THE investigation into the two great problems of the origin of society
and the philosophy of history occupies such an important position in the
evolution of Greek thought that, to obtain any clear view of the workings
of the critical spirit, it will be necessary to trace at some length
their rise and scientific development as evinced not merely in the works
of historians proper, but also in the philosophical treatises of Plato
and Aristotle. The important position which these two great thinkers
occupy in the progress of historical criticism can hardly be
over-estimated. I do not mean merely as regards their treatment of the
Greek Bible, and Plato’s endeavours to purge sacred history of its
immorality by the application of ethical canons at the time when
Aristotle was beginning to undermine the basis of miracles by his
scientific conception of law, but with reference to these two wider
questions of the rise of civil institutions and the philosophy of
history.
And first, as regards the current theories of the primitive condition of
society, there was a wide divergence of opinion in Hellenic society, just
as there is now. For while the majority of the orthodox public, of whom
Hesiod may be taken as the representative, looked back, as a great many
of our own day still do, to a fabulous age of innocent happiness, a
_bell’ età dell’ auro_, where sin and death were unknown and men and
women were like Gods, the foremost men of intellect such as Aristotle and
Plato, Æschylus and many of the other poets {29} saw in primitive man ‘a
few small sparks of humanity preserved on the tops of mountains after
some deluge,’ ‘without an idea of cities, governments or legislation,’
‘living the lives of wild beasts in sunless caves,’ ‘their only law being
the survival of the fittest.’
And this, too, was the opinion of Thucydides, whose _Archæologia_ as it
is contains a most valuable disquisition on the early condition of
Hellas, which it will be necessary to examine at some length.
Now, as regards the means employed generally by Thucydides for the
elucidation of ancient history, I have already pointed out how that,
while acknowledging that ‘it is the tendency of every poet to exaggerate,
as it is of every chronicler to seek to be attractive at the expense of
truth,’ he yet assumes in the thoroughly euhemeristic way, that under the
veil of myth and legend there does yet exist a rational basis of fact
discoverable by the method of rejecting all supernatural interference as
well as any extraordinary motives influencing the actors. It is in
complete accordance with this spirit that he appeals, for instance, to
the Homeric epithet of _ἀφνειός_, as applied to Corinth, as a proof of
the early commercial prosperity of that city; to the fact of the generic
name _Hellenes_ not occurring in the _Iliad_ as a corroboration of his
theory of the essentially disunited character of the primitive Greek
tribes; and he argues from the line ‘O’er many islands and all Argos
ruled,’ as applied to Agamemnon, that his forces must have been partially
naval, ‘for Agamemnon’s was a continental power, and he could not have
been master of any but the adjacent islands, and these would not be many
but through the possession of a fleet.’
Anticipating in some measure the comparative method of research, he
argues from the fact of the more barbarous Greek tribes, such as the
Ætolians and Acarnanians, still carrying arms in his own day, that this
custom was the case originally over the whole country. ‘The fact,’ he
says, ‘that the people in these parts of Hellas are still living in the
old way points to a time when the same mode of life was equally common to
all.’ Similarly, in another passage, he shows how a corroboration of his
theory of the respectable character of piracy in ancient days is afforded
by ‘the honour with which some of the inhabitants of the continent still
regard a successful marauder,’ as well as by the fact that the question,
‘Are you a pirate?’ is a common feature of primitive society as shown in
the poets; and finally, after observing how the old Greek custom of
wearing belts in gymnastic contests still survived among the more
uncivilised Asiatic tribes, he observes that there are many other points
in which a likeness may be shown between the life of the primitive
Hellenes and that of the barbarians to-day.’
As regards the evidence afforded by ancient remains, while adducing as a
proof of the insecure character of early Greek society the fact of their
cities {31} being always built at some distance from the sea, yet he is
careful to warn us, and the caution ought to be borne in mind by all
archæologists, that we have no right to conclude from the scanty remains
of any city that its legendary greatness in primitive times was a mere
exaggeration. ‘We are not justified,’ he says, ‘in rejecting the
tradition of the magnitude of the Trojan armament, because Mycenæ and the
other towns of that age seem to us small and insignificant. For, if
Lacedæmon was to become desolate, any antiquarian judging merely from its
ruins would be inclined to regard the tale of the Spartan hegemony as an
idle myth; for the city is a mere collection of villages after the old
fashion of Hellas, and has none of those splendid public buildings and
temples which characterise Athens, and whose remains, in the case of the
latter city, would be so marvellous as to lead the superficial observer
into an exaggerated estimate of the Athenian power.’ Nothing can be more
scientific than the archæological canons laid down, whose truth is
strikingly illustrated to any one who has compared the waste fields of
the Eurotas plain with the lordly monuments of the Athenian acropolis.
{32}
On the other hand, Thucydides is quite conscious of the value of the
positive evidence afforded by archæological remains. He appeals, for
instance, to the character of the armour found in the Delian tombs and
the peculiar mode of sepulture, as corroboration of his theory of the
predominance of the Carian element among the primitive islanders, and to
the concentration of all the temples either in the Acropolis, or in its
immediate vicinity, to the name of _ἄστυ_ by which it was still known,
and to the extraordinary sanctity of the spring of water there, as proof
that the primitive city was originally confined to the citadel, and the
district immediately beneath it (ii. 16). And lastly, in the very
opening of his history, anticipating one of the most scientific of modern
methods, he points out how in early states of civilisation immense
fertility of the soil tends to favour the personal aggrandisement of
individuals, and so to stop the normal progress of the country through
‘the rise of factions, that endless source of ruin’; and also by the
allurements it offers to a foreign invader, to necessitate a continual
change of population, one immigration following on another. He
exemplifies his theory by pointing to the endless political revolutions
that characterised Arcadia, Thessaly and Boeotia, the three richest spots
in Greece, as well as by the negative instance of the undisturbed state
in primitive time of Attica, which was always remarkable for the dryness
and poverty of its soil.
Now, while undoubtedly in these passages we may recognise the first
anticipation of many of the most modern principles of research, we must
remember how essentially limited is the range of the _archæologia_, and
how no theory at all is offered on the wider questions of the general
conditions of the rise and progress of humanity, a problem which is first
scientifically discussed in the _Republic_ of Plato.
And at the outset it must be premised that, while the study of primitive
man is an essentially inductive science, resting rather on the
accumulation of evidence than on speculation, among the Greeks it was
prosecuted rather on deductive principles. Thucydides did, indeed, avail
himself of the opportunities afforded by the unequal development of
civilisation in his own day in Greece, and in the places I have pointed
out seems to have anticipated the comparative method. But we do not find
later writers availing themselves of the wonderfully accurate and
picturesque accounts given by Herodotus of the customs of savage tribes.
To take one instance, which bears a good deal on modern questions, we
find in the works of this great traveller the gradual and progressive
steps in the development of the family life clearly manifested in the
mere gregarious herding together of the Agathyrsi, their primitive
kinsmanship through women in common, and the rise of a feeling of
paternity from a state of polyandry. This tribe stood at that time on
that borderland between umbilical relationship and the family which has
been such a difficult point for modern anthropologists to find.
The ancient authors, however, are unanimous in insisting that the family
is the ultimate unit of society, though, as I have said, an inductive
study of primitive races, or even the accounts given of them by
Herodotus, would have shown them that the _νεοττιὰ ἴδια_ of a personal
household, to use Plato’s expression, is really a most complex notion
appearing always in a late stage of civilisation, along with recognition
of private property and the rights of individualism.
Philology also, which in the hands of modern investigators has proved
such a splendid instrument of research, was in ancient days studied on
principles too unscientific to be of much use. Herodotus points out that
the word _Eridanos_ is essentially Greek in character, that consequently
the river supposed to run round the world is probably a mere Greek
invention. His remarks, however, on language generally, as in the case
of _Piromis_ and the ending of the Persian names, show on what unsound
basis his knowledge of language rested.
In the _Bacchæ_ of Euripides there is an extremely interesting passage in
which the immoral stories of the Greek mythology are accounted for on the
principle of that misunderstanding of words and metaphors to which modern
science has given the name of a disease of language. In answer to the
impious rationalism of Pentheus—a sort of modern Philistine—Teiresias,
who may be termed the Max Müller of the Theban cycle, points out that the
story of Dionysus being inclosed in Zeus’ thigh really arose from the
linguistic confusion between _μηρός_ and _ὅμηρος_.
On the whole, however—for I have quoted these two instances only to show
the unscientific character of early philology—we may say that this
important instrument in recreating the history of the past was not really
used by the ancients as a means of historical criticism. Nor did the
ancients employ that other method, used to such advantage in our own day,
by which in the symbolism and formulas of an advanced civilisation we can
detect the unconscious survival of ancient customs: for, whereas in the
sham capture of the bride at a marriage feast, which was common in Wales
till a recent time, we can discern the lingering reminiscence of the
barbarous habit of exogamy, the ancient writers saw only the deliberate
commemoration of an historical event.
Aristotle does not tell us by what method he discovered that the Greeks
used to buy their wives in primitive times, but, judging by his general
principles, it was probably through some legend or myth on the subject
which lasted to his own day, and not, as we would do, by arguing back
from the marriage presents given to the bride and her relatives. {37}
The origin of the common proverb ‘worth so many beeves,’ in which we
discern the unconscious survival of a purely pastoral state of society
before the use of metals was known, is ascribed by Plutarch to the fact
of Theseus having coined money bearing a bull’s head. Similarly, the
Amathusian festival, in which a young man imitated the labours of a woman
in travail, is regarded by him as a rite instituted in Ariadne’s honour,
and the Carian adoration of asparagus as a simple commemoration of the
adventure of the nymph Perigune. In the first of these _we_ discern the
beginning of agnation and kinsmanship through the father, which still
lingers in the ‘couvee’ of New Zealand tribes: while the second is a
relic of the totem and fetish worship of plants.
Now, in entire opposition to this modern inductive principle of research
stands the philosophic Plato, whose account of primitive man is entirely
speculative and deductive.
The origin of society he ascribes to necessity, the mother of all
inventions, and imagines that individual man began deliberately to herd
together on account of the advantages of the principle of division of
labour and the rendering of mutual need.
It must, however, be borne in mind that Plato’s object in this whole
passage in the _Republic_ was, perhaps, not so much to analyse the
conditions of early society as to illustrate the importance of the
division of labour, the shibboleth of his political economy, by showing
what a powerful factor it must have been in the most primitive as well as
in the most complex states of society; just as in the _Laws_ he almost
rewrites entirely the history of the Peloponnesus in order to prove the
necessity of a balance of power. He surely, I mean, must have recognised
himself how essentially incomplete his theory was in taking no account of
the origin of family life, the position and influence of women, and other
social questions, as well as in disregarding those deeper motives of
religion, which are such important factors in early civilisation, and
whose influence Aristotle seems to have clearly apprehended, when he says
that the aim of primitive society was not merely life but the higher
life, and that in the origin of society utility is not the sole motive,
but that there is something spiritual in it if, at least, ‘spiritual’
will bring out the meaning of that complex expression _τὸ καλόν_.
Otherwise, the whole account in the _Republic_ of primitive man will
always remain as a warning against the intrusion of _a priori_
speculations in the domain appropriate to induction.
Now, Aristotle’s theory of the origin of society, like his philosophy of
ethics, rests ultimately on the principle of final causes, not in the
theological meaning of an aim or tendency imposed from without, but in
the scientific sense of function corresponding to organ. ‘Nature maketh
no thing in vain’ is the text of Aristotle in this as in other inquiries.
Man being the only animal possessed of the power of rational speech is,
he asserts, by nature intended to be social, more so than the bee or any
other gregarious animal.
He is _φύσει πολιτικός_, and the national tendency towards higher forms
of perfection brings the ‘armed savage who used to sell his wife’ to the
free independence of a free state, and to the _ἰσότης τοῦ ἄρχειν καὶ τοῦ
ἄρχεσθαι_, which was the test of true citizenship. The stages passed
through by humanity start with the family first as the ultimate unit.
The conglomeration of families forms a village ruled by that patriarchal
sway which is the oldest form of government in the world, as is shown by
the fact that all men count it to be the constitution of heaven, and the
villages are merged into the state, and here the progression stops.
For Aristotle, like all Greek thinkers, found his ideal within the walls
of the _πόλις_, yet perhaps in his remark that a united Greece would rule
the world we may discern some anticipation of that ‘federal union of free
states into one consolidated empire’ which, more than the _πόλις_, is to
our eyes the ultimately perfect polity.
How far Aristotle was justified in regarding the family as the ultimate
unit, with the materials afforded to him by Greek literature, I have
already noticed. Besides, Aristotle, I may remark, had he reflected on
the meaning of that Athenian law which, while prohibiting marriage with a
uterine sister, permitted it with a sister-german, or on the common
tradition in Athens that before the time of Cecrops children bore their
mothers’ names, or on some of the Spartan regulations, could hardly have
failed to see the universality of kinsmanship through women in early
days, and the late appearance of monandry. Yet, while he missed this
point, in common, it must be acknowledged, with many modern writers, such
as Sir Henry Maine, it is essentially as an explorer of inductive
instances that we recognise his improvement on Plato. The treatise _περὶ
πολιτείων_, did it remain to us in its entirety, would have been one of
the most valuable landmarks in the progress of historical criticism, and
the first scientific treatise on the science of comparative politics.
A few fragments still remain to us, in one of which we find Aristotle
appealing to the authority of an ancient inscription on the ‘Disk of
Iphitus,’ one of the most celebrated Greek antiquities, to corroborate
his theory of the Lycurgean revival of the Olympian festival; while his
enormous research is evinced in the elaborate explanation he gives of the
historical origin of proverbs such as _οὐδεῖς μέγας κακὸς ἰχθῦς_, of
religious songs like the _ἰῶμεν ἐς Ἀθήνας_ of the Botticean virgins, or
the praises of love and war.
And, finally, it is to be observed how much wider than Plato’s his theory
of the origin of society is. They both rest on a psychological basis,
but Aristotle’s recognition of the capacity for progress and the tendency
towards a higher life shows how much deeper his knowledge of human nature
was.
In imitation of these two philosophers, Polybius gives an account of the
origin of society in the opening to his philosophy of history. Somewhat
in the spirit of Plato, he imagines that after one of the cyclic deluges
which sweep off mankind at stated periods and annihilate all pre-existing
civilisation, the few surviving members of humanity coalesce for mutual
protection, and, as in the case with ordinary animals, the one most
remarkable for physical strength is elected king. In a short time, owing
to the workings of sympathy and the desire of approbation, the moral
qualities begin to make their appearance, and intellectual instead of
bodily excellence becomes the qualification for sovereignty.
Other points, as the rise of law and the like, are dwelt on in a somewhat
modern spirit, and although Polybius seems not to have employed the
inductive method of research in this question, or rather, I should say,
of the hierarchical order of the rational progress of ideas in life, he
is not far removed from what the laborious investigations of modern
travellers have given us.
And, indeed, as regards the working of the speculative faculty in the
creation of history, it is in all respects marvellous how that the most
truthful accounts of the passage from barbarism to civilisation in
ancient literature come from the works of poets. The elaborate
researches of Mr. Tylor and Sir John Lubbock have done little more than
verify the theories put forward in the _Prometheus Bound_ and the _De
Natura Rerum_; yet neither Æschylus nor Lucretias followed in the modern
path, but rather attained to truth by a certain almost mystic power of
creative imagination, such as we now seek to banish from science as a
dangerous power, though to it science seems to owe many of its most
splendid generalities. {43}
Leaving then the question of the origin of society as treated by the
ancients, I shall now turn to the other and the more important question
of how far they may he said to have attained to what we call the
philosophy of history.
Now at the outset we must note that, while the conceptions of law and
order have been universally received as the governing principles of the
phenomena of nature in the sphere of physical science, yet their
intrusion into the domain of history and the life of man has always been
met with a strong opposition, on the ground of the incalculable nature of
two great forces acting on human action, a certain causeless spontaneity
which men call free will, and the extra-natural interference which they
attribute as a constant attribute to God.
Now, that there is a science of the apparently variable phenomena of
history is a conception which _we_ have perhaps only recently begun to
appreciate; yet, like all other great thoughts, it seems to have come to
the Greek mind spontaneously, through a certain splendour of imagination,
in the morning tide of their civilisation, before inductive research had
armed them with the instruments of verification. For I think it is
possible to discern in some of the mystic speculations of the early Greek
thinkers that desire to discover what is that ‘invariable existence of
which there are variable states,’ and to incorporate it in some one
formula of law which may serve to explain the different manifestations of
all organic bodies, _man included_, which is the germ of the philosophy
of history; the germ indeed of an idea of which it is not too much to say
that on it any kind of historical criticism, worthy of the name, must
ultimately rest.
For the very first requisite for any scientific conception of history is
the doctrine of uniform sequence: in other words, that certain events
having happened, certain other events corresponding to them will happen
also; that the past is the key of the future.
Now at the birth of this great conception science, it is true, presided,
yet religion it was which at the outset clothed it in its own garb, and
familiarised men with it by appealing to their hearts first and then to
their intellects; knowing that at the beginning of things it is through
the moral nature, and not through the intellectual, that great truths are
spread.
So in Herodotus, who may be taken as a representative of the orthodox
tone of thought, the idea of the uniform sequence of cause and effect
appears under the theological aspect of Nemesis and Providence, which is
really the scientific conception of law, only it is viewed from an
_ethical_ standpoint.
Now in Thucydides the philosophy of history rests on the probability,
which the uniformity of human nature affords us, that the future will in
the course of human things resemble the past, if not reproduce it. He
appears to contemplate a recurrence of the phenomena of history as
equally certain with a return of the epidemic of the Great Plague.
Notwithstanding what German critics have written on the subject, we must
beware of regarding this conception as a mere reproduction of that cyclic
theory of events which sees in the world nothing but the regular rotation
of Strophe and Antistrophe, in the eternal choir of life and death.
For, in his remarks on the excesses of the Corcyrean Revolution,
Thucydides distinctly rests his idea of the recurrence of history on the
psychological grounds of the general sameness of mankind.
‘The sufferings,’ he says, ‘which revolution entailed upon the cities
were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occurs as
long as human nature remains the same, though in a severer or milder
form, and varying in their symptoms according to the variety of the
particular cases.
‘In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments,
because they are not confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes
away the easy supply of men’s wants, and so proves a hard taskmaster,
which brings most men’s characters to a level with their fortunes.’