Five Stages of Greek Religion Part 8

Strangely obliging, ironic Fortune gave to him also a chance of testing of his own doctrine. There is extant a letter written on his death-bed.

'I write to you on this blissful day which is the last of my life. The obstruction of my bladder and internal pains have reached the extreme point, but there is marshalled against them the delight of my mind in thinking over our talks together. Take care of the children of Metrodorus in a way worthy of your life-long devotion to me and to philosophy.'[113:1] At least his courage, and his kindness, did not fail.

Epicureanism had certainly its sublime side; and from this very sublimity perhaps arose the greatest flaw in the system, regarded as a rational philosophy. It was accepted too much as a Revelation, too little as a mere step in the search for truth. It was based no doubt on careful and even profound scientific studies, and was expounded by the master in a vast array of volumes. But the result so attained was considered sufficient. Further research was not encouraged. Heterodoxy was condemned as something almost approaching 'parricide'.[113:2] The pursuit of 'needless knowledge' was deliberately frowned upon.[113:3]

When other philosophers were working out calculations about the size of the Sun and the commensurability of the sun-cycle and the moon-cycle, Epicurus contemptuously remarked that the Sun was probably about as big as it looked, or perhaps smaller: since fires at a distance generally look bigger than they are. The various theories of learned men were all possible but none certain. And as for the cycles, how did any one know that there was not a new sun shot off and extinguished every day?[113:4]

It is not surprising to find that none of the great discoveries of the h.e.l.lenistic Age were due to the Epicurean school. Lucretius, writing 250 years later, appears to vary hardly in any detail from the doctrines of the Master, and Diogenes of Oenoanda, 500 years later, actually repeats his letters and sayings word for word.

It is sad, this. It is un-h.e.l.lenic; it is a clear symptom of decadence from the free intellectual movement and the high hopes which had made the fifth century glorious. Only in one great school does the true h.e.l.lenic _Sophrosyne_ continue flourishing, a school whose modesty of pretension and quietness of language form a curious contrast with the rapt ecstasies of Stoic and Cynic and even, as we have seen, of Epicurean, just as its immense richness of scientific achievement contrasts with their comparative sterility. The Porch and the Garden offered new religions to raise from the dust men and women whose spirits were broken; Aristotle in his Open Walk, or _Peripatos_, brought philosophy and science and literature to guide the feet and interest the minds of those who still saw life steadily and tried their best to see it whole.

Aristotle was not lacking in religious insight and imagination, as he certainly was not without profound influence on the future history of religion. His complete rejection of mythology and of anthropomorphism; his resolute attempt to combine religion and science, not by sacrificing one to the other but by building the highest spiritual aspirations on ascertained truth and the probable conclusions to which it pointed; his splendid imaginative conception of the Divine Being or First Cause as unmoved itself while moving all the universe 'as the beloved moves the lover'; all these are high services to religious speculation, and justify the position he held, even when known only through a distorting Arabic translation, in medieval Christianity. If he had not written his other books he might well be famous now as a great religious teacher.

But his theology is dwarfed by the magnificence and ma.s.s of his other work. And as a philosopher and man of science he does not belong to our present subject.

He is only mentioned here as a standard of that characteristic quality in h.e.l.lenism from which the rest of this book records a downfall. One variant of a well-known story tells how a certain philosopher, after frequenting the Peripatetic School, went to hear Chrysippus, the Stoic, and was transfixed. 'It was like turning from men to G.o.ds.' It was really turning from Greeks to Semites, from philosophy to religion, from a school of very sober professions and high performance to one whose professions dazzled the reason. 'Come unto me,' cried the Stoic, 'all ye who are in storm or delusion; I will show you the truth and the world will never grieve you more.'

Aristotle made no such profession. He merely thought and worked and taught better than other men. Aristotle is always surprising us not merely by the immense volume of clear thinking and co-ordinated knowledge of which he was master, but by the steady _Sophrosyne_ of his temper. Son of the court physician of Philip, tutor for some years to Alexander the Great, he never throughout his extant writings utters one syllable of flattery to his royal and world-conquering employers; nor yet one syllable which suggests a grievance. He saw, at close quarters and from the winning side, the conquest of the Greek city states by the Macedonian _ethnos_ or nation; but he judges dispa.s.sionately that the city is the higher social form.

It seems characteristic that in his will, which is extant, after providing a dowry for his widow, Herpyllis, to facilitate her getting a second husband, and thanking her for her goodness to him, he directs that his bones are to be laid in the same grave with those of his first wife, Pythias, whom he had rescued from robbers more than twenty years before.[116:1]

Other philosophers disliked him because he wore no long beard, dressed neatly and had good normal manners, and they despised his philosophy for very similar reasons. It was a school which took the existing world and tried to understand it instead of inventing some intense ecstatic doctrine which should transform it or reduce it to nothingness.

It possessed no Open Sesame to unlock the prison of mankind; yet it is not haunted by that _Oimoge_ of Kynoskephalai. While armies sweep Greece this way and that, while the old G.o.ds are vanquished and the cities lose their freedom and their meaning, the Peripatetics instead of pa.s.sionately saving souls diligently pursued knowledge, and in generation after generation produced scientific results which put all their rivals into the shade.[116:2] In mathematics, astronomy, physics, botany, zoology, and biology, as well as the human sciences of literature and history, the h.e.l.lenistic Age was one of the most creative known to our record. And it is not only that among the savants responsible for these advances the proportion of Peripatetics is overwhelming; one may also notice that in this school alone it is a.s.sumed as natural that further research will take place and will probably correct as well as increase our knowledge, and that, when such corrections or differences of opinion do take place, there is no cry raised of Heresy.

It is the old difference between Philosophy and Religion, between the search of the intellect for truth and the cry of the heart for salvation. As the interest in truth for its own sake gradually abated in the ancient world, the works of Aristotle might still find commentators, but his example was forgotten and his influence confined to a small circle. The Porch and the Garden, for the most part, divided between them the allegiance of thoughtful men. Both systems had begun in days of discomfiture, and aimed originally more at providing a refuge for the soul than at ordering the course of society. But after the turmoil of the fourth century had subsided, when governments began again to approach more nearly to peace and consequently to justice, and public life once more to be attractive to decent men, both philosophies showed themselves adaptable to the needs of prosperity as well as adversity.

Many kings and great Roman governors professed Stoicism. It held before them the ideal of universal Brotherhood, and of duty to the 'Great Society of G.o.ds and Men'; it enabled them to work, indifferent to mere pain and pleasure, as servants of the divine purpose and 'fellow-workers with G.o.d' in building up a human Cosmos within the eternal Cosmos. It is perhaps at first sight strange that many kings and governors also followed Epicurus. Yet after all the work of a public man is not hindered by a slight irony as to the value of worldly greatness and a conviction that a dinner of bread and water with love to season it 'is better than all the crowns of the Greeks'. To hate cruelty and superst.i.tion, to avoid pa.s.sion and luxury, to regard human 'pleasure' or 'sweetness of life' as the goal to be aimed at, and 'friendship' or 'kindliness' as the princ.i.p.al element in that pleasure, are by no means doctrines incompatible with wise and effective administration. Both systems were good and both in a way complementary one to another. They still divide between them the practical philosophy of western mankind.

At times to most of us it seems as though nothing in life had value except to do right and to fear not; at others that the only true aim is to make mankind happy. At times man's best hope seems to lie in that part of him which is prepared to defy or condemn the world of fact if it diverges from the ideal; in that intensity of reverence which will accept many impossibilities rather than ever reject a holy thing; above all in that uncompromising moral sensitiveness to which not merely the corruptions of society but the fundamental and necessary facts of animal existence seem both nauseous and wicked, links and chains in a system which can never be the true home of the human spirit. At other times men feel the need to adapt their beliefs and actions to the world as it is; to brush themselves free from cobwebs; to face plain facts with common sense and as much kindliness as life permits, meeting the ordinary needs of a perishable and imperfect species without illusion and without make-believe. At one time we are Stoics, at another Epicureans.

But amid their differences there is one faith which was held by both schools in common. It is the great characteristic faith of the ancient world, revealing itself in many divergent guises and seldom fully intelligible to modern men; faith in the absolute supremacy of the inward life over things external. These men really believed that wisdom is more precious than jewels, that poverty and ill health are things of no import, that the good man is happy whatever befall him, and all the rest. And in generation after generation many of the ablest men, and women also, acted upon the belief. They lived by free choice lives whose simplicity and privation would horrify a modern labourer, and the world about them seems to have respected rather than despised their poverty.

To the Middle Age, with its monks and mendicants expectant of reward in heaven, such an att.i.tude, except for its disinterestedness, would be easily understood. To some eastern nations, with their cults of asceticism and contemplation, the same doctrines have appealed almost like a physical pa.s.sion or a dangerous drug running riot in their veins.

But modern western man cannot believe them, nor believe seriously that others believe them. On us the power of the material world has, through our very mastery of it and the dependence which results from that mastery, both inwardly and outwardly increased its hold. _Capta ferum victorem cepit._ We have taken possession of it, and now we cannot move without it.

The material element in modern life is far greater than in ancient; but it does not follow that the spiritual element is correspondingly less.

No doubt it is true that a naval officer in a conning-tower in a modern battle does not need less courage and character than a naked savage who meets his enemy with a stick and a spear. Yet probably in the first case the battle is mainly decided by the weight and accuracy of the guns, in the second by the qualities of the fighter. Consequently the modern world thinks more incessantly and anxiously about the guns, that is, about money and mechanism; the ancient devotes its thought more to human character and duty. And it is curious to observe how, in general, each tries to remedy what is wrong with the world by the method that is habitually in its thoughts. Speaking broadly, apart from certain religious movements, the enlightened modern reformer, if confronted with some ordinary complex of misery and wickedness, instinctively proposes to cure it by higher wages, better food, more comfort and leisure; to make people comfortable and trust to their becoming good. The typical ancient reformer would appeal to us to care for none of those things (since riches notoriously do not make men virtuous), but with all our powers to pursue wisdom or righteousness and the life of the spirit; to be good men, as we can be if we will, and to know that all else will follow.

This is one of the regions in which the ancients might have learned much from us, and in which we still have much to learn from them, if once we can shake off our temporal obsessions and listen.

NOTE

As an example it is worth noticing, even in a bare catalogue, the work done by one of Aristotle's own pupils, a Peripatetic of the second rank, Dicaearchus of Messene. His _floruit_ is given as 310 B. C. Dorian by birth, when Theophrastus was made head of the school he retired to the Peloponnese, and shows a certain prejudice against Athens.

One of the discoveries of the time was biography. And, by a brilliant stroke of imagination Dicaearchus termed one of his books ???? ???ad??, _The Life of h.e.l.las_. He saw civilization as the biography of the world.

First, the Age of Cronos, when man as a simple savage made no effort after higher things; next, the ancient river-civilizations of the orient; third, the h.e.l.lenic system. Among his scanty fragments we find notes on such ideas as p?t?a, f?at??a, f???, as Greek inst.i.tutions. The _Life of h.e.l.las_ was much used by late writers. It formed the model for another ???? ???ad?? by a certain Jason, and for Varro's _Vita Populi Romani_.

Then, like his great master, Dicaearchus made studies of the Const.i.tutions of various states (e. g. Pellene, Athens, and Corinth); his treatise on the Const.i.tution of Sparta was read aloud annually in that city by order of the Ephors. It was evidently appreciative.

A more speculative work was his _Tripoliticus_, arguing that the best const.i.tution ought to be compounded of the three species, monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic, as in Sparta. Only then would it be sure to last. Polybius accepted the principle of the Mixed Const.i.tution, but found his ideal in the const.i.tution of Rome, which later history was to prove so violently unstable. Cicero, _De Republica_, takes the same line (Polyb. vi. 2-10; Cic. _De Rep._ i. 45; ii. 65). Dicaearchus treated of similar political subjects in his public addresses at Olympia and at the Panathenaea.

We hear more about his work on the history of literature, though his generation was almost the first to realize that such a subject had any existence. He wrote _Lives of Philosophers_--a subject hitherto not considered worth recording--giving the biographical facts followed by philosophic and aesthetic criticism. We hear, for example, of his life of Plato; of Pythagoras (in which he laid emphasis on the philosopher's practical work), of Xenophanes, and of the Seven Wise Men.

He also wrote _Lives of Poets_. We hear of books on Alcaeus and on Homer, in which latter he is said to have made the startling remark that the poems 'should be p.r.o.nounced in the Aeolic dialect'. Whatever this remark exactly meant, and we cannot tell without the context, it seems an extraordinary antic.i.p.ation of modern philological discoveries. He wrote on the _Hypotheses_--i. e. the subject matter--_of Sophocles and Euripides_; also on _Musical Contests_, pe?? ???s???? ??????, carrying further Aristotle's own collection of the _Didascaliae_, or official notices of the production of Tragedies in Athens. The book dealt both with dates and with customs; it told how Skolia were sung, with a laurel or myrtle twig in the hand, how Sophocles introduced a third actor, and the like.

In philosophy proper he wrote On the Soul, pe?? ?????. His first book, the _Corinthiacus_, proved that the Soul was a 'harmony' or 'right blending' of the four elements, and was identical with the force of the living body. The second, the _Lesbiacus_, drew the conclusion that, if a compound, it was destructible. (Hence a great controversy with his master.)

He wrote pe?? f????? ?????p??, on the _Perishing of Mankind_; i. e. on the way in which large ma.s.ses of men have perished off the earth, through famine, pestilence, wild beasts, war, and the like. He decides that man's most destructive enemy is Man. (The subject may have been suggested to him by a fine imaginative pa.s.sage in Aristotle's _Meteorology_ (i. 14, 7) dealing with the vast changes that have taken place on the earth's surface and the unrecorded perishings of races and communities.)

He wrote a treatise against _Divination_, and a (satirical?) _Descent to the Cave of Trophonius_. He seems, however, to have allowed some importance to dreams and to the phenomena of 'possession'.

And, with all this, we have not touched on his greatest work, which was in the sphere of geography. He wrote a ?e???d?? ???, a _Journey Round the Earth_, accompanied with a map. He used for this map the greatly increased stores of knowledge gained by the Macedonian expeditions over all Asia as far as the Ganges. He also seems to have devised the method of denoting the position of a place by means of two co-ordinates, the method soon after developed by Eratosthenes into Lat.i.tude and Longitude.

He attempted calculations of the measurements of large geographic distances, for which of course both his data and his instruments were inadequate. Nevertheless his measurements remained a well-known standard; we find them quoted and criticized by Strabo and Polybius.

And, lastly, he published _Measurements of the Heights of Mountains in the Peloponnese_; but the t.i.tle seems to have been unduly modest, for we find in the fragments statements about mountains far outside that area; about Pelion and Olympus in Thessaly and of Atabyrion in Rhodes. He had a subvention, Pliny tells us (N. H. ii. 162, 'regum cura permensus montes'), from the king of Macedon, probably either Ca.s.sander or, as one would like to believe, the philosophic Antigonus Gonatas. And he calculated the heights, so we are told, by trigonometry, using the d??pt?a, an instrument of hollow reeds without lenses which served for his primitive theodolite. It is an extraordinary record, and ill.u.s.trates the true Peripatetic spirit.

FOOTNOTES:

[79:1] _h.e.l.len._ ii. 2, 3.

[80:1] Cf. Tarn, _Antigonus Gonatas_, p. 52, and authorities there quoted.

[81:1] Lysias, x.x.xiii.

[82:1] Dem. _Crown_, 208.

[83:1] 'Such-like trash', _Gorgias_, 519 A; dust-storm, _Rep._ vi. 496; clothes, _Gorg._ 523 E; 'democratic man', _Rep._ viii. 556 ff.

[84:1] _Laws_, 709 E, cf. Letter VII.

[85:1] Aulus Gellius, xiv. 3; Plato, _Laws_, p. 695; Xen. _Cyrop._ viii.

7, compared with _Hdt._ i. 214.

[87:1] This is the impression left by Xenophon, especially in the Symposium. Cf. Dummler, _Antisthenica_ (1882); _Akademika_ (1889). Cf.

the _Life of Antisthenes_ in Diog. Laert.

[87:2] G???? ???a???, Plato, _Soph._ 251 B, Isocr. _Helena_, i. 2.

[87:3] e. g. no combination of subject and predicate can be true because one is different from the other. 'Man' is 'man' and 'good' is 'good'; but 'man' is not 'good'. Nor can 'a horse' possibly be 'running'; they are totally different conceptions. See Plutarch, _adv. Co._ 22, 1 (p.

1119); Plato, _Soph._ 251 B; Arist. _Metaph._ 1024{b} 33; Top. 104{b} 20; Plato, _Euthyd._ 285 E. For similar reasons no statement can ever contradict another; the statements are either the same or not the same; and if not the same they do not touch. Every object has one ????? or thing to be said about it; if you say a different ????? you are speaking of something else. See especially _Scholia Arist._, p. 732{a} 30 ff. on the pa.s.sage in the _Metaphysics_, 1024{b} 33.

[90:1] ?? ???sa pa?a?a??tte??: see _Life_ in Diog. Laert., fragments in Mullach, vol. ii, and the article in Pauly-Wissowa.

[95:1] There were women among the Cynics. 'The doctrine also captured Metrocles' sister, Hipparchia. She loved Crates, his words, and his way of life, and paid no attention to any of her suitors, however rich or highborn or handsome. Crates was everything to her. She threatened her parents that she would commit suicide unless she were given to him. They asked Crates to try to change the girl's mind, and he did all he could to no effect, till at last he put all his possessions on the floor and stood up in front of her. 'Here is your bridegroom; there is his fortune; now think!' The girl made her choice, put on the beggar's garb, and went her ways with Crates. She lived with him openly and went like him to beg food at dinners.' Diog. Laert. vi. 96 ff.

[98:1] e. g. the struggle for existence among animals and plants; the ??????fa??a, or 'mutual devouring', of animals; and such points as the various advances in evolution which seem self-destructive. Thus, Man has learnt to stand on two feet and use his hands; a great advantage but one which has led to numerous diseases. Again, physiologists say that the increasing size of the human head, especially when combined with the diminishing size of the pelvis, tends to make normal birth impossible.

[100:1] _The Stoic Philosophy_ (1915). See also Arnold's _Roman Stoicism_ (1911); Bevan's _Stoics and Sceptics_ (1913); and especially _Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta_ by von Arnim (1903-5).

[101:1] The chief authorities on Epicurus are Usener's _Epicurea_, containing the _Life_ from Diog. Laert., fragments and introduction: the papyrus fragments of Philodemus in _Volumina Herculanensia_; Diogenes of Oenoanda (text by William, Teubner, 1907); the commentaries on Lucretius (Munro, Giussani, &c.).

[103:1] Epicurus is the one philosopher who protests with real indignation against that inhuman superiority to natural sorrows which is so much prized by most of the ancient schools. To him such 'apathy'

argues either a hard heart or a morbid vanity (Fr. 120). His letters are full of affectionate expressions which rather shock the stern reserve of antique philosophy. He waits for one friend's 'heavenly presence' (Fr.