Atheism in Pagan Antiquity Part 2

The introductory idea, that mankind has evolved from an animal state into higher stages, is at variance with the earlier Greek conception, namely, that history begins with a golden age from which there is a continual decline. The theory of the fragment is expressed by a series of authors from the same and the immediately succeeding period. It occurs in Euripides; a later and otherwise little-known tragedian, Moschion, developed it in detail in a still extant fragment; Plato accepted it and made it the basis of his presentation of the origin of the State; Aristotle takes it for granted. Its source, too, has been demonstrated: it was presumably Democritus who first advanced it. Nevertheless the author of the fragment has hardly got it direct from Democritus, who at this time was little known at Athens, but from an intermediary. This intermediary is probably Protagoras, of whom it is said that he composed a treatise, _The Original State, i.e._ the primary state of mankind. Protagoras was a fellow-townsman of Democritus, and recorded by tradition as one of his direct disciples.

In another point also the fragment seems to betray the influence of Democritus. When it is said that the wise inventors of the G.o.ds made them dwell in the skies, because from the skies come those natural phenomena which frighten men, it is highly suggestive of Democritus's criticism of the divine explanation of thunder and lightning and the like. In this case also Protagoras may have been the intermediary. In his work on the G.o.ds he had every opportunity of discussing the question in detail. But here we have the theory of Democritus combined with that of Prodicus in that it is maintained that from the skies come also those things that benefit men, and that they are on this account also a suitable dwelling-place for the G.o.ds. It is obvious that the author of the fragment (or his source) was versed in the most modern wisdom.

All this erudition, however, is made to serve a certain tendency: the well-known tendency to represent religion as a political invention having as its object the policing of society. It is a theory which in antiquity-to its honour be it said-is but of rare occurrence. There is a vague indication of it in Euripides, a more definite one in Aristotle, and an elaborate application of it in Polybius; and that is in reality all.

(That many people in more enlightened ages upheld religion as a means of keeping the ma.s.ses in check, is a different matter.) However, it is an interesting fact that the Critias fragment is not only the first evidence of the existence of the theory known to us, but also presumably the earliest and probably the best known to later antiquity. Otherwise we should not find reference for the theory made to a fragment of a farce, but to a quotation from a philosopher.

This might lead us to conclude that the theory was Critias's own invention, though, of course, it would not follow that he himself adhered to it. But it is more probable that it was a ready-made modern theory which Critias put into the mouth of Sisyphus. Not only does the whole character of the fragment and its scene of action favour this supposition, but there is also another factor which corroborates it.

In the _Gorgias_ Plato makes one of the characters, Callicles-a man of whom we otherwise know nothing-profess a doctrine which up to a certain point is almost identical with that of the fragment. According to Callicles, the natural state (and the right state; on this point he is at variance with the fragment) is that right belongs to the strong. This state has been corrupted by legislation; the laws are inventions of the weak, who are also the majority, and their aim is to hinder the encroachment of the strong. If this theory is carried to its conclusion, it is obvious that religion must be added to the laws; if the former is not also regarded as an invention for the policing of society, the whole theory is upset. Now in the _Gorgias_ the question as to the att.i.tude of the G.o.ds towards the problem of what is right and what is wrong is carefully avoided in the discussion. Not till the close of the dialogue, where Plato subst.i.tutes myth for scientific research, does he draw the conclusion in respect of religion. He does this in a positive form, as a consequence of _his_ point of view: after death the G.o.ds reward the just and punish the unjust; but he expressly a.s.sumes that Callicles will regard it all as an old wives' tale.

In Callicles an attempt has been made to see a pseudonym for Critias. That is certainly wrong. Critias was a kinsman of Plato, is introduced by name in several dialogues, nay, one dialogue even bears his name, and he is everywhere treated with respect and sympathy. Nowadays, therefore, it is generally acknowledged that Callicles is a real person, merely unknown to us as such. However that may be, Plato would never have let a leading character in one of his longer dialogues advance (and Socrates refute) a view which had no better authority than a pa.s.sage in a satyric drama. On the other hand, there is, as shown above, difficulty in supposing that the doctrine of the fragment was stated in the writings of an eminent sophist; so we come to the conclusion that it was developed and diffused in sophistic circles by oral teaching, and that it became known to Critias and Plato in this way. Its originator we do not know. We might think of the sophist Thrasymachus, who in the first book of Plato's _Republic_ maintains a point of view corresponding to that of Callicles in _Gorgias_.

But what we otherwise learn of Thrasymachus is not suggestive of interest in religion, and the only statement of his as to that kind of thing which has come down to us tends to the denial of a providence, not denial of the G.o.ds. Quite recently Diagoras of Melos has been guessed at; this is empty talk, resulting at best in subst.i.tuting _x_ (or _NN_) for _y_.

If I have dwelt in such detail on the _Sisyphus_ fragment, it is because it is our first direct and unmistakable evidence of ancient atheism. Here for the first time we meet with the direct statement which we have searched for in vain among all the preceding authors: that the G.o.ds of popular belief are fabrication pure and simple and without any corresponding reality, however remote. The nature of our tradition precludes our ascertaining whether such a statement might have been made earlier; but the probability is _a priori_ that it was not. The whole development of ancient reasoning on religious questions, as far as we are able to survey it, leads in reality to the conclusion that atheism as an expressed (though perhaps not publicly expressed) confession of faith did not appear till the age of the sophists.

With the Critias fragment we have also brought to an end the inquiry into the direct statements of atheistic tendency which have come down to us from the age of the sophists. The result is, as we see, rather meagre. But it may be supplemented with indirect testimonies which prove that there was more of the thing than the direct tradition would lead us to conjecture, and that the denial of the existence of the G.o.ds must have penetrated very wide circles.

The fullest expression of Attic free-thought at the end of the fifth century is to be found in the tragedies of Euripides. They are leavened with reflections on all possible moral and religious problems, and criticism of the traditional conceptions of the G.o.ds plays a leading part in them. We shall, however, have some difficulty in using Euripides as a source of what people really thought at this period, partly because he is a very p.r.o.nounced personality and by no means a mere mouthpiece for the ideas of his contemporaries-during his lifetime he was an object of the most violent animosity owing, among other things, to his free-thinking views-partly because he, as a dramatist, was obliged to put his ideas into the mouths of his characters, so that in many cases it is difficult to decide how much is due to dramatic considerations and how much to the personal opinion of the poet. Even to this day the religious standpoint of Euripides is matter of dispute. In the most recent detailed treatment of the question he is characterised as an atheist, whereas others regard him merely as a dialectician who debates problems without having any real standpoint of his own.

I do not believe that Euripides personally denied the existence of the G.o.ds; there is too much that tells against that theory, and, in fact, nothing that tells directly in favour of it, though he did not quite escape the charge of atheism even in his own day. To prove the correctness of this view would, however, lead too far afield in this connexion. On the other hand, a short characterisation of Euripides's manner of reasoning about religious problems is unavoidable as a background for the treatment of those-very rare-pa.s.sages where he has put actually atheistic reflections into the mouths of his characters.

As a Greek dramatist Euripides had to derive his subjects from the heroic legends, which at the same time were legends of the G.o.ds in so far as they were interwoven with tales of the G.o.ds' direct intervention in affairs. It is precisely against this intervention that the criticism of Euripides is primarily directed. Again and again he makes his characters protest against the manner in which they are treated by the G.o.ds or in which the G.o.ds generally behave. It is characteristic of Euripides that his starting-point in this connexion is always the moral one. So far he is a typical representative of that tendency which, in earlier times, was represented by Xenophanes and a little later by Pindar; in no other Greek poet has the method of using the higher conceptions of the G.o.ds against the lower found more complete expression than in Euripides. And in so far, too, he is still entirely on the ground of popular belief. But at the same time it is characteristic of him that he is familiar with and highly influenced by Greek science. He knows the most eminent representatives of Ionian naturalism (with the exception of Democritus), and he is fond of displaying his knowledge. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that he uses it in a contentious spirit against popular belief; on the contrary, he is inclined in agreement with the old philosophers to identify the G.o.ds of popular belief with the elements. Towards sophistic he takes a similar, but less sympathetic att.i.tude. Sophistic was not in vogue till he was a man of mature age; he made acquaintance with it, and he made use of it-there are reflections in his dramas which carry distinct evidence of sophistic influence; but in his treatment of religious problems he is not a disciple of the sophists, and on this subject, as on others, he occasionally attacked them.

It is against this background that we must set the reflections with an atheistic tone that we find in Euripides. They are, as already mentioned, rare; indeed, strictly speaking there is only one case in which a character openly denies the existence of the G.o.ds. The pa.s.sage is a fragment of the drama _Bellerophon_; it is, despite its isolation, so typical of the manner of Euripides that it deserves to be quoted in full.

"And then to say that there are G.o.ds in the heavens! Nay, there are none there; if you are not foolish enough to be seduced by the old talk. Think for yourselves about the matter, and do not be influenced by my words. I contend that the tyrants kill the people wholesale, take their money and destroy cities in spite of their oaths; and although they do all this they are happier than people who, in peace and quietness, lead G.o.d-fearing lives. And I know small states which honour the G.o.ds, but must obey greater states, which are less pious, because their spearmen are fewer in number. And I believe that you, if a slothful man just prayed to the G.o.ds and did not earn his bread by the work of his hands-" Here the sense is interrupted; but there remains one more line: "That which builds the castle of the G.o.ds is in part the unfortunate happenings ..." The continuation is missing.

The argumentation here is characteristic of Euripides. From the injustice of life he infers the non-existence of the G.o.ds. The conclusion evidently only holds good on the a.s.sumption that the G.o.ds must be just; and this is precisely one of the postulates of popular belief. The reasoning is not sophistic; on the contrary, in their attacks the sophists took up a position outside the foundation of popular belief and attacked the foundation itself. This reasoning, on the other hand, is closely allied to the earlier religious thinking of the Greeks; it only proceeds further than the latter, where it results in rank denial.

The drama of _Bellerophon_ is lost, and reconstruction is out of the question; if only for that reason it is unwarrantable to draw any conclusions from the detached fragment as to the poet's personal att.i.tude towards the existence of the G.o.ds. But, nevertheless, the fragment is of interest in this connexion. It would never have occurred to Sophocles or Aeschylus to put such a speech in the mouth of one of his characters. When Euripides does that it is a proof that the question of the existence of the G.o.ds has begun to present itself to the popular consciousness at this time. Viewed in this light other statements of his which are not in themselves atheistic become significant. When it is said: "If the G.o.ds act in a shameful way, they are not G.o.ds"-that indeed is not atheism in our sense, but it is very near to it. Interesting is also the introduction to the drama _Melanippe_: "Zeus, whoever Zeus may be; for of that I only know what is told." Aeschylus begins a strophe in one of his most famous choral odes with almost the same words: "Zeus, whoe'er he be; for if he desire so to be called, I will address him by this name." In him it is an expression of genuine antique piety, which excludes all human impertinence towards the G.o.ds to such a degree that it even forgoes knowing their real names.

In Euripides the same idea becomes an expression of doubt; but in this case also the doubt is raised on the foundation of popular belief.

It is not surprising that so prominent and sustained a criticism of popular belief as that of Euripides, produced, moreover, on the stage, called forth a reaction from the defenders of the established faith, and that charges of impiety were not wanting. It is more to be wondered at that these charges on the whole are so few and slight, and that Euripides did not become the object of any actual prosecution. We know of a private trial in which the accuser incidentally charged Euripides with impiety on the strength of a quotation from one of his tragedies, Euripides's answer being a protest against dragging his poetry into the affair; the verdict on that belonged to another court. Aristophanes, who is always severe on Euripides, has only one pa.s.sage directly charging him with being a propagator of atheism; but the accusation is hardly meant to be taken seriously. In _The Frogs_, where he had every opportunity of emphasising this view, there is hardly an indication of it. In _The Clouds_, where the main attack is directed against modern free-thought, Euripides, to be sure, is sneered at as being the fashionable poet of the corrupted youth, but he is not drawn into the charge of impiety. Even when Plato wrote his _Republic_, Euripides was generally considered the "wisest of all tragedians." This would have been impossible if he had been considered an atheist. In spite of all, the general feeling must undoubtedly have been that Euripides ultimately took his stand on the ground of popular belief.

It was a similar instinctive judgment in regard to religion which prevented antiquity from placing Xenophanes amongst the atheists. Later times no doubt judged differently; the quotation from _Melanippe_ is in fact cited as a proof that Euripides was an atheist in his heart of hearts.

In Aristophanes we meet with the first observations concerning the change in the religious conditions of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. In one of his plays, _The Clouds_, he actually set himself the task of taking up arms against modern unbelief, and he characterises it directly as atheism.

If only for that reason the play deserves somewhat fuller consideration.

It is well known that Aristophanes chose Socrates as a representative of the modern movement. In him he embodies all the faults with which he wished to pick a quarrel in the fashionable philosophy of the day. On the other hand, the essence of Socratic teaching is entirely absent from Aristophanes's representation; of that he had hardly any understanding, and even if he had he would at any rate not have been able to make use of it in his drama. We need not then in this connexion consider Socrates himself at all; on the other hand, the play gives a good idea of the popular idea of sophistic. Here we find all the features of the school, grotesquely mixed up and distorted by the farce, it is true, but nevertheless easily recognisable: rhetoric as an end in itself, of course, with emphasis on its immoral aspect; empty and hair-splitting dialectics; linguistic researches; Ionic naturalism; and first and last, as the focus of all, denial of the G.o.ds. That Aristophanes was well informed on certain points, at any rate, is clear from the fact that the majority of the scientific explanations which he puts into the mouth of Socrates actually represent the latest results of science at that time-which in all probability did not prevent his Athenians from considering them as exceedingly absurd and ridiculous.

What matters here, however, is only the accusation of atheism which he made against Socrates. It is a little difficult to handle, in so far as Aristophanes, for dramatic reasons, has equipped Socrates with a whole set of deities. There are the clouds themselves, which are of Aristophanes's own invention; there is also the air, which he has got from Diogenes of Apollonia, and finally a "vortex" which is supposed to be derived from the same source, and which at any rate has cast Zeus down from his throne. All this we must ignore, as it is only conditioned partly by technical reasons-Aristophanes had to have a chorus and chose the clouds for the purpose-and partially by the desire to ridicule Ionic naturalism. But enough is left over. In the beginning of the play Socrates expressly declares that no G.o.ds exist. Similar statements are repeated in several places. Zeus is sometimes subst.i.tuted for the G.o.ds, but it comes to the same thing. And at the end of the play, where the honest Athenian, who has ventured on the ticklish ground of sophistic, admits his delusion, it is expressly said:

"Oh, what a fool I am! Nay, I must have been mad indeed when I thought of throwing the G.o.ds away for Socrates's sake!"

Even in the verses with which the chorus conclude the play it is insisted that the worst crime of the sophists is their insult to the G.o.ds.

The inference to be drawn from all this is simply that the popular Athenian opinion-for we may rest a.s.sured that this and the view of Aristophanes are identical-was that the sophists were atheists. That says but little. For popular opinion always works with broad categories, and the probability is that in this case, as demonstrated above, it was in the wrong, for, as a rule, the sophists were hardly conscious deniers of the G.o.ds. But, at the same time, at the back of the onslaught of Aristophanes there lies the idea that the teaching of the sophists led to denial of the G.o.ds; that atheism was the natural outcome of their doctrine and way of reasoning. And that there was some truth therein is proved by other evidence which can hardly be rejected.

In the indictment of Socrates it is said that he "offended by not believing in the G.o.ds in which the State believed." In the two apologies for Socrates which have come down to us under Xenophon's name, the author treats this accusation entirely under the aspect of atheism, and tries to refute it by positive proofs of the piety of Socrates. But not one word is said about there being, in and for itself, anything remarkable or improbable in the charge. In Plato's _Apology_, Plato makes Socrates ask the accuser point-blank whether he is of the opinion that he, Socrates, does not believe in the G.o.ds at all and accordingly is a downright denier of the G.o.ds, or whether he merely means to say that he believes in other G.o.ds than those of the State. He makes the accuser answer that the a.s.sertion is that Socrates does not believe in any G.o.ds at all. In Plato Socrates refutes the accusation indirectly, using a line of argument entirely differing from that of Xenophon. But in Plato, too, the accusation is treated as being in no way extraordinary. In my opinion, Plato's _Apology_ cannot be used as historical evidence for details unless special reasons can be given proving their historical value beyond the fact that they occur in the _Apology_. But in this connexion the question is not what was said or not said at Socrates's trial. The decisive point is that we possess two quite independent and unambiguous depositions by two fully competent witnesses of the beginning of the fourth century which both treat of the charge of atheism as something which is neither strange nor surprising at their time. It is therefore permissible to conclude that in Athens at this time there really existed circles or at any rate not a few individuals who had given up the belief in the popular G.o.ds.

A dialogue between Socrates and a young man by name Aristodemus, given in Xenophon's _Memorabilia_, makes the same impression. Of Aristodemus it is said that he does not sacrifice to the G.o.ds, does not consult the Oracle and ridicules those who do so. When he is called to account for this behaviour he maintains that he does not despise "the divine," but is of the opinion that it is too exalted to need his worship. Moreover, he contends that the G.o.ds do not trouble themselves about mankind. This is, of course, not atheism in our sense; but Aristodemus's att.i.tude is, nevertheless, extremely eccentric in a community like that of Athens in the fifth century. And yet it is not mentioned as anything isolated and extraordinary, but as if it were something which, to be sure, was out of the common, but not unheard of.

It is further to be observed that at the end of the fifth century we often hear of active sacrilegious outrages. An example is the historic trial of Alcibiades for profanation of the Mysteries. But this was not an isolated occurrence; there were more of the same kind at the time. Of the dithyrambic poet Cinesias it is said that he profaned holy things in an obscene manner. But the greatest stress of all must be laid on the well-known mutilation of the Hermae at Athens in 415, just before the expedition to Sicily. All the tales about the outrages of the Mysteries _may_ have been fict.i.tious, but it is a fact that the Hermae were mutilated. The motive was probably political: the members of a secret society intended to pledge themselves to each other by all committing a capital crime. But that they chose just this form of crime shows quite clearly that respect for the State religion had greatly declined in these circles.

What has so far been adduced as proof that the belief in the G.o.ds had begun to waver in Athens at the end of the fifth century is, in my opinion, conclusive in itself to anybody who is familiar with the more ancient Greek modes of thought and expression on this point, and can not only hear what is said, but also understand how it is said and what is pa.s.sed over in silence. Of course it can always be objected that the proofs are partly the a.s.sertions of a comic poet who certainly was not particular about accusations of impiety, partly deductions _ex silentio_, partly actions the motives for which are uncertain. Fortunately, however, we have-from a slightly later period, it is true-a positive utterance which confirms our conclusion and which comes from a man who was not in the habit of talking idly and who had the best opportunities of knowing the circ.u.mstances.

In the tenth book of his _Laws_, written shortly before his death, _i.e._ about the middle of the fourth century, Plato gives a detailed account of the question of irreligion seen from the point of view of penal legislation. He distinguishes here between three forms, namely, denial of the existence of the G.o.ds, denial of the divine providence (whereas the existence of the G.o.ds is admitted), and finally the a.s.sumption that the G.o.ds exist and exercise providence, but that they allow themselves to be influenced by sacrifices and prayers. Of these three categories the last is evidently directed against ancient popular belief itself; it does not therefore interest us in this connexion. The second view, the denial of a providence, we have already met with in Xenophon in the character of Aristodemus, and in the sophist Thrasymachus; Euripides, too, sometimes alludes to it, though it was far from being his own opinion. Whether it amounted to denial of the G.o.ds or not was, in ancient times, the cause of much dispute; it is, of course, not atheism in our sense, but it is certainly evidence that belief in the G.o.ds is shaken. The first view, on the other hand, is sheer atheism. Plato consequently reckons with this as a serious danger to the community; he mentions it as a widespread view among the youth of his time, and in his legislation he sentences to death those who fail to be converted. It would seem certain, therefore, that there was, in reality, something in it after all.

Plato does not confine himself to defining atheism and laying down the penalty for it; he at the same time, in accordance with a principle which he generally follows in the _Laws_, discusses it and tries to disprove it.

In this way he happens to give us information-which is of special interest to us-of the proofs which were adduced by its followers.

The argument is a twofold one. First comes the naturalistic proof; the heavenly bodies, according to the general (and Plato's own) view the most certain deities, are inanimate natural objects. It is interesting to note that in speaking of this doctrine in detail reference is clearly made to Anaxagoras; this confirms our afore-mentioned conjectures as to the character of his work. Plato was quite in a position to deal with Anaxagoras on the strength not only of what he said, but of what he pa.s.sed over in silence. The second argument is the well-known sophistic one, that the G.o.ds are _nomoi_, not _physei_, they depend upon convention, which has nothing to do with reality. In this connexion the argument adds that what applies to the G.o.ds, applies also to right and wrong; _i.e._ we find here in the _Laws_ the view with which we are familiar from Callicles in the _Gorgias_, but with the missing link supplied. And Plato's development of this theme shows clearly just what a general historical consideration might lead us to expect, namely, that it was naturalism and sophistic that jointly undermined the belief in the old G.o.ds.

CHAPTER V

With Socrates and his successors the whole question of the relation of Greek thought to popular belief enters upon a new phase. The Socratic philosophy is in many ways a continuation of sophistic. This is involved already in the fact that the same questions form the central interest in the two schools of thought, so that the problems stated by the sophists became the decisive factor in the content of Socratic and Platonic thought. The Socratic schools at the same time took over the actual programme of the sophists, namely, the education of adolescence in the highest culture. But, on the other hand, the Socratic philosophy was in the opposite camp to sophistic; on many points it represents a reaction against it, a recollection of the valuable elements contained in earlier Greek thought on life, especially human life, values which sophistic regarded with indifference or even hostility, and which were threatened with destruction if it should carry the day. This reactionary tendency in Socratic philosophy appears nowhere more plainly than in the field of religion.

Under these circ.u.mstances it is a peculiar irony of fate that the very originator of the new trend in Greek thought was charged with and sentenced for impiety. We have already mentioned the singular prelude to the indictment afforded by the comedy of Aristophanes. We have also remarked upon the futility of looking therein for any actual enlightenment on the Socratic point of view. And Plato makes Socrates state this with all necessary sharpness in the _Apology_. Hence what we may infer from the attack of Aristophanes is merely this, that the general public lumped Socrates together with the sophists and more especially regarded him as a G.o.dless fellow. Unless this had been so, Aristophanes could not have introduced him as the chief character in his travesty. And without doubt it was this popular point of view which his accusers relied on when they actually included atheism as a count in their bill of indictment. It will, nevertheless, be necessary to dwell for a moment on this bill of indictment and the defence.

The charge of impiety was a twofold one, partly for not believing in the G.o.ds the State believed in, partly for introducing new "demonic things."

This latter act was directly punishable according to Attic law. What his accusers alluded to was the _daimonion_ of Socrates. That they should have had any idea of what that was must be regarded as utterly out of the question, and whatever it may have been-and of this we shall have a word to say later-it had at any rate nothing whatever to do with atheism. As to the charge of not believing in the G.o.ds of the State, Plato makes the accuser prefer it in the form that Socrates did not believe in any G.o.ds at all, after which it becomes an easy matter for Socrates to show that it is directly incompatible with the charge of introducing new deities. As ground for his accusation the accuser states-in Plato, as before-that Socrates taught the same doctrine about the sun and moon as Anaxagoras.

The whole of the pa.s.sage in the _Apology_ in which the question of the denial of G.o.ds is dealt with-a short dialogue between Socrates and the accuser, quite in the Socratic manner-historically speaking, carries little conviction, and we therefore dare not take it for granted that the charge either of atheism or of false doctrine about the sun and moon was put forward in that form. But that something about this latter point was mentioned during the trial must be regarded as probable, when we consider that Xenophon, too, defends Socrates at some length against the charge of concerning himself with speculations on Nature. That he did not do so must be taken for certain, not only from the express evidence of Xenophon and Plato, but from the whole nature of the case. The accusation on this point was a.s.suredly pure fabrication. There remains only what was no doubt also the main point, namely, the a.s.sertion of the pernicious influence of Socrates on the young, and the inference of irreligion to be drawn from it-an argument which it would be absurd to waste any words upon.

The attack, then, affords no information about Socrates's personal point of view as regards belief in the G.o.ds, and the defence only very little.

Both Xenophon and Plato give an account of Socrates's _daimonion_, but this point has so little relation to the charge of atheism that it is not worth examination. For the rest Plato's defence is indirect. He makes Socrates refute his opponent, but does not let him say a word about his own point of view. Xenophon is more positive, in so far as in the first place he a.s.serts that Socrates worshipped the G.o.ds like any other good citizen, and more especially that he advised his friends to use the Oracle; in the second place, that, though he lived in full publicity, no one ever saw him do or heard him say anything of an impious nature. All these a.s.sertions are a.s.suredly correct, and they render it highly improbable that Socrates should have secretly abandoned the popular faith, but they tell us little that is positive about his views. Fortunately we possess other means of getting to closer grips with the question; the way must be through a consideration of Socrates's whole conduct and his mode of thought.

Here we at once come to the interesting negative fact that there is nothing in tradition to indicate that Socrates ever occupied himself with theological questions. To be sure, Xenophon has twice put into his mouth a whole theodicy expressing an elaborate teleological view of nature. But that we dare not base anything upon this is now, I think, universally acknowledged. Plato, in the dialogue _Euthyphron_, makes him subject the popular notion of piety to a devastating criticism; but this, again, will not nowadays be regarded as historical by anybody. Everything we are told about Socrates which bears the stamp of historical truth indicates that he restricted himself to ethics and left theology alone. But this very fact is not without significance. It indicates that Socrates's aim was not to alter the religious views of his contemporaries. Since he did not do so we may reasonably believe it was because they did not inconvenience him in what was most important to him, _i.e._ ethics.

We may, however, perhaps go even a step farther. We may venture, I think, to maintain that so far from contemporary religion being a hindrance to Socrates in his occupation as a teacher of ethics, it was, on the contrary, an indispensable support to him, nay, an integral component of his fundamental ethical view. The object of Socrates in his relations with his fellow-men was, on his own showing-for on this important point I think we can confidently rely upon Plato's _Apology_-to make clear to them that they knew nothing. And when he was asked to say in what he himself differed from other people, he could mention only one thing, namely, that he was aware of his own ignorance. But his ignorance is not an ignorance of this thing or that, it is a radical ignorance, something involved in the essence of man as man. That is, in other words, it is determined by religion. In order to be at all intelligible and ethically applicable, it presupposes the conception of beings of whom the essence is knowledge. For Socrates and his contemporaries the popular belief supplied such beings in the G.o.ds. The inst.i.tution of the Oracle itself is an expression of the recognition of the superiority of the G.o.ds to man in knowledge. But the dogma had long been stated even in its absolute form when Homer said: "The G.o.ds know everything." To Socrates, who always took his starting-point quite popularly from notions that were universally accepted, this basis was simply indispensable. And so far from inconveniencing Socrates, the multiplicity and anthropomorphism of the G.o.ds seemed an advantage to him-the more they were like man in all but the essential qualification, the better.

The Socratic ignorance has an ethical bearing. Its complement is his a.s.sertion that virtue is knowledge. Here again the G.o.ds are the necessary presupposition and determination. That the G.o.ds were good, or, as it was preferred to express it, "just" (the Greek word comprises more than the English word), was no less a popular dogma than the notion that they possessed knowledge. Now all Socrates's efforts were directed towards goodness as an end in view, towards the ethical development of mankind.

Here again popular belief was his best ally. To the people to whom he talked, virtue (the Greek word is at once both wider and narrower in sense than the English term) was no mere abstract notion; it was a living reality to them, embodied in beings that were like themselves, human beings, but perfect human beings.

If we correlate this with the negative circ.u.mstance that Socrates was no theologian but a teacher of ethics, we can easily understand a point of view which accepted popular belief as it was and employed it for working purposes in the service of moral teaching. Such a point of view, moreover, gained extraordinary strength by the fact that it preserved continuity with earlier Greek religious thought. This latter, too, had been ethical in its bearing; it, too, had employed the G.o.ds in the service of its ethical aim. But its central idea was felicity, not virtue; its starting-point was the popular dogma of the felicity of the G.o.ds, not their justice. In this way it had come to lay stress on a virtue which might be termed modesty, but in a religious sense, _i.e._ man must recognise his difference from the G.o.ds as a limited being, subject to the vicissitudes of an existence above which the G.o.ds are raised. Socrates says just the same, only that he puts knowledge or virtue, which to him was the same thing, in the place of felicity. From a religious point of view the result is exactly the same, namely, the doctrine of the G.o.ds as the terminus and ideal, and the insistence on the gulf separating man from them. We are tempted to say that, had Socrates turned with hostile intent against a religion which thus played into his hands, the more fool he. But this is putting the problem the wrong way up-Socrates never stood critically outside popular belief and traditional religious thought speculating as to whether he should use it or reject it. No, his thought grew out of it as from the bosom of the earth. Hence its mighty religious power, its inevitable victory over a school of thought which had severed all connexion with tradition.

That such a point of view should be so badly misunderstood as it was in Athens seems incomprehensible. The explanation is no doubt that the whole story of Socrates's denial of the G.o.ds was only included by his accusers for the sake of completeness, and did not play any great part in the final issue. This seems confirmed by the fact that they found it convenient to support their charge of atheism by one of introducing foreign G.o.ds, this being punishable by Attic law. They thus obtained some slight hold for their accusation. But both charges must be presumed to have been so signally refuted during the trial that it is hardly possible that any great number of the judges were influenced by them. It was quite different and far weightier matters which brought about the conviction of Socrates, questions on which there was really a deep and vital difference of opinion between him and his contemporaries. That Socrates's att.i.tude towards popular belief was at any rate fully understood elsewhere is testified by the answer of the Delphic Oracle, that declared Socrates to be the wisest of all men. However remarkable such a p.r.o.nouncement from such a place may appear, it seems impossible to reject the accounts of it as unhistorical; on the other hand, it does not seem impossible to explain how the Oracle came to declare itself as reported. Earlier Greek thought, which insisted upon the gulf separating G.o.ds and men, was from olden times intimately connected with the Delphic Oracle. It hardly sprang from there; more probably it arose spontaneously in various parts of h.e.l.las. But it would naturally feel attracted toward the Oracle, which was one of the religious centres of h.e.l.las, and it was recognised as legitimate by the Oracle.

Above all, the honour shown by the Oracle to Pindar, one of the chief representatives of the earlier thought, testifies to this. Hence there is nothing incredible in the a.s.sumption that Socrates attracted notice at Delphi as a defender of the old-fashioned religious views approved by the Oracle, precisely in virtue of his opposition to the ideas then in vogue.

If we accept this explanation we are, however, excluded from taking literally Plato's account of the answer of the Delphic Oracle and Socrates's att.i.tude towards it. Plato presents the case as if the Oracle were the starting-point of Socrates's philosophy and of the peculiar mode of life which was indissolubly bound up with it. This presentation cannot be correct if we are to regard the Oracle as historical and understand it as we have understood it. The Oracle presupposes the Socrates we know: a man with a religious message and a mode of life which was bound to attract notice to him as an exception from the general rule. It cannot, therefore, have been the cause of Socrates's finding himself. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine a man choosing a mode of life like that of Socrates without a definite inducement, without some fact or other that would lead him to conceive himself as an exception from the rule. If we look for such a fact in the life of Socrates, we shall look in vain as regards externals. Apart from his activities as a religious and ethical personality, his life was that of any other Attic citizen. But in his spiritual life there was certainly one point, but only one, on which he deviated from the normal, namely, his _daimonion_. If we examine the accounts of this more closely the only thing we can make of them is-or so at least it seems to me-that we are here in the presence of a form-peculiar, no doubt, and highly developed-of the phenomena which are nowadays cla.s.sed under the concept of clairvoyance. Now Plato makes Socrates himself say that the power of avoiding what would harm him, in great things and little, by virtue of a direct perception (a "voice"), which is what const.i.tuted his _daimonion_, was given him from childhood.

That it was regarded as something singular both by himself and others is evident, and likewise that he himself regarded it as something supernatural; the designation _daimonion_ itself seems to be his own. I think that we must seek for the origin of Socrates's peculiar mode of life in this direction, strange as it may be that a purely mystic element should have given the impulse to the most rationalistic philosophy the world has ever produced. It is impossible to enter more deeply into this problem here; but, if my conjecture is correct, we have an additional explanation of the fact that Socrates was disposed to anything rather than an attack on the established religion.

A view of popular religion such as I have here sketched bore in itself the germ of a further development which must lead in other directions. A personality like Socrates might perhaps manage throughout a lifetime to keep that balance on a razor's edge which is involved in utilising to the utmost in the service of ethics the popular dogmas of the perfection of the G.o.ds, while disregarding all irrelevant tales, all myths and all notions of too human a tenor about them. This demanded concentration on the one thing needful, in conjunction with deep piety of the most genuine antique kind, with the most profound religious modesty, a combination which it was a.s.suredly given to but one man to attain. Socrates's successors had it not. Starting precisely from a Socratic foundation they entered upon theological speculations which carried them away from the Socratic point of view.

For the Cynics, who set up virtue as the only good, the popular notions of the G.o.ds would seem to have been just as convenient as for Socrates. And we know that Antisthenes, the founder of the school, made ample use of them in his ethical teaching. He represented Heracles as the Cynical ideal and occupied himself largely with allegorical interpretation of the myths.