ancient thought, not excepting Socratic thought, was that instead of
appealing to objective experiment it appealed to some subjective sense
of fitness. There were exceptions, of course: Democritus, Eratosthenes,
Hippocrates, and to a great extent Aristotle. But in general there was a
strong tendency to follow Plato in supposing that people could really
solve questions by an appeal to their inner consciousness. One result of
this, no doubt, was a tendency to lay too much stress on mere agreement.
It is obvious, when one thinks about it, that quite often a large number
of people who know nothing about a subject will all agree and all be
wrong. Yet we find the most radical of ancient philosophers
unconsciously dominated by the argument _ex consensu gentium_. It is
hard to find two more uncompromising thinkers than Zeno and Epicurus.
Yet both of them, when they are almost free from the popular
superstitions, when they have constructed complete systems which, if not
absolutely logic-proof, are calculated at least to keep out the weather
for a century or so, open curious side-doors at the last moment and let
in all the gods of mythology.[129:1] True, they are admitted as
suspicious characters, and under promise of good behaviour. Epicurus
explains that they do not and cannot do anything whatever to anybody;
Zeno explains that they are not anthropomorphic, and are only symbols or
emanations or subordinates of the all-ruling Unity; both parties get rid
of the myths. But the two great reformers have admitted a dangerous
principle. The general consensus of humanity, they say, shows that there
are gods, and gods which in mind, if not also in visual appearance,
resemble man. Epicurus succeeded in barring the door, and admitted
nothing more. But the Stoics presently found themselves admitting or
insisting that the same consensus proved the existence of daemons, of
witchcraft, of divination, and when they combined with the Platonic
school, of more dangerous elements still.
I take the Stoics and Epicureans as the two most radical schools. On the
whole both of them fought steadily and strongly against the growth of
superstition, or, if you like to put it in other language, against the
dumb demands of man's infra-rational nature. The glory of the Stoics is
to have built up a religion of extraordinary nobleness; the glory of the
Epicureans is to have upheld an ideal of sanity and humanity stark
upright amid a reeling world, and, like the old Spartans, never to have
yielded one inch of ground to the common foe.
The great thing to remember is that the mind of man cannot be
enlightened permanently by merely teaching him to reject some particular
set of superstitions. There is an infinite supply of other superstitions
always at hand; and the mind that desires such things--that is, the mind
that has not trained itself to the hard discipline of reasonableness and
honesty, will, as soon as its devils are cast out, proceed to fill
itself with their relations.
* * * * *
Let us first consider the result of the mere denial of the Olympian
religion. The essential postulate of that religion was that the world is
governed by a number of definite personal gods, possessed of a human
sense of justice and fairness and capable of being influenced by normal
human motives. In general, they helped the good and punished the bad,
though doubtless they tended too much to regard as good those who paid
them proper attention and as bad those who did not.
Speaking broadly, what was left when this conception proved inadequate?
If it was not these personal gods who made things happen, what was it?
If the Tower of Siloam was not deliberately thrown down by the gods so
as to kill and hurt a carefully collected number of wicked people, while
letting the good escape, what was the explanation of its falling? The
answer is obvious, but it can be put in two ways. You can either say:
'It was just chance that the Tower fell at that particular moment when
So-and-so was under it.' Or you can say, with rather more reflection but
not any more common sense: 'It fell because of a definite chain of
causes, a certain degree of progressive decay in the building, a certain
definite pressure, &c. It was bound to fall.'
There is no real difference in these statements, at least in the meaning
of those who ordinarily utter them. Both are compatible with a
reasonable and scientific view of the world. But in the Hellenistic Age,
when Greek thought was spreading rapidly and superficially over vast
semi-barbarous populations whose minds were not ripe for it, both views
turned back instinctively into a theology as personal as that of the
Olympians. It was not, of course, Zeus or Apollo who willed this; every
one knew so much: it happened by Chance. That is, Chance or Fortune
willed it. And Τύχη became a goddess like the rest. The great
catastrophes, the great transformations of the mediterranean world
which marked the Hellenistic period, had a strong influence here. If
Alexander and his generals had practised some severely orthodox
Macedonian religion, it would have been easy to see that the Gods of
Macedon were the real rulers of the world. But they most markedly did
not. They accepted hospitably all the religions that crossed their path.
Some power or other was disturbing the world, that was clear. It was not
exactly the work of man, because sometimes the good were exalted,
sometimes the bad; there was no consistent purpose in the story. It was
just Fortune. Happy is the man who knows how to placate Fortune and make
her smile upon him!
It is worth remembering that the best seed-ground for superstition is a
society in which the fortunes of men seem to bear practically no
relation to their merits and efforts. A stable and well-governed society
does tend, speaking roughly, to ensure that the Virtuous and Industrious
Apprentice shall succeed in life, while the Wicked and Idle Apprentice
fails. And in such a society people tend to lay stress on the reasonable
or visible chains of causation. But in a country suffering from
earthquakes or pestilences, in a court governed by the whim of a despot,
in a district which is habitually the seat of a war between alien
armies, the ordinary virtues of diligence, honesty, and kindliness seem
to be of little avail. The only way to escape destruction is to win the
favour of the prevailing powers, take the side of the strongest invader,
flatter the despot, placate the Fate or Fortune or angry god that is
sending the earthquake or the pestilence. The Hellenistic period pretty
certainly falls in some degree under all of these categories. And one
result is the sudden and enormous spread of the worship of Fortune. Of
course, there was always a protest. There is the famous
_Nullum numen habes si sit prudentia: nos te,
Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam_,
taken by Juvenal from the Greek. There are many unguarded phrases and at
least three corrections in Polybius.[133:1] Most interesting of all
perhaps, there is the first oration of Plutarch on the Fortune of
Alexander.[133:2] A sentence in Pliny's _Natural History_, ii. 22, seems
to go back to Hellenistic sources:
'Throughout the whole world, at every place and hour, by
every voice Fortune alone is invoked and her name spoken: she
is the one defendant, the one culprit, the one thought in
men's minds, the one object of praise, the one cause. She is
worshipped with insults, counted as fickle and often as blind,
wandering, inconsistent, elusive, changeful, and friend of the
unworthy. . . . We are so much at the mercy of chance that
Chance is our god.'
The word used is first _Fortuna_ and then _Sors_. This shows how little
real difference there is between the two apparently contradictory
conceptions.--'Chance would have it so.' 'It was fated to be.' The sting
of both phrases--their pleasant bitterness when played with, their
quality of poison when believed--lies in their denial of the value of
human endeavour.
Yet on the whole, as one might expect, the believers in Destiny are a
more respectable congregation than the worshippers of Chance. It
requires a certain amount of thoughtfulness to rise to the conception
that nothing really happens without a cause. It is the beginning,
perhaps, of science. Ionic philosophers of the fifth century had laid
stress on the Ἀνάγκη φύσιος,[134:1] what we should call the Chain of
causes in Nature. After the rise of Stoicism Fate becomes something less
physical, more related to conscious purpose. It is not _Anankê_ but
_Heimarmenê_. Heimarmenê, in the striking simile of Zeno,[134:2] is like
a fine thread running through the whole of existence--the world, we must
remember, was to the Stoics a live thing--like that invisible thread of
life which, in heredity, passes on from generation to generation of
living species and keeps the type alive; it runs causing, causing for
ever, both the infinitesimal and the infinite. It is the Λόγος τοῦ
Κόσμου,[135:1] the Νοῦς Διός, the Reason of the World or the mind of
Zeus, rather difficult to distinguish from the Pronoia or Providence
which is the work of God and indeed the very essence of God. Thus it is
not really an external and alien force. For the human soul itself is a
fragment or effluence of the divine, and this Law of God is also the law
of man's own Phusis. As long as you act in accordance with your true
self you are complying with that divine Εἱμαρμένη or Πρόνοια, whose
service is perfect freedom. Only when you are false to your own nature
and become a rebel against the kingdom of God which is within you, are
you dragged perforce behind the chariot-wheels. The doctrine is implied
in Cleanthes' celebrated Hymn to Destiny and is explained clearly by
Plotinus.[135:2]
That is a noble conception. But the vulgar of course can turn Kismet
into a stupid idol, as easily as they can Fortune. And Epicurus may have
had some excuse for exclaiming that he would sooner be a slave to the
old gods of the vulgar, than to the Destiny of the philosophers.[135:3]
So much for the result in superstitious minds of the denial, or rather
the removal, of the Olympian Gods. It landed men in the worship of
Fortune or of Fate.
Next, let us consider what happened when, instead of merely rejecting
the Gods _en masse_, people tried carefully to collect what remained of
religion after the Olympian system fell.
Aristotle himself gives us a fairly clear answer. He held that the
origins of man's idea (ἔννοια) of the Divine were twofold,[136:1] the
phenomena of the sky and the phenomena of the human soul. It is very
much what Kant found two thousand years later. The spectacle of the vast
and ordered movements of the heavenly bodies are compared by him in a
famous fragment with the marching forth of Homer's armies before Troy.
Behind such various order and strength there must surely be a conscious
mind capable
Κοσμῆσαι ἵρρους τε καὶ ἀνέρας ἀσπιδιώτας,
To order steeds of war and mailèd men.
It is only a step from this to regarding the sun, moon, and stars as
themselves divine, and it is a step which both Plato and Aristotle,
following Pythagoras and followed by the Stoics, take with confidence.
Chrysippus gives practically the same list of gods: 'the Sun, Moon, and
Stars; and Law: and men who have become Gods.'[136:2] Both the wandering
stars and the fixed stars are 'animate beings, divine and eternal',
self-acting subordinate gods. As to the divinity of the soul or the mind
of man, the earlier generations are shy about it. But in the later
Stoics it is itself a portion of the divine life. It shows this
ordinarily by its power of reason, and more conspicuously by becoming
ἔνθεος, or 'filled with God', in its exalted moments of prevision,
ecstasy, and prophetic dreams. If reason itself is divine, there is
something else in the soul which is even higher than reason or at least
more surprisingly divine.
Let us follow the history of both these remaining substitutes for the
Olympian gods.
First for the Heavenly bodies. If they are to be made divine, we can
hardly stop there. The Earth is also a divine being. Old tradition has
always said so, and Plato has repeated it. And if Earth is divine, so
surely are the other elements, the _Stoicheia_, Water, Air, and above
all, Fire. For the Gods themselves are said by Plato to be made of fire,
and the Stars visibly are so. Though perhaps the heavenly Fire is really
not our Fire at all, but a πέμπτον σῶμα, a 'Fifth Body', seeing that it
seems not to burn nor the Stars to be consumed.
This is persuasive enough and philosophic; but whither has it led us?
Back to the Olympians, or rather behind the Olympians; as St. Paul puts
it (Gal. iv. 9), to 'the beggarly elements'. The old Korê, or Earth
Maiden and Mother, seems to have held her own unshaken by the changes of
time all over the Aegean area. She is there in prehistoric Crete with
her two lions; with the same lions orientalized in Olympia and Ephesus;
in Sparta with her great marsh birds; in Boeotia with her horse. She
runs riot in a number of the Gnostic systems both pre-Christian and
post-Christian. She forms a divine triad with the Father and the Son:
that is ancient and natural. But she also becomes the Divine Wisdom,
Sophia, the Divine Truth, Aletheia, the Holy Breath or Spirit, the
Pneuma. Since the word for 'spirit' is neuter in Greek and masculine in
Latin, this last is rather a surprise. It is explained when we remember
that in Hebrew the word for Spirit, 'Ruah', is mostly feminine. In the
meantime let us notice one curious development in the life of this
goddess. In the old religion of Greece and Western Asia, she begins as a
Maiden, then in fullness of time becomes a mother. There is evidence
also for a third stage, the widowhood of withering autumn.[138:1] To the
classical Greek this motherhood was quite as it should be, a due
fulfilment of normal functions. But to the Gnostic and his kind it
connoted a 'fall', a passage from the glory of Virginity to a state of
Sin.[138:2] The Korê becomes a fallen Virgin, sometimes a temptress or
even a female devil; sometimes she has to be saved by her Son the
Redeemer.[138:3] As far as I have observed, she loses most of her
earthly agricultural quality, though as Selene or even Helen she keeps
up her affinity with the Moon.
Almost all the writers of the Hellenistic Age agree in regarding the
Sun, Moon, and Stars as gods. The rationalists Hecataeus and Euhemerus,
before going on to their deified men, always start with the heavenly
bodies. When Plutarch explains in his beautiful and kindly way that all
religions are really attempts towards the same goal, he clinches his
argument by observing that we all see the same Sun and Moon though we
call them by different names in all languages.[139:1] But the belief
does not seem to have had much religious intensity in it, until it was
reinforced by two alien influences.
First, we have the ancient worship of the Sun, implicit, if not
explicit, in a great part of the oldest Greek rituals, and then
idealized by Plato in the _Republic_, where the Sun is the author of all
light and life in the material world, as the Idea of Good is in the
ideal world. This worship came gradually into contact with the
traditional and definite Sun-worship of Persia. The final combination
took place curiously late. It was the Roman conquests of Cilicia,
Cappadocia, Commagene, and Armenia that gave the decisive moment.[139:2]
To men who had wearied of the myths of the poets, who could draw no more
inspiration from their Apollo and Hyperion, but still had the habits and
the craving left by their old Gods, a fresh breath of reality came with
the entrance of Ἥλιος ἀνίκητος Μίθρας, 'Mithras, the Unconquered Sun'.
But long before the triumph of Mithraism as the military religion of the
Roman frontier, Greek literature is permeated with a kind of intense
language about the Sun, which seems derived from Plato.[139:3] In later
times, in the fourth century A. D. for instance, it has absorbed some
more full-blooded and less critical element as well.
Secondly, all the seven planets. These had a curious history. The
planets were of course divine and living bodies, so much Plato gave us.
Then come arguments and questions scattered through the Stoic and
eclectic literature. Is it the planet itself that is divine, or is the
planet under the guidance of a divine spirit? The latter seems to win
the day. Anthropomorphism has stolen back upon us: we can use the old
language and speak simply of the planet Mercury as Ἑρμοῦ ἀστήρ. It is
the star of Hermes, and Hermes is the spirit who guides it.[140:1] Even
Plato in his old age had much to say about the souls of the seven
planets. Further, each planet has its sphere. The Earth is in the
centre, then comes the sphere of the Moon, then that of the Sun, and so
on through a range of seven spheres. If all things are full of gods, as
the wise ancients have said, what about those parts of the sphere in
which the shining planet for the moment is not? Are they without god?
Obviously not. The whole sphere is filled with innumerable spirits
everywhere. It is all Hermes, all Aphrodite. (We are more familiar with
the Latin names, Mercury and Venus.) But one part only is visible. The
voice of one school, as usual, is raised in opposition. One veteran had
seen clearly from the beginning whither all this sort of thing was sure
to lead. 'Epicurus approves none of these things.'[140:2] It was no
good his having destroyed the old traditional superstition, if people
by deifying the stars were to fill the sky with seven times seven as
many objects of worship as had been there before. He allows no
_Schwärmerei_ about the stars. They are _not_ divine animate beings, or
guided by Gods. Why cannot the astrologers leave God in peace? When
their orbits are irregular it is _not_ because they are looking for
food. They are just conglomerations of ordinary atoms of air or fire--it
does not matter which. They are not even very large--only about as large
as they look, or perhaps smaller, since most fires tend to look bigger
at a distance. They are not at all certainly everlasting. It is quite
likely that the sun comes to an end every day, and a new one rises in
the morning. All kinds of explanations are possible, and none certain.
Μόνον ὁ μῦθος ἀπέστω. In any case, as you value your life and your
reason, do not begin making myths about them!
On other lines came what might have been the effective protest of real
Science, when Aristarchus of Samos (250 B. C.) argued that the earth was
not really the centre of the universe, but revolved round the Sun. But
his hypothesis did not account for the phenomena as completely as the
current theory with its 'Epicycles'; his fellow astronomers were against
him; Cleanthes the Stoic denounced him for 'disturbing the Hearth of the
Universe', and his heresy made little headway.[141:1]
The planets in their seven spheres surrounding the earth continued to be
objects of adoration. They had their special gods or guiding spirits
assigned them. Their ordered movements through space, it was held,
produce a vast and eternal harmony. It is beautiful beyond all earthly
music, this Music of the Spheres, beyond all human dreams of what music
might be. The only pity is that--except for a few individuals in
trances--nobody has ever heard it. Circumstances seem always to be
unfavourable. It may be that we are too far off, though, considering the
vastness of the orchestra, this seems improbable. More likely we are
merely deaf to it because it never stops and we have been in the middle
of it since we first drew breath.[142:1]
The planets also become Elements in the Kosmos, _Stoicheia_. It is
significant that in Hellenistic theology the word Stoicheion, Element,
gets to mean a Daemon--as Megathos, Greatness, means an Angel.[142:2]
But behold a mystery! The word _Stoicheia_, 'elementa', had long been
used for the Greek A B C, and in particular for the seven vowels α ε η ι
ο υ ω. That is no chance, no mere coincidence. The vowels are the mystic
signs of the Planets; they have control over the planets. Hence strange
prayers and magic formulae innumerable.
Even the way of reckoning time changed under the influence of the
Planets. Instead of the old division of the month into three periods of
nine days, we find gradually establishing itself the week of seven days
with each day named after its planet, Sun, Moon, Ares, Hermes, Zeus,
Aphrodite, Kronos. The history of the Planet week is given by Dio
Cassius, xxxvii. 18, in his account of the Jewish campaign of Pompeius.
But it was not the Jewish week. The Jews scorned such idolatrous and
polytheistic proceedings. It was the old week of Babylon, the original
home of astronomy and planet-worship.[143:1]
For here again a great foreign religion came like water in the desert to
minds reluctantly and superficially enlightened, but secretly longing
for the old terrors and raptures from which they had been set free. Even
in the old days Aeschylus had called the planets 'bright potentates,
shining in the fire of heaven', and Euripides had spoken of the 'shaft
hurled from a star'.[143:2] But we are told that the first teaching of
astrology in Hellenic lands was in the time of Alexander, when Bêrôssos
the Chaldaean set up a school in Cos and, according to Seneca, _Belum
interpretatus est_. This must mean that he translated into Greek the
'_Eye of Bel_', a treatise in seventy tablets found in the library of
Assur-bani-pal (686-626 B. C.) but composed for Sargon I in the third
millennium B. C. Even the philosopher Theophrastus is reported by
Proclus[143:3] as saying that 'the most extraordinary thing of his age
was the lore of the Chaldaeans, who foretold not only events of public
interest but even the lives and deaths of individuals'. One wonders
slightly whether Theophrastus spoke with as much implicit faith as
Proclus suggests. But the chief account is given by Diodorus, ii. 30
(perhaps from Hecataeus).
'Other nations despise the philosophy of Greece. It is so
recent and so constantly changing. They have traditions which
come from vast antiquity and never change. Notably the
Chaldaeans have collected observations of the Stars through
long ages, and teach how every event in the heavens has its
meaning, as part of the eternal scheme of divine forethought.
Especially the seven Wanderers, or Planets, are called by them
Hermêneis, Interpreters: and among them the Interpreter in
chief is Saturn. Their work is to interpret beforehand τὴν τῶν
θεῶν ἔννοιαν, the thought that is in the mind of the Gods. By
their risings and settings, and by the colours they assume,
the Chaldaeans predict great winds and storms and waves of
excessive heat, comets, and earthquakes, and in general all
changes fraught with weal or woe not only to nations and
regions of the world, but to kings and to ordinary men and
women. Beneath the Seven are thirty Gods of Counsel, half
below and half above the Earth; every ten days a Messenger or
Angel star passes from above below and another from below
above. Above these gods are twelve Masters, who are the twelve
signs of the Zodiac; and the planets pass through all the
Houses of these twelve in turn. The Chaldaeans have made
prophecies for various kings, such as Alexander who conquered
Darius, and Antigonus and Seleucus Nikator, and have always
been right. And private persons who have consulted them
consider their wisdom as marvellous and above human power.'
Astrology fell upon the Hellenistic mind as a new disease falls upon
some remote island people. The tomb of Ozymandias, as described by
Diodorus (i. 49, 5), was covered with astrological symbols, and that of
Antiochus I, which has been discovered in Commagene, is of the same
character. It was natural for monarchs to believe that the stars watched
over them. But every one was ready to receive the germ. The Epicureans,
of course, held out, and so did Panaetius, the coolest head among the
Stoics. But the Stoics as a whole gave way. They formed with good reason
the leading school of philosophy, and it would have been a service to
mankind if they had resisted. But they were already committed to a
belief in the deity of the stars and to the doctrine of Heimarmenê, or
Destiny. They believed in the pervading Pronoia,[145:1] or Forethought,
of the divine mind, and in the Συμπάθεια τῶν ὅλων--the Sympathy of all
Creation,[145:2] whereby whatever happens to any one part, however
remote or insignificant, affects all the rest. It seemed only a natural
and beautiful illustration of this Sympathy that the movements of the
Stars should be bound up with the sufferings of man. They also appealed
to the general belief in prophecy and divination.[145:3] If a prophet
can foretell that such and such an event will happen, then it is
obviously fated to happen. Foreknowledge implies Predestination. This
belief in prophecy was, in reality, a sort of appeal to fact and to
common sense. People could produce then, as they can now, a large number
of striking cases of second sight, presentiment, clairvoyance, actual
prophecy and the like;[145:4] and it was more difficult then to test
them.
The argument involved Stoicism with some questionable allies.
Epicureans and sceptics of the Academy might well mock at the sight of a
great man like Chrysippus or Posidonius resting an important part of his
religion on the undetected frauds of a shady Levantine 'medium'. Still
the Stoics could not but welcome the arrival of a system of prophecy and
predestination which, however the incredulous might rail at it,
possessed at least great antiquity and great stores of learning, which
was respectable, recondite, and in a way sublime.