BOOK I.
THE BEGINNINGS.
" To one small people . . . it was given to create the principle of Progress. That people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin."
-SIR HENRY SUMNER MAINE.
INTRODUCTION.
ALL beginnings are obscure, whether owing to their minuteness or their
apparent insignificance. Where they do not escape perception, they are liable
to elude observation. The sources of history, too, can only be tracked at
a foot-pace. They must be followed to their fount, like the current of a
stream which springs in a mountain fastness. Such steps or paces are called
inferences. They are of two kinds, according as they proceed from causes
or from effects. In the second case, we try to infer the existence and the
nature of causes from the existence and the nature of effects. Inferences
of that type are indispensable, but frequently fallacious. For though every
cause, taken by itself, produces the same invariable effect, yet the converse
proposition does not by any means hold good. Each effect is not invariably
the product of one and the same cause. The condition known as `' plurality
of causes" plays an important part in the intellectual no less than
in the physical universe. The contrary process yields more trustworthy results.
It starts from the causes, from the series of great and tangible factors,
plainly manifest or readily to be found, which must have influenced the
events to be accounted for, and in which the degree of such influence is
the sole object of doubt. In the present instance, where we are dealing
with the higher intellectual life of a nation, the first place is claimed
by its geographical conditions and the peculiar character of its homes.
Hellas is a sea-girt mountain-land. The poverty of her soil corresponds
to the narrowness of her river-valleys. And here we find the first clue
to some of the essential features of Hellenic evolution proper. It is clear,
for instance, that a permanent home and a steady and manifold care and attention
were offered to any seeds of civilization which might be deposited in her
soil. Her mountain barriers served her in the office of stone walls, breaking
the force of the storm of conquest which sweeps unchecked across the plains.
Each hilly canton was a potential seat of culture. Each could develop a
separate type of that strongly marked individualism, which was ultimately
to prove so favourable to the rich and many-sided civilization of Greece,
so fatal to the political concentration of her powers. The country was full
of piquant contrasts. Her Arcadia -- -- an inland canton, sunk in torpid
provincialism -- -- was matched at the opposite extreme by the extent and
curvature of the coast. Her sea-board was larger than Spain's, her mainland
smaller than Portugal's. Other conditions, too, fostered this variety of
natural gifts. The most diverse trades and professions were practiced in
the closest proximity. Seamen and shepherds, hunters and husbandmen, flourished
side by side, and the fusion of their families produced in ater generations
a sum of talents and aptitudes complementary to each other. Again, the good
fairies who presided at the birth of Greece could have laid no more salutary
blessing in her cradle than the " poverty which was ever her familiar
friend." It worked powerfully in three ways for the advancement of
her civilization. It acted as a spur to compel her to exert all her powers;
it served as a further defence against invasion, for the comparatively poor
country must have seemed but indifferent booty -- -- a fact noted in connection
with Attica by the most philosophical historian of antiquity; and last,
and chicfly, it lent a forcible impulse to commerce, navigation, emigration,
and the foundation of colonies.
The bays that offer the best harbourage on the Greek peninsula open towards
the east, and the islands and islets, with which that region is thickly
sown, afford, as it were, a series of stepping-stones to the ancient seats
of Asiatic civilization. Greece may be said to look east and south. Her
back is turned to the north and west, with their semi-barbaric conditions.
Another circumstance of quite exceptional good fortune may be ranged with
these natural advantages. There was Greece in her infancy on the one side,
and the immemorial civilizations on the other: who was to ply between them
? The link was found -- -- as it were by deliberate selection -- -- in those
hardy adventurers of the sea, the merchant-people of Phcenicia, a nation
politically of no account, but full of daring and eager for gain. Thus it
happened that the Greeks acquired the elements of culture from Babylon and
Egypt without paying the forfeit of independence. The benefits of this ordinance
are obvious. The favoured country enjoyed a steadier rate of progress, a
more unbroken evolution, a comparative immunity from the sacrifice of her
national resources. And if further proof be required, take the fate of the
Celts and Germans, whom Rome enslaved at the moment that she civilized;
or take the sad lot of the savage tribes of to-day, who receive the blessing
of civilization at the hands of almighty Europe, and wear it too often as
a curse.
Still, the determining influence in the intellectual life of Greece must
be sought in her colonial system. Colonies were founded at all times, and
under every form of government. The Monarchy, a period of perpetual conflict,
frequently witnessed the spectacle of settled inhabitants giving way to
immigrating tribes, and seeking a new home beyond the seas. The Oligarchy,
which rested entirely on the permanent alliance between noble birth and
territorial possession, was often constrained to expel the "pauvre
gentilhomme," the type and symbol of disorder, and to furnish him
with fresh estates in foreign parts, whither he would speedily be followed
by further victims of the incessant party strife. Meantime, the growth of
the maritime trade of Greece, the flourishing condition of her industries,
and her increasing population, soon made it necessary to establish fixed
commercial stations, an uninterrupted supply of raw material, and safe channels
for the importation of food. The same outlets were utilized, chicfly under
the Democracy, to relieve the indigent poor and to draft off the surplus
population. Thus, at an early period, there arose that vast circle of Greek
plantations which stretched from the homes of the Cossacks on the Don to
the oases of the Sahara, and from the eastern shore of the Black Sea to
the coast-line of Spain. Great Greece and Greater Greece, -- -- if the first
name belong to the Hellenic portion of Southern Italy, the second might
well be given to the sum of these settlements outside. The mere number and
diversity of the colonies practically ensured the prospect that any seeds
of civilization would happen on suitable soil, and this prospect was widened
and brightened to an incalculable degree by the nature of the settlements
and the manner of their foundation. Their sites were selected at those points
of the coast which offered the best facilities for successful commercial
enterprise. The emigrants themselves were chicfly young men of a hardy and
courageous disposition, who would bequeath their superior qualities to their
numerous issue. Men of duller parts, who lived by rule and rote, were not
likely to turn their backs on their homes except under stress of necessity.
Again, though a single citystate took the lead in the foundation of each
colony, it would frequently be reinforced by a considerable foreign contingent,
and this cross-breeding of Hellenic tribes would be further extended by
an admixture of non-Hellenic blood, owing to the preponderance of the men
over the women among the original emigrants. Thus, every colony served the
purpose of experiment. Greek and non-Greek racial elements were mixed in
varying proportions, and the test was applied to their resulting powers
of resistance and endurance. Local customs, tribal superstitions, and national
prejudices swiftly disappeared before the better sense of the settlers.
Contact with foreign civilizations, however imperfectly developed, could
not but enlarge their menta1 horizon to a very appreciable degree. The average
of capacity rose by leaps and bounds, and the average of intellect was heightened
by its constant engagement in new and difficult tasks. Merit counted for
more than descent. A man there was a man; good work could command a good
wage, and poor work meant a hard bed and indifferent protection. The whole
system of economic, political, and social life cried out to be reorganized
and reformed, and in these circumstances the force of mere tradition and
the reign of unintelligent routine were involved in rapid decline. True,
some of the settlements succumbed to the attacks of hostile residents; others,
again, were so far outnumbered by the natives that their individuality was
gradually absorbed. But from first to last the communication of the colonies
with their mothercity and mother-country -- -- a communication fostered
by religious ties and frequently strengthened by later arrivals -- -- was
sufficiently intimate to preserve in all its parts the reciprocal benefits
which proved so eminently fruitful. Greece found in her colonies the great
playground of her intellect. There she proved her talents in every variety
of circumstances, and there she was able to train them to the height of
their latent powers. Her colonial life retained for centuries its fresh
and buoyant spirit. The daughter cities in most respects outstripped their
mother in the race. To them can be traced nearly all the great innovations,
and the time was to come when they would steep themselves in intellectual
pursuits as well, when the riddles of the world and of human life were to
find a permanent home and enduring curiosity in their midst.
2. There is a period in Greek history which bears a most striking resemblance
to the close of our own Middle Ages, when the repetition of similar causes
produced similar effects.
On the threshold of modern Europe stands the era of the great discoverers,
and the geographical limits of the Greek horizon at this time were likewise
wonderfully extended. On the far east and west of the world, as it was then
known, the outline emerged from the mist. Precise and definite knowledge
replaced the obscurity of legend. Shortly after 800 B.C., the eastern shore
of the Black Sea began to be colonized by Milesians; Sinope was founded
in 785, and Trapezunt about thirty years later. Soon after the middle of
the same century, Eubcea and Corinth sent out the first Greek settlers to
Sicily, where Syracuse was founded in 734 B.C., and before the century's
end the ambition and enterprise of Miletus had taken fast foothold at the
mouths of the Nile. Three conclusions are involved in the fact of this impulse
to expansion. It points to a rapid growth of population on the Greek peninsula
and in the older colonies. It presumes a considerable development of Greek
industry and commerce; and, finally, it serves to measure the progress in
ship-building and in kindred arts. Take navigation, for instance. Where
vessels formerly had hugged the shore, and had not ventured in deep waters,
now they boldly crossed the sea. The mercantile marine was protected by
men-of-war. Seaworthy battleships came into use with raised decks and three
rows of oars, the first of them being built for the Samians in 705 B.C.
Naval engagements were fought as early as 664 B.C., so that the sea acquired
the utmost significance in the civilization of Hellas for the commerce of
peace and war. At the same time, the progress of industry was fostered by
a notable innovation. A current coinage was created. The " bullocks
" of hoary antiquity and the copper "kettles" and "tripods"
of a later date successively passed into desuetude, and the precious metals
replaced these rougher makeshifts as measures of value and tokens of exchange.
Babylonian and Egyptian merchants had long since familiarized the market
with silver and gold in the form of bars and rings, and the Babylonians
had even introduced the official stamp as a guarantee of standard and weight.
A convenient shape was now added to the qualities of worth and durability
which make gold and silver the most practical symbols of exchange, and the
metals were coined for current use. This invention, borrowed from Lydia
about 700 B.C. by the Phocaæns of Ionia, conferred remarkable benefits
on commerce. It facilitated intercourse and extended its bounds, and its
effects may be compared with those of the bill of exchange, introduced in
Europe by Jewish and Lombardy merchants at the close of the Middle Ages.
Similar, if not greater, in effect was the change in the methods of warfare.
The old exclusive service of the cavalry, which had flourished in the dearth
of pastoral and corn-land as the privilege of wealthy landowners, was now
reinforced by the hoplites, or heavy-armed infantry, who far exceeded the
cavalry in numbers. The change was analogous -- and its consequences were
equal in importance -- to that which enabled the armed peasantry of Switzerland
to disperse the chivalry of Burgundy and Austria. New orders of the population
achieved prosperity and culture, and were filled with a strong sense of
self-esteem. A sturdy middle class asserted itself by the side of the old
squirearchy, and bore with increasing impatience the yoke of the masterful
nobles. But here, as elsewhere, the contradiction between actual conditions
of strength and legal dues of prerogative became the cause of civil strife.
A battle of classes broke out. It spread to the peasants, where persistent
ill-usage and by no means infrequent serfdom had sown the seeds of revolt,
and out of the rents and ruins of society there was hatched a brood of usurpers,
who partly destroyed and partly set aside the existing order of things.
They constructed in its place a form of government which, though commonly
short-lived, was not without notable results. The Orthagorides, the Cypselides,
the Pisistratides, a Polycrates, and many another, may be compared with
the Italian tyrants of the late Middle Ages -- the Medici, the Sforza, or
the Visconti -- precisely as the party feuds of the one epoch recall in
the other the conflict between the lords and the guilds. The obscure origin
and questionable title of these newly founded dynasties were discreetly
veiled in the glitter of warlike undertakings, of alliances with foreign
potentates, public works on a lavish scale, splendid buildings, and munificent
benefactions, combined with an enhanced regard for the safety of the national
sanctuaries and for the encouragement of the fine arts. But we must look
deeper for the most lasting result of this entr'acte in history.
It tranquillized party feeling; it overthrew the rule of the nobles without
breaking the foundations of social welfare; it poured new wine in the old
vessels, revealing unsuspected possibilities in the extant forms of the
constitution. The " tyranny " served as a bridge to the system
of democracy, first in a moderate, and at last in its fully developed shape.
Meantime, the stream of intellectual culture found broader and deeper
channels. The ballads of the heroes, which had been sung for centuries in
the halls of Ionian nobles to the accompaniment of the Iyre, slowly fell
into desuetude. New forms of poetry began to emerge, and with them, in some
instances, the poet's personality emerged from the material of his song.
Subjective poetry came into existence, as was bound to happen, when, as
now, people escaped in ever-increasing numbers from the groove of hereditary
conventions. The State was involved in change and vicissitude, society was
governed by uncertain conditions, and individual life accordingly acquired
a more adventurous complexion. People's talents would be more sharply defined,
their independent activity stimulated, their self-reliance encouraged. In
civic and party business a person would play one's own part, advising and
blaming as counsellor or critic, and boldly giving vent among one's fellows
to one's sentiments of expectation or disappointment, One's joy, one's sorrow,
one's anger, and one's scorn. One became a unit in society, self-made for
the most part, and entirely selfdependent, and would deem one's private
concerns of sufficient importance to display them in the light of publicity.
One poured out one's heart to one's fellow-citizens, making them the arbiters
in one's love-suits and law-suits, and appealing to their sympathy in the
injuries one suffered, the successes one achieved, the pleasures one enjoyed.
A new spirit, too, was breathed in the older poetical forms. Myth and legend
were refashioned by the masters of choric song in differing, if not in contradictory,
modes. The didactic poets still aimed at system, order, and harmony in their
treatment of the material, but side by side with those endeavours a manifold
diversity was to be remarked, and a licence in criticism, expressing itself
in a prejudice or preference in respect to this or that hero or heroine
of holy tradition. Thus, the neutral tints of the background were ever more
and more relieved by strong, self-conscious figures standing out from the
uniform mass. Habits of free-will and feeling were created, and with them
there grew the faculty of independent thought, which was constantly engaged
and exercised in wider fields of speculation.
3. The Greeks were naturally keen-sighted. The faithful representation
of sensible objects and occurrences constitutes one of the chief charms
of the Homeric poems, and the imitation of figures and gestures by a hand
that waxed in cunning now began to succeed to the arts of language and speech.
Greece became the apprentice of older civilized countries, turning to Egypt
above all for the paramount example of artistic instinct, natural joy, and
engaging humour. But even in the limited sphere of the observation of human
ways and manners, fresh material was constantly collected. As travelling
grew easier, its occasions would be multiplied. Not merely the merchant,
ever intent on new gain, but the fugitive murderer, the exiled loser in
the civil strife, the restless emigrant wandering on the face of the earth,
the adventurer whose spear was at the service of the highest bidder, who
would eat the bread of an Assyrian monarch to-day and to-morrow would pour
down his burning throat the barley-water of Egypt, who was equally at home
in the fruit-laden valley of the Euphrates and in the sands of the Nubian
desert, -- all of these would add to the sum of knowledge about places,
peoples, and humankind. The frequent meeting or regular congregation in
certain centres of Greeks of all cities and tribes served the purpose of
huge reservoirs, in which the observations of individuals and the reports
they made to their fellow-townsmen were collected and stored. The shrine
of the oracle at Delphi was a chief example of the first, while the second
condition was fulfilled by the recurring festivals of the Games, among which
those at Olympia held the foremost rank. The sanctuary at Delphi, sacred
to Pythian Apollo, was situated in the shadow of steep, beetling crags.
Thither would come, and there would meet, an endless line of pilgrims from
all parts of Greece and her colonies -- private citizens, representatives
of whole states, and, since the middle of the seventh century at least,
occasional envoys from foreign courts. They all came to consult the god;
but the answers they received were mostly the result of the priest's ingenious
manipulation of the stock of useful knowledge deposited by former clients.
And few indeed can have departed from that romantic mountain glen without
finding their imagination quickened and their experience augmented by contact
with their companions on the road. The Games which we have mentioned were
celebrated in the broad river-valley of the Alpheius, and the attractiveness
of that brilliant spectacle increased with each generation. The programme
was constantly extended by the inclusion of new kinds of competitions, and
the spectators, who at first were drawn merely from the surrounding country,
gradually began to arrive -- as is shown by the winners' lists, extant since
776 B.C. -- from all points in the circumference of the wide Hellenic world.
Nor would their intercourse be confined to the exchange of news and information.
People would take one another's measure; opinions would be freely canvassed;
the merits of the different institutions in that land of many subdivisions
-- their customs, habits, and beliefs -- would form topics of general discussion.
Comparison engendered judgment, and judgment brough reflection in its train
to bear on the causes of the differences and on the permanent element in
change. It induced, that is to say, an inquiry for the common canon which
obtained in the commerce and dogma of daily life. The observation of common
things, growing keener and richer by experience, led to comparative discussion
and estimation, and, finally, to reflective criticism. Many proud stream
was nourished by that source. To it we refer sententious poetry, the invention
of types of human character, and the proverbial wisdom which thoughtful
citizens and philosophic statesmen have sown broadcast in the world.
The art of writing, the main vehicle for the exchange of thought, helped to distribute the fresh acquisitions of knowledge. Writing, it is true, was no novelty in Greece. When we read in the Homeric poems of the intimate intercourse with Phoenicia, we readily conceive that the sharp-witted Greek would have borrowed that wonderful aid to the preservation and communication of thought from the Canaanitish dealers, for the customer must often have surprised the merchant making entries in his account-book. Nay, the art of writing would appear to have been familiar, to some of the Greeks at least, even before that date. It is no more possible that the syllabic writing on the recently discovered Cypric monuments, with its awkward and clumsy devices, could have been later than the use of the simple Semitic letters, than that the invention of the battle-axe could have followed that of the musket. All that was wanted was a convenient and easily fashioned material The want took some time to supply. The remedy was not found till soon after 660 B.C., when Greek trade with Egypt under Psammetich I. received a notable impulse. Then a writing-material of a kind which can hardly be improved was afforded by the pulp of the papyrus shrub, split into slender and flexible strips. From city to city, from land to land, from century to century, the sheets of written symbols now began to fly. The circulation of thought was accelerated, the commerce of intellect enlarged, and the continuity of culture guaranteed, in a degree which can well-nigh be compared with that which marked the invention of the printing-press at the dawn of modern history. To the oral delivery of poems, designed to captivate the hearer, there was presently to be added their silent appeal to the solitary enjoyment of the reader, who could weigh, compare, and discriminate to the top of one's critical bent. Yet a little while, and literary communication was to break the last of its bonds, and the beginnings of prose composition were to supersede the era of metric language.
4. The west coast of Asia Minor is the cradle of the intellectual civilization
of Greece. Its line stretches from north to south, but the heart of the
movement must be sought in the country enclosing the centre of the line,
and in the adjacent islands. There nature poured her gifts with lavish profusion,
and those on whom they fell belonged to the Ionian tribe, at all times the
most talented among Hellenes. The birthplace of the Ionians is obscure.
We know that their blood was mixed with elements from central Greece, if,
indeed, they were not a mere product of such fusion, and their diverse origin
is doubtless mainly accountable for the complexity of their natural gifts.
At least, it was not till they were settled in their new Asiatic home that
their individuality reached its full powers. As bold seafarers and energetic
traders, they enjoyed every benefit of the keen and fertilizing influence
to be derived from intercourse with foreign nations in a more advanced state
of civilization. They had the further advantage of intermarrying with other
fine races, such as the Carians and Phcenicians, a fact which indisputably
increased their original diversity of talent. The Ionians were the furthest
removed of all Greeks from that fatal stagnation to which dwellers in isolated
countries succumb so readily. It must be added that they lacked the sense
of security which friendly mountain-barriers and an infertile soil bestow.
The proximity of civilized nations, highly developed and united in a State,
was as prejudicial to the political independence of the Ionians as it was
beneficial to their intellectual progress. The yoke of foreign dominion
which was laid on one part of the people, the compulsory exile in which
another part was driven, the slow but sure corrosion of its manhood by the
inroad of Oriental luxury,-these were among the consequences of the devastating
attacks by barbarians from Cimmeria, followed by the victories of the Lydians
and Persians. The net result of this cross-series of good influences and
bad was the rapid rise and swift decline of a period of prosperity. The
ripe fruit fell all too soon, and the seeds it dropped were borne by fugitives
from the foreigner's yoke, who would return now and again to the safe protection
of Attica's fertile soil.
The evolution we have been describing took its course in but a few centuries;
its splendid results included the full bloom of heroic minstrelsy, the triumph
of the new forms of verse we have mentioned as the heirs of epic poetry,
and, lastly, the rise of scientific pursuits and philosophical speculation.
New answers were given to the eternal question of humankind -- What is the
meaning of self, God, and the world ? -- and these new answers gradually
replaced or reshaped the former acceptations of religious belief.
5. Greek religion is a vessel which has been replenished from the treasury
of enlightened minds. Poets and artists have combined to idealize its gods
as types of perfect beauty. Still, its ultimate springs are those from which
mankind has derived an infinite variety of figures and forms, partly beautiful
and wholesome, partly hurtful and ugly.
Human thought follows twin channels. It obeys the law of likeness, and
it obeys the law of contiguity. While similar ideas suggest one another,
yet the same result is evolved by ideas which occur simultaneously or in
immediate succession. An absent friend, for instance, may be recalled to
our thoughts not merely by the sight of his portrait; the rooms in which
he dwelt, the tools which he handled, serve the purpose just as well. These
laws are summarily known as the laws of the association of ideas, and the
conception of natural phenomena, which may be called the personification
of nature, is directly and inevitably due to their action. Whenever the
savage perceives a motion or some other effect, which, whether by its rarity
or by its intimate connection with his interests, strikes his mind strongly
enough to set his associative faculties at work, he will infallibly conclude
that the occurrence is the outcome of an exercise of will. The reason is
extremely simple. A savage or civilized person perceives the connection
of will-power with movement -- or, indeed, with effects of any kind -- every
day and hour of one's life; and no other combination whatever enters in
his direct experience.
Observation of other living beings continually strengthens the association
which springs from this inner experience. Indeed, effects of all kinds and
the deliberate exercise of will-power are connected so frequently in our
mind that where one of the two is found we confidently look for the other.
This expectation has been gradually confined to narrower limits by the operation
of experiences of a different order, chief of which may be mentioned the
gradual dominion which humans have usurped over nature. But in instances
where the associative force of ideas is strengthened by powerful passions,
or where it is insufficiently checked by experience of an opposite tendency,
or, again, where it is reinforced by the second principle of association,
which would here be expressed by a likeness between an unintentional and
an intentional event, in such instances our expectation breaks all bounds,
and reduces the civilized person, for moments at least, to the level of
the primitive savage. These are cases in which we are enabled to test the
truth of that explanation by a kind of experiment. Take the view of savages,
for example. A watch, or a gun, or any other unfamiliar mechanism, they
regard as a living being. But in our own instance, we are not thrown back
on such primitive conceptions. We do not unconditionally refer lightning
and thunder, plague and volcano, to the activity of such beings. Nevertheless,
there are moments when even a scientist admits the thought of outside purpose
and power, even though one is unable to assign a definite form to the power
whose intervention one believes in. Among such occasions may be counted
any exceptional windfall, or any unparalleled misfortune, especially when
the obvious causes of the event happen not to be in adequate proportion
to the effect that is produced. Even a trivial effect may afford an illustration
of our argument when the conditions of its origin -- as in the dispensations
of the gambling-table -- defy all human calculation. Such inarticulate thoughts
stand wholly apart from the religious beliefs held at this date by civilized
mankind. It is not merely that the unbeliever is affected by them; the person
of orthodox creed is frequently quite unable to bring the suggestions that
flash across the mind into harmony with the dogmas that one has formed for
oneself or accepted from others as to the government of the world and the
nature of its ruler. This Puck of superstition, from whose visitation no
human is completely exempt, is the wan and spectral image of that mighty
and universal generating power whence is derived an endless host of phantoms
of all shapes and colours.
A second step towards the formation of religion follows imperceptibly
on the first. We have marked the assumption that an effect is due to an
exercise of will. Next comes the observation that a series of frequently
recurring effects is to be referred to one and the same natural object.
Thus natural objects would be regarded as the animate and volitional authors
of such processes, and human instinct and inclination, human passion and
design, were ascribed to them in their capacity of exercising an effective
willpower after the human pattern. Wonder and admiration were paid to them,
and according as their operations were useful and wholesome, or the reverse,
they were regarded with love or fear. The great objects of nature exert
a very considerable influence over human life, and it was chicfly in such
cases that humans would feel themselves impelled to win their favour, to
confirm their good will, and to turn their possible hostility to an auspicious
disposition. One would endeavour to persuade the heaven to send fertilizing
rain on earth instead of destructive storm; one would try to induce the
sun to impart a gentle warmth instead of a scorching heat; one would implore
the flood not to sweep away one's dwelling, but to bear one's frail craft
uninjured on its mighty stream. One would seek to mollify the powers that
govern one's existence by petitions, thanksgivings, and offerings -- means
one found so efficacious in the instance of one's earthly masters. One would
invoke their gracious protection, one would thank them for their benefactions
in the past, and one would supplicate for their forgiveness when one feared
to have incurred their displeasure. In a word, one would employ both prayer
and sacrifice in the forms suggested by one's limited experience. One would
possess a redgion and a cult.
Hosts of spirits and demons, not wholly disembodied, material, speedily
range themselves in line with these objects of worship, whixh we may call
natural fetishes. Savages, unacquanited as they are with the finer distinctions
of scientific thought, were led to believe in these beings by a triple set
of inferences. The first was drawn from real or apparent observations of
the outer world; the second from the inner or moral life; and the third
depended on observations taken at the transition from life to death in the
human and animal creation.
The smell of a flower teaches the primitive person that there are objects
not the less real because they evade one's sight and touch. The wind, whose
material nature one can but partially understand, makes one acquainted with
objects that can be felt, but not seen. Shadows, that contain the outline
of an object without its material resistance, and still more the coloured
images reflected in a sheet of water, bring astonishment and confusion to
the mind of primitive people. In both instances one is aware of something
precisely resembling the material object, which yet mocks one's endeavour
to seize it and touch it. Dream pictures serve but to increase one's confusion.
One perceived them, one thought, with all one's senses at once; they stood
in bodily shape before one's eyes, and still in the morning the doors of
one's hut were as firmly closed as overnight. Humans and beasts, plants,
stones, and tools of all kinds, stood indisputably before one, plainly perceptible
to sight, hearing, and touch, and yet in many instances there could actually
have been no room for them in the limited accommodation of one's dwelling.
Thus one is driven to tht conclusion that, like perfumes and winds, shadows
and reflections, they were the souls of things. Occasionally it happens
that the visions of sleep require and demand a different sort of explanation.
The dreamer is not always receiving visits from the souls of other persons
or things. Frequently one believes oneself to be traversing long distances,
and conversing with one's friends in far-off homes. Hence one concludes
that something -- one's own soul or one of one's souls, the belief in a
plurality of souls being both natural and common, -- has temporarily left
one's body. One is subject to the same experiences with the same train of
inferences in the state which we have learnt to call hallucination. The
irregular life led by primitive people, with its long fastings and sudden
excesses, rendered them as liable to such attacks as to heavy and exciting
dreams. Those souls or essences of things must be taken as standing in the
closest relation with the things themselves, which are affected by whatever
affects their souls. In popular belief it is still a bad omen to tread on
a person's shadow, and in one of the tribes of South Africa the crocodile
is believed to get a person in its power if it merely snaps at the reflection
of the person which is thrown on the water from the bank. So the doings
and sufferings of persons in dreams is of the gravest import to the living
originals.
But popular belief endows the soul with far greater power and with practical
independence by a second series of considerations, depending, not on the
observations of sense, but on those of the processes of will. So long as
the inner life of primitive person moves in a uniform and even groove, one
has little cause to reflect on the seat and origin of one's will and endeavour.
It is when the blood begins to surge in one's veins, when one glows and
thrills with emotion, that one's beating heart teaches one of its own accord
how that region of one's body is the theatre of occurrences which one is
impelled to explain to oneself by the light of one's own perception and
of the analogies already at one's disposal. Hitherto one has been accustomed
to connect each particular effect with a particular Being; and the more
violent and sudden the change, the less one will be able to rid oneself
of the impression that some Bemg of the kind is stirring and ruling in one's
own breast. There are moments when one is seized by an overpowering passion.
Rage, for instance, fills one's heart and drives one to a deed of bloodshed
that one may presently bitterly repent. Or, again, in the very act of committing
it, a sudden impulse makes one hold one's hand; and it is in moments such
as these that one is overcome by an irresistible belief in one or more Beings,
within one or without, who drive one to action or restrain ome from the
act. One's belief in the soul reaches its most effective point in the circumstances
which accompany the extinction of the individual life. It is once more the
cases of sudden change which make the deepest impression o the observer,
and give the lead to one's reflection. If dying were always a gradual decay
and a final folding of the hands to sleep, or if the dead person were always
changed beyon recognition, the inferences drawn from the cessation of life
might have taken a different form. Frequently, however no outward changes
disturb the features of the dead. Death comes as a sudden transition from
complete vigou to complete silence, and the spectator asks oneself to what
causes is due this dread and terrifying transformation. Something, one says
in answer to oneself, has departed from the dead person that lent one life
and movement. A cessation of powers and qualities which a moment ago were
in evidence is taken literally as a departure and as a separation in space.
The warm breath, so mysterious in its origin, which the living body always
exhaled, has been extinguished, and the reflection is obvious that the source
of the arrested processes of life has perished simultaneously with the breath.
Violent deaths, when life seems to leave the body with the blood pouring
from the wound, awaken sometimes a belief that life itself is borne on that
crimson stream. A second theory is to be remarked among some other peoples.
The reflection in the pupil of the eye which vanishes at the approach of
death is there regarded as the source of the processes of life and animation.
But these attributes, after all, are most commonly ascribed to the warm
breath or steam which proceeds from within the living organism, and by far
the most of the words which are used in different languages to signify "soul"
and "spirit" express that primary meaning. We saw in both explanations
of the visions of sleep that the soul was supposed to be separable from
the body. Their temporary separation accounts for states of unconsciousness,
catalepsy, and ecstasy, just as the explanation of pathological conditions
of all kinds, such as madness, convulsions, and the like, may best be sought
in the entry of a foreign soul into the body. The instance of demonic possession
is a case in point. The difference is that the separation of the two elements
in death is regarded as enduring and final.
We see, then, that the breath is regarded as an independent being, but
there is no ground to assume that when it has left the body it must perish
as well. On the contrary, the picture of the beloved dead is an unfading
possession; one's soul, in other words, hovers round us. And how -- so primitive
people asked themselves -- should it be otherwise ? The soul is plainly
impelled to haunt as long as it can the old familiar places, and to linger
about the objects which it cared for and loved. The last doubt on this question
is dispelled by the frequent visitation of the image of the departed in
the dreams of survivors in the night-time.
Two results ensue from the assumption of independent souls or spirits
outliving their connection with the human and maybe the animal body. In
the first place, it gave rise to a second class of objects of worship parallel
to the natural fetishes. Secondly, it supplied a pattern on which imagination
could mould a series of other Beings, which either existed independently
or temporarily occupied a visible habitation. There was no lack of urgent
motives for the adoption of this creed, and for such operations of the fancy
on the part of primitive people. Theye were governed by outward circumstances
in a hardly conceivable degree. One's desire to enlighten the darkness that
surrounded one at every step was only matched by one's inability to give
it practica1 satisfaction. Sickness and health, famine and plenty, success
and failure in the chase, in sport, and in war, followed one another in
bewildering succession. Savage people naturally wished to recognize the
agents of their fortune, and to influence them on their own behalf, but
their powerlessness to fulfill that longing in any rational manner was stronger
than the wish itself. A maximum of curiosity in each individual was combined
with a minimum of collective knowledge. Fancy was set in motion on every
side with hardly a noticeable exception in order to span that gulf, and
it is difficult to form an approximate conception of the amount of imagination
at play. For the protective roof which civilization has built over people
is at the same time a party-wall interposed between them and nature. The
objects of natural worship were indefinitely extended. Forest and field,
bush and fountain, were filled with them. But the needs of primitive people
outgrew their rate of increase; they could not but observe that their weal
and woe, their success and misfortune, were not invariably connected with
objects perceptible to sense. They observed a sudden scarcity where game
had formerly been abundant; they found themselves all at once no match for
the foe they had frequently routed; they felt a paralysis creep through
their limbs, or a mist obstruct their consciousness, and in none of these
instances could they blame any visible being. They seized on any outward
circumstance which gave a momentary direction to their bewildered thought
as an infallible guide. They would assume a close and definite connection
between occurrences that happened in fortuitous coincidence or succession.
If an unknown animal, for instance, were suddenly to burst from the thicket
at a time when a pestilence was raging, they would straightway worship it
and implore its good graces as the author of the plague; and through all
this uncertainty primitive people never cease anxiously to look for the
agents of their good luck and ill. Their longing for help and salvation
remained insatiable throughout. Presently they turned for aid to those who
had watched over them in life, and addressed their prayers to the spirits
of his departed kinsfolk, parents, and forefathers. The worship of ancestors
was started, and with it went the supplication of spirits not confined to
natural objects, but associated in thought with the ordinances and occurrences
of life. Spirits were assumed with powers of protection and mischief. We
are thus presented with three classes of objects of worship, overlapping
one another at various points. They began to react on one another, and to
pass into one another's spheres.
The legendary figure of some remote ancestor, the forefather of a whole
tribe or race, would be ranked on a footing of equality with the great natural
fetishes. It might happen, indeed, that just as a nation or an illustrious
tribe would regard and worship the sun or the sky as the author of its existence,
so this legendary forefather would be identified with one of those fetishes.
Nor need it arouse our surprise that objects of nature or art should come
to be looked on as the homes of ancestral or other spirits, and as such
should receive a form of worship and be ranked as secondary fetishes. They
would owe these honours not so much to any palpable influence they exercised
as to their strangeness, their unaccustomed shape or colour, or their accidental
connection with the memory of some important event. Finally, it is obvious
that spirits or demons, originally confined to no fixed abode, would be
confused at times with a natural fetish through their similarity in name
or qualities, and would at last be merged with it in a single being. It
is wholly illegitimate to infer from occurrences of this more or less isolated
character that any of the three great classes of objects of worship, natural
fetishes or independent spirits, for example, was foreign to the original
belief of the people, or of later and adventitious derivation. As well might
one conclude from the proved worship of animals, as such, or from the deification
of humans, which has been frequently observed, and which still obtains through
the great Hindoo civilization, that these are the sole or even the chief
sources of religious belief. It is always difficult and often hopeless to
attempt to follow the details of such a process of transformation, and to
sift the nucleus of a religion from its gradual accretions. But the fact
that such transformation took place, and that the course of religious development
was thereby deeply affected, is a truth which may be stated without reserve
At this point, however, it will be well to return to the more modest path
from which we have digressed.
6. The gods of Greece assembled in Olympus round the throne of Zeus,
hearkening the song of Apollo and the Muses, sipping nectar from golden
goblets, involved in adventures of war and love -- we cannot but perceive
how little they resemble the earliest and roughest products of religious
imagination. They are severed by a yawning gulf which it would seem to be
impossible to bridge over. Nevertheless, the appearance is fallacious. The
exact observer will remark a vast number of links and stepping-stones, till
one will hardly venture to distinguish between the beginning of the one
series of beings and the end of the other; above all, between the end of
the natural fetish and the beginning of the anthropomorphic god. Comparative
philology tells us that Zeus, the chief of the gods of Olympus, was originally
no other than the sky itself. Hence he was said to rain, to hurl the lightnings,
and to gather the clouds. Homer himself still entitles the Earth-goddess
"broad-bosomed" or "broad-wayed" indifferently, and
thus shifts, like the colours of the chameleon, between two quite contrary
conceptions. When E:arth is represented by an old theological poet as giving
birth to high mountains and to the starry heaven that it may wholly encompass
her, or when Earth as the bride of Heaven is represented as the mother of
deep-eddying Ocean, and Ocean again with Tethys as engendering the rivers,
we are plainly standing with both feet in the realm of the pure worship
of nature. Presently, however, we are confronted with a different set of
stories. Fair-flowing Xanthus is represented by Homer as subject to a wrathful
mood; Achilles fills his bed with dead men; he is sorely pressed by the
flames ignited by Hephaestus, smith of the gods; he is in danger of defeat;
he stays his course in order to escape from the conflagration; and he implores
Hera the white-armed, the woman-like consort of the king of the gods, to
help him to resist the savage onslaught of her son. In all these instances
we are surely conscious of two fundamentally different kinds of religious
imagination, of two strata, as it were, which a volcanic eruption has thrown
into hopeless confusion.
Thc following reply may be attempted to the question why Greek religion,
like that of countless other peoples, has undergone this transformation.
It was an intrinsic tendency of the associative faculty, which led to the
personification of nature, to lend more and more of a human character to
the objects of worship. First came the connection in thought between movements
or effects and the impulses of the human will. Next volition was connected
with the whole range of human emotion; and, finally, the range of human
emotion was associated in thought with the external form of humans and the
sum of the conditions of human life. This development took a slow course.
It was delayed by humans themselves, who, on the confines of savagery, knowing
no law but that of need, and harassed as they were by real and imaginary
dangers, were not yet sufficiently in conceit with themselves to form these
supreme powers in their own mean and ignoble image. Still, the gradual beginnings
of civilization tended to level the differences and to reduce the distance
between the heights and the depths. No people, we may conjecture, ever yet
came to regard the great powers of nature as savages living on roots and
berries in a state of semi-starvation. But a tribe with an abundance of
rich hunting-grounds might conceive a heavenly hunter such as the Germanic
Wotan, or, like the farmers of ancient India, would figure the god of heaven
and his clouds as a shepherd with his flock. And this tendency was notably
strengthened by the auspicious circumstances of external life, which awoke
the desire for clearness, distinctness, and a logical sequence of ideas.
It is now the exception and no longer the rule, to meet with such vague,
indefinite, and contradictory conceptions as that of a sensitive stream,
or of a river brought to birth by generation. We may not be able to assert
conclusively whether the worship of ancestors or of fetishes was the earlier
in time, but we can assert that, old as demonism may have been, it must
have been extended by the division of labour and the growing diversity of
life. Fresh demons had to be created to meet the multiplicity of human business
and experience. But these independent spirits offer less opposition to the
personifying faculty than objects of natural worship, and they presently
formed the model on which the last-named were moulded. Demons, like souls,
were conceived as entering human bodies. Our remarks about demonic possession
will recur in this connection, and the process which nothing prevented and
many conditions assisted was speedily adapted to the case of natural fetishes.
Spirits and gods whose habitation is confined to external things, which
they use as their instruments, now replace or accompany the volitional and
conscious objects of nature. Thus the god and the external thing are no
longer completely identified. They merely stand in the relation of tenant
and abode. The gods become more independent of the destiny of the object
they inhabit; their spheres of activity are no longer confined to it, but
they obtain an allowance of free action.
The graceful feminine figures which the Greeks worshipped as nymphs afford
an instructive example of this transformation. Homer's hymn to Aphrodite
takes cognizance of dryads who share in the dance of the Immortals and sport
with Hermes and the fauns under the shadows of the rocks. But the pines
and the high-branching oaks they inhabit are something more than their mere
dwelling place. These beings are but half divine; they are born, they grow,
and they die together with the abodes they haunt. Other nymphs are exempt
from that fate. They dwell in water-brooks, meadows, and groves, but they
are numbered with the Immortals, and they are not missing from the great
council of the gods when Zeus gathers them in his gleaming halls. We may
draw the following conclusion. There was a time when the tree itself was
personified and worshipped. Next came a period when the spirit of its life
was regarded as an independent being, separable from it, but closely bound
up with its destiny. Finally, this last bond was severed as well; the divine
being was liberated, as it were, and hovered indestructibly over the perishable
object of its care. This final and decisive step put polytheism in the place
of fetishism. Traces of the era of fetishes linger about but a few of the
great unique objects of nature, such as the earth, the stars, and the legendary
Oceanus. And even in these instances fresh figures were created under the
influence of the new thought to accompany the older deities, barely touched
as they were by the finger of anthropomorphism. A further development may
here be remarked. These natural spirits, released from their external objects,
were set an appointed task just as certain independent deities presided
over whole categories of occupation. They were appointed to wood or garden,
to the fountain, the wind, and so forth, and became what has appropriately
been termed "class-gods." This transformation was assisted, apart
from the influence of demonism, by the progressive perception of the intrinsic
likeness in whole series of beings. Humanity's generalizing powers found
here their earliest satisfaction, and their artistic and inventive faculties
were provided with inexhaustible material in the contemplation of the free
action of the gods.
The Greeks were furnished in a pre-eminent degree with the conditions requisite for the progress of personification, and for the idealization of the divine powers which depended on it. The demand for clearness and distinctness may have been a birthright of the Greeks; it was obviously strengthened by the bright air and brilliant sky enjoyed through the greater part of Hellas, by the sharp outline of its hills, by its wide and yet circumscribed horizon. The Greek sense of beauty was constantly fed on landscapes combining in the smallest compass all the 1oveliest elements of nature. Green pastures and snowy peaks, dusky pine-woods and smiling meadows, wide prospects over land and sea, fascinated the eye at every turn And the inventive spirit which was later to display itself in the rich and teeming inheritance of Greek poetry and art must surely have seized on the first material at its disposal, and therein have spent the powers which vere denied expression elsewhere.
It is difficult to follow the course of this evolution in detail, and
our difficulty is enhanced by the character of the literary monuments that
have reached us. It was a cherished belief of former generations that Homer's
poems were produced in the infancy of Greece. Schliemann's spade has destroyed
this illusion. A notable degree of material civilization clearly distinguished
the eastern portions of Greece -- the islands, and the shore of Asia Minor
-- soon after 1500 B.C. The conditions of human life depicted by the Homeric
poems are the result of a comparatively long development contaminated by
Egypt and the East. When we recall the splendid banqueting-halls, with their
plates of beaten metals, their blue glazed friezes on a gleaming alabaster
ground, their ceilings artistically carved, and their drinking cups of embossed
gold, we look in vain for traces of primitive peoples in the princes and
nobles whose Round Table was the theme of the Homeric poems. Their passions,
it is true, were still uncontrolled. Otherwise the insatiable wrath of Achilles
or Meleager would never have become a favourite subject for poetic description.
We recall the period in which the Niebelungenlied was composed, when the
original and untamed force of passionate sensibility fell on an era of foreign
manners and imported refinement of taste. But we find no trace in these
heroes of the timidity and awe with which the almighty forces of nature
were regardecl by primitive people. The gods were fashioned by the nobles
after the pattern of their own existence, as they acquired more and more
self-esteem, more and more security, in the stress of life. Olympus became
a mirror of heroic experience, and its gorgeous and frequently tumultuous
features were faithfully reproduced. Gods and mortals approached each other
with a familiarity never since repeated. Mortals wore no little of divine
dignity; the gods took no mean share of human weakness. The virtues ascribed
to the gods were the virtues dearest to those warriors-qualities of valour
and pride, and steadfastness in friendship and hate. Gods, like mortals,
were affected by strong individual motives; the obligation of duty was almost
always a matter of personal loyalty, and in the Iliad at least they but
rarely appear as the champions of abstract justice. To their worshippers
who lavished precious gifts on them, to the cities that dedicated splendid
temples to them, to the tribes and races which traditionally enjoyed their
favour, they lent their faithful protection with a loyalty as resolute as
it was untiring. They were but little restrained by any scruples of morality;
nay, their special favourites were endowed by them with talents for perjury
and theft. They seldom paused to consider the rights or wrongs of the matter
to which they devoted their assistance, else how could some of the gods
have been found on the side of the Greeks, while others with equal interest
and trouble supported the Trojan cause ? How, again, could Poseidon in the
Odyssey have persecuted patient Odysseus with inexhaustible hate, while
Athene proved herself in every danger his trusty counsellor and shield ?
Their obedience was solely due to the god of heaven, chief of the gods,
and more often than not they obeyed him with reluctance, and used every
artifice of deceit and guile to evade the obligation of his command. Moreover,
the heavenly overlord resembled his earthly prototype in that his power
did not rest on the immovable foundation of law. He found himself frequently
obliged to extort the fulfilment of his orders by the employment of threats,
and even by violent maltreatment. There was a single peremptory exception
to the chaos induced by the acts and passions of the Immortals. Moira, or
Fate, was supreme over gods and mortals alike, and in her worship we recognize
the faint and earliest perception of the operation of law throughout the
range of experience. Thus the oldest monuments of the Greek intellect that
have reached us show us the gods in as human a form as is compatible with
reverent worship, and instances indeed could be found where that last limit
was transgressed. Take, for example, the lovestory of Ares and Aphrodite;
it stirred the Phceacians to ribald mirth, and it evinces a worldliness
in religious Conception which, like the exclusive cult of beauty of the
Cinquecento, could hardly have spread over wide classes of the population
without seriously affecting the heart of religious belief. The majesty of
the ancient Greek religion is not to be found in the confines of the courtly
epic, where the joys of the world and the flesh and the frank deliciousness
of life disperse the gloomier aspects of belief, and clothe them, so to
speak, with their brilliance. The exceptional occurrences that seem to contradict
this view will be found to be its clearest illustration.
Homeric peoples believed themselves to be constantly and universally
surrounded by gods and dependent on them. They attributed their good luck
and ill, their successful spearthrust or their enemy's escape, to the friendship
or hostility of a demon. Every cunning plan, every sound device, was credited
to divine inspiration, and every act of infatuated blindness was ascribed
to the same cause. It was the aim of all their endeavours to win the favour
of the Immortals and to avert their wrath. But despite this dependence,
and despite the occurrence, in the Iliad especially, with its shifting battle-scenes,
of situations fraught with dire peril, it is to be noted that humans themselves,
the costliest of human possessions, are never offered as a sacrifice to
the gods. The religion of the Greeks, like that of most other peoples, was
familiar with human sacrifices; but though it survives till the full light
of historic times, it is completely missing from the picture of civilization
displayed by the Homeric poems. Or rather, the abominable custom is mentioned
therein on one single occasion, as the exception which proves the rule.
At the splendid obsequies devised by Achilles in honour of Patroclus, the
well-beloved, we are told that, besides innumerable sheep and oxen, besides
four horses and two favourite hounds, twelve Trojan youths were first slaughtered
and then burnt with the body of his dead friend. This complete consumption
of the offering by fire is proved by more recent ritual evidence to have
been the ceremony in vogue among worshippers of the infernal deities. The
blood of the slaughtered beasts and humans is first suffered to trickle
over the corpse, and the soul is supposed to be present and to be refreshed
and honoured by the gifts it receives. Achilles performs by this act a solemn
obligation to the dead, and narrates it to the soul, when it appears to
him by night, and again at the funera1 itself. But, strangely enough, the
description of this revolting deed has none of that sensuous breadth and
detail which we correctly call the epic style, and find so characteristic
of Homer. Rather the poet glides, as it were, with deliberate haste over
the horrible story. He and his audience seem to shrink from it; it is the
legacy of a world of thought and feeling from which the vitality has departed,
and this impression is strengthened by other and kindred observations. Except
for this single instance, hardly any trace whatsoever is found in the Homeric
poems of the whole series of rites connected with and dependent on the belief
in the protracted existence of powerful beings rising with spectral influence
from the grave, and constantly demanding fresh tokens of propitiation. There
are no sacrifices to the dead, whether bloody or bloodless, there is no
purlfication for homicide, no worship of souls or ancestors. The souls,
it is true, survive the bodies, but they are well-nigh exclusively confined
to the far infernal realms of death, where they wander as "powerless
heads," vagrant shadows, and bloodless ghosts, of no efficacy and of
little account. It was quite different in later times, and, as we learn
from trustworthy discoveries and equally trustworthy conclusions, in earlier
times too. We may appropriately dwell on this point, which is of great importance
to the history of the belief in souls and to religious history in general.
7. The sacrifice of prisoners or slaves is a funeral custom of remote
antiquity, and one which is widely spread in our own times. The Scythians,
when they buried their king, used to strangle one of his concubines and
five of his slaves -- the cook, the cup-bearer, the chamberlain, the groom,
and the doorkeeper -- and these, together with his favourite horses, and
with a quantity of costly vessels, of golden goblets and so forth, would
be committed to the royal grave. After the lapse of a year, fifty more chosen
slaves were strangled, set upon as many slaughtered horses, and stationed
round the tomb like a guard of honour.
Many pages and chapters might be filled with the enumeration of similar
customs, from which the Hindoo suttee is also derived. Naturally they show
a long course of gradations, varying from the savage and barbarous to the
tender and refined. Human sacrifices were followed by animal sacrifices,
and these in their turn by drink sacrifices and other bloodless offerings.
Æschylus and Sophocles represent Agamemnon's tomb in Mycena as the
recipient of libations of milk, locks of hair, and garlands of flowers.
But newly discovered tombs of the kings in that city, dating from hoary
antiquity, show traces of sacrificial offerings of a far more substantial
kind. Bones of animals, and human remains too, were found there, besides
innumerable most costly weapons, drinking-cups, and other vessels. Taking
these objects in connection with the altars discovered in the vaulted tomb
at Orchomenus in Bceotia, we may infer that the souls of the dead enjoyed
adoration and worship in the proper sense of the word. The cult of ancestors
and souls has been in almost universal vogue. It is still as widely spread
among the most debased savages in all regions of the earth as among the
highly civilized Chinese, in whose state-religion it plays the most important
part. It takes precedence, too, in the beliefs of nations of Aryan descent.
The Romans observed it no less than the Greeks, and the "Manes"
of ancient Rome were the " pitaras " of the Hindoos. The extinction
of a family at Athens was regarded as ominous, inasmuch as its ancestors
would be deprived of the honours that were due to them. The whole population
of Greece, and the communities of which it was composed in a series, as
it were, of concentric circles, addressed their prayers to real or imaginary
forefathers. And so imperious was this need that professional brotherhoods
or guilds would invent a common ancestor, should they otherwise not possess
one. The custom was bound up with the origins of state and society, which
were originally ranked as merely extended family groups. But our immediate
interest is confined to the deepest root of this custom -- the belief in
the protracted existence of the soul as a powerful being with enduring influence
on the success and failure of its living descendants. We have already discussed
the source of this belief, and we shall later be occupied with the changes
that it underwent. At present we have to dispel a misunderstanding which
might darken our historical insight.
The souls depicted by Homer have dwindled to pale and ineffectual shadows.
Their worship, and the customs that arise from it, are practically obsolete
in his poems, but it would be erroneous to conclude from these facts that
the evidence from comparative ethnology should be neglected, or that the
oldest form of this part of the Greek religion is preserved in epic poetry.
The discoveries dating from the period of civilization which is now called
the Mycenæan have shattered the last foundation of every possible
doubt. The causes that induced this change in religious ideas can only be
arrived at by conjecture. It plainly depended, not merely on temporal, but
also on local conditions, and at first, at least, it was probably confined
to certain classes of the population. At the period of which we are speaking
the custom of burning the dead body prevailed, and the consequent belief
obtained, and was clearly expressed by Homer, that the consuming flames
finally severed body from soul, and consigned the soul to the realm of shadows.
In connection with the development of Greek religion, considerable influence
has been attached to this custom and its results. Of hardly secondary account
may be reckoned the local separation of colonists from their ancestral tombs,
and from the seats of worship appertaining to them in the mother-country.
But of greater importance than all was the joy in life and the world, so
repellent to melancholy and gloom, which pervades the Homeric poems. It
shrank from the sinister and the spectral with the same invincible optimism
that banished the ugly and the grotesque from its purview. Nor was itonly
the shades of the dead that had to recede into the background. Spectral
godheads such as Hecate, orrtble spirits such as the Titans with their hundred
arms and fifty heads, coarse and revolting myths such as that of the emasculation
of Uranus, were similarly compelled to give way to the instinct of joy;
and monsters of the type of the round-eyed Cyclops were treated m a more
playful humour. Two alternative inferences present themselves. We may either
regard the gradual growth of the sense of beauty and the rise in the standard
of life dependent on the progress of material civilization as the chief
factor of development; or we may ascrtbe to the people who invented philosophy
and natural science the possession, even in those early times, of the elements
of rationalistic enlightenment. In other words, is the change in the soul-idea
which confronts us in Homer to be attributed in the first instance to the
lightness or to the brightness of the Ionian genius ? This question does
not yet admit of a definite answer. We owe the possibility of its discussion
to the brilliant intellectual and analytical powers of a contemporary student
in these fields.
8. The personification of Nature must, then, primarily be thanked for
the inexhaustible material it supplied to the play, first of imagination
and next of imagination heightened to art. But it must further be recognized
as having been the earliest to satisfy the curiosity of people, and our
craving for light in the deep darkness in the midst of which we live and
breathe. The "why" and "wherefore" of sensible phenomena
are questions that cannot be avoided, and the spontaneous presumption that
everything which happens is due to the impulse of volitional beings -- a
presumption springing from the unlimited dominion of the association of
ideas -- affords, it must be admitted, a sort of answer in itself. It is
a kind of philosophy of nature, capable of infinite extension in proportion
to the increase of the number of phenomena observed, and to the more and
more clearly defined shapes of the powers of nature, regarded as living
beings. Primitive peoples are not merely poets, believing in the truth of
their inventions; they are, in their way, a kind of investigator as well.
The mass of answers which they give to the questions continually pressing
on them is gradually composed to an all-embracing weft and the threads thereof
are myths. As evidence of this we may instance the popular legends of all
times and countries with their remarkable points of likeness and their no
less striking points of difference. The two greatest heavenly bodies figure
in almost every nation as a related pair, whether in the relation of husband
and wife or of sister and brother. Numberless myths represent the phases
of the moon as the wandering of the lunar goddess, and the occasional eclipses
of sun and moon as the consequences, partly of domestic strife, partly of
the hostile attacks of dragons and monsters. The Semite, for example, explained
the weakness of the sun in winter by the story of Samson's -- the sun-god's
-- bewitchment by the seductive goddess of the night, who robbed him of
his shining hair; as soon as his long locks, the sunbeams, in which his
strength resided, were cut off, it was an easy task to blind him. The ancient
Indian regarded the clouds as cows -- as soon as they were milked the fruitful
rain poured down; if the quickening moisture were long delayed, the drought
was ascribed to evil spirits who had stolen the herds and hidden them in
rocky caves, and Indra, the god of heaven, had to descend on the storm-wind
to free them from their bondage, and rescue them from the robbers. The dreadful
spectacle afforded to the gaze of primitive people by a mountain emitting
flames would forthwith seem to them the work of a demon dwelling in the
bowels of the Earth. Many tribes would content themselves with this explanation,
but one or another would presently ask why it was that so mighty a spirit
should be confined in infernal darkness The answer would suggest itself
spontaneously, he had been vanquished in conflict with a yet more powerful
bemg. Thus Typhon and Enceladus were looked on by the Greeks as the vanquished
opponents of the great god of heaven, bearing the heavy penalty of their
crime. Or take the instance of the earth, from whose womb came forth a constant
procession of fruits. How natural it was to represent her as a woman impregnated
by the heaven above her, who sent down his life-giving rain. This world-wide
myth has been turned to various forms. The Maoris and Chinese, the Phoenicians
and Greeks, would ask why husband and wife were kept so far apart from each
other, instead of dwelling in the intimate relations of a conjugal pair.
The inhabitants of New Zealand replied with the story that the offspring
of Rangi (heaven) and Papa (earth) had no room to live as long as their
parents were united. So at last they made up their minds to relieve themselves
from the pressure and the darkness, and one of them -- the mighty god and
father of the forests -- succeeded, after many vain attempts on the part
of his brethren, in sundering their parents by force. But the love of heaven
and earth survived their separation. Passionate sighs, which mortals call
mist, still rise to heaven from the breast of mother earth, and tears still
trickle from the eyes of the sad god of heaven, and are called by mortals
drops of dew. This ingenious and highly poetical myth of the Maoris gives
the key to a similar but far coarser legend which obtained in Greece, and
of which merely fragments have come down to us. Hesiod tells us that the
earth was cramped and oppressed by her teeming burden of children, of which
heaven was the father. But heaven, adds the poet, would not suffer them
to come to birth, but thrust them back in their mother's womb. Panting from
her labours, she devises a cunning scheme, and confides its execution to
one of her sons. Cronos whets his sickle and mutilates Uranus his father,
so that he is debarred from further procreation, and Gaia is released thenceforward
from her husband's embraces, and is enabled, we may add, to find room for
the offspring with whom she is teeming.
We may mark at this point the following conclusion. The process of personification
was not confined to mere objects, but was extended to forces, states, and
qualities. Night, darkness, death, sleep, love, appetite, infatuation, were
all looked on by the Greeks as individual beings more or less successfully
personified. Some are completely embodied, others stand out from the background
of their content as imperfectly as a bas-relief. The relations existing
between these forces or states are explained by analogies from human or
animal life. Likeness, for instance, figures as relationship, death and
sleep are twin brothers; consecution figures as generation, so that day
is the offspring of night, or night of day indifferently. All groups of
like nature appear as tribes, kindred, or families, and traces of this process
of thought are to be found in our language to this day. Finally, the habit
of explaining an enduring condition or the recurring incidents of the world
by mythical fictions led to the attempt to solve the great riddles of human
life and fate in a similar manner. The Greek in his dark hour of pessimism
would ask why the evils of life were so much in excess of its blessings,
and the question immediately suggested a second one -- Who and what brought
evil in the world ? And the answer mainly resembles that of the modern Frenchman,
the sum of whose researches into the source of innumerable transgressions
was contained in the words " cherchez la femme." But the ancient
Greeks cast their indictment of the weaker and fairer sex in the form of
a single charge. They relate that Zeus, with the help of the rest of the
gods, in order to punish Prometheus for his theft of fire and the consequent
arrogance of mankind, created a woman adorned with all the graces as the
mother of the female race, and sent her down to the earth. At another time
the Greek, still groping for enlightenment on this subject, accused curiosity
or the thirst for knowledge as the root of all evil. If the gods, they said,
had endowed us with every blessing, and had locked up all evils in a box,
and had straightly warned us not to open it, human -- and chicfly woman's
-- curiosity would have set at nought the divine prohibition. Both myths
are merged in one: Pandora, the woman, as her name implies, adorned with
every seductive gift, is the woman, stung by curiosity, who lifts the lid
of the fateful box and lets its perilous contents escape. Once more we are
astounded at the similarity of mythical invention obtaining among the most
diverse peoples, and one almost involuntarily recalls the allied Hebraic
story of Eve the mother of all life -- and the ominous consequences of her
sinful curiosity.
9. The multiplicity of myths and the crowd of deities must at last have
proved a weariness and a stumbling block to the orthodox Greek. Legends
clustered like weeds in a pathless and primeval forest, obstructed by ever-fresh
undergrowth. The thinning axe was wanted, and a hand was presently found
to wield it with thew and sinew. A peasant's vigour and a peasant's shrewdness
accomplished the arduous task, and we reach in him the earliest didactic
poet of the Occident. Hesiod of Ascra, in Bceotia, flourished in the eighth
century B.C. He sprang from a soil where the air was less bright than in
the rest of Greece, and one's heart was less light in one's breast. His
intellect was clear but clumsy; he was versed in the management of house
and field, and was not a stranger to lawsuits. His imaginative powers were
of comparatively restricted range, and his disposition was yet more unyielding.
A Roman among Greeks, the author of " Works and Days " was distinguished
by sober sensibilities, by a strict love of order, and by the parsimonious
thrift of a good business man trained in the manufacture of smooth account-books,
averse from any hint of contradiction, and shy of all superfluity. It is
in this spirit, so to speak, that he took an inventory of Olympus, fitting
each of the Immortals in the framework of his system by the genealogical
clamps. He pruned the luxuriance of epic poetry, reviving the immemorial
but dimly understood traditions extant among the lower orders of Greece
without respect to their claims to beauty. Thus his theogony comprised a
complete and comprehensive picture, with but rare gleams of true poetry
and hardly a breath of the genuine joy of life. The names of Homer and Hesiod
were coupled in remote antiquity as the twin authors of Greek religion.
But they stand, in point of fact, in strong contrast. The unchecked imagination
of Ionian poets, which made light of the contradictions and diversities
of legend, differed as widely from the home-keeping, methodical wisdom of
the Bceotian peasant as the brilliant insonciance of their noble
audience from the gloomy spirit of the meek hinds and farmers for whom Hesiod's
poems were composed.
The " Theogony " is at once a cosmogony; the " Origin
of the Gods" included the origin of the world. We are chiefly concerned
with the last named of these pairs, and may let the poet speak for himself.
At the beginning, he tells us, there was Chaos: then come Gaia, the broadbosomed
earth, and next, Eros, loveliest of the gods, who compels the senses of
mortals and immortals alike, and melts the strength of their limbs. Chaos
engendered Darkness and Black Night, and Air and Day -- Æther and
Hemera -- sprang from their union. Gaia first created of her own accord
the starry heaven, the high mountains, and Pontus, the sea; then, as the
bride of Uranus, she brought forth Oceanus, the stream that encompasses
the earth, and a long series of children, some of them mighty monsters,
and others of an almost allegorical description, besides the gods of the
lightning called Cyclopes, and Tethys, the great goddess of the sea. From
the marriage of Ocean and Tethys sprang fountains and the streams. The sun-god,
the moon-goddess, and the Dawn were born to two other children of Heaven
and Earth. Dawn is united to her cousin Astraeus, god of the stars, and
the Winds, the Morning-star, and the rest of the luminaries were born of
that marriage.
Part of this exposition is so puerile in its simplicity, that hardly
a word of comment is required. "The greater ii the author of the less:"
hence the mountains were born of the Earth; mighty Oceanus and the smaller
streams and rivers stood in the relation of father and sons; the little
Morning-star was the son of the widespreading Dawn, and the rest of the
stars were clearly to be set down as his brothers. It is less obvious why
the Day should have sprung from the Night, for the pposite theory would
have been equally admissible, and an old Indian hymn-writer actually poses
the question whether Day or Night was created first. Still, Hesiod's Opinion
may perhaps be called the more natural. Darkness appears to us as a permanent
state requiring no explanation; light, at each manifestation, is due to
a special event, whether it be the rise of the sun, the lightning of the
storm-cloud, or the ignition of a flame by human hand. So far, then, we
have merely had to deal with the earliest reflections of thoughtful and
bewildered man. These tell their own story, but a more attentive examination
is required when we come to the most important part of Hesiod's work, where
he discusses the origin of the world.
The brief and arid character of this exposition is the first point that
we notice, and it arouses our astonishment. The stage-bell rings, as it
were, and Chaos, Gaia, and Eros appear as the curtain rises. No hint is
vouchsafed as to the reason of their appearance. A bare "but then"
connects the origin of Earth with the origin of Chaos. Not a single syllable
of explanation is given of the When and How of this process, whether Earth
was born of Chaos or not, and what were the aids to birth; and the same
unbroken silence is preserved on the promotion of the Love-god to the prominent
part which he fills. Of course one may say, the principle of love or generation
must have entered the world before any procreation could take place. But
why should the didactic poet drop it without a word, why should he never
refer to that function of Eros at all, and why should he rather disguise
it, as we plainly perceive to be the fact ? Various epithets are here predicated
of the Love-god, and in a later passage he is given a place next to Himeros
-- craving -- in the train of Aphrodite. But none of these allusions recalls
in the remotest degree the mighty, vitalizing creative Being who alone is
appropriate in this connection, and whom we shall meet later on in other
cosmogonic experiments, where the origin and function of Eros come to adequate
expression. One thing is as clear as noonday. A wide gulf is fixed between
the summary and superficial methods of Hesiod's inquiry into origins and
the devotion of those who applied the whole force of their immature philosophy
to the solution of the great enigma. Hesiod's system is a mere husk of thought
which must once have been filled with life. It has survived the loss of
its contents, just as the shell survives the shell-fish. We seem to be gazing
at a hortus siccus of conceptions, the growth and development of
which we are no longer able to watch. Inference has to take the place of
direct observation, and a start must be made at the terms the poet used,
presumably with but partial comprehension. These terms will help us to construct
the process of thought of which they are the dead deposit. We shall be assisted
herein by the consideration of kindred phenomena, not merely in Greece,
but in other countries as well. We have already briefly described the nature
of Eros, and may now proceed to discuss the meaning of Chaos.
Chaos resembles empty space as closely as the inexact thought of primitive
ppeoples approximates to the speculative conceptions of advanced philosophers.
Primitive pwoplw endeavour to imagine the primordial condition of things,
in all its striking contrast to the world as they knows it. The earth, and
all that is therein, and the dome of the sky were not extant. All that remained
was a something stretching from the topmost heights to the uttermost depths,
and continuing immeasurably on either side the hollow emptiness interposed
between the Heaven and the Earth. The Babylonians called it apsu, "the
abyss," or tiamat, "the deep." The Scandinavians knew it
as ginnunga gap, "the yawning gap," a term of which the
first word belongs to the same root as the Greek Chaos. This gaping
void, this abysmal deep, was conceived as obscure and dark simply because
-- in accordance with the principles of this system -- none of the sources
of light had as yet been put in action. For the same reason, the observer
confined one's imagination to the depths rather than the heights of Chaos,
height and light being hardly distinguishable in one's mind. Chaos filled
the whole space known to or even suspected by primitive thought. Earth and
her complement -- the dome of heaven with its luminaries sufficed for one's
knowledge and one's thought; even one's vague and aspiring curiosity was
content to flutter in those limits. One's intellect stopped short at the
idea of the distance between heaven and earth stretching into the infinite.
The two other dimensions of space troubled them scarcely at all, and whether
they believed in their finite or infinite extension it would be equally
futile to inquire.
Thus Hesiod's inventory included not merely the simple popular legends but also the oldest attempts at speculation. These last, indeed, are presented in so rough and incomplete a guise that his sparse allusions can only acquaint us with the existence of such attempts at his time, and with their barest and most general outline. We shall have to trust to later accounts to discover their contents more accurately, though our knowledge at the best can only be approximate. Then, too, we shall have occasion to examine the standard of thought to which such experiments belong. Meantime, our survey of Hesiod would be incomplete without a reference to one side of his scheme which also bears a more speculative character. Many of the beings he presents to us, and interweaves in his genealogies, show little or nothing of the vivid personification which marks the figures of simple popular belief. "Lying Speeches," for instances, would hardly impress any one at first sight as individual personages. Yet they are found with " Toilsome Labour," "Tearful Pains," " Battles," and "Carnage " in the enumeration of the offspring of Eris, or Strife. The experience is repeated in the instance of the children of Night. These do not merely include mythical figures of a comparatively life-like kind, such as Eris herself, Sleep, Death, the Moirai, or goddesses of Fate, and so forth, but also blank, spectral personifications, such as "Deceit " and "Ruinous Old Age." "Deceit's" title to that place would appear to rest on its habit of avoiding the light; Old Age is promoted to it on no other ground than that every untoward and unwelcome event seems appropriate to the region of darkness and gloom, very much in the same way as we ourselves speak of "gloomy thoughts" and "black cares." No one can exactly determine Hesiod's debt to his predecessors either here or elsewhere; but it is fair to believe that in such purely speculative excursions he was trusting to his own imagination.