The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire Part 7

"The G.o.ds," he says elsewhere, "are not scornful, they are not envious.

They welcome us, and, as we ascend, they reach us their hands. Are you surprised a man should go to the G.o.ds? G.o.d comes to men, nay! nearer still! he comes _into_ men. No mind (_mens_) is good without G.o.d.

Divine seeds are sown in human bodies," and will grow into likeness to their origin if rightly cultivated.[100] It should be noted that the ascent is by the route of frugality, temperance and fort.i.tude. To this we must return.

Man's part in life is to be the "spectator and interpreter" of "G.o.d"[101] as he is the "son of G.o.d";[102] to attach himself to G.o.d;[103] to be his soldier, obey his signals, wait his call to {62} retreat; or (in the language of the Olympian festival) to "join with him in the spectacle and the festival for a short time"

(_sympompeusonta auto ka syneortasonta prs oligon_), to watch the pomp and the panegyris, and then go away like a grateful and modest man;[104] to look up to G.o.d and say "use me henceforth for what thou will. I am of thy mind; I am thine."[105] "If we had understanding, what else ought we to do, but together and severally, hymn G.o.d, and bless him (_euphemein_) and tell of his benefits? Ought we not, in digging or ploughing or eating, to sing this hymn to G.o.d? 'Great is G.o.d who has given us such tools with which to till the earth; great is G.o.d who has given us hands, the power of swallowing, stomachs, the power to grow unconsciously, and to breathe while we sleep.' ... What else can I do, a lame old man, but hymn G.o.d? If I were a nightingale, I would do the part of a nightingale ... but I am a rational creature, and I ought to hymn G.o.d; this is my proper work; I do it; nor will I quit my post so long as it is given me; and you I call upon to join in this same song."[106] Herakles in all his toils had nothing dearer to him than G.o.d, and "for that reason he was believed to be the son of G.o.d and he was."[107] "Clear away from your thoughts sadness, fear, desire, envy, avarice, intemperance, etc. But it is not possible to eject all these things, otherwise than by looking away to G.o.d alone (_prs monon tn then apobleponta_) by fixing your affections on him only, by being dedicated to his commands."[108] This is "a peace not of Caesar's proclamation (for whence could he proclaim it?) but of G.o.d's--through reason."[109]

[Sidenote: Humanity]

The man, who is thus in harmony with the Spermaticos, Logos, who has "put his 'I' and 'mine'"[110] in the things of the will, has no quarrel with anything external. He takes a part in the affairs of men without aggression, greed or meanness. He submits to what is laid upon him.

His peace none can take away, and none can make him angry. There is a fine pa.s.sage in Seneca's ninety-fifth letter, following his account of right worship already quoted, in which he proceeds to deduce from this the right att.i.tude to men. A sentence or two {63} must suffice. "How little it is not to injure him, whom you ought to help! Great praise forsooth, that man should be kind to man! Are we to bid a man to lend a hand to the shipwrecked, point the way to the wanderer, share bread with the hungry? ... This fabric which you see, wherein are divine and human, is one. We are members of a great body. Nature has made us of one blood, has implanted in us mutual love, has made us for society (sociabiles). She is the author of justice and equity.... Let that verse be in your heart and on your lip.

_h.o.m.o sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto_"[111]

"Unhappy man! will you ever love? (_ecquando amabis_)" he says to the irritable.[112] A little before, he said, "Man, a sacred thing to man, is slain for sport and merriment; naked and unarmed he is led forth; and the mere death of a man is spectacle enough."[113] This was the Stoic's condemnation of the gladiatorial shows. Nor was it only by words that Stoicism worked for humanity, for it was Stoic lawyers who softened and broadened and humanized Roman law.[114]

Yet Stoicism in Seneca and Epictetus had reached its zenith. From now onward it declined. Marcus Aurelius, in some ways the most attractive of all Stoics, was virtually the last. With the second century Stoicism ceased to be an effective force in occupying and inspiring the whole mind of men, though it is evident that it still influenced thinkers. Men studied the Stoics and made fresh copies of their books, as they did for a thousand years; they borrowed and adapted; but they were not Stoics. Stoicism had pa.s.sed away as a system first and then as a religion; and for this we have to find some reason or reasons.

It may well be true that the environment of the Stoics was not fit for so high and pure a philosophy. The broad gulf between the common Roman life and Stoic teaching is evident enough. The intellectual force of the Roman world moreover was ebbing, and Stoicism required more strength of mind and character than was easily to be found. That a religion or a philosophy {64} fails to hold its own is not a sure sign that it is unfit or untrue; it may only be premature, and it may be held that at another stage of the world's history Stoicism or some similar scheme of thought,--or, better perhaps, some central idea round which a system and a life develop--may yet command the a.s.sent of better men in a better age. At the same time, it is clear that when Stoicism re-emerges,--if it does,--it will be another thing. Already we have seen in Wordsworth, and (so far as I understand him) in Hegel, a great informing conception which seems to have clear affinity with the Spermaticos Logos of the Stoics. The pa.s.sage from the "Lines written above Tintern Abbey" (quoted in the previous chapter) may be supplemented by many from the "Prelude" and other poems to ill.u.s.trate at once the likeness and the difference between the forms the thought has taken. It is, however, a certain condemnation of a philosophic school when we have to admit that, whatever its apprehension of truth, it failed to capture its own generation, either because of some error of presentment, or of some fundamental misconception. When we find, moreover, that there is not only a refusal of Stoicism but a reaction from it, conscious or unconscious, we are forced to inquire into the cause.

[Sidenote: The individual will]

We shall perhaps be right in saying, to begin with, that the doctrine of the Generative Reason, the Spermaticos Logos, is not carried far enough. The immense practical need, which the Stoic felt, of fortifying himself against the world, is not unintelligible, but it led him into error. He employed his doctrine of the Spermaticos Logos to give grandeur and sufficiency to the individual, and then, for practical purposes, cut him off from the world. He manned and provisioned the fortress, and then shut it off from supplies and from relief. It was a necessary thing to a.s.sert the value and dignity of the mere individual man against the despotisms, but to isolate the man from mankind and from the world of nature was a fatal mistake. Of course, the Stoic did not do this in theory, for he insisted on the polity of G.o.ds and men, the "one city,"[115] and the duty of the "citizen of the universe" (_kosmios_)--a man is not an independent object; like the foot in the body he is essentially {65} a "part."[116]

In practice, too, Stoics were human. Seneca tells us to show clemency but not to feel pity, but we may be sure that the human heart in him was far from observing the distinction--he "talked more boldly than he lived," he says--he was "among those whom grief conquered,"[117] and, though he goes on to show why he failed in this way, he is endeared to us by his failure to be his own ideal Stoic. Yet it remains that the chapters, with which his book on Clemency ends, are a Stoic protest against pity, and they can be re-inforced by a good deal in Epictetus.

If your friend is unhappy, "remember that his unhappiness is his own fault, for G.o.d has made all men to be happy, to be free from perturbations."[118] Your friend has the remedy in his own hands; let him "purify his dogmata."[119] Epictetus would try to heal a friend's sorrow "but not by every means, for that would be to fight against G.o.d (_theomachein_)," and would involve daily and nightly punishment to himself[120]--and "no one is nearer me than myself."[121] In the _Manual_ the same thought is accentuated. "Say to yourself 'It is the opinion about this thing that afflicts the man.' So far as words go, do not hesitate to show sympathy, and even, if it so happen, to lament with him. Take care, though, that you do not lament internally also (_me ka esothen stenaxes_)."[122] We have seen what he has to say of a lost child. In spite of all his fine words, the Stoic really knows of nothing between the individual and the cosmos, for his practical teaching deadens, if it does not kill, friendship and family love.

Everything with the Stoic turns on the individual. _ta epi soi_, "the things in your own power," is the refrain of Epictetus' teaching. All is thrown upon the individual will, upon "the universal" working in the individual, according to Stoic theory, "upon me" the plain man would say. If the G.o.ds, as Seneca says, lend a hand to such as climb, the climber has to make his own way by temperance and fort.i.tude. The "holy spirit within us" is after all hardly to be distinguished from conscience, intellect and will.[123] G.o.d, says Epictetus, ordains "if you wish good, get it from yourself."[124] Once the will (_proairesis_) is right, {66} all is achieved.[125] "You must exercise the will (_thelesai_)--and the thing is done, it is set right; as on the other hand, only fall a nodding and the thing is lost. For from within (_esothen_) comes ruin, and from within comes help."[126] "What do you want with prayers?" asks Seneca, "make yourself happy."[127]

The old Stoic paradox about the "folly" of mankind, and the worthlessness of the efforts of all save the sage, was by now chiefly remembered by their enemies.[128]

All this is due to the Stoic glorification of reason, as the embodiment in man of the Spermaticos Logos. Though Nous with the Stoics is not the pure dry light of reason, they tended in practice to distinguish reason from the emotions or pa.s.sions (_pathe_), in which they saw chiefly "perturbations," and they held up the ideal of freedom from them in consequence (_apatheia_).[129] To be G.o.dlike, a man had to suppress his affections just as he suppressed his own sensations of pain or hunger. Every human instinct of paternal or conjugal love, of friendship, of sympathy, of pity, was thus brought to the test of a Reason, which had two catch-words by which to try them--the "Universe"

and "the things in your own power"--and the sentence was swift and summary enough. They did not realize that for most men--and probably it is truest of the best men--Life moves onward with all its tender and gracious instincts, while a.n.a.lysis limps behind. The experiment of testing affection and instinct by reason has often been tried, and it succeeds only where the reason is willing to be a const.i.tutional monarch, so to say, instead of the despot responsible only to the vague concept of the Universe, whom the Stoics wished to enthrone. They talked of living according to Nature, but they were a great deal too quick in deciding what was Nature. If the centuries have taught us anything, it is to give Nature more time, more study and more respect than even yet we do. There are words {67} at the beginning of the thirteenth book of the "Prelude" wiser and truer than anything the Stoics had to say of her with their "excessive zeal" and their "quick turns of intellect." Carried away by their theories (none, we must remember as we criticize them, without some ground in experience and observation), the Stoics made solitude in the heart and called it peace. The price was too high; mankind would not pay it, and sought a religion elsewhere that had a place for a man's children.

[Sidenote: Sin and salvation]

Again, in their contempt for the pa.s.sions the Stoics underestimated their strength. How strong the pa.s.sions are, no man can guess for another, even if he can be sure how strong his own are. Perhaps the Stoics could subordinate their pa.s.sions to their reason;--ancient critics kept sharp eyes on them and said they were not always successful.[130] But there is no question that for the ma.s.s of men, the Stoic account of reason is absurd. "I see another law in my members," said a contemporary of Seneca's, "warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity." Other men felt the same and sought deliverance in the sacraments of all the religions. That Salvation was not from within, was the testimony of every man who underwent the _taurobolium_. So far as such things can be, it is established by the witness of every religious mind that, whether the feeling is just or not the feeling is invincible that the will is inadequate and that religion begins only when the Stoic's ideal of saving oneself by one's own resolve and effort is finally abandoned.

Whether this will permanently be true is another question, probably for us unprofitable. The ancient world, at any rate, and in general the modern world, have p.r.o.nounced against Stoic Psychology--it was too quick, too superficial. The Stoics did not allow for the sense of sin.[131] They recognized the presence of evil in the world; they felt that "it has its seat within us, in our inward part";[132] and they remark the effect of evil in the blunting of the faculties--let the guilty, says Persius, "see virtue, and pine that they have lost her forever."[133] While Seneca finds himself "growing better and becoming changed," he still feels there may be much more needing amendment.[134]

He often {68} expresses dissatisfaction with himself.[135] But the deeper realization of weakness and failure did not come to the Stoics, and what help their teaching of strenuous endeavour could have brought to men stricken with the consciousness of broken willpower, it is hard to see. "Filthy Natta," according to Persius, was "benumbed by vice"

(_stupet hic vitio_).[136] "When a man is hardened like a stone (_apolithothe_), how shall we be able to deal with him by argument?"

asks Epictetus, arguing against the Academics, who "opposed evident truths"--what are we to do with necrosis of the soul?[137] But the Stoics really gave more thought to fancies of the sage's equality with G.o.d and occasional superiority--so confident were they in the powers of the individual human mind. Plutarch, indeed, forces home upon them as a deduction from their doctrine of "the common nature" of G.o.ds and men the consequence that sin is not contrary to the Logos of Zeus--and yet they say G.o.d punishes sin.[138]

Yet even the individual, much as they strove to exalt his capabilities, was in the end cheapened in his own eyes.[139] As men have deepened their self-consciousness, they have yielded to an instinctive craving for the immortality of the soul.[140] Whether savages feel this or not, it is needless to argue. No religion apart from Buddhism has permanently held men which had no hopes of immortality; and how far the corruptions of Buddhism have modified its rigour for common people, it is not easy to say. In one form or another, in spite of a terrible want of evidence, men have clung to eternal life. The Stoics themselves used this consensus of opinion as evidence for the truth of the belief.[141] "It pleased me," writes Seneca, "to inquire of the eternity of souls (_de aeternitate animarum_)--nay! to believe in it. I surrendered myself to that great hope."[142] {69} "How natural it is!"

he says, "the human mind is a great and generous thing; it will have no bounds set to it unless they are shared by G.o.d."[143] "When the day shall come, which shall part this mixture of divine and human, here, where I found it, I will leave my body, myself I will give back to the G.o.ds. Even now I am not without them." He finds in our birth into this world an a.n.a.logy of the soul pa.s.sing into another world, and in language of beauty and sympathy he pictures the "birthday of the eternal," the revelation of nature's secrets, a world of light and more light. "This thought suffers nothing sordid to dwell in the mind, nothing mean, nothing cruel. It tells us that the G.o.ds see all, bids us win their approval, prepare for them, and set eternity before us."[144] Beautiful words that wake emotion yet!

[Sidenote: Immortality]

But is it clear that it is eternity after all? In the _Consolation_ which Seneca wrote for Marcia, after speaking of the future life of her son, he pa.s.sed at last to the Stoic doctrine of the first conflagration, and described the destruction of the present scheme of things that it may begin anew. "Then we also, happy souls who have been a.s.signed to eternity (_felices animae et aeterna sort.i.tae_), when G.o.d shall see fit to reconstruct the universe, when all things pa.s.s (_labentibus_), we too, a little element in a great catastrophe, shall be resolved into our ancient elements. Happy is your son, Marcia, who already knows this."[145] Elsewhere he is still less certain. "Why am I wasted for desire of him, who is either happy or non-existent? (_qui aut beatus aut nullus est_)."[146]

That in later years, in his letters to Lucilius, Seneca should lean to belief in immortality, is natural enough. Epictetus' language, with some fluctuations, leans in the other direction: "When G.o.d does not supply what is necessary, he is sounding the signal for retreat--he has opened the door and says to you, Come! But whither? To nothing terrible, but whence you came, to the dear and kin [both neuters], the elements. What in you was fire, shall go to fire, earth to earth, spirit to spirit [perhaps, breath _hoson pneumation eis pneumation_], water to water; {70} no Hades, nor Acheron, nor Cocytus, nor Pyriphlegethon; but all things full of G.o.ds and daemons. When a man has such things to think on, and sees sun and moon and stars, and enjoys earth and sea, he is not solitary or even helpless."[147] "This is death, a greater change, not from what now is into what is not, but into what now is not. Then shall I no longer be? You will be, but something else, of which now the cosmos has no need. For you began to be (_egenou_), not when you wished, but when the cosmos had need."[148]

On the whole the Stoic is in his way right, for the desire for immortality goes with the instincts he rejected--it is nothing without the affections and human love.[149] But once more logic failed, and the obscure grave witnesses to man's instinctive rejection of Stoicism, with its simple inscription _taurobolio in aeternum renatus_.

[Sidenote: The question of the G.o.ds]

Lastly we come to the G.o.ds themselves, and here a double question meets us. Neither on the plurality nor the personality of the divine does Stoicism give a certain note. In the pa.s.sages already quoted it will have been noticed how interchangeably "G.o.d," "the G.o.ds" and "Zeus" have been used. It is even a question whether "G.o.d" is not an ident.i.ty with fate, providence, Nature and the Universe.[150] Seneca, as we have seen, dismisses the theory of daemons or _genii_ rather abruptly--"that is what some think." Epictetus definitely accepts them, so far as anything here is definite, and with them, or in them, the ancestral G.o.ds. Seneca, as we have seen, is contemptuous of popular ritual and superst.i.tion. Epictetus inculcates that "as to piety about the G.o.ds, the chief thing is to have right opinions about them," but, he concludes, "to make libations and to sacrifice according to the custom of our fathers, purely and not meanly, nor carelessly, nor scantily, nor above our ability, is a thing which belongs to all to do."[151]

"Why do you," he asks, "act the part of a Jew, when you are a Greek?"[152] He also accepts the {71} fact of divination.[153]

Indeed, aside perhaps from conspicuous extravagances, the popular religion suffices. Without enthusiasm and without clear belief, the Stoic may take part in the ordinary round of the cults. If he did not believe himself, he pointed out a way to the reflective polytheist by which he could reconcile his traditional faith with philosophy--the many G.o.ds were like ourselves manifestations of the Spermaticos Logos; and he could accept tolerantly the ordinary theory of daemons, for Chrysippus even raised the question whether such things as the disasters that befall good men are due to negligence on the part of Providence, or to evil daemons in charge of some things.[154] While for himself the Stoic had the strength of mind to shake off superst.i.tion, the common people, and even the weaker brethren of the Stoic school, remained saddled with polytheism and all its terrors and follies. Of this compromise Seneca is guiltless.[155] It was difficult to cut the connexion with Greek tradition--how difficult, we see in Plutarch's case. The Stoics, however, fell between two stools, for they had not enough feeling for the past to satisfy the pious and patriotic, nor the resolution to be done with it. After all, more help was to be had from Lucretius than from Epictetus in ridding the mind of the paralysis of polytheism.

But the same instinct that made men demand immortality for themselves, a feeling, dim but strong, of the value of personality and of love, compelled them to seek personality in the divine. Here the Stoic had to halt, for after all it is a thing beyond the power of reason to demonstrate, and he could not here allege, as he liked, that the facts stare one in the face. So, with other thinkers, impressed at once by the want of evidence, and impelled by the demand for some available terms, he wavered between a clear statement of his own uncertainty, and the use of popular names. "Zeus" had long before been adopted by Cleanthes in his famous hymn, but this was an element of weakness; for the wall-paintings in every great house gave another account of Zeus, which belied every attribute with which the Stoics credited him. The apologists and the Stoics {72} explained the legends by the use of allegory, but, as Plato says, children cannot distinguish between what is and what is not allegory--nor did the common people. The finer religious tempers demanded something firmer and more real than allegory. They wanted G.o.d or G.o.ds, immortal and eternal; and at best the Stoic G.o.ds were to "melt like wax or tin" in their final conflagration, while Zeus too, into whom they were to be resolved, would thereby undergo change, and therefore himself also prove perishable.[156]

"I put myself in the hands of a Stoic," writes Justin Martyr, "and I stayed a long time with him, but when I got no further in the matter of G.o.d--for he did not know himself and he used to say this knowledge was not necessary--I left him."[157] Other men did not, like Justin, pursue their philosophic studies, and when they found that, while the Stoic's sense of truth would not let him ascribe personality to G.o.d, all round there were definite and authoritative voices which left the matter in no doubt, they made a quick choice. What authority means to a man in such a difficulty, we know only too well.

The Stoics in some measure felt their weakness here. When they tell us to follow G.o.d, to obey G.o.d, to look to G.o.d, to live as G.o.d's sons, and leave us not altogether clear what they mean by G.o.d, their teaching is not very helpful, for it is hard to follow or look to a vaguely grasped conception. They realized that some more definite example was needed.

"We ought to choose some good man," writes Seneca, "and always have him before our eyes that we may live as if he watched us, and do everything as if he saw."[158] The idea came from Epicurus. "Do everything, said he, as if Epicurus saw. It is without doubt a good thing to have set a guard over oneself, to whom you may look, whom you may feel present in your thoughts."[159] "Wherever I am, I am consorting with the best men.

To them, in whatever spot, in whatever age they were, I send my mind."[160] He recommends Cato, Laelius, Socrates, Zeno. Epictetus has the same advice. What would Socrates do? is the canon he recommends.[161] "Though you are not yet a Socrates, you {73} ought to live as one who wishes to be a Socrates."[162] "Go away to Socrates and see him ... think what a victory he felt he won over himself."[163]

Comte in a later day gave somewhat similar advice. It seems to show that we cannot do well without some sort of personality in which to rest ourselves.

[Sidenote: Plutarch's criticism]

When once this central uncertainty in Stoicism appeared, all the fine and true words the Stoics spoke of Providence lost their meaning for ordinary men who thought quickly. The religious teachers of the day laid hold of the old paradoxes of the school and with them demolished the Stoic Providence. "Chrysippus," says Plutarch, "neither professes himself, nor any one of his acquaintances and teachers, to be good (_spoudaion_). What then do they think of others, but precisely what they say--that all men are insane, fools, unholy, impious, transgressors, that they reach the very acme of misery and of all wretchedness? And then they say that it is by Providence that our concerns are ordered--and we so wretched! If the G.o.ds were to change their minds and wish to hurt us, to do us evil, to overthrow and utterly crush us, they could not put us in a worse condition; for Chrysippus demonstrates that life can admit no greater degree either of misery or unhappiness."[164] Of course, this attack is unfair, but it shows how men felt. They demanded to know how they stood with the G.o.ds--were the G.o.ds many or one? were they persons or natural laws[165]

or even natural objects? did they care for mankind? for the individual man? This demand was edged by exactly the same experience of life which made Stoicism so needful and so welcome to its followers. The pressure of the empire and the terrors of living drove some to philosophy and many more to the G.o.ds--and for these certainty was imperative and the Stoics could not give it.

It is easy, but not so profitable as it seems, to find faults in the religion of other men. Their generation rejected the Stoics, but they may not have been right. If the Stoics were too hasty in making reason into a despot to rule over the {74} emotions, their contemporaries were no less hasty in deciding, on the evidence of emotions and desires, that there were G.o.ds, and these the G.o.ds of their fathers, because they wished for inward peace and could find it nowhere else. The Stoics were at least more honest with themselves, and though their school pa.s.sed away, their memory remained and kept the respect of men who differed from them, but realized that they had stood for truth.

Chapter II Footnotes:

[1] _Hist._ i, 2.

[2] Tac. _Ann._ iv, 33, _sic converso statu neque alia re Romana quam si unus imperitet_.

[3] Hdt. iii, 80. Cf. Tac. _A._ vi, 48, 4, _vi dominationis convulsus et mutatus_.

[4] Suetonius, _Gaius_, 29.

[5] Sen. _de ira_, iii, 15, 3.

[6] Lecky, _European Morals_, i, 275; Epictetus, _D._ iii, 15.

[7] Seneca, _Ep._ 90, 36-43.

[8] Tacitus, _Germany_, cc. 18-20.

[9] Tac. _A._ i, 72. Suetonius (_Tib._ 59) quotes specimens.

[10] See Boissier, _Tacite_, 188 f.; _l'opposition sous les Cesars_, 208-215.

[11] Persius, v, 73, _libertate opus est_.

[12] Horace, _Sat._ ii, 2, 79.