The Chief End of Man Part 4

A TRAVELER'S NOTE-BOOK

A tourist who roams for a brief while through some great country like England or Russia may jot down a few of the impressions which come home to him, making no pretense at completeness or symmetry of description.

So, one who has journeyed like a hasty traveler over some pa.s.sages in that vast tract of years which we describe as the cla.s.sic and Christian civilizations, notes down in the following pages a few of the salient features that have impressed him. He has already prefaced this with a sort of outline map, drawn largely from familiar authorities, under the t.i.tle "Our Spiritual Ancestry;" and has further ventured to interpret some phases of our own time, as "The Ideal of To-Day." Now he goes on to group a few observations on some special phases of the historical survey, disclaiming any attempt at exact proportion and perspective, but lingering where the prospect has pleased his fancy, or at points which seemed to yield some necessary clew or fruitful suggestion.

When, in the poems bearing the name of Homer, the curtain rises on the drama of man as it was acted in Greece, after the immeasurable prehistoric s.p.a.ce, we are amazed at the sudden brilliance. The men and deeds brought before us are various in character and worth,--savage, heroic, repulsive, beautiful, by turns. But the ever-present charm is man seeing the world about him. It is the vividness with which every object is seen in its distinctive form and spirit, and conveyed by the fit word and phrase. So seen and spoken, the commonest object becomes a thing of delight. The high-roofed house, the brazen threshold, the polished chest, the silver-studded sword, the purple robes,--the tawny oxen, the hollow ships, the tapering oars,--the wine-dark sea, the rosy-fingered dawn, the gold-throned morning,--Hector of the nodding plume, the white-armed Nausicaa,--so in long procession moves the spectacle. A like distinctness invests all the actions and emotions of the story with charm. To us, as to the poet, the world becomes enchanted simply in being seen.

And presently we discover a strange transfiguration that is being wrought. Experiences which were painful or grievous to the actors and sufferers become in the representation the source of keen pleasure to the hearers or readers. The Iliad is mainly a story of men destroying one another. The Odyssey depicts a long strife with hardship and danger.

The men who heard those songs were themselves familiar with the fight, with the wounds and terrors mixed with its energies and elations; they had tasted the perils of shipwreck and of pirates. But as they listened, the rehearsal of trials the counterpart of their own filled them with exhilaration. We who read in modern days, if less experienced in bloodshed and bodily peril, yet in some fashion have had our share of battle and storm; and we, too, like the first listeners, drink in the tale with delight. The poet, in other words, has the secret not only of seeing but of idealizing the actual world. We catch from him some subtle art by which, standing a little aloof from the pressure and turmoil around us, often felt as painful or degrading, we see it through an atmosphere in which it becomes a splendid and heart-stirring scene. At a later stage we may perhaps in a degree a.n.a.lyze the change of view; we may partly understand how through the struggle with evil man is strengthened and enn.o.bled; how in such strife courage and sympathy and tenderness are engendered. But long before we can thus philosophize, and to a degree which our philosophy can hardly explain, we are affected by this beauty and elevation imparted to the spectacle of human life by the true poets.

We moderns read Homer with delight in the roll of the music, the vividness of the pictures, the humanity so near us in its essence and so unlike in its dress. When we inquire what are the moral ideals, we are often uncertain how far the impressions made on us may differ from those of the original audience, or the intention of the singer. But often his work is like the painting of great Nature herself. We pa.s.s upon it as we pa.s.s upon the facts of life.

The supernal features in the story are not here discussed. The deities, judged by our standards, have little of divinity. Beyond the grave lies a dim and dreamy realm. All this, with its great significance, we here omit, to linger a little on the essential and permanent humanity.

Achilles, the embodiment of power and pa.s.sion, just touched with human ruth; Hector, the selfless, brave and gentle champion; Odysseus, victor in the long pilgrimage by fort.i.tude and by wisdom,--these are the three ideal types of the early world, portrayed by its n.o.blest genius.

The Iliad culminates in the triumph of pity. The heart of Zeus is melted, the harder heart of Achilles is melted, before the sorrows of bereaved old age. An exquisite gentleness breathes through the closing scenes. All the wrath and terror and savagery of the story have led up to this height of pure compa.s.sion. A new light falls on all that has gone before. Achilles, the fierce hero of the earlier story, is outshone by his victim, Hector of the great and gentle heart. The crowning word of praise, after father, mother, wife have uttered their lament, is spoken by the frail woman whose sin had brought ruin on Hector and his people: "If any other haply upbraided me in the palace halls, then wouldst thou soothe such with words, and refrain them by the gentleness of thy spirit and by thy gentle words. Therefore bewail I thee with pain at heart, and my hapless self with thee, for no more is any left in wide Troy-land to be my friend and kind to me, but all men shudder at me."

We see the sin of man and woman wrecking nations and leaving the sinner in dreary isolation. We see unrelenting wrath, even when provoked by wrong, spreading woe upon the innocent, and at last smiting the wrathful man through his dearest affections. We see the heroism which meets death in defense of the beloved, yet has only tender pity for her who has wrought the ruin.

The Iliad is mostly war,--men acting h.e.l.l on earth, as Goethe said. But in the Odyssey the goal of the hero is his home. The magnet is not Helen's beauty, but Penelope's faithfulness. Odysseus, mighty warrior, crafty leader,--who with his sword has smitten the Trojans, by his wiles destroyed their city,--Odysseus is driven for ten years through hostile seas and men and G.o.ds by the compelling pa.s.sion of home-sickness!

In the Odyssey, it is the battle with the sea which does most to toughen and supple and make indomitable. The soldier and sailor are the pioneers of the race. These and the tiller of the earth are the strong roots out of which are to grow the flower and fruit.

In the Iliad, woman appears in Helen as the tempting prize and the gage of battle, and in Andromeda as the tender wife foredoomed to bereavement and captivity. In the Odyssey, woman plays a higher part--as Penelope, faithful and prudent and patient wife, fit spouse for Odysseus; as Eurydice, the devoted old nurse; and as Nausicaa, loveliest of pristine maidens.

"The story of her worth shall never die; but for all humankind immortal ones shall make a gladsome song in praise of steadfast Penelope." It is a n.o.ble story: the fidelity of a wife, the undaunted courage of a man; a long battle with adversity, crowned with the joy of love's reunion; the meeting with servant, nurse, dog, son, wife, father.

Odysseus fights his battle as every hero must,--against hostile nature and man,--by courage and patience and craft, and a confidence that the heavenly power will somehow bring him through.

So at the heart of the Iliad and the Odyssey is an austere and sweet message. The singers who embodied it in tales which stir every pulse with delight were among the supreme teachers of mankind. The inner meaning of humanity's story which their songs display is still the lesson set us,--out of adversity man may win fort.i.tude; through battle, shipwreck, and overthrow he scales the heights of manhood; and the faithful pilgrimage ends in a home which is dearer for all troubles past.

The Homeric poems show man in his first full awaking to beauty and to music. They show more. The fashioning of the supernal world in man's mind varies with people and with time. Here it is Zeus and Hades, again it will be Jehovah and Satan, and then Heaven and h.e.l.l. But in the Iliad and Odyssey the human heart recognizes its rightful lords as long as it shall endure,--Courage and Pity, Fort.i.tude and Fidelity.

Socrates is the man who has actually achieved goodness, and tries to make a science and art of goodness, to find a way in which it can be clearly known and rationally and effectively taught. "Can virtue be taught?" is his characteristic question. The chief result of his keen scrutiny is to bring to light how little men really know of the higher life,--how little he knows of it himself. The effect of this revelation of ignorance is not a despair of truth, but a humility which is the beginning of wisdom.

The deepest thing in Socrates is his knowledge of the good life as a reality, and of the joy and peace which it brings. Secure in this, he can go on in the most fearless temper, and even with light-hearted jesting, to sift the questions. Intellectually, his main achievement is to bring out clearly the problems to be faced, and to give an immense stimulus to the higher cla.s.s of minds.

In the picture of Socrates by Xenophon in the Memorabilia, which bears all the marks of true portraiture, goodness goes with happiness and knowledge. It is a most winning combination--beautiful as a Greek statue. Xenophon lays stress on his happiness, but the basis is self-command. Among a people where even religion and philosophy were tolerant of sensuality, he was pure. He was hardy, trained to bear heat and cold, temperate, simple, faithful to civic duty, a reverent worshiper of the G.o.ds, watchful for the divine leading.

Xenophon shows him absorbed in teaching, imparting the best he has found, never so happy as when he can win a young man to virtue. His ideal society is the union of those who together are seeking goodness and knowledge.

His patience is shown under the worst of domestic annoyances, a scolding wife,--he says he thus learns to bear all other crosses. His admonition to his son to bear with her shows genuine tenderness.

He has the heroic quality. He resists the raging people, and refuses the part a.s.signed him in voting the death sentence on the generals whose defeat had been a misfortune and not a fault. He calmly disobeys the Thirty Tyrants, at the risk of his life. He dies at last, a tranquil martyr to fearless truth-speaking.

He teaches n.o.bly of Providence, the Supreme, the guidance from above. He conforms to the religion of his people, while planting a higher truth.

When Athens, faithfully warned by him in vain, was sinking toward ruin and decay, he was sowing the seeds of spiritual harvests for future generations, like Jesus when Judea was tottering to its fall. In the intellectual development of man's higher life he holds a place not unlike that of Jesus in the emotional development.

Socrates, as Xenophon describes him, goes no farther as a teacher than to impress the principles of conduct as they were generally accepted by good men of the time, with peculiar persuasiveness. But Plato shows him as an original investigator of the human mind and the universe. In this there is an undoubted trait of true portraiture, but its limit is very difficult to trace, because in Plato's dialogues the master is made the mouthpiece of all the pupil's philosophy. The most distinctive feature which can be identified as that of Socrates himself is the cross-examination. Under this process, high-sounding generalities,--put in the mouths of speakers in the dialogues, the whole word-play set forth with exquisite grace and charm,--are shown by a rigid sifting to resolve themselves into nebulous and baseless figments,--the mere simulacra of true knowledge.

The conversations glide from this destructive a.n.a.lysis into a constructive philosophy, and then we soon feel that it is Plato rather than Socrates whom we are getting. The great contribution of Socrates himself to philosophy is the att.i.tude he impressed--of inquiry which is serious because seeking the foundations of virtue and happiness, and is inexorable in its insistence on nothing less than solid reality. Against all allurements of indolence, comfort, and social convention he presses the question, What is _true_? His characteristic word is:

"Some things, Meno, I have said of which I am not altogether confident.

But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to inquire than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in searching after what we know not; that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power."

Plato took from Socrates not method but inspiration, and soared into speculation. He wrote over the door of the Academy, "Let no one enter here who does not know geometry." That is, you are first to acquire absolute confidence, by familiarity with the demonstrations of mathematics, that real and certain knowledge is accessible to the human mind. Thus planting his foot on firmest certainty, Plato leaps off into a glorious sea of clouds. Flashes of insight and sublime allegory mix with fantastic theory and word-play.

The vast range of his thought we will touch only at two points. In the Symposium and the Phaedrus he discusses in his most brilliant vein the problem of love. To the reader who has inherited the ethical ideal of Christianity, Plato's love will seem like the image in Nebuchadnezzar's vision,--the head of gold, the feet of miry clay. He has a toleration for some aspects of sensuality of which Paul said, "it is a shame even to speak;" and this tolerance, in the greatest of the cla.s.sic philosophers, is the most pregnant suggestion of the cleansing work which it was left for Christianity to undertake. Yet Plato teaches most impressively the subordination of sense to spirit in love, and the struggle of the two in man has seldom been set forth more powerfully than in his figure of the two yoked horses: the white, celestial steed struggling upward; the black, unruly one plunging down, while Reason, the charioteer, strives to guide. In the description of Love which Socrates professes to quote from the wise woman of Mantineia, there is the very height of the Platonic philosophy,--the gradual sublimation of human pa.s.sion to the recognition of all n.o.ble forms and ideas, and at last to the vision of the Divine Beauty which is one with Wisdom and with Love.

"The true order of going or being led by another to the things of love is to use the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upwards for the sake of that other beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

"What if man had eyes to see the true beauty--the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollution of mortality, and all the colors and vanities of human life--thither looking and holding converse with the true beauty divine and simple, and bringing into being and educating true creations of virtue, and not idols only?

Do you not see that in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities; for he has hold not of an image but of a reality,--and will be enabled, bringing forth and educating true virtue, to become the friend of G.o.d and be immortal, if mortal man may." [1]

It is largely to Plato that we owe the idea of immortality as it exists in the mind of the civilized world to-day. The belief in a continued existence beyond death is much older; it is seen in the Iliad, where the appearance of the dead Patroclus to Achilles in a dream is accepted as the a.s.surance of a shadowy and forlorn hereafter; and in the Odyssey the visit of the hero to the land of shades is portrayed with a free and gloomy imagination. It was a belief which among the earlier Greeks had little power either to console or to guide. In the age of Socrates, it seems to have signified little in the minds of the orthodox and pious.

The great tragedians, who sublimate the popular mythology, for the most part regard the after-life as only a sad inevitable sequel; and to be s.n.a.t.c.hed back from it for even a brief reprieve, like Alkestis, is miraculous good fortune. The greatest of the tragedians in his highest reach, Sophocles in Oedipus at Colonus, invests the departure of the hero, who has been purified by suffering, with a mystic radiance, a "light that never was on sea or land," the promise as it were of some future too sublime for mortal words. But the philosophy of Socrates was directed rather to the clear penetration of the method and secret of earthly life, than to any vision of the hereafter. It is noticeable that Xenophon, the loyal disciple and biographer of Socrates, himself of the best type of orthodox piety, and zealous to vindicate his master from the charge of irreligion,--Xenophon, in all the story of the master's life and death, gives not a hint of any future hope. But Plato developed the idea that in man there resides an essential, indestructible principle, superior to the physical frame which is its home and may be either its servant or master--a principle which manifests itself in thought, aspiration, virtue; which has existed before the body and will exist after it; which chooses for itself an upward or downward path; and which rightly tends to a celestial and immortal destiny. The thought never won universal acceptance even among philosophers; it had only an indirect and slight effect on the Stoicism which was the best religious product of ancient philosophy. But it wrought by degrees all effect on the thinking of mankind. While the lofty faith of the Egyptian pa.s.sed away leaving no visible fruit, the idea of Plato slowly suffused with its light and warmth the current of human aspirations. Meantime, the later Jewish belief in a hereafter--in its form a much cruder conception of a physical revival from the grave--flamed up in a pa.s.sionate ardor, as the sequence of the life and teaching of Jesus. The Platonic and the Christian belief sprang from a like source. Each was born from the death of a man so great and so beloved as to give the impression of some imperishable quality.

Socrates, with his n.o.ble character and aim, was put to death as a criminal. Was that the end of it all? Impossible--monstrous--never, if this world be indeed a cosmos. The one firm certainty which Socrates seems to have held, "No evil can happen to a good man in life or death,"--flashes in Plato's mind into a glorious hope of immortality, embodied in his loftiest pa.s.sage, the picture of the dying Socrates.

The soul when withdrawn from all outward objects and rapt in contemplation is nearest to the divine,--this is the central thought of the Phaedo. It is pursued with much subtle argumentation, of which the essential residuum is this: the soul's action is purest and most intense when farthest withdrawn from the visible and tangible world,--and hence we guess that her true and eternal home is in that invisible realm of which all this material universe is but the veil and symbol.

But more impressive than the argument, more moving to the human heart, is the picture which is given of Socrates himself as the hour of death comes on,--the exaltation of all his familiar traits, the playfulness so exquisitely blent with seriousness, the searching thought, the frank human desire to be convinced by his own argument,--the charm of his friendly ways, the hand playing with Phaedo's hair, the taking of the cup "in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color, looking at the man with all his eyes as his manner was,"--the last word, of calm reminder of a trivial obligation,--the whole scene of majestic and tender peace, like a sunset. It is a scene which reconciles us to life, and makes us no longer impatient even of our uncertainties.

It speaks with a voice like that of Landor's verse:--

"Death stands above me, whispering low, I know not what into my ear, Of his strange language all I know Is,--there is not a word of fear."

To the modern reader there is a singular contradiction between the doctrine of Lucretius and his temper. The denial of any divine supervision of human life, or any hereafter for man; the dominion over all existence of purely material law,--this seems to us to destroy man's dearest faith and hope. This is the teaching of Lucretius, yet on this road he marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this world was ruled by capricious and unworthy despots, and the next world was gloomy with terrors and almost unlighted by hopes. Such had become the popular mythology in its later day, and as contrasted with this the view and temper of Lucretius are rational and manly. His message went far beyond a negation; he announced one of the greatest discoveries of the human spirit--the uniformity of nature. Well might the genius of poetry and the vigor of manhood unite to make the message impressive and splendid. Not caprice, but order,--not conflict, but harmony,--not deified partialities and spites and l.u.s.ts, but exalted and unchanging law, rules the universe!

When Lucretius essayed to define in what this law consists, he fell hopelessly short of the mark. In his revulsion from the chaos and pettiness of man-like divinities, he fixed on material forces,--clearly to be seen and permanent in their operation,--as the only and sufficient cause and order. Those forces, by a brilliant guess, he resolved into an interplay of atoms. From this basis he projected a physical theory, which we know now was quite inadequate even for material phenomena, while the application of it to human thought and will was hopelessly insufficient. Viewed from this standpoint, the spectacle of human life takes on a sadness which the poet's genius cannot dispel, and sometimes intensifies. To man's inner world Lucretius has no serviceable key. But he is to be judged not by what he missed but by what he gained. He above all others stands as the discoverer of one of the few cardinal truths by which to-day we interpret the universe,--the constancy of nature.

The genius of Lucretius did for the realm of thought what Roman statesmanship did for the nations,--it brought peace and order among warring elements, by the imposition of a rule which was often narrow and harsh, but which was firm, stable, and the foundation for fairer and freer growths.

Already in Lucretius, and now again in Epictetus, we have pa.s.sed from the Greek into the Roman world. It is a change partly of race, partly of time, and it is in close a.n.a.logy with the successive phases of the human spirit. The mythology which satisfied the youth of the world had grown unlovely and unreal. Plato's splendid imaginings had yielded neither a secure basis to the thinker nor a moral guidance to the common man.

Lucretius's interpretation of all events as the product of material law had small power to sustain or cheer when the intellectual glow of the bold innovator had subsided. Thoughtful men sought as their one supreme necessity an adequate and worthy rule of life. So there was wrought out, or grew, the Stoic philosophy. Based on an intellectual theory, its working strength lay in its consonance with the best habits and apt.i.tudes engendered in the world's actual experience. The Greek type was beauty, pleasure, thought, freedom; the Roman type was law, obedience, self-mastery. The legion was the school of discipline and fidelity. The forum was the theatre where cla.s.ses and parties, through rude jostling, worked out an efficient political order. A Greek thinker gave the mould, and Roman virtue gave the metal, of the Stoic type.

We may best study that type in Epictetus,--once a slave, afterward a teacher; so careless of fame that he left no written work, and we have only the priceless notes taken down by a faithful scholar, making a book whose stamp of heroic manhood twenty centuries have not dimmed.

"Man is master of his fate." The true aim of life is goodness, and goodness is within the command of the will. The lawgiver is Nature, and Nature bids us to be just, strong, pure, and to seek the good of our fellows. Such was the essence of Stoicism. As to deity, providence, or a hereafter,--belief and hope varied, according to the individual; but to the true Stoic the all-important matter was, Act well your part, here and now.

In Epictetus is always the note of reality and of victory. While actually a slave, he has learned the secret of inward freedom. His essential doctrine is that good and evil reside wholly in the will, and the will is free. As we choose, so we are. And by the right choice we find ourselves in harmony with the universe.

Though Epictetus continually appeals to reason, his basal word is to the will. Be constant to duty--accept the order of things as good, and be true to the highest law--revere "nature," the established order; obey "nature," the ideal law. Take all for the best, and you make all for the best.

Most practical and inspiring are his counsels. The war must be waged in the inmost thoughts. The images that rise to seduce, the images that rise to dismay, are to be fought down and driven away. "Be not hurried away by the rapidity of the appearance, but say, Appearances, wait for me a little; let me see who you are and what you are about; let me put you to the test. And then do not allow the appearance to lead you on and draw lively pictures of the things which will follow, for if you do, it will carry you off wherever it pleases. But rather bring to oppose it some other beautiful and n.o.ble appearance, and cast out this base appearance. And if you are accustomed to be exercised in this way, you will see what shoulders, what sinews, what strength you have." [2]