Sôtêr' of early Greece, contaminated with similar figures, like Attis
and Adonis from Asia Minor, Osiris from Egypt, and the special Jewish
conception of the Messiah of the Chosen people. He has various names,
which the name of Jesus or 'Christos', 'the Anointed', tends gradually
to supersede. Above all he is, in some sense, Man, or 'the Second Man'
or 'the Son of Man'. The origin of this phrase needs a word of
explanation. Since the ultimate unseen God, spirit though He is, made
man in His image, since holy men (and divine kings) are images of God,
it follows that He is Himself Man. He is the real, the ultimate, the
perfect and eternal Man, of whom all bodily men are feeble copies. He is
also the Father; the Saviour is his Son, 'the Image of the Father', 'the
Second Man', 'the Son of Man'. The method in which he performs his
mystery of Redemption varies. It is haunted by the memory of the old
Suffering and Dying God, of whom we spoke in the first of these studies.
It is vividly affected by the ideal 'Righteous Man' of Plato, who 'shall
be scourged, tortured, bound, his eyes burnt out, and at last, after
suffering every evil, shall be impaled or crucified'.[163:1] But in the
main he descends, of his free will or by the eternal purpose of the
Father, from Heaven through the spheres of all the Archontes or
Kosmokratores, the planets, to save mankind, or sometimes to save the
fallen Virgin, the Soul, Wisdom, or 'the Pearl'.[164:1] The Archontes
let him pass because he is disguised; they do not know him (cf. 1 Cor.
ii. 7 ff.). When his work is done he ascends to Heaven to sit by the
side of the Father in glory; he conquers the Archontes, leads them
captive in his triumph, strips them of their armour (Col. ii. 15; cf.
the previous verse), sometimes even crucifies them for ever in their
places in the sky.[164:2] The epistles to the Colossians and the
Ephesians are much influenced by these doctrines. Paul himself
constantly uses the language of them, but in the main we find him
discouraging the excesses of superstition, reforming, ignoring,
rejecting. His Jewish blood was perhaps enough to keep him to strict
monotheism. Though he admits Angels and Archontes, Principalities and
Powers, he scorns the Elements and he seems deliberately to reverse the
doctrine of the first and second Man.[164:3] He says nothing about the
Trinity of Divine Beings that was usual in Gnosticism, nothing about the
Divine Mother. His mind, for all its vehement mysticism, has something
of that clean antiseptic quality that makes such early Christian works
as the Octavius of Minucius Felix and the Epistle to Diognetus so
infinitely refreshing. He is certainly one of the great figures in Greek
literature, but his system lies outside the subject of this essay. We
are concerned only with those last manifestations of Hellenistic
religion which probably formed the background of his philosophy. It is a
strange experience, and it shows what queer stuff we humans are made of,
to study these obscure congregations, drawn from the proletariate of the
Levant, superstitious, charlatan-ridden, and helplessly ignorant, who
still believed in Gods begetting children of mortal mothers, who took
the 'Word', the 'Spirit', and the 'Divine Wisdom', to be persons called
by those names, and turned the Immortality of the Soul into 'the
standing up of the corpses';[165:1] and to reflect that it was these who
held the main road of advance towards the greatest religion of the
western world.
* * * * *
I have tried to sketch in outline the main forms of belief to which
Hellenistic philosophy moved or drifted. Let me dwell for a few pages
more upon the characteristic method by which it reached them. It may be
summed up in one word, Allegory. All Hellenistic philosophy from the
first Stoics onward is permeated by allegory. It is applied to Homer, to
the religious traditions, to the ancient rituals, to the whole world. To
Sallustius after the end of our period the whole material world is only
a great myth, a thing whose value lies not in itself but in the
spiritual meaning which it hides and reveals. To Cleanthes at the
beginning of it the Universe was a mystic pageant, in which the immortal
stars were the dancers and the Sun the priestly torch-bearer.[165:2]
Chrysippus reduced the Homeric gods to physical or ethical principles;
and Crates, the great critic, applied allegory in detail to his
interpretation of the all-wise poet.[166:1] We possess two small but
complete treatises which illustrate well the results of this tendency,
Cornutus ρεπὶ θεῶν and the _Homeric Allegories_ of Heraclitus, a
brilliant little work of the first century B. C. I will not dwell upon
details: they are abundantly accessible and individually often
ridiculous. A by-product of the same activity is the mystic treatment of
language: a certain Titan in Hesiod is named Koios. Why? Because the
Titans are the elements and one of them is naturally the element of
Κοιότης, the Ionic Greek for 'Quality'. The Egyptian Isis is derived
from the root of the Greek εἰδέναι, Knowledge, and the Egyptian Osiris
from the Greek ὅσιος and ἱρός ('holy' and 'sacred', or perhaps more
exactly 'lawful' and '_tabu_'). Is this totally absurd? I think not. If
all human language is, as most of these thinkers believed, a divine
institution, a cap filled to the brim with divine meaning, so that by
reflecting deeply upon a word a pious philosopher can reach the secret
that it holds, then there is no difficulty whatever in supposing that
the special secret held by an Egyptian word may be found in Greek, or
the secret of a Greek word in Babylonian. Language is One. The Gods who
made all these languages equally could use them all, and wind them all
intricately in and out, for the building up of their divine enigma.
We must make a certain effort of imagination to understand this method
of allegory. It is not the frigid thing that it seems to us. In the
first place, we should remember that, as applied to the ancient
literature and religious ritual, allegory was at least a _vera
causa_--it was a phenomenon which actually existed. Heraclitus of
Ephesus is an obvious instance. He deliberately expressed himself in
language which should not be understood of the vulgar, and which bore a
hidden meaning to his disciples. Pythagoras did the same. The prophets
and religious writers must have done so to an even greater
extent.[167:1] And we know enough of the history of ritual to be sure
that a great deal of it is definitely allegorical. The Hellenistic Age
did not wantonly invent the theory of allegory.
And secondly, we must remember what states of mind tend especially to
produce this kind of belief. They are not contemptible states of mind.
It needs only a strong idealism with which the facts of experience
clash, and allegory follows almost of necessity. The facts cannot be
accepted as they are. They must needs be explained as meaning something
different.
Take an earnest Stoic or Platonist, a man of fervid mind, who is
possessed by the ideals of his philosophy and at the same time feels his
heart thrilled by the beauty of the old poetry. What is he to do? On one
side he can find Zoilus, or Plato himself, or the Cynic preachers,
condemning Homer and the poets without remorse, as teachers of
foolishness. He can treat poetry as the English puritans treated the
stage. But is that a satisfactory solution? Remember that these
generations were trained habitually to give great weight to the voice of
their inner consciousness, and the inner consciousness of a sensitive
man cries out that any such solution is false: that Homer is not a liar,
but noble and great, as our fathers have always taught us. On the other
side comes Heraclitus the allegorist. 'If Homer used no allegories he
committed all impieties.' On this theory the words can be allowed to
possess all their old beauty and magic, but an inner meaning is added
quite different from that which they bear on the surface. It may, very
likely, be a duller and less poetic meaning; but I am not sure that the
verses will not gain by the mere process of brooding study fully as much
as they lose by the ultimate badness of the interpretation. Anyhow, that
was the road followed. The men of whom I speak were not likely to give
up any experience that seemed to make the world more godlike or to feed
their spiritual and emotional cravings. They left that to the barefooted
cynics. They craved poetry and they craved philosophy; if the two spoke
like enemies, their words must needs be explained away by one who loved
both.
The same process was applied to the world itself. Something like it is
habitually applied by the religious idealists of all ages. A fundamental
doctrine of Stoicism and most of the idealist creeds was the perfection
and utter blessedness of the world, and the absolute fulfilment of the
purpose of God. Now obviously this belief was not based on experience.
The poor world, to do it justice amid all its misdoings, has never lent
itself to any such barefaced deception as that. No doubt it shrieked
against the doctrine then, as loud as it has always shrieked, so that
even a Posidonian or a Pythagorean, his ears straining for the music of
the spheres, was sometimes forced to listen. And what was his answer?
It is repeated in all the literature of these sects. 'Our human
experience is so small: the things of the earth may be bad and more than
bad, but, ah! if you only went beyond the Moon! That is where the true
Kosmos begins.' And, of course, if we did ever go there, we all know
they would say it began beyond the Sun. Idealism of a certain type will
have its way; if hard life produces an ounce or a pound or a million
tons of fact in the scale against it, it merely dreams of infinite
millions in its own scale, and the enemy is outweighed and smothered. I
do not wish to mock at these Posidonian Stoics and Hermetics and
Gnostics and Neo-Pythagoreans. They loved goodness, and their faith is
strong and even terrible. One feels rather inclined to bow down before
their altars and cry: _Magna est Delusio et praevalebit._
Yet on the whole one rises from these books with the impression that all
this allegory and mysticism is bad for men. It may make the emotions
sensitive, it certainly weakens the understanding. And, of course, in
this paper I have left out of account many of the grosser forms of
superstition. In any consideration of the balance, they should not be
forgotten.
If a reader of Proclus and the _Corpus Hermeticum_ wants relief, he will
find it, perhaps, best in the writings of a gentle old Epicurean who
lived at Oenoanda in Cappadocia about A. D. 200. His name was
Diogenes.[169:1] His works are preserved, in a fragmentary state, not on
papyrus or parchment, but on the wall of a large portico where he
engraved them for passers-by to read. He lived in a world of
superstition and foolish terror, and he wrote up the great doctrines of
Epicurus for the saving of mankind.
'Being brought by age to the sunset of my life, and expecting
at any moment to take my departure from the world with a glad
song for the fullness of my happiness, I have resolved, lest I
be taken too soon, to give help to those of good temperament.
If one person or two or three or four, or any small number you
choose, were in distress, and I were summoned out to help one
after another, I would do all in my power to give the best
counsel to each. But now, as I have said, the most of men lie
sick, as it were of a pestilence, in their false beliefs about
the world, and the tale of them increases; for by imitation
they take the disease from one another, like sheep. And
further it is only just to bring help to those who shall come
after us--for they too are ours, though they be yet unborn;
and love for man commands us also to help strangers who may
pass by. Since therefore the good message of the Book has this
wall and to set forth in public the medicine of the healing of
mankind.'
The people of his time and neighbourhood seem to have fancied that the
old man must have some bad motive. They understood mysteries and
redemptions and revelations. They understood magic and curses. But they
were puzzled, apparently, by this simple message, which only told them
to use their reason, their courage, and their sympathy, and not to be
afraid of death or of angry gods. The doctrine was condensed into four
sentences of a concentrated eloquence that make a translator
despair:[170:1] 'Nothing to fear in God: Nothing to feel in Death: Good
can be attained: Evil can be endured.'
Of course, the doctrines of this good old man do not represent the whole
truth. To be guided by one's aversions is always a sign of weakness or
defeat; and it is as much a failure of nerve to reject blindly for fear
of being a fool, as to believe blindly for fear of missing some
emotional stimulus.
There is no royal road in these matters. I confess it seems strange to
me as I write here, to reflect that at this moment many of my friends
and most of my fellow creatures are, as far as one can judge, quite
confident that they possess supernatural knowledge. As a rule, each
individual belongs to some body which has received in writing the
results of a divine revelation. I cannot share in any such feeling. The
Uncharted surrounds us on every side and we must needs have some
relation towards it, a relation which will depend on the general
discipline of a man's mind and the bias of his whole character. As far
as knowledge and conscious reason will go, we should follow resolutely
their austere guidance. When they cease, as cease they must, we must use
as best we can those fainter powers of apprehension and surmise and
sensitiveness by which, after all, most high truth has been reached as
well as most high art and poetry: careful always really to seek for
truth and not for our own emotional satisfaction, careful not to neglect
the real needs of men and women through basing our life on dreams; and
remembering above all to walk gently in a world where the lights are dim
and the very stars wander.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
It is not my purpose to make anything like a systematic bibliography,
but a few recommendations may be useful to some students who approach
this subject, as I have done, from the side of classical Greek.
For Greek Philosophy I have used besides Plato and Aristotle, Diogenes
Laertius and Philodemus, Diels, _Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_; Diels,
_Doxographi Graeci_; von Arnim, _Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta_; Usener,
_Epicurea_; also the old _Fragmenta Philosophorum_ of Mullach.
For later Paganism and Gnosticism, Reitzenstein, _Poimandres_;
Reitzenstein, _Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen_; Dieterich,
_Eine Mithrasliturgic_ (also _Abraxas_, _Nekyia_, _Muttererde_, &c.); P.
Wendland, _Hellenistisch-Römische Kultur_; Cumont, _Textes et Monuments
relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra_ (also _The Mysteries of Mithra_,
Chicago, 1903), and _Les Religions Orientales dans l'Empire Romain_;
Seeck, _Untergang der antiken Welt_, vol. iii; Philo, _de Vita
Contemplativa_, Conybeare; Gruppe, _Griechische Religion and
Mythologie_, pp. 1458-1676; Bousset, _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_, 1907,
with good bibliography in the introduction; articles by E. Bevan in the
_Quarterly Review_, No. 424 (June 1910), and the _Hibbert Journal_, xi.
1 (October 1912). _Dokumente der Gnosis_, by W. Schultz (Jena, 1910),
gives a highly subjective translation and reconstruction of most of the
Gnostic documents: the _Corpus Hermeticum_ is translated into English by
G. R. S. Meade, _Thrice Greatest Hermes_, 1906. The first volume of Dr.
Scott's monumental edition of the _Hermetica_ (Clarendon Press, 1924)
has appeared just too late to be used in the present volume.
For Jewish thought before the Christian era Dr. Charles's _Testaments of
the Twelve Patriarchs_; also the same writer's _Book of Enoch_, and the
_Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments_ by Carl Clemen,
Giessen, 1909.
Of Christian writers apart from the New Testament those that come most
into account are Hippolytis ([cross symbol] A. D. 250), _Refutatio
Omnium Haeresium_, Epiphanius (367-403), _Panarion_, and Irenaeus
([cross symbol] A. D. 202), _Contra Haereses_, i, ii. For a simple
introduction to the problems presented by the New Testament literature I
would venture to recommend Prof. Bacon's _New Testament_, in the Home
University Library, and Dr. Estlin Carpenter's _First Three Gospels_. In
such a vast literature I dare not make any further recommendations, but
for a general introduction to the History of Religions with a good and
brief bibliography I would refer the reader to Salomon Reinach's
_Orpheus_ (Paris, 1909; English translation the same year), a book of
wide learning and vigorous thought.
FOOTNOTES:
[124:1] Mr. Marett has pointed out that this conception has its roots
deep in primitive human nature: _The Birth of Humility_, Oxford, 1910,
p. 17. 'It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say that man tends to run away
from the sacred as uncanny, to cower before it as secret, and to
prostrate himself before it as tabu. On the other hand, it seems plain
that to these three negative qualities of the sacred taken together
there corresponds on the part of man a certain negative attitude of
mind. Psychologists class the feelings bound up with flight, cowering,
and prostration under the common head of "asthenic emotion". In plain
English they are all forms of heart-sinking, of feeling unstrung. This
general type of innate disposition would seem to be the psychological
basis of Humility. Taken in its social setting, the emotion will, of
course, show endless shades of complexity; for it will be excited, and
again will find practical expression, in all sorts of ways. Under these
varying conditions, however, it is reasonable to suppose that what Mr.
McDougall would call the "central part" of the experience remains very
much the same. In face of the sacred the normal man is visited by a
heart-sinking, a wave of asthenic emotion.' Mr. Marett continues: 'If
that were all, however, Religion would be a matter of pure fear. But it
is not all. There is yet the positive side of the sacred to be taken
into account.' It is worth remarking also that Schleiermacher
(1767-1834) placed the essence of religion in the feeling of absolute
dependence without attempting to define the object towards which it was
directed.
[129:1] Usener, _Epicurea_ (1887), pp. 232 ff.; Diels, _Doxographi
Graeci_ (1879), p. 306; Arnim, _Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta_ (1903-5),
Chrysippus 1014, 1019.
[133:1] Juv. x. 365 f.; Polyb. ii. 38, 5; x. 5, 8; xviii. 11, 5.
[133:2] Cf. also his _Consolatio ad Apollonium_. The earliest text is
perhaps the interesting fragment of Demetrius of Phalerum (fr. 19, in
_F. H. G._ ii. 368), written about 317 B. C. It is quoted with
admiration by Polybius xxix. 21, with reference to the defeat of Perseus
of Macedon by the Romans:
'One must often remember the saying of Demetrius of Phalerum . . . in
his Treatise on Fortune. . . . "If you were to take not an indefinite
time, nor many generations, but just the fifty years before this, you
could see in them the violence of Fortune. Fifty years ago do you
suppose that either the Macedonians or the King of Macedon, or the
Persians or the King of Persia, if some God had foretold them what was
to come, would ever have believed that by the present time the Persians,
who were then masters of almost all the inhabited world, would have
ceased to be even a geographical name, while the Macedonians, who were
then not even a name, would be rulers of all? Yet this Fortune, who
bears no relation to our method of life, but transforms everything in
the way we do not expect and displays her power by surprises, is at the
present moment showing all the world that, when she puts the Macedonians
into the rich inheritance of the Persian, she has only lent them these
good things until she changes her mind about them." Which has now
happened in the case of Perseus. The words of Demetrius were a prophecy
uttered, as it were, by inspired lips.'
[134:1] Eur., _Tro._ 886. Literally it means 'The Compulsion in the way
Things grow'.
[134:2] Zeno, fr. 87, Arnim.
[135:1] Chrysippus, fr. 913, Arnim.
[135:2] Cleanthes, 527, Arnim. Ἂγου δέ μ', ὦ Ζεῦ, καὶ σύ γ' ἡ Πεπρωμένη,
κτλ. Plotinus, _Enn._ III. i. 10.
[135:3] Epicurus, Third Letter. Usener, p. 65, 12 = Diog. La. x. 134.
[136:1] Aristotle, fr. 12 ff.
[136:2] e. g. Chrysippus, fr. 1076, Arnim.
[138:1] _Themis_, p. 180, n. 1.
[138:2] Not to Plotinus: _Enn._ II. ix against the Valentinians. Cf.
Porphyry, Ἀφορμαί, 28.
[138:3] Bousset, _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_, 1907, pp. 13, 21, 26, 81,
&c.; pp. 332 ff. She becomes Helen in the beautiful myth of the Simonian
Gnostics--a Helen who has forgotten her name and race, and is a slave in
a brothel in Tyre. Simon discovers her, gradually brings back her memory
and redeems her. Irenaeus, i. 23, 2.
[139:1] _De Iside et Osiride_, 67. (He distinguishes them from the real
God, however, just as Sallustius would.)
[139:2] Mithras was worshipped by the Cilician Pirates conquered by
Pompey. Plut., _Vit. Pomp._ 24.
[139:3] ἔκγονος τοῦ πρώτου θεοῦ. Plato (Diels, 305); Stoics, ib. 547, l.
8.
[140:1] Aristotle (Diels, 450). ὅσας δὲ εἶναι τὰς σφαίρας, τοσούτους
ὑπάρχειν καὶ τοὺς κινοῦντας θεούς. Chrysippus (Diels 466); Posidonius,
ib. (cf. Plato, _Laws_. 898 ff.). See Epicurus's Second Letter,
especially Usener, pp. 36-47 = Diog. La. x. 86-104. On the food required
by the heavenly bodies cf. Chrysippus, fr. 658-61, Arnim.
[140:2] ὁ δὲ Ἐπίκουρος οὐδὲν τούτων ἐγκρίνει. Diels, 307{a} 15. Cf.
432{a} 10.
[141:1] Heath, _Aristarchos of Samos_, pp. 301-10.
[142:1] Pythagoras in Diels, p. 555, 20; the best criticism is in
Aristotle, _De Caelo_, chap. 9 (p. 290 b), the fullest account in
Macrobius, _Comm. in Somn. Scipionis_, ii.
[142:2] See Diels, _Elementium_, 1899, p. 17. These magic letters are
still used in the Roman ritual for the consecration of churches.
[143:1] A seven-day week was known to Pseudo-Hippocrates περὶ σαρκῶν _ad
fin._, but the date of that treatise is very uncertain.
[143:2] Aesch., _Ag._ 6; Eur., _Hip._ 530. Also _Ag._ 365, where ἀστρῶν
βέλος goes together and μήτε πρὸ καιροῦ μήθ' ὕπερ.
[143:3] Proclus, _In Timaeum_, 289 F; Seneca, _Nat. Quaest._ iii. 29, 1.
[145:1] Chrysippus, 1187-95. Esse divinationem si di sint et
providentia.
[145:2] Cicero, _De Nat. De._ iii. 11, 28; especially _De Divinatione_,
ii. 14, 34; 60, 124; 69, 142. 'Qua ex coniunctione naturae et quasi
concentu atque consensu, quam συμπάθειαν Graeci appellant, convenire
potest aut fissum iecoris cum lucello meo aut meus quaesticulus cum
caelo, terra rerumque natura?' asks the sceptic in the second of these
passages.
[145:3] Chrysippus, 939-44. Vaticinatio probat fati necessitatem.
[145:4] Chrysippus, 1214, 1200-6.
[146:1] _Eine Mithrasliturgie_, 1903. The MS. is 574 Supplément grec de
la Bibl. Nationale. The formulae of various religions were used as
instruments of magic, as our own witches used the Lord's Prayer
backwards.
[146:2] _Refutatio Omnium Haeresium_, v. 7. They worshipped the Serpent,
Nāhāsh (נָחָשׁ).
[147:1] Bousset, p. 351. The hostility of Zoroastrianism to the old
Babylonian planet gods was doubtless at work also. Ib. pp. 37-46.
[147:2] Or, in some Gnostic systems, of the Mother.
[148:1] Harrison, _Prolegomena_, Appendix on the Orphic tablets.
[148:2] Ap. _Metamorphoses_, xi.
[149:1] 2 Cor. xii. 2 and 3 (he may be referring in veiled language to
himself); Gal. i. 12 ff.; Acts ix. 1-22. On the difference of tone and
fidelity between the Epistles and the Acts see the interesting remarks
of Prof. P. Gardner, _The Religious Experience of St. Paul_, pp. 5 ff.
[149:2] Porphyry, _Vita Plotini_, 23. 'We have explained that he was
good and gentle, mild and merciful; we who lived with him could feel it.
We have said that he was vigilant and pure of soul, and always striving
towards the Divine, which with all his soul he loved. . . . And thus it
happened to this extraordinary man, constantly lifting himself up
towards the first and transcendent God by thought and the ways explained
by Plato in the _Symposium_, that there actually came a vision of that
God who is without shape or form, established above the understanding
and all the intelligible world. To whom I, Porphyry, being now in my
sixty-eighth year, profess that I once drew near and was made one with
him. At any rate he appeared to Plotinus "a goal close at hand." For his
whole end and goal was to be made One and draw near to the supreme God.
And he attained that goal four times, I think, while I was living with
him--not potentially but in actuality, though an actuality which
surpasses speech.'