual existence until, in common with the whole world, it should
be reabsorbed into the elemental fire; but others looked forward to a
more speedy extinction, without ceasing on that account to consider
themselves orthodox members of the school. Of these the most remarkable
instance is Marcus Aurelius. The great emperor was not blind to what
seemed the enormous injustice of death, and did not quite see his way
to reconciling it with the Stoic belief in a beneficent providence; but
the difficulty of finding room for so many ghosts, and perhaps also the
Heracleitean dogma of perpetual transformation, led him to renounce
whatever hope he may at one time have cherished of entering on a new
existence in some better world.[359] A similar consequence was involved
in the principles of the Peripatetic philosophy; and Alexander of
Aphrodisias, the famous Aristotelian commentator, who flourished about
200 A.D., affirms the perishable nature of the soul on his own account,
and, with perfect justice, attributes the same belief to Aristotle
himself.[360]
Among the scientific and literary men who were not pledged to any
particular school, we find the elder Pliny rejecting the belief in
immortality, not only as irrational but as the reverse of consolatory.
It robs us, he declares, of Nature’s most especial boon, which is
death, and doubles the pangs of dissolution by the prospect of
continued existence elsewhere.[361] Quintilian leaves the question
undecided;[362] Tacitus expresses himself doubtfully;[363] and Galen,
whose great physiological knowledge enabled him to see how fallacious
were Plato’s arguments, while his philosophical training equally
separated him from the materialists, also refuses to pronounce in
favour of either side.[364] What Juvenal thought is uncertain; but,
from his general tone, we may conjecture that he leant to the negative
side.[365]
Against these we have to set the confident expressions of belief in a
future life employed by all the Platonists and Pythagoreans, and by
some of the Stoic school. But their doctrines on the subject will be
most advantageously explained when we come to deal with the religious
philosophy of the age as a whole. What we have now to examine is the
general condition of popular belief as evinced by the character of the
funereal monuments erected in the time of the empire. Our authorities
are agreed in stating that the majority of these bear witness to a
wide-spread and ever-growing faith in immortality, sometimes conveyed
under the form of inscriptions, sometimes under that of figured
reliefs, sometimes more naïvely signified by articles placed in the
tomb for use in another world. ‘I am waiting for my husband,’ is the
inscription placed over his dead wife by one who was, like her, an
enfranchised slave. Elsewhere a widow ‘commends her departed husband to
the gods of the underworld, and prays that they will allow his spirit
to revisit her in the hours of the night.’[366] ‘In death thou art not
dead,’ are the words deciphered on one mouldering stone. ‘No,’ says
a father to a son whom he had lost in Numidia, ‘thou hast not gone
down to the abode of the Manes but risen to the stars of heaven.’ At
Doxato, near Philippi in Macedonia, ‘a mother has graven on the tomb of
her child: “We are crushed by a cruel blow, but thou hast renewed thy
being and art dwelling in the Elysian fields.”’[367] This conception
of the future world as a heavenly and happy abode where human souls
are received into the society of the gods, recurs with especial
frequency in the Greek epitaphs, but is also met with in Latin-speaking
countries. And, considering how great a part the worship of departed
spirits plays in all primitive religions, just such a tendency might be
expected to show itself at such a time, if, as we have contended, the
conditions of society under the empire were calculated to set free the
original forces by which popular faith is created. It seems, therefore,
rather arbitrary to assume, as Friedländer does,[368] that the movement
in question was entirely due to Platonic influence,—especially
considering that there are distinct traces of it to be found in
Pindar;—although at the same time we may grant that it was powerfully
fostered by Plato’s teaching, and received a fresh impulse from the
reconstitution of his philosophy in the third century of our era.
Side by side, however, with these exalted aspirations, the old popular
belief in a subterranean abode of souls survived under its very crudest
forms; and here also modern explorations have brought to light very
surprising evidence of the strength with which the grotesque idea of
Charon the Stygian ferryman still kept its hold on the imagination of
uneducated people. Originally peculiar to Greece, where it still exists
under a slightly altered form, this superstition penetrated into the
West at a comparatively early period. Thus in the tombs of Campania
alone many hundred skeletons have been found with bronze coins in
their mouths, placed there to pay their passage across the Styx; and
explorations at Praeneste show that this custom reaches back to the
middle of the fourth century B.C. We also learn from Lucian that, in
his time, the old animistic beliefs were entertained to the extent of
burning or burying the clothes, ornaments, and other appurtenances
of deceased persons along with their bodies, under the idea that the
owners required them for use in the other world; and it is to such
deposits that our museums of classical antiquity owe the greater part
of their contents.[369]
When the belief in a future life assumes the form last mentioned, it
is, as we have said, simply a survival of the most primitive animism,
not testifying to any religious reaction at the time when it can be
proved to have flourished. It is introduced in the present connexion
merely to show what ideas were current among those classes to whose
opinions Roman civilisation was gradually giving irresistible weight.
How the minds of the richer and more educated classes were affected
by this underlying stratum, is shown by the nature of the figured
representations with which their last abodes were ornamented. Everyone
has been made tolerably familiar with these through the sculptured
sarcophagi preserved in our museums; but, from their symbolical
character, the significance of the reliefs with which they are
decorated is not obvious at first sight; and some of the mythical
adventures thus embodied may have been wrought without any reference to
the destination of the dark and narrow chamber which they enclosed, or
may even have been intended to divert the imagination from sad thoughts
by the luxuriance of rushing life and joy and victory which they
displayed; but after making every possible deduction on this score,
there remain many others offering a deeper source of consolation to
the bereaved survivor by the pictured promise of future reunion with
those whom he had loved and lost. One favourite subject is the visit
of Diana to the sleeping Endymion, by which is clearly foreshadowed
an awakening to divine felicity from the sleep of death. The rape of
Proserpine, followed by her restoration to the upper world, conveys
a similar intention; as also does the fate of Adonis, since he too
was believed to have risen from the dead. The marriage of Bacchus
and Ariadne unquestionably symbolises the exchange of an earthly for
a heavenly life; and the scenes of Bacchic revelry with which the
interior of some tombs is decorated, were, to the imagination of those
who designed them, no unbecoming image of the joys awaiting a blessed
soul in its celestial abode. An inscription of which we have already
quoted the opening words expresses in terms that hope of companionship
with the joyous band of Dionysus at which the plastic representations
can but mutely hint. ‘Now in a flowery meadow,’ says the mourning
mother of Doxato to her child, ‘the priestess marked with a sacred
seal is enrolling thee in the troop of Bacchus, where the Naiads that
bear the sacred baskets claim thee as their fellow to lead the solemn
procession by the light of torches.’ At the same time, a tenderer or
graver note is often struck. The stories of Admêtus and Alcestis, of
Protesilaus and Laodameia, point to a renewal of conjugal love beyond
the grave. What were formerly supposed to be scenes representing the
eternal farewell of husband and wife are, in the opinion of modern
archaeologists, pictures of their restoration to each other’s arms.
Rising higher still, Achilles among the daughters of Lycomêdes probably
typifies the liberation of an immortal spirit from the seductions of
sense. The labours of Heracles recall his apotheosis, and seem to show
that a life of noble effort shall be rewarded hereafter. The battle
of the Amazons is an allegory of strife with and triumph over the
temptations of earthly delight. Another often-recurring theme, the
hunting of the Calydonian boar, may mean the soul’s victory over death;
but this explanation is offered only as a conjecture of the present
writer’s.
A remarkable circumstance connected with the evidence afforded by
the figured monuments is its progressive character. According to M.
Ravaisson, ‘As time goes on, the indications of belief in a future
life, instead of becoming fainter, grow clearer and more distinct.
More and more exalted ideas are formed of the soul’s destiny, and ever
increasing honours are paid to the dead. Moreover, these ideas and
practices are extended so as to cover a greater number of individuals.
At first it would seem that the only persons whose fate excites any
interest are kings and heroes, the children or the descendants of the
gods; in the course of time many others, and at last all, or nearly
all, are admitted to a share in the same regard. The ancient principle
that happiness is reserved for those who resemble the gods remains
unchanged; but the notion of what constitutes resemblance to the gods,
or in other words perfection, gradually becomes so modified, that all
men may aspire to reach it.’[370]
We are here in presence of a phenomenon like that to which attention
was invited in an early chapter of this work.[371] The belief in
immortality, entertained under a gloomy and repulsive form by the
uneducated, is taken up by the higher classes, brought into contact
with their more generous ideas, broadened, deepened, purified, and
finally made the basis of a new religion. Nevertheless, in the present
instance at least, all was not clear gain; and the faith which smiles
on us from storied sarcophagus and mural relief, or pleads for our
sympathy in epitaphs more enduring than the hope which they enshrine,
had also its grotesque and hideous side, for an expression of which we
must turn to literature again.
Once credited with a continued existence, the departed spirit would not
remain in the Hades or the Elysium provided for it by the justice or
the piety, of the survivor, but persisted in returning to this world
and manifesting a most uncomfortable interest in its affairs; or,
even if willing to remain at rest, it was liable to be dragged back
by incantations, and compelled to reveal the secrets of futurity at
the bidding of an unprincipled magician. What science and good feeling
combined have proved unable to keep down among ourselves, naturally
raged with unmitigated virulence at a time when the primitive barbarism
and superstition were only covered over by a crust of culture which
at many points was growing thinner every day. Among Latin writers,
the younger Pliny, Suetonius, and Apuleius, among Greek writers,
Plutarch, Pausanias, Maximus Tyrius, Philostratus, and Dion Cassius,
afford unequivocal evidence of their belief and the belief of their
contemporaries in ghostly apparitions; and Lucian, while rejecting
ghost-stories on his own account, speaks as if they were implicitly
accepted even in philosophical circles.[372] Still more abundant is
the evidence proving the frequency of attempts made to evoke spirits
by means of magical incantations. Horace’s Canidia boasts that she can
raise the dead even after their bodies have been burned.[373] Lucan
describes the process of conjuring up a ghost at length; and it is
thought that he inserted the whole scene in his poem as a satire on the
emperor Nero, who is known to have been addicted to such practices, as
were also his successors, Didius Julianus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus.
And that the same art was cultivated by private persons is clear from
the allusions made to it by Quintilian, Apuleius, Tertullian, and
Heliodôrus.[374]
VIII.
We have now to consider how the philosophy of the empire was affected
by the atmosphere of supernaturalism which surrounded it on every side.
Of the Epicureans it need only be said that they were true to their
trust, and upheld the principles of their founder so long as the sect
itself continued to exist. But we may reckon it as a first consequence
of the religious reaction, that, after Lucretius, Epicureanism failed
to secure the adhesion of a single eminent man, and that, even as a
popular philosophy, it suffered by the competition of other systems,
among which Stoicism long maintained the foremost place. We showed
in a former chapter how strong a religious colouring was given to
their teaching by the earlier Stoics, especially Cleanthes. It would
appear, however, that Panaetius discarded many of the superstitions
accepted by his predecessors, possibly as a concession to that revived
Scepticism which was so vigorously advocated just before his time; and
it was under the form imposed on it by this philosopher that Stoicism
first gained acceptance in Roman society; if indeed the rationalism
of Panaetius was not itself partly determined by his intercourse with
such liberal minds as Laelius and the younger Scipio. But Posidonius,
his successor, already marks the beginning of a reactionary movement;
and, in Virgil, Stoical opinions are closely associated with an
unquestioning acceptance of the ancient Roman faith. The attitude of
Seneca is much more independent; he is full of contempt for popular
superstition, and his god is not very distinguishable from the order
of Nature. Yet his tendency towards clothing philosophical instruction
in religious terms deserves notice, as a symptom of the superior
facility with which such terms lent themselves to didactic purposes.
Acceptance of the universal order became more intelligible under the
name of obedience to a divine decree; the unity of the human race and
the obligations resulting therefrom impressed themselves more deeply
on the imaginations of those who heard that men are all members of
one body; the supremacy of reason over appetite became more assured
when its dictates were interpreted as the voice of a god within the
soul.[375]
The religious tendency of Seneca’s philosophy appears rather in his
psychology than in his metaphysics, in the stress which he lays on
human immortality rather than in his discussions on creation and
divine providence. His statements on this subject are not, indeed,
very consistent, death being sometimes spoken of as the end of
consciousness, and at other times, as the beginning of a new life,
the ‘birthday of eternity,’ to quote a phrase afterwards adopted
by Christian preachers. Nor can we be absolutely certain that the
promised eternity is not merely another way of expressing the soul’s
absorption into and identification with the fiery element whence it
was originally derived. This, however, is an ambiguity to be met with
in other doctrines of a spiritual existence after death, nor is it
entirely absent from the language even of Christian theologians. What
deserves attention is that, whether the future life spoken of by Seneca
be taken in a literal or in a figurative sense, it is equally intended
to lead our thoughts away from the world of sensible experience to a
more ideal order of things; and, to that extent, it falls in with the
more general religious movement of the age. Whether Zeller is, for
that reason, justified in speaking of him as a Platonising Stoic seems
more questionable; for the Stoics always agreed with Plato in holding
that the soul is distinct from and superior to the body, and that it
is consubstantial with the animating principle of Nature. The same
circumstances which were elsewhere leading to a revival of Platonism,
equally tended to develope this side of Stoicism, but it seems needless
to seek for a closer connexion between the two phenomena.[376]
On passing from Seneca to Epictêtus, we find that the religious element
has received a considerable accession of strength, so considerable,
indeed, that the simple progress of time will not altogether account
for it. Something is due to the superior devoutness of the Eastern
mind—Epictêtus was a Phrygian,—and still more to the difference in
station between the two philosophers. As a noble, Seneca belonged to
the class which was naturally most inclined to adopt an independent
attitude towards the popular beliefs; as a slave, Epictêtus belonged to
the class which was naturally most amenable to their authority. It was,
however, no accident that philosophy should, at a distance of only a
generation, be represented by two such widely contrasted individuals;
for the whole tendency of Roman civilisation was, as we have seen, to
bring the Oriental element and the servile element of society into
ever-increasing prominence. Nothing proves the ascendency of religious
considerations in the mind of Epictêtus more strongly than his aversion
from the physical enquiries which were eagerly prosecuted by Seneca.
Nature interests him solely as a manifestation of divine wisdom and
goodness. As a consequence of this intensified religious feeling,
the Stoic theory of natural law is transformed, with Epictêtus, into
an expression of filial submission to the divine will, while the
Stoic teleology becomes an enumeration of the blessings showered by
providence on man. In the latter respect, his standpoint approaches
very near to that of Socrates, who, although a free-born Athenian
citizen, belonged, like him, to the poorer classes, and sympathised
deeply with their feeling of dependence on supernatural protection,—a
remark which also applies to the humble day-labourer Cleanthes.
Epictêtus also shares the idea, characteristic of the Platonic rather
than of the Xenophontic Socrates, that the philosopher is entrusted
with a mission from God, without which it would be perilous for him to
undertake the office of a teacher, and which, in the discharge of that
office, he should keep constantly before his eyes. But the dialectical
element which with Socrates had furnished so strong a counterpoise to
the authoritative and traditional side of his philosophy, is almost
entirely wanting in the discourses of his imitator, and the little
of it which he admits is valued only as a means of silencing the
Sceptics. On the other hand, the weakness and insignificance of human
nature, considered on the individual side, are abundantly illustrated,
and contemptuous diminutives are habitually used in speaking of its
component parts.[378] It would seem that the attitude of prostration
before an overwhelming external authority prevented Epictêtus from
looking very favourably on the doctrine of individual immortality;
and even if he accepted that doctrine, which seems in the highest
degree improbable, it held a much less important place in his thoughts
than in those of Cicero and Seneca. It would seem, also, that the
Stoic materialism was betraying its fundamental incompatibility with
a hope originally borrowed from the idealism of Plato. Nor was this
renunciation inconsistent with the ethical dualism which drew a sharp
line of distinction between flesh and spirit in the constitution of
man, for the superiority of the spirit arose from its identity with
the divine substance into which it was destined to be reabsorbed after
death.[379]
If, in the philosophy of Epictêtus, physics and morality become
entirely identified with religion, religion, on the other hand, remains
entirely natural and moral. It is an offering not of prayer but of
praise, a service less of ceremonies and sacrifices than of virtuous
deeds, a study of conscience rather than of prophecy, a faith not so
much in supernatural portents as in providential law.[380] But in
arriving at Marcus Aurelius, we have overstepped the line which divides
rational religion from superstition. Instances of the good emperor’s
astonishing credulity have already been given and need not be repeated.
They are enough to show that his lavish expenditure on public worship
was dictated by something more than a regard for established customs.
We know, indeed, that the hecatombs with which his victories were
celebrated gave occasion to profane merriment even in the society
of that period. On one occasion, a petition was passed from hand to
hand, purporting to be addressed to the emperor by the white oxen,
and deprecating his success on the ground that if he won they were
lost.[381] Yet the same Marcus Aurelius, in speaking of his predecessor
Antoninus, expressly specifies piety without superstition as one of the
traits in his character which were most deserving of imitation.[382]
And, undoubtedly, the mental condition of those who were continually in
an agony of fear lest they should incur the divine displeasure by some
purely arbitrary act or omission, or who supposed that the gods might
be bribed into furthering their iniquitous enterprises, was beyond all
comparison further removed from true wisdom than the condition of those
who believed themselves to be favoured by particular manifestations
of the divine beneficence, perhaps as a recompense for their earnest
attempts to lead a just and holy life. We may conclude, then, that
philosophy, while injuriously affected by the supernaturalist movement,
still protected its disciples against the more virulent forms of
superstition, and by entering into combination with the popular belief,
raised it to a higher level of feeling and of thought. It was not,
however, by Stoicism that the final reconciliation of ancient religion
with philosophy could be accomplished, but by certain older forms of
speculation which we now proceed to study.
In the preceding chapter we attempted to show that the tendency of
Roman thought, when brought into contact with the Greek systems,
was to resolve them into their component elements, or to throw them
back on their historical antecedents. As a result of this dissolving
process, the Stoicism of the second century split up into a number of
more or less conflicting principles, each of which received exclusive
prominence according to the changeful mood of the thinker who resorted
to philosophy for consolation or for help. Stoicism had originally
embraced the dynamism of Heracleitus, the teleology of Socrates,
the physical morality of Prodicus and his Cynic successors, the
systematising dialectic of Aristotle, the psychism of Plato and the
Pythagoreans, and, to a certain extent, the superstitions of popular
mythology. With Epictêtus, we find the Cynic and the Socratic elements
most clearly developed, with Marcus Aurelius, the Socratic and the
Heracleitean, the latter being especially strong in the meditations
written shortly before his death. In the eastern provinces of the
empire, Cynicism was preached as an independent system of morality, and
obtained great success by its popular and propagandist character. Dion
Chrysostom, a much-admired lecturer of the second century, speaks with
enthusiasm of its most famous representative Diogenes, and recounts,
with evident gusto, some of the most shameless actions attributed,
perhaps falsely, to that eccentric philosopher.[383] And the popular
rhetorician Maximus Tyrius, although a professed Platonist, places the
Cynic life above every other.[384] But the traditions of Cynicism were
thoroughly opposed to the prevalent polytheism; and its whole attitude
was calculated to repel rather than to attract minds penetrated with
the enthusiastic spirit of the age. To all such the Neo-Pythagorean
doctrine came as a welcome revelation.
After its temporary adoption by the Academy, Pythagoreanism had
ceased to exist as an independent system, but continued to lead a
sort of underground life in connexion with the Orphic and Dionysiac
mysteries. When or where it reappeared under a philosophical form
cannot be certainly determined. Zeller fixes on the beginning of the
first century B.C. as the most probable date, and on Alexandria as the
most probable scene of its renewed speculative activity.[385] Some
fifty years later, we find Pythagorean teachers in Rome, and traces of
their influence are plainly discernible in the Augustan literature.
Under its earliest form, the new system was an attempt to combine
mathematical mysticism with principles borrowed from the Stoic and
other philosophies; or perhaps it was simply a return to the poetical
syncretism of Empedocles. Although composed of fire and air, the soul
is declared to be immortal; and lessons of holiness are accompanied
by an elaborate code of rules for ceremonial purification. The elder
Sextius, from whom Seneca derived much of his ethical enthusiasm,
probably belonged to this school. He taught a morality apparently
identical with that of Stoicism in every point except the inculcation
of abstinence from animal food.[386] To this might be added the
practice of nightly self-confession—an examination from the moral point
of view of how one’s whole day has been spent,—were we certain that the
Stoics did not originate it for themselves.[387]
The alliance between Neo-Pythagoreanism and Stoicism did not last long.
Their fundamental principles were too radically opposed to admit of
any reconciliation, except what could be effected by the absorption of
both into a more comprehensive system. And Roman Stoicism, at least,
was too practical, too scientific, too sane, to assimilate what must
have seemed a curious amalgam of mathematical jugglery and dreamy
asceticism; while the reputation of belonging to what passed for a
secret society would be regarded with particular dread in the vicinity
of the imperial court,—it was, in fact, for this particular reason that
the elder Seneca persuaded his son to renounce the vegetarian diet
which Sotion had induced him to adopt,—and the suspicious hostility of
the public authorities may have had something to do with the speedy
disappearance of Neo-Pythagoreanism from Rome.[388] On the other hand,
so coarsely materialistic and utilitarian a doctrine as that of the
Porch, must have been equally repulsive to the spiritualism which,
while it discerned a deep kinship permeating all forms of animal
existence, saw in the outward conditions of that existence only the
prison or the tomb where a heaven-born exile lay immured in expiation
of the guilt that had driven him from his former and well-nigh
forgotten abode. Hence, after Seneca, we find the two schools pursuing
divergent directions, the naturalism of the one becoming more and more
contrasted with the spiritualism of the other. It has been mentioned
how emphatically Marcus Aurelius rejected the doctrine of a future
life, which, perhaps, had been brought under his notice as a tenet of
the Neo-Pythagoreans. The latter, on their side, abandoned the Stoic
cosmology for the more congenial metaphysics of Plato, which they
enriched with some elements from Aristotle’s system, but without in
the least acknowledging their obligations to those two illustrious
masters. On the contrary, they professed to derive their hidden
wisdom from certain alleged writings of Pythagoras and his earlier
disciples, which, with the disregard for veracity not uncommon among
mystics, they did not scruple to forge wholesale. As a consequence
of their unfortunate activity, literature was encumbered with a mass
of worthless productions, of which many fragments still survive,
mixed, perhaps, with some genuine relics of old Italiote speculation,
the extrication of which is, however, a task of almost insuperable
difficulty.
It is only as a religious philosophy that Neo-Pythagoreanism can
interest us here. Considered in this light, the principles of its
adherents may be summed up under two heads. First, they taught the
separate existence of spirit as opposed to matter. Unlike the Stoics,
they distinguished between God and Nature, although they were not
agreed as to whether their Supreme Being transcended the world or was
immanent in it. This, however, did not interfere with their fundamental
contention, for either alternative is consistent with his absolute
immateriality. In like manner, the human soul is absolutely independent
of the body which it animates; it has existed and will continue to
exist for ever. The whole object of ethics, or rather of religion,
is to enforce and illustrate this independence, to prevent the soul
from becoming attached to its prison-house by indulgence in sensual
pleasures, to guard its habitation against defiling contact with the
more offensive forms of material impurity. Hence their recommendation
of abstinence from wine, from animal food, and from marriage, their
provisions for personal cleanliness, their use of linen instead of
woollen garments, under the idea that a vegetable is purer than an
animal tissue. The second article of the Pythagorean creed is that
spirit, being superior to matter, has the power of interfering with
and controlling its movements, that, being above space and time, it
can be made manifest without any regard to the conditions which they
ordinarily impose. To what an extent this belief was carried, is
shown by the stories told of Pythagoras, the supposed founder of the
school, and Apollonius of Tyana, its still greater representative in
the first century of our era. Both were credited with an extraordinary
power of working miracles and of predicting future events; but,
contrary to the usual custom of mythologers, a larger measure of this
power was ascribed to the one who lived in a more advanced stage of
civilisation, and the composition of whose biography was separated by
a comparatively short interval from the events which it professes to
relate.[389]
IX.
The most important result of the old Pythagorean teaching was, that
it contributed a large element—somewhat too large, indeed,—to Plato’s
philosophy. Neo-Pythagoreanism bears precisely the same relation to
that revived Platonism which was the last outcome of ancient thought.
It will be remembered that the great controversy between Stoicism
and Scepticism, which for centuries divided the schools of Athens,
and was passed on by them to Cicero and his contemporaries, seemed
tending towards a reconciliation based on a return to the founder of
the Academy, when, from whatever cause, Greek speculation came to
a halt, which continued until the last third of the first century
after Christ. At that epoch, we find a great revival of philosophical
interest, and this revival seems to have been maintained for at least
a hundred years, that is to say, through the whole of what is called
the age of the Antonines. In the struggle for existence among the rival
sects which ensued, Platonism started with all the advantages that a
great inheritance and a great name could bestow. At the commencement
of this period, we find the Academy once more professing to hold the
doctrines of its founder in their original purity and completeness.
Evidently the sober common-sense view of Antiochus had been discarded,
and Plato’s own writings were taken as an authoritative standard of
truth. A series of industrious commentators undertook the task of
elucidating their contents. Nor was it only in the schools that their
influence was felt. The beauty of their style must have strongly
recommended the _Dialogues_ to the attention of literary men. Plutarch,
the most considerable Greek writer of his time, was a declared
Platonist. So also was the brilliant African novelist, Apuleius, who
flourished under Marcus Aurelius. Celsus, the celebrated anti-Christian
controversialist, and Maximus, the Tyrian rhetorician, professed the
same allegiance; and the illustrious physiologist Galen shows traces
of Platonic influence. Platonism, as first constituted, had been
an eminently religious philosophy, and its natural tendencies were
still further strengthened at the period of its revival by the great
religious reaction which we have been studying in the present chapter;
while, conversely, in the struggle for supremacy among rival systems,
its affinities with the spirit of the age gave it an immense advantage
over the sceptical and materialistic philosophies, which brought it
into still closer sympathy with the currents of popular opinion. And
its partisans were drawn even further in the same direction by the
influence of Neo-Pythagoreanism, representing, as this did, one among
the three or four leading principles which Plato had attempted to
combine.
The chief theological doctrines held in common by the two schools, were
the immortality of the soul and the existence of daemons. These were
supposed to form a class of spiritual beings, intermediate between gods
and men, and sharing to some extent in the nature of both. According to
Plutarch, though very long-lived, they are not immortal; and he quotes
the famous story about the death of Pan in proof of his assertion;[390]
but, in this respect, his opinion is not shared by Maximus Tyrius[391],
who expressly declares them to be immortal; and, indeed, one hardly
sees how the contrary could have been maintained consistently with
Platonic principles; for, if the human soul never dies, much less can
spirits of a higher rank be doomed to extinction. As a class, the
daemons are morally imperfect beings, subject to human passions, and
capable of wrong-doing. Like men also, they are divided into good and
bad. The former kind perform providential and retributive offices on
behalf of the higher gods, inspiring oracles, punishing crime, and
succouring distress. Those who permit themselves to be influenced by
improper motives in the discharge of their appointed functions, are
degraded to the condition of human beings. The bad and morose sort are
propitiated by a gloomy and self-tormenting worship.[392] By means of
the imperfect character thus ascribed to the daemons, a way was found
for reconciling the purified theology of Platonism with the old Greek
religion. To each of the higher deities there is attached, we are
told, a daemon who bears his name and is frequently confounded with
him. The immoral or unworthy actions narrated of the old gods were, in
reality, the work of their inferior namesakes. This theory was adopted
by the Fathers of the Church, with the difference, however, that
they altogether suppressed the higher class of Platonic powers, and
identified the daemons with the fallen angels of their own mythology.
This is the reason why a word which was not originally used in a bad
sense has come to be synonymous with devil.
It was in perfect accordance with the spirit of Greek philosophy,
and more particularly of Platonism, that a connecting link should
be interposed between earth and heaven, the human and the divine,
especially when, as at this time, the supreme creator had come to be
isolated in solitary splendour from the rest of existence; but it would
be a mistake to suppose that the daemons were invented for the purpose
to which they were applied. We find them mentioned by Hesiod;[393]
and they probably represent an even older phase of religious thought
than the Olympian gods, being, in fact, a survival of that primitive
psychism which peopled the whole universe with life and animation. This
becomes still clearer when we consider that they are described, both
under their earliest and their latest Greek form, as being, in part at
least, human souls raised after death to a higher sphere of activity.
Among these, Maximus Tyrius includes the demi-gods of mythology,
such as Asclêpius and Heracles, who, as we have seen, were objects
of particular veneration under the empire.[394] Thus daemon-worship
combined three different elements or aspects of the supernaturalist
movement:—the free play given to popular imagination by the decay or
destruction of the aristocratic organisation of society and religion,
the increasing tendency to look for a perpetuation and elevation of
human existence, and the convergence of philosophical speculation with
popular faith.
Daemonism, however, does not fill a very great place in the creed of
Plutarch; and a comparison of him with his successors shows that the
saner traditions of Greek thought only gradually gave way to the rising
flood of ignorance and unreason. It is true that, as a moralist, the
philosopher of Chaeronea considered religion of inestimable importance
to human virtue and human happiness; while, as a historian, he accepted
stories of supernatural occurrences with a credulity recalling that
of Livy and falling little short of Dion Cassius. Nor did his own
Platonistic monotheism prevent him from extending a very generous
intellectual toleration to the different forms of polytheism which he
found everywhere prevailing.[395] In this respect, he and probably
all the philosophers of that and the succeeding age, the Epicureans,
the Sceptics, and some of the Cynics alone excepted, offer a striking
contradiction to one of Gibbon’s most celebrated epigrams. To them the
popular religions were not equally false but equally true, and, to a
certain extent, equally useful. Where Plutarch drew the line was at
what he called Deisidaimonia, the frightful mental malady which, as
already mentioned, began to afflict Greece soon after the conquests
of Alexander. It is generally translated superstition, but has a much
narrower meaning. It expresses the beliefs and feelings of one who
lives in perpetual dread of provoking supernatural vengeance, not by
wrongful behaviour towards his fellow-men, nor even by intentional
disrespect towards a higher power, but by the neglect of certain
ceremonial observances; and who is constantly on the look-out for
heaven-sent prognostications of calamities, which, when they come,
will apparently be inflicted from sheer ill-will, Plutarch has devoted
one of his most famous essays to the castigation of this weakness. He
deliberately prefers atheism to it, showing by an elaborate comparison
of instances that the former—with which, however, he has no sympathy
at all—is much less injurious to human happiness, and involves much
less real impiety, than such a constant attribution of meaningless
malice to the gods. One example of Deisidaimonia adduced by Plutarch is
Sabbatarianism, especially when carried, as it had recently been by the
Jews during the siege of Jerusalem, to the point of entirely suspending
military operations on the day of rest.[396] That the belief in
daemons, some of whom passed for being malevolent powers, might yield
a fruitful crop of new superstitions, does not seem to have occurred
to Plutarch; still less that the doctrine of future torments of which,
following Plato’s example, he was a firm upholder, might prove a terror
to others besides offenders against the moral law,—especially when
manipulated by a class whose interest it was to stimulate the feeling
in question to the utmost possible intensity.
When we pass from Plutarch to Maximus Tyrius and Apuleius, the darkness
grows perceptibly thicker, and is no longer broken by the _lucida tela
diei_ with which the Theban thinker had combated at least one class
of mistaken beliefs. These writers are so occupied with developing
the positive aspects of supernaturalism—daemonology, divination, and
thaumaturgy—that they can find no place for a protest against its
extravagances and perversions; nor is their mysticism balanced by
those extensive applications of philosophy to real life, whether
under the form of biography or of discourses on practical morality,
which enabled Plutarch’s mind to preserve an attitude of comparative
sobriety and calmness. Hence while Maximus is absolutely forgotten,
and Apuleius remembered only as an amusing story-teller, Plutarch has
been perhaps the most successful interpreter between Greek humanity
and modern thought. His popularity is now rapidly declining, but the
influence exercised by his writings on characters differing so much
from one another and from his own as those of Montaigne, Rousseau, and
Wordsworth, suffices to prove, if any proof be needed, how deep and
wide were the sympathies which they once evoked.
What progress devotional feeling had made during the interval which
separated Apuleius from Plutarch and his school, may be illustrated by
a comparison of the terms which they respectively employ in reference
to the Egyptian Isis. The author of the treatise on Isis and Osiris
identifies the goddess with the female or material, as distinguished
from the formative principle in Nature; which, to say the least of
it, is not giving her a very exalted rank in the scheme of creation.
Apuleius, on the other hand, addresses her, or makes his hero address
her, in the following enthusiastic language:—
Holy everlasting Saviour of the human race! Bounteous nurse of
mortals! Tender mother of the afflicted! Not for a day or night nor
even for one little moment dost thou relax thy care for men, driving
away the storms of life and stretching forth to them the right hand of
deliverance, wherewith thou dost unravel even the tangled threads of
fate, soothe the storms of fortune, and restrain the hurtful courses
of the stars. The gods above adore thee, the gods below respect; thou
dost cause the heavens to roll, the sun to shine; the world thou
rulest, and treadest Tartarus under foot. To thee the stars reply,
for thee the seasons come again; in thee the deities rejoice, and
thee the elements obey. At thy nod the breezes blow, the clouds drop
fatness, the seeds germinate and seedlings spring. But my wit is small
to celebrate thy praises, my fortune poor to pay thee sacrifices, the
abundance of my voice does not suffice to tell what I think of thy
majesty, nor would a thousand tongues nor an unwearied and everlasting
flow of speech. Therefore what alone religion joined to poverty can
achieve, I will provide: an image of thy divine countenance and most
holy godhead, guarded for perpetual contemplation within the recesses
of my heart.[397]
Doubtless the cool intellect of a Greek and the fervid temperament of
an African would always have expressed themselves in widely different
accents. What we have to note is that the one was now taking the place
of the other because the atmosphere had been heated up to a point as
favourable to passion as it was fatal to thought.
After Apuleius, Platonism, outside the lecture rooms of Athens, becomes
identified with Pythagoreanism, and both with dogmatic theology. In
this direction, philosophy was feeling its way towards a reconciliation
with two great Oriental religions, Hebrew monotheism and Medo-Persian
dualism. The first advances had come from religion. Aristobulus, an
Alexandrian Jew (B.C. 160), was apparently the first to detect an
analogy between the later speculations of Plato and his own hereditary
faith. Both taught that the world had been created by a single
supreme God. Both were penetrated with the purest ethical ideas. Both
associated sensuality and idolatry in the same vehement denunciations.
The conclusion was obvious. What had been supernaturally revealed to
the chosen people could not have been discovered elsewhere by a simple
exercise of human reason. Plato must have borrowed his wisdom from
Moses.[398] At a later period, the celebrated Philo, following up the
clue thus furnished, proceeded to evolve the whole of Greek philosophy
from the Pentateuch. An elaborate system of allegorical interpretation,
borrowed from the Stoics, was the instrument with which he effected his
enterprise. The result was what might have been foreseen—a complete
Hellenisation of Hebrew religion. Circumscription, antithesis, and
mediation were, as we know, the chief moments of Greek thought. Philo
rearranged his monotheistic system according to the scheme which they
supplied. He first determined the divine unity with such logical
precision as to place God out of relation to the world. Then, in the
true Greek spirit, he placed at the other end of his metaphysical scale
matter—the shifting, formless, shadowy residuum left behind when every
ideal element has been thought away from the world. So conceived,
matter became, what it had been to Plato, the principle of all evil,
and therefore something with which God could not possibly be brought
into contact. Accordingly, the process of creation is made intelligible
by the interposition of a connecting link in the shape of certain
hypostasised divine attributes or forces, represented as at the same
time belonging to and distinct from the divine personality. Of these
the most important are the goodness to which the world owes its origin,
and the power by which it is governed. Both are united in the Logos or
Word. This last idea—which, by the way, was derived not from Plato but
from the Stoics—sums up in itself the totality of mediatorial functions
by which God and the world are put into communication with one another.
In like manner, Plato had interposed a universal soul between his
Ideas and the world of sensible appearances, and had pointed to an
arrangement of the Ideas themselves by which we could ascend in thought
to a contemplation of the absolute good. There seems, however, to be
a difference between the original Hellenic conception and the same
conception as adapted to Oriental ways of thinking. With Plato, as with
every other Greek philosopher, a mediator is introduced not for the
purpose of representing the supreme ideal to us nor of transmitting our
aspirations to it, but of guiding and facilitating our approach to it,
of helping us to a perfect apprehension and realisation of its meaning.
With Philo, on the contrary, the relation of the Logos to God is much
the same as that of a Grand Vizier to an Oriental Sultan. And, from
this point of view, it is very significant that he should compare it to
the high-priest who lays the prayers of the people before the eternal
throne, especially when we couple this with his declaration that the
Logos is the God of us imperfect beings, the first God being reserved
for the contemplation of those who are wise and perfect.[399]
Such a system was likely to result, and before long actually did
result, in the realisation of the Logos on earth, in the creation of
an inspired and infallible Church, mediating between God and man;
while it gave increased authority and expansive power to another
superstition which already existed in Philo’s time, and of which his
Logos doctrine was perhaps only the metaphysical sublimation,—the
superstition that the divine Word has been given to mankind under the
form of an infallible book. From another point of view, we may discern
a certain connexion between the idea that God would be defiled by any
immediate contact with the material world, and the Sabbatarianism which
was so rife among Gentiles as well as among Jews at that period. For
such a theory of the divine character readily associates itself with
the notion that holiness excludes not only material industry but any
interest the scope of which is limited to our present life.
That Philo’s interpretation of Platonism ultimately reacted on Greek
thought seems certain, but at what date his influence began to tell,
and how far it reached, must remain undecided. Plutarch speaks of
God’s purity and of his transcendent elevation above the universe
in language closely resembling that of the Alexandrian Jew, with
whose opinions he may have been indirectly acquainted.[400] We have
already seen how the daemons were employed to fill up the interval
thus created, and what serious concessions to popular superstition
the belief in their activity involved. Still Plutarch does not go so
far as to say that the world was not created by God. This step was
taken by Numenius, a philosopher who flourished about the middle of
the second century, and who represents the complete identification of
Platonism with Pythagoreanism, already mentioned as characteristic of
the period following that date. Numenius is acquainted with Philo’s
speculations, and accepts his derivation of Platonism from the
Pentateuch. ‘What,’ he asks, ‘is Plato but a Moses writing in the Attic
dialect?’[401] He also accepts the theory that the world was created
by a single intermediate agent, whom, however, he credits with a much
more distinct and independent personality than Philo could see his
way to admitting. And he regards the human soul as a fallen spirit
whose life on earth is the consequence of its own sinful desires. From
such fancies there was but a single step to the more thorough-going
dualism which looks on the material world as entirely evil, and as the
creation of a blind or malevolent power. This step had already been
taken by Gnosticism. The system so called summed up in itself, more
completely, perhaps, than any other, all the convergent or conflicting
ideas of the age. Greek mythology and Greek philosophy, Zoroastrianism,
Judaism, and Christianity each contributed an element to the fantastic
and complicated scheme propounded by its last great representative,
Valentinus. This teacher pitches his conception of the supreme God
even higher than Philo, and places him, like Plato’s absolute Good,
outside the sphere of being. From him—or it—as from a bottomless
gulf proceed a vast series of emanations ending in the Demiurgus or
creator of the visible world, whose action is described, in language
vividly recalling the speculations of certain modern metaphysicians,
as an enormous blunder. For, according to Gnosticism, the world is not
merely infected with evil by participation in a material principle, it
is evil altogether, and a special intervention of the higher powers
is needed in order to undo the work of its delirious author.[402]
Here we have a particular side of Plato’s philosophy exaggerated and
distorted by contact with Zoroastrian dualism. In the _Statesman_ there
is a mythical description of two alternate cycles, in one of which
the world is governed by a wise providence, while in the other things
are abandoned to themselves, and move in a direction the reverse of
that originally imposed on them. It is in the latter cycle that Plato
supposes us to be moving at present.[403] Again, after having been long
content to explain the origin of evil by the resistance of inert matter
to the informing power of ideal goodness, Plato goes a step further
in his latest work, the _Laws_, and hazards the hypothesis of an evil
soul actively counterworking the beneficent designs of God.[404] And
we find the same idea subsequently taken up by Plutarch, who sees in
it the most efficient means for exonerating God from all share in the
responsibility for physical disorder and moral wrong.[405] But both
master and disciple restricted the influence of their supposed evil
soul within very narrow limits, and they would have repudiated with
horror such a notion as that the whole visible world is a product of
folly or of sin.
Gnostic pessimism marks the extreme point of aberration to which Greek
thought was drawn by the attraction of Oriental superstition. How it
was rescued from destruction by a new systematisation of its ancient
methods and results will be explained in another chapter.
X.
In conclusion, a few words may profitably be devoted to the question
whether the rationalistic movement of our own age is likely to be
followed by such another supernaturalist reaction as that which
made itself so powerfully felt during the first centuries of Roman
imperialism. There is, no doubt, a certain superficial resemblance
between the world of the Caesars and the world in which we live.
Everywhere we see aristocracies giving way to more centralised and
equitable forms of government, the authority of which is sometimes
concentrated in the hands of a single absolute ruler. Not only are the
interests and wishes of the poorer and less educated classes consulted
with increasing anxiety, but the welfare of women is engrossing the
attention of modern legislators to an even greater extent than was
the case with the imperial jurists. Facilities for travelling, joined
to the far-reaching combinations of modern statesmanship and modern
strategy, are every day bringing Europe into closer contact with the
religious life of Asia. The decay of traditional and organised theology
is permitting certain forms of spontaneous and unorganised superstition
to develope themselves once more, as witness the wide diffusion of
spiritism, which is probably akin to the demonology and witchcraft
of earlier ages, and would, no doubt, be similarly persecuted by the
priests,—who, as it is, attribute spiritualistic manifestations to
diabolical agency,—had they sufficient power for the purpose. Lastly,
corresponding to the syncretism of the Roman empire, we may observe a
certain mixture and combination of religious principles, Catholic ideas
being avowedly adopted by even the most latitudinarian Protestants,
and Protestant influences entering into Catholicism, much more
imperceptibly it is true, but probably to an equal extent.
The analogy between modern Europe and the Roman empire is, however,
as we have already hinted, merely superficial. It has been shown in
the course of our analysis that to ensure the triumph of superstition
in the old world something more was necessary than the destruction of
aristocratic government. Every feeling of liberty—except the liberty
to die—and almost every feeling of self-respect had to be crushed out
by the establishment of an authoritative hierarchy extending from the
Emperor down to the meanest slaves, before the voice of Hellenic reason
could be hushed. But among ourselves it is rather of the opposite
fault—of too great independence and individualism—that complaints
are heard. If we occasionally see a hereditary monarch or a popular
minister invested with despotic power, this phenomenon is probably due
to the circumstances of a revolutionary period, and will in course
of time become more and more exceptional. Flatterers, parasites, and
will-hunters are not an increasing but a diminishing class. Modern
officers, as a body, show none of that contempt for reasoning and
amenability to superstition which characterised the Roman centurions;
in France, military men are even distinguished for their deadly hatred
of priests. And, what is more important than any other element in our
comparison, the reserves which modern civilisation is bringing to the
front are of a widely different intellectual stature and equipment
from their predecessors under Augustus and the Antonines. Since
the reorganisation of industry by science, millions of working-men
have received an education which prepares them to understand the
universality of law much better than the literary education given
to their social superiors, which, indeed, bears a remarkable
resemblance to the rhetorical and sophistical training enjoyed by the
contemporaries of Maximus Tyrius and Apuleius. If as much cannot be
said of the middle classes, they are at any rate far more enlightened
than Roman provincials, and are likely to improve still further with
the spread of education—another peculiarly modern phenomenon. On this
point we have, indeed, something better to argue from than _à priori_
probabilities. We see before our eyes the rationalistic movement
advancing _pari passu_ with the democratic movement, and, in some
countries, overtly aided by it. To say that this alliance has been
provoked by an accidental and temporary association of monarchy and
aristocracy with Church establishments, is a superficial explanation.
The paid advocates of delusion know well where their interest lies.
They have learned by experience that democracy means the education of
the people, and that the education of the people means the loss of
their own prestige. And they know also that, in many cases, the people
are already sufficiently educated to use political power, once they
have obtained it, for the summary destruction of organised and endowed
superstition. What has been said of popular influence applies equally
to the influence of women. When they were either not educated at all or
only received a literary education, every improvement in their position
was simply so much ground gained for superstition. The prospect is very
different now. Women are beginning to receive a training like that of
men, or rather a training superior to what all but a very few men have
hitherto enjoyed. And the result is that, wherever this experiment has
been tried, they have flung aside traditional beliefs once supposed to
be a necessity of their nature even more decisively and disdainfully
than have the professors by whom they are taught.
Once more, there was a cause of intellectual degeneration at work in
the ancient world, which for us has almost ceased to exist. This was
the flood of barbarism which enveloped and corrupted, long before it
overwhelmed, the Hellenised civilisation of Rome. But if the danger
of such an inundation is for ever removed, are we equally secure
against the contagion of that intellectual miasma which broods over
the multitudinous barbarian populations among whom we in turn are
settling as conquerors and colonists? Anyone choosing to maintain the
negative might point to the example of a famous naturalist who, besides
contributing largely to the advancement of his own special science, is
also distinguished for high general culture, but whom long residence
in the East Indies has fitted to be the dupe of impostures which it is
a disgrace even for men and women of fashion to accept. Experience,
however, teaches us that, so far at least, there is little danger to
be dreaded from this quarter. Instead of being prone to superstition,
Anglo-Indian society is described as prevailingly sceptical or even
agnostic; and, in fact, the study of theology in its lowest forms is
apt to start a train of reflection not entirely conducive to veneration
for its more modern developments. For the rest, European enlightenment
seems likely to spread faster and farther among the conquered, than
Oriental darkness among the conquering race.
So far, we have only considered belief in its relation to the
re-distribution of political, social, and national forces. But
behind all such forces there is a deeper and more perennial cause of
intellectual revolution at work. There is now in the world an organised
and ever-growing mass of scientific truths, at least a thousand times
greater and a thousand times more diffused than the amount of positive
knowledge possessed by mankind in the age of the Antonines. What those
truths can do in the future may be inferred from what they have already
done in the past. Even the elementary science of Alexandria, though
it could not cope with the supernaturalist reaction of the empire,
proved strong enough, some centuries later, to check the flood of
Mahometan fanaticism, and for a time to lead captivity captive in the
very strongholds of militant theological belief. When, long afterwards,
Jesuitism and Puritanism between them threatened to reconquer all that
the humanism of the Renaissance had won from superstition, when all
Europe from end to end was red with the blood or blackened with the
death-fires of heretics and witches, science, which had meanwhile been
silently laying the foundations of a new kingdom, had but to appear
before the eyes of men, and they left the powers of darkness to follow
where she led. When the follies and excesses of the Revolution provoked
another intellectual reaction, her authority reduced it to a mere
mimicry and shadow of the terrible revenges by which analogous epochs
in the past history of opinion had been signalised. And this was at a
time when the materials of reaction existed in abundance, because the
rationalistic movement of the eighteenth century had left the middle
and lower classes untouched. At the present moment, Catholicism has no
allies but a dispirited, half-sceptical aristocracy; and any appeal to
other quarters would show that her former reserves have irrevocably
passed over to the foe. What is more, she has unconsciously been
playing the game of rationalism for fifteen centuries. By waging a
merciless warfare on every other form of superstition, she has done her
best to dry up the sources of religious belief. Those whom she calls
heathens and pagans lived in an atmosphere of supernaturalism which
rendered them far less apt pupils of philosophy than her own children
are to-day. It was harder to renounce what she took away than it will
be to renounce what she has left, when the truths of science are seen
by all, as they are now seen by a few, to involve the admission that
there is no object for our devotion but the welfare of sentient beings
like ourselves; that there are no changes in Nature for which natural
forces will not account; and that the unity of all existence has, for
us, no individualisation beyond the finite and perishable consciousness
of man.