it does not follow that the spiritual element is correspondingly less.
No doubt it is true that a naval officer in a conning-tower in a modern
battle does not need less courage and character than a naked savage who
meets his enemy with a stick and a spear. Yet probably in the first case
the battle is mainly decided by the weight and accuracy of the guns, in
the second by the qualities of the fighter. Consequently the modern
world thinks more incessantly and anxiously about the guns, that is,
about money and mechanism; the ancient devotes its thought more to human
character and duty. And it is curious to observe how, in general, each
tries to remedy what is wrong with the world by the method that is
habitually in its thoughts. Speaking broadly, apart from certain
religious movements, the enlightened modern reformer, if confronted with
some ordinary complex of misery and wickedness, instinctively proposes
to cure it by higher wages, better food, more comfort and leisure; to
make people comfortable and trust to their becoming good. The typical
ancient reformer would appeal to us to care for none of those things
(since riches notoriously do not make men virtuous), but with all our
powers to pursue wisdom or righteousness and the life of the spirit; to
be good men, as we can be if we will, and to know that all else will
follow.
This is one of the regions in which the ancients might have learned much
from us, and in which we still have much to learn from them, if once we
can shake off our temporal obsessions and listen.
NOTE
As an example it is worth noticing, even in a bare catalogue, the work
done by one of Aristotle's own pupils, a Peripatetic of the second
rank, Dicaearchus of Messene. His _floruit_ is given as 310 B. C. Dorian
by birth, when Theophrastus was made head of the school he retired to
the Peloponnese, and shows a certain prejudice against Athens.
One of the discoveries of the time was biography. And, by a brilliant
stroke of imagination Dicaearchus termed one of his books Βίος Ἑλλαδος,
_The Life of Hellas_. He saw civilization as the biography of the world.
First, the Age of Cronos, when man as a simple savage made no effort
after higher things; next, the ancient river-civilizations of the
orient; third, the Hellenic system. Among his scanty fragments we find
notes on such ideas as πάτρα, φρατρία, φυλή, as Greek institutions. The
_Life of Hellas_ was much used by late writers. It formed the model for
another Βίος Ἑλλαδος by a certain Jason, and for Varro's _Vita Populi
Romani_.
Then, like his great master, Dicaearchus made studies of the
Constitutions of various states (e. g. Pellene, Athens, and Corinth);
his treatise on the Constitution of Sparta was read aloud annually in
that city by order of the Ephors. It was evidently appreciative.
A more speculative work was his _Tripoliticus_, arguing that the best
constitution ought to be compounded of the three species, monarchic,
aristocratic, and democratic, as in Sparta. Only then would it be sure
to last. Polybius accepted the principle of the Mixed Constitution, but
found his ideal in the constitution of Rome, which later history was to
prove so violently unstable. Cicero, _De Republica_, takes the same line
(Polyb. vi. 2-10; Cic. _De Rep._ i. 45; ii. 65). Dicaearchus treated of
similar political subjects in his public addresses at Olympia and at the
Panathenaea.
We hear more about his work on the history of literature, though his
generation was almost the first to realize that such a subject had any
existence. He wrote _Lives of Philosophers_--a subject hitherto not
considered worth recording--giving the biographical facts followed by
philosophic and aesthetic criticism. We hear, for example, of his life
of Plato; of Pythagoras (in which he laid emphasis on the philosopher's
practical work), of Xenophanes, and of the Seven Wise Men.
He also wrote _Lives of Poets_. We hear of books on Alcaeus and on
Homer, in which latter he is said to have made the startling remark that
the poems 'should be pronounced in the Aeolic dialect'. Whatever this
remark exactly meant, and we cannot tell without the context, it seems
an extraordinary anticipation of modern philological discoveries. He
wrote on the _Hypotheses_--i. e. the subject matter--_of Sophocles and
Euripides_; also on _Musical Contests_, περὶ Μουσικῶν ἀγώνων, carrying
further Aristotle's own collection of the _Didascaliae_, or official
notices of the production of Tragedies in Athens. The book dealt both
with dates and with customs; it told how Skolia were sung, with a
laurel or myrtle twig in the hand, how Sophocles introduced a third
actor, and the like.
In philosophy proper he wrote On the Soul, περὶ ψυχῆς. His first book,
the _Corinthiacus_, proved that the Soul was a 'harmony' or 'right
blending' of the four elements, and was identical with the force of the
living body. The second, the _Lesbiacus_, drew the conclusion that, if a
compound, it was destructible. (Hence a great controversy with his
master.)
He wrote περὶ φθορᾶς ἀνθρώπων, on the _Perishing of Mankind_; i. e. on
the way in which large masses of men have perished off the earth,
through famine, pestilence, wild beasts, war, and the like. He decides
that man's most destructive enemy is Man. (The subject may have been
suggested to him by a fine imaginative passage in Aristotle's
_Meteorology_ (i. 14, 7) dealing with the vast changes that have taken
place on the earth's surface and the unrecorded perishings of races and
communities.)
He wrote a treatise against _Divination_, and a (satirical?) _Descent to
the Cave of Trophonius_. He seems, however, to have allowed some
importance to dreams and to the phenomena of 'possession'.
And, with all this, we have not touched on his greatest work, which was
in the sphere of geography. He wrote a Περίοδος γῆς, a _Journey Round
the Earth_, accompanied with a map. He used for this map the greatly
increased stores of knowledge gained by the Macedonian expeditions over
all Asia as far as the Ganges. He also seems to have devised the method
of denoting the position of a place by means of two co-ordinates, the
method soon after developed by Eratosthenes into Latitude and Longitude.
He attempted calculations of the measurements of large geographic
distances, for which of course both his data and his instruments were
inadequate. Nevertheless his measurements remained a well-known
standard; we find them quoted and criticized by Strabo and Polybius.
And, lastly, he published _Measurements of the Heights of Mountains in
the Peloponnese_; but the title seems to have been unduly modest, for we
find in the fragments statements about mountains far outside that area;
about Pelion and Olympus in Thessaly and of Atabyrion in Rhodes. He had
a subvention, Pliny tells us (N. H. ii. 162, 'regum cura permensus
montes'), from the king of Macedon, probably either Cassander or, as one
would like to believe, the philosophic Antigonus Gonatas. And he
calculated the heights, so we are told, by trigonometry, using the
δίοπτρα, an instrument of hollow reeds without lenses which served for
his primitive theodolite. It is an extraordinary record, and illustrates
the true Peripatetic spirit.
FOOTNOTES:
[79:1] _Hellen._ ii. 2, 3.
[80:1] Cf. Tarn, _Antigonus Gonatas_, p. 52, and authorities there
quoted.
[81:1] Lysias, xxxiii.
[82:1] Dem. _Crown_, 208.
[83:1] 'Such-like trash', _Gorgias_, 519 A; dust-storm, _Rep._ vi. 496;
clothes, _Gorg._ 523 E; 'democratic man', _Rep._ viii. 556 ff.
[84:1] _Laws_, 709 E, cf. Letter VII.
[85:1] Aulus Gellius, xiv. 3; Plato, _Laws_, p. 695; Xen. _Cyrop._ viii.
7, compared with _Hdt._ i. 214.
[87:1] This is the impression left by Xenophon, especially in the
Symposium. Cf. Dümmler, _Antisthenica_ (1882); _Akademika_ (1889). Cf.
the _Life of Antisthenes_ in Diog. Laert.
[87:2] Γέρων ὀψιμαθήϛ, Plato, _Soph._ 251 B, Isocr. _Helena_, i. 2.
[87:3] e. g. no combination of subject and predicate can be true because
one is different from the other. 'Man' is 'man' and 'good' is 'good';
but 'man' is not 'good'. Nor can 'a horse' possibly be 'running'; they
are totally different conceptions. See Plutarch, _adv. Co._ 22, 1 (p.
1119); Plato, _Soph._ 251 B; Arist. _Metaph._ 1024{b} 33; Top. 104{b}
20; Plato, _Euthyd._ 285 E. For similar reasons no statement can ever
contradict another; the statements are either the same or not the same;
and if not the same they do not touch. Every object has one λόγος or
thing to be said about it; if you say a different λόγος you are speaking
of something else. See especially _Scholia Arist._, p. 732{a} 30 ff. on
the passage in the _Metaphysics_, 1024{b} 33.
[90:1] Τὸ νόμισμα παραχαράττειν: see _Life_ in Diog. Laert., fragments
in Mullach, vol. ii, and the article in Pauly-Wissowa.
[95:1] There were women among the Cynics. 'The doctrine also captured
Metrocles' sister, Hipparchia. She loved Crates, his words, and his way
of life, and paid no attention to any of her suitors, however rich or
highborn or handsome. Crates was everything to her. She threatened her
parents that she would commit suicide unless she were given to him. They
asked Crates to try to change the girl's mind, and he did all he could
to no effect, till at last he put all his possessions on the floor and
stood up in front of her. 'Here is your bridegroom; there is his
fortune; now think!' The girl made her choice, put on the beggar's garb,
and went her ways with Crates. She lived with him openly and went like
him to beg food at dinners.' Diog. Laert. vi. 96 ff.
[98:1] e. g. the struggle for existence among animals and plants; the
ἀλληλοφαγία, or 'mutual devouring', of animals; and such points as the
various advances in evolution which seem self-destructive. Thus, Man has
learnt to stand on two feet and use his hands; a great advantage but one
which has led to numerous diseases. Again, physiologists say that the
increasing size of the human head, especially when combined with the
diminishing size of the pelvis, tends to make normal birth impossible.
[100:1] _The Stoic Philosophy_ (1915). See also Arnold's _Roman
Stoicism_ (1911); Bevan's _Stoics and Sceptics_ (1913); and especially
_Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta_ by von Arnim (1903-5).
[101:1] The chief authorities on Epicurus are Usener's _Epicurea_,
containing the _Life_ from Diog. Laert., fragments and introduction: the
papyrus fragments of Philodemus in _Volumina Herculanensia_; Diogenes of
Oenoanda (text by William, Teubner, 1907); the commentaries on Lucretius
(Munro, Giussani, &c.).
[103:1] Epicurus is the one philosopher who protests with real
indignation against that inhuman superiority to natural sorrows which is
so much prized by most of the ancient schools. To him such 'apathy'
argues either a hard heart or a morbid vanity (Fr. 120). His letters are
full of affectionate expressions which rather shock the stern reserve of
antique philosophy. He waits for one friend's 'heavenly presence' (Fr.
165). He 'melts with a peculiar joy mingled with tears in remembering
the last words' of one who is dead (Fr. 186; cf. 213). He is
enthusiastic about an act of kindness performed by another, who walked
some five miles to help a barbarian prisoner (Fr. 194).
[106:1] Lucretius, i. 62-79, actually speaks of the great
atheist in language taken from the Saviour Religions (see below, p.
162):
When Man's life upon earth in base dismay,
Crushed by the burthen of Religion, lay,
Whose face, from all the regions of the sky,
Hung, glaring hate upon mortality,
First one Greek man against her dared to raise
His eyes, against her strive through all his days;
Him noise of Gods nor lightnings nor the roar
Of raging heaven subdued, but pricked the more
His spirit's valiance, till he longed the Gate
To burst of this low prison of man's fate.
And thus the living ardour of his mind
Conquered, and clove its way; he passed behind
The world's last flaming wall, and through the whole
Of space uncharted ranged his mind and soul.
Whence, conquering, he returned to make Man see
At last what can, what cannot, come to be;
By what law to each Thing its power hath been
Assigned, and what deep boundary set between;
Till underfoot is tamed Religion trod,
And, by His victory, Man ascends to God.
[107:1] That is, 8,000 drachmae. Rents had risen violently in 314 and so
presumably had land prices. Else one would say the Garden was about the
value of a good farm. See Tarn in _The Hellenistic Age_ (1923), p. 116.
[108:1] τυρὸν κυθρίδιον, Fr. 182.
[108:2] Fr. 143. Παιὰν ἄναξ, φίλον Λεοντάριον, οἴου κροτοθορύβου ἡμᾶς
ἀνέπλησας, ἀναγνόντας σου τό ἐπιστόλιον. Fr. 121 (from an enemy) implies
that the Hetairae were expected to reform when they entered the Garden.
Cf. Fr. 62 συνουσίη ὤνησε μὲν οὐδέποτε, ἀγαπητὸν δὲ εἰ μὴ ἔβλαψε: cf.
Fr. 574.
[109:1] See p. 169 below on Diogenes of Oenoanda.
[110:1] Pleasures and pains may be greater or less, but the complete
'removal of pain and fear' is a perfect end, not to be surpassed. Fr.
408-48, Ep. iii. 129-31.
[110:2] e. g. Plut. _Ne suaviter quidem vivi_, esp. chap. 17 (p. 1098
D).
[111:1] Cf. Fr. 141 when Epicurus writes to Colotes: 'Think of me as
immortal, and go your ways as immortal too.'
[112:1] Fr. 601; cf. 598 ff.
[113:1] Fr. 138; cf. 177.
[113:2] 'οἱ τούτοις ἀντιγράφοντες οὐ πάνυ τι μακρὰν τῆς τῶν πατραλοιῶν
καταδίκης ἀφεστήκασιν', Fr. 49. Usener, from Philodemus, _De Rhet._ This
may be only a playful reference to Plato's phrase about being a
πατραλοίας of his father, Parmenides, _Soph._, p. 241 D.
[113:3] Epicurus congratulated himself (erroneously) that he came to
Philosophy καθαρὸς πάσης παιδείας, 'undefiled by education'. Cf. Fr. 163
to Pythocles, παιδείαν δὲ πᾶσαν, μακάριε, φεῦγε τὸ ἀκάτιον ἀράμενος,
'From education in every shape, my son, spread sail and fly!'
[113:4] Fr. 343-6.
[116:1] Pythias was the niece, or ward, of Aristotle's friend, Hermias,
an extraordinary man who rose from slavery to be first a free man and a
philosopher, and later Prince or 'Dynast' of Assos and Atarneus. In the
end he was treacherously entrapped by the Persian General, Mentor, and
crucified by the king. Aristotle's 'Ode to Virtue' is addressed to him.
To his second wife, Herpyllis, Aristotle was only united by a civil
marriage like the Roman _usus_.
[116:2] See note on Dicaearchus at end of chapter.
IV
THE FAILURE OF NERVE
Any one who turns from the great writers of classical Athens, say
Sophocles or Aristotle, to those of the Christian era must be conscious
of a great difference in tone. There is a change in the whole relation
of the writer to the world about him. The new quality is not
specifically Christian: it is just as marked in the Gnostics and
Mithras-worshippers as in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, in Julian and
Plotinus as in Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a rise
of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a loss of
self-confidence, of hope in this life and of faith in normal human
effort; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation;
an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul to
God. It is an atmosphere in which the aim of the good man is not so much
to live justly, to help the society to which he belongs and enjoy the
esteem of his fellow creatures; but rather, by means of a burning faith,
by contempt for the world and its standards, by ecstasy, suffering, and
martyrdom, to be granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his
immeasurable sins. There is an intensifying of certain spiritual
emotions; an increase of sensitiveness, a failure of nerve.
Now this antithesis is often exaggerated by the admirers of one side or
the other. A hundred people write as if Sophocles had no mysticism and
practically speaking no conscience. Half a dozen retort as if St. Paul
had no public spirit and no common sense. I have protested often against
this exaggeration; but, stated reasonably, as a change of proportion and
not a creation of new hearts, the antithesis is certainly based on fact.
The historical reasons for it are suggested above, in the first of these
essays.
My description of this complicated change is, of course, inadequate, but
not, I hope, one-sided. I do not depreciate the religions that followed
on this movement by describing the movement itself as a 'failure of
nerve'. Mankind has not yet decided which of two opposite methods leads
to the fuller and deeper knowledge of the world: the patient and
sympathetic study of the good citizen who lives in it, or the ecstatic
vision of the saint who rejects it. But probably most Christians are
inclined to believe that without some failure and sense of failure,
without a contrite heart and conviction of sin, man can hardly attain
the religious life. I can imagine an historian of this temper believing
that the period we are about to discuss was a necessary softening of
human pride, a _Praeparatio Evangelica_.[124:1]
I am concerned in this paper with the lower country lying between two
great ranges. The one range is Greek Philosophy, culminating in Plato,
Aristotle, the Porch, and the Garden; the other is Christianity,
culminating in St. Paul and his successors. The one is the work of
Hellas, using some few foreign elements; the second is the work of
Hellenistic culture on a Hebrew stock. The books of Christianity are
Greek, the philosophical background is Hellenistic, the result of the
interplay, in the free atmosphere of Greek philosophy, of religious
ideas derived from Egypt, Anatolia, Syria, and Babylon. The preaching is
carried on in Greek among the Greek-speaking workmen of the great
manufacturing and commercial cities. The first preachers are Jews: the
central scene is set in Jerusalem. I wish in this essay to indicate how
a period of religious history, which seems broken, is really continuous,
and to trace the lie of the main valleys which lead from the one range
to the other, through a large and imperfectly explored territory.
The territory in question is the so-called Hellenistic Age, the period
during which the Schools of Greece were 'hellenizing' the world. It is a
time of great enlightenment, of vigorous propaganda, of high importance
to history. It is a time full of great names: in one school of
philosophy alone we have Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Panaetius,
Posidonius. Yet, curiously enough, it is represented in our tradition by
something very like a mere void. There are practically no complete books
preserved, only fragments and indirect quotations. Consequently in the
search for information about this age we must throw our nets wide.
Beside books and inscriptions of the Hellenistic period proper I have
drawn on Cicero, Pliny, Seneca, and the like for evidence about their
teachers and masters. I have used many Christian and Gnostic documents
and works like the Corpus of Hermetic writings and the Mithras Liturgy.
Among modern writers I must acknowledge a special debt to the researches
of Dieterich, Cumont, Bousset, Wendland, and Reitzenstein.
* * * * *
The Hellenistic Age seems at first sight to have entered on an
inheritance such as our speculative Anarchists sometimes long for, a
_tabula rasa_, on which a new and highly gifted generation of thinkers
might write clean and certain the book of their discoveries about
life--what Herodotus would call their '_Historiê_'. For, as we have seen
in the last essay, it is clear that by the time of Plato the traditional
religion of the Greek states was, if taken at its face value, a bankrupt
concern. There was hardly one aspect in which it could bear criticism;
and in the kind of test that chiefly matters, the satisfaction of men's
ethical requirements and aspirations, it was if anything weaker than
elsewhere. Now a religious belief that is scientifically preposterous
may still have a long and comfortable life before it. Any worshipper can
suspend the scientific part of his mind while worshipping. But a
religious belief that is morally contemptible is in serious danger,
because when the religious emotions surge up the moral emotions are not
far away. And the clash cannot be hidden.
This collapse of the traditional religion of Greece might not have
mattered so much if the form of Greek social life had remained. If a
good Greek had his Polis, he had an adequate substitute in most respects
for any mythological gods. But the Polis too, as we have seen in the
last essay, fell with the rise of Macedon. It fell, perhaps, not from
any special spiritual fault of its own; it had few faults except its
fatal narrowness; but simply because there now existed another social
whole, which, whether higher or lower in civilization, was at any rate
utterly superior in brute force and in money. Devotion to the Polis lost
its reality when the Polis, with all that it represented of rights and
laws and ideals of Life, lay at the mercy of a military despot, who
might, of course, be a hero, but might equally well be a vulgar sot or a
corrupt adventurer.
What the succeeding ages built upon the ruins of the Polis is not our
immediate concern. In the realm of thought, on the whole, the Polis
triumphed. Aristotle based his social theory on the Polis, not the
nation. Dicaearchus, Didymus, and Posidonius followed him, and we still
use his language. Rome herself was a Polis, as well as an Empire. And
Professor Haverfield has pointed out that a City has more chance of
taking in the whole world to its freedoms and privileges than a Nation
has of making men of alien birth its compatriots. A Jew of Tarsus could
easily be granted the civic rights of Rome: he could never have been
made an Italian or a Frenchman. The Stoic ideal of the World as 'one
great City of Gods and Men' has not been surpassed by any ideal based on
the Nation.
What we have to consider is the general trend of religious thought from,
say, the Peripatetics to the Gnostics. It is a fairly clear history. A
soil once teeming with wild weeds was to all appearance swept bare and
made ready for new sowing: skilled gardeners chose carefully the best of
herbs and plants and tended the garden sedulously. But the bounds of the
garden kept spreading all the while into strange untended ground, and
even within the original walls the weeding had been hasty and
incomplete. At the end of a few generations all was a wilderness of
weeds again, weeds rank and luxuriant and sometimes extremely beautiful,
with a half-strangled garden flower or two gleaming here and there in
the tangle of them. Does that comparison seem disrespectful to religion?
Is philosophy all flowers and traditional belief all weeds? Well, think
what a weed is. It is only a name for all the natural wild vegetation
which the earth sends up of herself, which lives and will live without
the conscious labour of man. The flowers are what we keep alive with
difficulty; the weeds are what conquer us.