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Title: The religion of Plutarch
A pagan creed of apostolic times
Author: John Oakesmith
Release date: January 15, 2024 [eBook #72730]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Longmans, Green, and co, 1902
Credits: Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGION OF PLUTARCH ***
THE RELIGION OF PLUTARCH
THE RELIGION OF
PLUTARCH
_A PAGAN CREED OF APOSTOLIC TIMES_
AN ESSAY
BY
JOHN OAKESMITH, D.LITT., M.A.
Διὸ καὶ φιλόμυθος ὁ φιλόσοφός τώς ἐστιν.
ARIST., _Meta._, i. 2.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1902
_All rights reserved_
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The following pages are practically a reprint of a volume which was
issued for private circulation some twelve months ago, under the title
“The Religion of Plutarch as expounded in his ‘Ethics.’” The main
difference between the present volume and its predecessor consists in the
translation or removal of various quotations from Greek and Latin sources
which were given in full in the first edition of the book. The references
to these sources have, of course, been retained. Verbal corrections
have been made here and there, and a few pages of new matter have been
introduced into the “Preface.” In other respects the two impressions are
substantially the same.
I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without expressing my gratitude
to J. E. Sandys, Esq., Litt.D., Public Orator in the University of
Cambridge, and Examiner in Greek at the University of London, who kindly
placed at my disposal his own copy of the original essay, in which he
had made numerous suggestions on points of style, and on questions of
scholarship in general. These suggestions have, for the most part, been
adopted in the preparation of the present edition. My thanks are also
owing to my colleagues in the Civil Service, especially to those in the
General Post Office, London, to whose encouragement it is largely due
that this essay, in its present form, is able to see the light.
As the _Athenæum_, in reviewing the original edition (_Athenæum_, 2nd
of August, 1902), suggested that “the present essay is probably the
forerunner of a larger and more elaborate book,” it may be desirable to
explain that the following pages do not constitute “the larger and more
elaborate book” which the _Athenæum_ is right in forecasting.
JOHN OAKESMITH.
PREFACE
When the student of Plutarch leaves the familiar ground of the “Parallel
Lives,” and turns, for the first time, to the less thoroughly explored
region of the “Ethics,” he is struck with wonder at the many-sided
excellence of the writer whose special gift he has been accustomed to
regard as consisting in the composition of biographies more remarkable
for the presentation of moral truths than for the accurate narration of
historical facts. He learns with surprise that Plutarch has bequeathed
to posterity a mine of information respecting the period in which he
himself lived, as valuable and as interesting as the view presented in
his “Lives” of that higher antiquity in which his classic heroes moved
and worked. Even the actual bulk of Plutarch’s contribution to what may
be called “general literature” is noteworthy. Apart from the “Lives,”
the so-called “Catalogue of Lamprias” contains the titles of nearly two
hundred works attributed, ostensibly by his son, to Plutarch,[1] and some
fourscore of these have been handed down to our time under the general,
but somewhat misleading, title of “Ethica” or “Moralia.”
Among these surviving essays are to be found contributions, of a
surprising vitality and freshness, to the discussion of Education,
Politics, Art, Literature, Music, Hygiene; serious and studied criticisms
and appreciations of the great philosophic schools of Greece and their
founders; short sermons on minor morals, illustrated by vivid sketches
of character both typical and individual; conversations on Love and
Marriage, and on other topics perpetually interesting to civilized
societies. The longest work of all, the “Symposiacs,” or “Table Talk,”
besides containing a wealth of material used by Plutarch and his friends
in the discussion of current problems of scientific, literary, and social
interest, gives a picture of Græco-Roman Society in the first Christian
century, which, both from its general character and from the multitude
of details it contains on matters of fact, is of the utmost importance
for the accurate study of the period and its complicated problems. All
these various works are interpenetrated with the character of the writer
to such a vivid degree of personality that their study, from this point
of view alone, would probably cast more light upon Plutarch’s methods
as a writer of history than innumerable minute and difficult inquiries
into his “sources,” and the manner in which he used them in writing his
“Lives.”
Fascinating, however, as is the study of the “Ethics” in these various
aspects, it soon becomes evident that the point of paramount importance
for a proper appreciation of Plutarch’s attitude towards life and its
problems in general, is to be found in the position which he assumed in
face of the religious questions which perplexed the thinking men of his
time and country. What was Plutarch’s view of that ancient and hereditary
faith which was not only the official creed of the Empire, but which was
still accepted as a sufficient spiritual satisfaction by many millions
of the Empire’s subjects? Was it possible that a man so steeped in the
best literature, so keen a student of the greatest philosophies, could
be a believer, to any serious extent, in those traditions which appear
so crude and impossible in the light of our higher modern ideals? And if
he could think them worthy of credit, by what method of interpretation
was this consummation facilitated? How could he persuade himself and
others to find in them at once the sanction and the inspiration of
virtuous conduct? These are some of the questions which are constantly
before the mind of the reader as he turns the pages of the “Ethics,” and
they are constantly before the mind of the reader because the author is
constantly supplying materials for answering them. The most important
of Plutarch’s general writings are devoted to the full discussion, from
a variety of standpoints, of religious questions, not only those handed
down by the popular tradition, or embodied in ceremonial observances and
legalized worships, but also those more purely theological conceptions
presented in the various systems of Greek Philosophy. Around Plutarch’s
Religion revolves his conception of life; his numerous contributions to
the discussion of other subjects of human interest unfold their full
significance only when regarded in the light supplied by a knowledge of
his religious beliefs.
Such, at any rate, is the experience of the present writer after a close
study of the “Ethics” during several years; and it is with the hope of
contributing in some degree to the clearer appreciation of Plutarch’s
manifold activities in other directions, that an investigation into his
religious views has been made the special object of the following pages.
The text which has been used for the purposes of this essay is that
issued at intervals between the years 1888 and 1896 by Mr. G. N.
Bernardakis, the director of the Gymnasium at Mytilene.[2] The editor has
postponed, for discussion in a subsequent work, many questions bearing
upon the authority of his MSS., and the principles which he has applied
to them in the choice of his readings; his efforts in the _editio minor_
having been almost wholly confined to presenting the results of his
labours in the shape of a complete and coherent text. Although, as Dr.
Holden has said, “until the appearance of the promised _editio major_ it
is premature to pronounce an opinion on the editor’s qualifications as a
textual critic,”[3] yet Mr. Bernardakis has exhibited so much combined
accuracy and acumen in the preliminary discussion of various questions
connected with his collation of MSS., and has disposed so completely,
as Dr. Holden admits, of the charges of inaccuracy brought against
him by Professor von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff of Berlin,[4] that the
more general student of Classical Literature may, perhaps, feel some
amount of confidence that in this edition he sees the actual work of
Plutarch himself, and not the ingenious and daring conjectures of some
too brilliant critic. This feeling of confidence will not be diminished
by the evident anxiety displayed by Mr. W. R. Paton, an English scholar
working in the same field, “to induce Mr. Bernardakis to assist and
correct” him in editing a text of the “De Cupiditate Divitiarum,”[5] and
it will be increased by the discovery that, greatly different as the text
of Bernardakis is from that of any other previous edition, the difference
frequently consists in the substitution of plain sense for undiluted
absurdity, or total want of meaning.
Indebtedness to other sources of criticism and information is, the writer
hopes, fully acknowledged in the footnotes as occasion arises. There has
yet been published no work in English dealing with Plutarch’s “Ethics” at
all similar in scope and character either to Volkmann’s “Leben, Schriften
und Philosophie des Plutarch von Chæronea,”[6] or to Gréard’s “La Morale
de Plutarque.”[7] Archbishop Trench, who speaks slightingly of Gréard’s
interesting study, has himself contributed one or two “Lectures” to some
general observations on this sphere of Plutarch’s activity,[8] while the
Rev. J. P. Mahaffy has given two chapters to the subject in his “Greek
World under Roman Sway.”[9] Chap. xiii., which is headed “Plutarch and
His Times—Public Life,” is devoted partly to Apuleius, and partly to
Plutarch himself, and exhibits, in continuous form, a number of that
author’s best-known and most frequently quoted statements and opinions on
the subjects of Politics and Religion, some ten pages being set apart for
the presentation and criticism of his views on the latter topic. Chap.
xiv. is entitled “Plutarch and His Times—Private Life,” and intersperses
with comments a number of extracts from the evidence furnished by
Plutarch on various matters appertaining to the social and domestic life
of his epoch, giving the gist of passages selected from the “Table Talk,”
from various essays on Education, and from several tracts on Minor Morals
and other themes of general interest.
Although Professor Mahaffy’s prolonged and extensive researches into
every available sphere of Greek life and thought occasionally enable
him to help out his author’s descriptions by aptly chosen illustrations
from other sources, yet, in dealing with a writer at once so voluminous
and so full of interest as Plutarch, the historian is hampered by the
necessary limits of his appointed task, no less than by his own diffusive
and gossiping style. Mr. Mahaffy’s Clio has always appeared to us in the
light of an amiable and cultured hostess presiding at Afternoon Tea,
gliding graciously hither and thither among her guests, and introducing
topics of conversation which have only a superficial interest, or
which she presents only in their superficial aspects; while, perhaps
unconsciously, conveying the impression that she reserves for discussion
among a few chosen intimates the more profound and sacred issues of human
life. These two chapters on Plutarch furnish an excellent example of
Professor Mahaffy’s method. They are entertaining in the sense that all
well-conducted gossip is entertaining. A trait of character is chosen
here; a smart saying, or a foolish one, is selected there; a piquant
anecdote is retold elsewhere: but the searchlight is never stationary,
and the earnest student who trusts solely to its assistance will vainly
attempt to see Plutarch steadily and see him whole.
It is, of course, the fact, as already suggested, that, in these
chapters, Professor Mahaffy is dealing with Plutarch only so far as he
furnishes material illustrative of the conception which the historian
has formed as to the character of the age in which his subject lived.
This fact is conspicuously evident in the brief account of Plutarch’s
Religion given in the ten pages from page 311 onwards, where Professor
Mahaffy accepts the belief of so many of his predecessors, that the age
was an age of religious decadence, and not an age of religious revival;
and that, moreover, it was blameworthy in Plutarch that “he never took
pains to understand” Christianity.[10] Further, it must be added, that
the historian’s natural desire to illustrate Plutarch’s times, rather
than to display Plutarch himself, has led him to commit serious injustice
by his uncritical acceptance of certain spurious tracts as the genuine
workmanship of Plutarch.
The conclusion at which Professor Mahaffy arrives, that Plutarch was “a
narrow and bigoted Hellene,”[11] is intelligible enough to those who
accept the view which we have endeavoured to combat in Chapter III. of
the following essay, a view which is simply a belated survival of the
ancient prejudice which consigns to eternal perdition the followers
of other Religions, because they are wilfully blind to the light with
which our own special Belief has been blessed in such splendour. But
the man who, after even the most casual study of Plutarch’s utterances
on Religion, can seriously describe him as “narrow and bigoted” will
maintain, with equal serenity, that it is the practice of the sun to
shine at midnight. Professor Mahaffy, indeed, in using such expressions,
is at variance with his own better judgment, inasmuch as he elsewhere
concedes that, “had Plutarch been at Athens when St. Paul came there, he
would have been the first to give the Apostle a respectful hearing.”[12]
The subject of Plutarch’s “Moralia” has also been touched in a few
contributions to the current Literature of the Reviews. The article
on “Plutarch” appearing over Paley’s initials in the “Encyclopædia
Britannica,” and giving a brief statement of the subjects dealt with in
the different tracts in the “Moralia,” almost entirely exhausts the short
list of English literary contributions to the treatment of this portion
of Plutarch’s work. Paley declared in the article in question that the
“Moralia” were “practically almost unknown to most persons in Britain,
even to those who call themselves scholars.” This sweeping assertion is
not by any means true to-day, although it is still the case that, so far
as the literary presentment of results is concerned, the “Ethics” of
Plutarch are a neglected field of research.
Volkmann, in the “Leben und Schriften” part of his work, carefully
discusses the authenticity of each tract in the generally recognized
list of Plutarch’s writings, while in the volume dealing with the
“Philosophie” he gives an exhaustive analysis of the greater portion of
them. Recognizing that Plutarch had no special philosophical system of
his own, Volkmann endeavours to remedy this deficiency by the application
of a systematic method of treatment with regular branches of “synthetic”
and “analytic” investigation. The “synthetic” branch of Volkmann’s
method is devoted to a discussion of Plutarch’s philosophic standpoint;
to an examination of his polemic against the Stoics and Epicureans; and
to the consideration of his relation to Plato, which Volkmann regards
as the foundation of Plutarch’s Philosophy. The function of Volkmann’s
“analytic” method is to discover how, on the philosophic basis thus
laid down by the “synthetic” method, Plutarch arranges his positive
conclusions in a coherent relationship with his negative polemic. It
is, according to Volkmann, a natural result of the successful operation
of this twofold system, that the circumstances of Plutarch’s life lose
their external character, and attain to an essential connexion with
his philosophical conceptions. This last assertion is made by way of
criticism directed against Gréard’s “natural and simple” method of
arranging Plutarch’s philosophical utterances under headings descriptive
of the various spheres of life to which they seem appropriate—“_la vie
domestique_,” “_la cité_,” “_le temple_,” &c. Volkmann thinks that under
this arrangement the sense of internal unity is lost; that Plutarch’s
views are presented in it as goodnatured and benevolent, but somewhat
rambling, reflections on the separate aspects of human life, instead
of being treated as the outcome of a consistent philosophy taking
ethical phenomena into systematic consideration.[13] This criticism has
considerable force, though it does not detract from the truth and charm
of M. Gréard’s book. Volkmann himself undoubtedly errs in the opposite
direction. Gréard was quite justified in retorting on his critic, “_Il
arrive même qu’en voulant établir trop_ rationellement _la philosophie
de Plutarque, M. Volkmann se trouve conduit à lui prêter une sorte de
système, bien qu’il sache comme personne que nul moins que le sage
de Chéronée n’a porté dans ses écrits une pensée systématique_.”[14]
Volkmann, in our opinion, attaches far too much importance both to
Plutarch’s discipular relation to Plato, and to his polemic against the
Stoics and Epicureans. Plutarch’s opposition to Plato is frequently as
strongly marked as his opposition to Stoics and Epicureans; and his
indebtedness to Stoics and Epicureans is frequently as strongly marked as
his indebtedness to Plato.
Volkmann’s work had been preceded in 1854 by an interesting and
well-written Thesis, entitled “De Apologetica Plutarchi Chæronensis
Theologia.”[15] The author, C. G. Seibert, gives a brief review of Greek
Philosophy, with the object of showing the attitude assumed by each of
the great schools to the gods of the national tradition. He demonstrates
conclusively, and Volkmann follows in his steps, that Plutarch owed
something to all the Schools, to Stoics, to Peripatetics, and to
Epicureans. Yet he, too, insists that Plutarch’s attitude towards the
popular religion was identical with that assumed by Plato—_eadem ratione
(qua Plato) Platonis discipuli theologiam tractarunt, e quibus præ
cœteris Plutarchus magistri divini vestigia secutus est_. This, indeed,
is the orthodox tendency in the appreciation of Plutarch, and it has
been carried to the extent of claiming Plutarch as the founder of that
special kind of Platonism distinguished by the epithet “New.” “Plutarch,”
says Archbishop Trench, “was a Platonist with an oriental tinge, and
thus a forerunner of the New Platonists.”—“He might be described with
greater truth than Ammonius as the Founder of Neo-Platonism,” wrote Dr.
H. W. J. Thiersch, who, however, had not freed himself from the idea
(the truth of which even so early a writer as Dacier had doubted, and
the legendary character of which M. Gréard has proved beyond a doubt)
that Plutarch received consular honours at the hands of Trajan.[16]—“In
this essay” (the _De Oraculorum Defectu_), thinks Mr. W. J. Brodribb,
“Plutarch largely uses the Neo-Platonic Philosophy.”[17] Even those who
do not insist that Plutarch is a Neo-Platonist, or a “forerunner” of
Neo-Platonism, are so anxious to label him with some designation, that
they will hardly allow him to speak for himself. It may, perhaps, argue
presumption on the part of an _homo incognitus nulliusque auctoritatis_
to suggest that Plutarch faces the teaching of his predecessors with an
independent mind; that he is _nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri_;
that he tries Plato’s teachings, not from Plato’s point of view, but from
his own.[18]
Such, however, is the view maintained in the pages of the following
essay. It seems to us that, in order to discover the principle which
gives coherence and internal unity to Plutarch’s innumerable philosophic
utterances, it is not necessary to start with the assumption that he
belongs to any particular school. Philosophy is to him one of the
recognized sources of Religion and Morality. Tradition is another source,
and Law or recognized custom another. Plutarch assumes that these three
sources conjointly supply solid sanctions for belief and conduct. They
are the three great records of human experience, and Plutarch will
examine all their contributions to the criticism of life with a view to
selecting those parts from each which will best aid him and his fellow
citizens to lead lives of virtue and happiness. The great philosophical
schools of Greece are regarded from this point of view—from the point
of view of a moralist and a philosopher, not from the point of view of
a Platonist, an anti-Stoic, or an anti-Epicurean. Plutarch is indebted,
as even Volkmann himself shows, to all the Schools alike. Then why
call him a Platonist, or a Neo-Pythagorizing Platonist, as Zeller has
done? Plutarch’s teaching is too full of logical inconsistencies to be
formalized into a system of Philosophy. But the dominating principle
of his teaching, the paramount necessity of finding a sanction and an
inspiration for conduct in what the wisdom of the past had already
discovered, is so strikingly conspicuous in all his writings that his
logical inconsistencies appear, and are, unimportant. It is this desire
of making the wisdom and traditions of the past available for ethical
usefulness which actuates his attempt to reconcile the contradictions,
and remove the crudities and inconsistencies, in the three sources of
religious knowledge. This is the principle which gives his teaching
unity, and not any external circumstances of his life, or his attitude in
favour of or in opposition to the tenets of any particular school.
There is no English translation of Plutarch’s “Ethics” which can claim
anything approaching the character of an authorized version. Almost
every editor of Plutarch has felt it necessary to find fault with his
predecessors’ attempts to express Plutarch’s meaning through the medium
of another language. Amyot’s translation is, in the opinion of the Comte
Joseph de Maistre, repellent to “ladies and foreigners.” Wyttenbach,
who makes numerous alterations of Xylander’s Latin version, also says
of Ricard’s French translation, that “it skips over the difficulties
and corruptions in such a manner as to suggest that the translator was
content merely to produce a version which should be intelligible to
French readers.”[19] Wyttenbach himself is reprehended in the following
terms by the editor of the Didot text of the “Moralia”—“Of the Latin
version, in which we have made numerous corrections, it must be admitted
that Xylander and Wyttenbach, in dealing with corrupt passages, not
infrequently translated conjectures of their own, or suggested by other
scholars, which we have been unable to adopt into the Greek Text.” In
the preface to his English translation of the “De Iside et Osiride,”
the Rev. Samuel Squire, Archdeacon of Bath in 1744, has some excellent
critical remarks on the style of previous translators of Plutarch, and he
somewhat pathetically describes the difficulties awaiting the author who
endeavours to translate that writer—“_To enter into another man’s Soul
as it were, who lived several hundred years since, to go along with his
thoughts, to trace, pursue, and connect his several ideas, to express
them with propriety in a language different from that they were conceived
in, and lastly to give the copy the air and spirit of an original,
is not so easy a task as it may be perhaps deemed by those who have
never made the attempt. The very few good translations of the learned
authors into our own language, will sufficiently justify the truth of
the observation—but if any one still doubts it, let him take the first
section of the book before him, and make the experiment himself._” M.
Gréard is briefer but equally emphatic—“_Toute traduction est une œuvre
délicate, celle de Plutarque plus que toute autre peut-être_.”
Whatever may be the cause of the perpetuation of this ungracious
tradition of fault-finding, whether the general difficulty specified by
Archdeacon Squire, or the more particular obstacle of a corrupt text
described by other commentators, we do not feel that we are called upon
to make any departure from so long-established a custom. The quaint
charm of most of the translations forming the basis of Dr. Goodwin’s
revision no one will be inclined to deny, although the reviser’s own
remarks make it clear that little dependence is to be placed upon their
accuracy in any instance of difficulty.[20] The two volumes contained
in the well-known “Bohn” series of translations are utterly misleading,
not only as regards the colour which they infuse into Plutarch’s style,
but also as regards their conspicuous incorrectness in many particular
instances.[21] To other translations of individual tracts reference has
been occasionally made in the notes.
In view of the fact that no dependence was to be placed upon the accuracy
of any translation yet furnished of that portion of our author’s work
with which we were dealing, it was necessary, before undertaking this
essay, to make full translations of considerable portions of the “Ethics”
from the text of Bernardakis; and these translations, or paraphrases
based upon them, are largely employed in the following pages. Mere
references to the text in support of positions assumed, or statements
made, would have been useless and misleading in the absence of clear
indications as to the exact interpretation placed upon the words of the
text. The writer cannot hope to have succeeded where, in the opinion of
competent judges, there have been so many failures. But he has, at any
rate, made a conscientious attempt to understand his author, and to give
expression to his view of his author’s meaning, without any prejudice
born of the assumption that Plutarch belonged to a particular school, or
devoted his great powers of criticism and research to the exposition and
illustration of the doctrines of any single philosopher.
JOHN OAKESMITH.
BATTERSEA, _September, 1902_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
_General character of Modern European Religions: their cardinal
appeal to Emotion—Roman Religion: its sanctions chiefly
rational: the causes of its failure: its place as a factor
in Morality taken by Greek Philosophy—Early Greek Morality
based partly on Religion, partly on Reason, which, in the form
of Philosophy, eventually supplies the main inspiration to
Goodness—Gradual limitation of Philosophy to Ethics_ 1
CHAPTER II.
_Importance of the ethical tendency in pre-Socratic Philosophy
generally under-estimated—Development of this tendency from
Thales to the Sophists, and from the Sophists to the Stoics and
Epicureans—Special influence of these two Schools, aided by the
failure of political interest, in establishing a practicable
ideal of PERSONAL virtue—This ideal, conspicuous in Plutarch’s
“Ethics,” and inculcated by the philosophers of the early
Græco-Roman Empire generally_ 20
CHAPTER III.
_Ethical aspect of Græco-Roman Society in the period
of Plutarch: difficulty of obtaining an impartial view
of it—Revival of moral earnestness concurrent with the
establishment of the Empire: the reforms of Augustus a
formal expression of actual tendencies—Evidences of this in
philosophical and general literature—The differences between
various Schools modified by the importance of the ethical end
to which all their efforts were directed—Endeavour made to base
morality on sanctions already consecrated by the philosophies
and religious traditions of the Past—Plutarch’s “Ethics” the
result of such an endeavour_ 43
CHAPTER IV.
_Plutarch’s attitude towards Pagan beliefs marked by a
spirit of reverent rationalism—The three recognized sources
of Religion: Poetry, Philosophy, and Law or Custom—The
contribution of each to be examined by Reason with the
object of avoiding both Superstition and Atheism: Reason the
“Mystagogue” of Religion—Provisional examples of Plutarch’s
method in the three spheres—His reluctance to press rationalism
too far—His piety partly explained by his recognition of the
divine mission of Rome—Absence of dogmatism in his teaching_ 62
CHAPTER V.
_Plutarch’s Theology—His conception of God not a pure
metaphysical abstraction, his presentment of it not
dogmatic—General acceptance of the attributes recognized
by Greek philosophy as essential to the idea of God—God
as UNITY, ABSOLUTE BEING, ETERNITY—God as INTELLIGENCE:
PERSONALITY of Plutarch’s God intimately associated with
his Intelligence—God’s Intelligence brings him into contact
with humanity: by it he knows the events of the Future and
the secrets of the human heart—From his knowledge springs
his Providence—God as Father and Judge—the DE SERA NUMINIS
VINDICTA—Immortality of the Soul_ 87
CHAPTER VI.
_Plutarch’s Dæmonology—Dæmonology as a means of reconciliation
between the traditional Polytheism and Philosophic
Monotheism—Dæmonlore in Greek philosophers and in the popular
faith—Growth of a natural tendency to identify the gods of the
polytheistic tradition with the Dæmons—Emphasis thus given to
the philosophic conception of the Deity—Dæmons responsible for
all the crude and cruel superstitions attaching to the popular
gods—Function of the Dæmons as mediators between God and man_ 120
CHAPTER VII.
_Necessity for a Mediator between God and Man partly met by
Oracular Inspiration—General failure of Oracles in the age of
Plutarch—Plutarch’s “Delphian Essays”—The DE PYTHIÆ ORACULIS:
nature of Inspiration: oracles not verbally inspired—The DE
DEFECTU ORACULORUM—Various explanations of Inspiration—Plutarch
inclines to accept that which assumes an original Divine
afflatus placed under the superintendence of Dæmons, whose
activities are subject to the operation of natural causes_ 138
CHAPTER VIII.
_Sincerity of Plutarch’s belief in Dæmons—Function
of the Dæmons as Mediators not confined to oracular
inspiration—Dæmons in their personal relationship with the
human soul—The DE DÆMONIO SOCRATIS—This tract not a formal
treatise on Dæmonology—Various explanations of the Socratic
“Dæmon”—Ethical value of the conception of Dæmons as spiritual
guardians of individual men—“Men may rise on stepping-stones
of their dead selves to higher things”—Dangers of the
conception—Superstition: Plutarch’s general attitude towards
that Vice_ 163
CHAPTER IX.
_Relation between Superstition and Atheism: Atheism an
intellectual error: Superstition an error involving the
passions: the DE SUPERSTITIONE—Moral fervour of Plutarch’s
attack on Superstition—His comparative tolerance of
Atheism—The greatest safeguard against both alike consists
in an intellectual appreciation of the Truth—The DE ISIDE ET
OSIRIDE—The Unity underlying national differences of religious
belief_ 179
CHAPTER X.
_Conclusions respecting the general character of Plutarch’s
Religion—Monotheism and Dæmonology both essential parts
of his Theodicy—His strong belief in the personality
of God—Metaphysical weakness but Moral strength of his
Teaching—Close connexion between his Religion and his
Ethics—Plutarch not an “Eclectic,” nor a Neo-Platonist—Contrast
between Plutarch’s Religion and Philosophy and the Religion
and Philosophy of the Neo-Platonists—Christianity and
Neo-Platonism—The struggle between them and its probable effect
on later religious history—Conclusion_ 201
THE RELIGION OF PLUTARCH
CHAPTER I.
_General character of Modern European Religions: their cardinal
appeal to Emotion—Roman Religion: its sanctions chiefly
rational: the causes of its failure: its place as a factor
in Morality taken by Greek Philosophy—Early Greek Morality
based partly on Religion, partly on Reason, which, in the form
of Philosophy, eventually supplies the main inspiration to
Goodness—Gradual limitation of Philosophy to Ethics._
The various religious revivals which the European world has witnessed
during the prolonged course of the Christian era; the great attempts
which the modern conscience has made from time to time to bring itself
into a more intimate and fruitful relation with the principles that
make for goodness of character and righteousness of life: have, in
general, taken the form less of reasoned invocations to the cultivated
intelligence than of emotional appeals to the natural passions and
prepossessions of humanity. The hope of reward, the fear of punishment, a
spontaneous love of certain moral qualities, and of certain personalities
imagined as embodying these qualities; a heartfelt hatred of certain
moral defects, and of certain personalities imagined as embodying these
defects:—such are the feelings that have formed the strength of every
movement which has in turn agitated the religious life of the Western
world from St. Paul to Wesley, from St. Augustine to Cardinal Newman.
What is felt to be goodness is loved with a personal adoration which is
convinced that nothing in the world is of import compared with the hope
of one day touching the mere hem of that garment of holiness, the mystic
effluence of which has already power to irradiate life with a strange
beauty and meaning. Any sanction which imaginative piety or legendary
authority can lend to Virtue is credited, not because it makes Virtue
natural, intelligible, and human, but because it places her on a pedestal
beyond the reach of unaided mortal effort, and thus compels a still more
determined recourse to emotional and supernatural sanctions in order
to ensure her fruitful cultivation. Hence Tertullian will glory in the
Crucifixion of Christ, because in the eyes of reason it is shameful; and
he will proclaim the Resurrection as certain, because reason condemns it
as impossible.[22] Hence Augustine will believe first, postponing the
grave question whether belief is likely to be supported by proof.[23]
Hence that conception of saintliness which the world owes to Catholic
Christianity, a type of character which, while maintaining a marvellous
purity of life, is devoid of that robust intelligence without which
purity runs into asceticism; which carries virtue to such an extravagant
pitch that its results may be more disastrous than those of extravagant
vice, inasmuch as the latter may serve morality by demonstrating the
repulsiveness of iniquity, while the former tends to evil by exhibiting
the impossibility of goodness.[24]
This “_extravagance du christianisme_”[25] is, of course, utterly at
variance with the general character of the efforts by which either a
Greek or a Roman directed his steps in the ways of goodness. Neither
Aristotle nor Horace, neither Plato nor Seneca, would have admitted many
of the most lauded virtues of modern ethical systems to be virtues at
all. Least of all would they have hailed as a virtue that passionate
excess of enthusiasm which makes Virtue independent of Reason, and greets
intellectual impossibilities as the trials and tests of the “virtue” of
Belief.[26] Speaking in a general sense, and with a tacit recognition
of certain exceptions to be noticed in their proper place, it may be
premised that Pagan goodness of character found its inspiration, not in
any kind of emotional enthusiasm, but in methods of thought and action
selected and controlled by the operation of reason and intelligence.[27]
Horace’s opinion respecting the viciousness of the man who indulges in
a too excessive love of virtue is the opinion, if not of a Greek, at
any rate of a Roman who is saturated with Greek philosophy;[28] but the
early character of the poet’s countrymen, as evinced not less in their
Religion than in their general outlook on life, is as little disposed
to extravagance as the strongest advocate of _aurea mediocritas_ could
well desire. Roman Religion, influenced to some extent as it was by
the gloomy terrors of Etruscan superstition, found its value and its
meaning, from the gods of the Indigitamenta downwards, in the fact that
it was an appeal to the intelligence of the citizen. That this appeal
operated in a narrow sphere of duties and was not unaffected by mean and
sordid considerations does not militate against its general character
as an address to the reason rather than an invocation to the passions.
Ancient critics found for the word “_Religio_” a derivation which pointed
to carefulness and regularity as qualities inherent in its essential
meaning;[29] and that avoidance of disordered excess, which tends to
compromise, was as conspicuous in early Roman religious practice as it
was in the sternest of Greek philosophies when transplanted to Roman
soil, and interpenetrated with the Roman character.[30] This spirit of
compromise was based upon a recognition that the actual demands of
practical life were of greater importance than the maintenance of a
rigid conformity to the letter of religious precepts. Virgil, who was a
participant in the work of religious reform inaugurated by Augustus, and
who everywhere breathes a spirit of the most careful reverence towards
the ancient traditions of the national faith, gives emphatic expression
to this view of the dominant claims of practical life, and of the
tolerant attitude which Religion assumes with regard to them:—
“Quippe etiam festis quædam exercere diebus
Fas et jura sinunt; rivos deducere nulla
Relligio vetuit, segeti prætendere sæpem,
Insidias avibus moliri, incendere vepres,
Balantumque gregem fluvio mersare salubri.”[31]
This recognition of the principle that Duty has claims which even
Religion must concede is prominently written on every page of Roman
History. It indicates the operation, in one direction, of that influence
of Reason on Religion which, in another direction, leads to the
admission of a real divinity in the gods adored by foreign peoples.
The famous formula of Roman Religion, which appealed to the protecting
gods of Carthage and its people to leave that city to its fate, is an
early anticipation of that hospitable tolerance, so strange to modern
sects, which welcomed Greek and barbarian deities to the Roman Pantheon,
and never persecuted from religious motives.[32] This spirit had its
apotheosis in the endeavours of the reformers of the age of Plutarch to
establish the triumph of Reason in a general recognition of the Unity
of God beneath the different names which expressed Him to different
peoples.[33]
Although we cannot accept as actual history the particulars given
by Dionysius Halicarnassensis respecting the manner in which
Romulus established the principles of Roman religious and political
administration, considerable value may be conceded to such an account,
because it is calculated to explain, from the writer’s point of view, the
existence of certain actual characteristics of Roman civic and sacred
polity.[34] Romulus is recorded as subjecting Religion to the selective
power of reason and good taste. Reason decides what it is becoming for
the Divine Nature to be, and everything inconsistent with this salutary
notion is rigidly excluded from the State Religion. Romulus teaches the
Romans that the gods are good, and that their goodness is the cause
of man’s happiness and progress; he instructs them in Temperance and
Justice, as the bases of civic concord, and of the advantages resulting
therefrom; he inculcates military Fortitude as the best means of
securing the undisturbed practice of the other virtues, and the social
blessings springing from such practice; and he concludes that Virtue is
not a matter of chance, or the result of supernatural inspirations, but
the product of reasonable laws when zealously and faithfully carried
into practice by the citizens. Reason is here clearly represented as
the lawgiver of Religion, and the cause and origin of the practical
virtues. Dionysius may, as we have suggested, be endeavouring to explain,
by an _ex post facto_ piece of history, the existence of certain
characteristics of the Roman constitution as exhibited in its later
developments, but these features are not the less evident and essential
parts of the system because we cannot accept any particular account of
the time and manner in which they were incorporated with it.
Further, the Roman administrative authority deliberately repressed the
exhibition of religious enthusiasm as dangerous to the stability of
the Republic; the State could brook no rival in her affections: the
devotion of Regulus[35] and the suppression of the Bacchanalia bear
equal witness to a firm insistence on the control of personal emotion
as a cardinal principle of Roman administration.[36] The apparently
paradoxical and casuistical position assigned in the “De Natura Deorum”
to Cotta, who believes in the national religion as a Roman while denying
it as a philosopher, is sufficiently lucid and rational when regarded
in the light of the religious administration of Rome, which had never
claimed to enslave the intelligences of men, so long as that elaborate
ritual, with which the safety of the State was involved, received due and
reverential attention.[37]
The ancient Roman Religion, revolving round the State in this way,
and moulding the life of every individual citizen into rigid external
conformity with the official ideal, showed its strength in the
production of a type of moral character which was perfect within the
iron limits fixed by the civic authority.[38] It was dignified, austere,
self-controlled, self-reverent. In the absence of great temptations, such
as assail the secret strongholds of the human heart and lie beyond the
influence of any external power, the ancient _Virtus Romana_ was equal
to all the demands which a somewhat restricted code of ethics made upon
it. But, when a wider knowledge of the world brought with it a weakening
of the chain which bound the citizen to the central power; when, at the
same time, a wider possession of the world and a richer enjoyment of
its pleasures increased to an enormous extent the temptations directed
against the purity and completeness of the moral character:[39] then it
became alarmingly clear to thoughtful men that, unless the moral life
was to run to seed in vicious weeds of self-indulgence, it was necessary
to invoke the aid of a subtler and stronger influence than that of the
State, an influence capable of varying its appeal in accordance with
the infinitely varying moral needs of individual men.[40] It was with
the hope of finding inspiration of this character that Lucretius and
Cicero turned the attention of their countrymen to Greek Philosophy; it
was there that they wished to find an ampler and more direct sanction
in reason for cultivating a life of virtue. Reason, which had not been
devoid of effect in the narrow sphere of Roman Religion, was now to be
made the basis of morality in general; but it was reason directed to
the purification and enlargement of the springs of personal conduct,
and calling into play qualities which had lain dormant, or had been
restricted, during the long dominance of the State over the individual
citizen. To Regulus, his religion was the State; to Cicero, the State
and its demands form but a small fraction of the moral life. A revival
of Religion was to Cicero a revival of Philosophy; Reason, the parent
of Philosophy, was also to be the parent of Conduct; the first of all
virtues is the virtue of Knowledge, of intelligent discrimination
between the things that make for morality and happiness and the things
that make for immorality and misery.[41] Starting from this standpoint,
Cicero, though approaching Greek Philosophy more in the spirit of the
student than in that of the religious reformer, though participating,
as his Letters show, in that general carelessness on religious matters
which marked Roman Society during the later years of the Republic, was,
nevertheless, the means of giving a powerful stimulus to that movement in
the direction of deliberate personal morality, which became conspicuous
in the Græco-Roman world of the Early Empire, and culminated under the
fostering care of Trajan and the Antonines. It then became clear that
Cicero had not looked in vain to Greek Philosophy to save his countrymen
from that moral degradation and disorder which, in his own words, it
demanded the most earnest endeavours of every individual citizen to check
and restrain.[42]
In Greece, Religion and Philosophy had early enjoyed mutual relations
of an intimate character. The force of the weighty invocations which
the poet of the “Works and Days”[43] addresses to his dishonourable
brother Perses lies less in the conventional theology which alludes
to the wrath of “broad-sighted Zeus” as tracking the footsteps of the
wicked, than in the reasoned choice which the sinner is invited to make
between Injustice as leading inevitably to ruin, and Virtue leading as
inevitably to prosperity;[44] and the claims of individual judgment,
the right of every man to subject everything to the test of his own
intelligence, never found finer expression than in the verse which
assigns the palm of moral perfection to him who has the courage to think
for himself.[45] Pindar, the most religious poet of antiquity, applies
the test of reason to the established myths of Hellas when he refuses
to credit such legends as depict the gods in unseemly situations, or
under the influence of degrading passions.[46] Xenophanes thought that
the claims of Religion and Morality could be best advanced by cleansing
the moral atmosphere of the gods whose recorded lives were so flagrantly
in opposition to the dictates of purity, reason, and honour; a strain
of criticism which found its most striking and notorious expression in
the famous Second and Third Books of Plato’s “Republic,” but which had
not been without its exponents among more whole-hearted adherents of the
national Religion. But, meanwhile, the national Religion, as embodied,
at least, in the national liturgy, had been coming to terms with the
growing strength of Philosophy, and the vestibules of the Temple at
Delphi were inscribed with those famous philosophical apophthegms, whose
presence there subsequently enabled Plutarch to claim that Apollo was
not only a God and a Seer, but a Philosopher.[47] The popular morality
of the days of Socrates, which supplied his cross-examinees with
ready-made answers to questions on the nature of Vice and Virtue, and
of the vices and the virtues, was composed as much of Philosophy as
of Religion in the narrower sense of the term.[48] The Theogonies of
Homer and Hesiod furnished the external machinery of the supernatural
world, but the moral utterances of these two poets, and not of these
only, but of Simonides and Solon, of Theognis and the “Seven Sages,”
contained many striking lessons, and many emphatic warnings, touching the
necessity and advantages of a life of virtue. It became, in fact, quite
evident, though not, of course, explicitly asserted, or perhaps even
consciously admitted, that the gods, as represented in the Homeric poems
and as existing in the popular imagination, were quite impossible as a
foundation for Morality, though surpassingly splendid as the material
of Art. It is hardly too much to say that, after the establishment of
the great philosophic schools in the fourth century, all the conscious
inspiration to a life of Virtue, and all the consolations which it is
the more usual function of Religion to administer, were supplied by
Philosophy. Sudden conversions from Vice to Philosophy mark the history
of the philosophic movement in Greece as religious movements have been
marked among other peoples and in other periods. An edifying discourse
under a Stoic Portico, or in an Academic School, has been as effective
in its practical results as a religious oration by Bossuet, or a village
preaching by Whitfield.[49] Religion and Philosophy are identified,
because both are identical with Morality; the lives of some Greek
Philosophers furnish the nearest parallel attained in antiquity to the
modern ideal of saintliness.
This application of Philosophy to the spiritual requirements of the
individual man, this independence of supernatural sanctions for
goodness, was aided by the almost purely liturgical character of
the Greek Religion. Greek Religion made no special appeal to the
individual conscience with a view to awakening that sense of personal
responsibility for every part of one’s life and conduct which is the
very soul and centre of Religion as understood in modern days. To attend
the traditional religious festivals; to fulfil the rites prescribed for
certain occasions by the sacerdotal laymen who represented the State on
its religious side; to hold a vague conventional notion respecting the
existence of the gods and of their separate personalities; to listen
quietly, and respond reverently, while the purple-robed, myrtle-crowned,
altar-ministrant intoned with solemn resonance the ancient formulæ
embalming the sacred legends of some deity whose “Mysteries” were
specially fostered and honoured by the State; to aid in giving effect to
the dreadful imprecations pronounced against those guilty of sacrilege
or parricide; to respond, in a word, to all the external demands of the
national faith as a political institution: represented the religious
duty of a good and patriotic citizen. A beautiful and impressive liturgy
is, indeed, not without effect in surrounding with a quiet atmosphere of
goodness a class of minds whose temptations are mercifully proportioned
to their weakness; but real moral worth must spring from internal
sources, and these internal sources were not to be found in the Greek
national Religion. Hence a wider field for Philosophy in the lives of a
people whose eagerness in the pursuit of virtue was as marked, if not so
successful, as their aspirations after perfection of art and profundity
of knowledge.
We do not ignore, in attributing this importance to Philosophy as the
inspiration of goodness, either that fortunate class of people who, in
Plato’s beautiful expression, are “good by the divine inspiration of
their own nature,”[50] or that more numerous section of society who
were directed into a certain common conventional goodness by the moral
influence of the purer myths, and who were taught, like the youth in
Browning’s poem, “whose Father was a scholar and knew Greek,” that
“Their aim should be to loathe, like Peleus’ son,
A lie as Hell’s Gate, love their wedded wife,
Like Hector, and so on with all the rest.”[51]
But there was another side to the myths, a side less favourable to
the development of morals, and one which had been brought forward so
conspicuously in the adverse criticisms of the philosophers that no
one could pretend to ignore its existence.[52] The prevailing tendency
of Greek myth was not moral, and it was only after the most careful
pruning, such, for example, as that which Plutarch applies to it in his
educational essays, that myth became safely available as a factor in
ethical progress. The mainsprings of Conduct, of personal and private
Morality, are to be found in Philosophy, and so great an importance did
Philosophy acquire as the instrument of goodness, that that particular
branch of Philosophy which exercised surveillance over the realm of
Conduct became eventually recognized as Philosophy _par excellence_;
the overwhelming significance attached by Greek philosophers, from the
Sophists onwards, to the practical element in their teaching, led to a
restriction of the terms “Philosophy” and “Philosopher” to an almost
purely ethical connotation. The argument in the “Phædo” that, without
Philosophy, Virtue is nothing more than a mere rough sketch, is so
strongly emphasized in other quarters that there is formed a general
conviction that the sole sphere of Philosophy is the sphere of human
conduct.[53]
CHAPTER II.
_Importance of the ethical tendency in pre-Socratic Philosophy
generally under-estimated—Development of this tendency from
Thales to the Sophists, and from the Sophists to the Stoics and
Epicureans—Special influence of these two Schools, aided by the
failure of political interest, in establishing a practicable
ideal of PERSONAL virtue—This ideal, conspicuous in Plutarch’s
“Ethics,” and inculcated by the philosophers of the early
Græco-Roman Empire generally._
It will be interesting and useful briefly to trace the growth of the
ethical tendency in Greek Philosophy, not only as a preparation for
the study of Plutarch’s position as an ethical and religious teacher,
but also because the prominence of this tendency in the pre-Socratic
systems appears to have been greatly underestimated.[54] It has been
found so easy, for purposes of historical narrative, to describe a
certain philosophical tendency as “physical,” and a certain other as
“metaphysical,” that the purely general character of these descriptions
has been overlooked. Thales was a natural philosopher, an astronomer,
and, if we may trust the “general belief of the Greeks” to which
Herodotus alludes in his account of the crossing of the river Halys by
Crœsus, a great mechanical engineer as well.[55] But he was something
more than this. He was distinguished for great political insight, and was
acknowledged to be the greatest of the group of practical philosophers
who were known as the Seven Sages.[56] To this group are assigned
those famous dicta which, whether inscribed by priests on the walls of
temples, or embodied by philosophers in their ethical systems, conveyed
a profound moral significance to every member of a Hellenic community.
Although no special one of these sayings is ascribed to Thales by
name, it would surely be absurd to suppose him deficient in those very
qualities which brought fame to the men at whose head he was universally
placed. A man who was confessedly a trusted counsellor in Politics would
assuredly, in those days, have had something to say on that branch of
Politics which was destined eventually to be separated from its parent
stem, and to become a distinct branch of philosophical investigation.
Anaximander cannot, at this distance of time, be directly associated
with the practical problems of human life, but must ever remain wrapped
up in his “infinity,” which is neither Air nor Water, nor any other
element, but “something that is different from all of them.”[57] It is
not, however, without significance in this connexion, that the most
striking fragment of his Philosophy that has reached our times is couched
in ethical phraseology: “That out of which existing things have their
birth must also, _of right_, be their grave when they are destroyed. For
they must, by the dispensation of time, _give a just compensation for
their injustice_.”[58] We are in equal ignorance of any special ethical
teaching of Anaximenes. Heraclitus, however, has a distinctly ethical
aspect, in spite of the physical nature of most of his philosophical
speculations. Self-knowledge, which is alien to the multitude, who are
under the sway of the poets,[59] is already, in Heraclitus, the basis of
self-control, as it is in Socrates the basis of all moral excellence.[60]
An ordered self-control is the highest of all virtues; even the Sun must
not transgress the limits of his sphere, or the Erinnyes, the Ministers
of _Justice_, will find him out.[61] Anaxagoras, whom Sextus Empiricus
will one day describe as “the most _physical_” of all the philosophers,
began his book on Nature with the words “All things were in confusion
together; then came Intelligence, and gave them order and arrangement;”
thus laying the foundation of his Natural Philosophy in a principle which
could not fail of early application to the sphere of Conduct.[62] The
denial of blind Chance, or of immutable Fate, in the realm of physical
phenomena easily leads to its repudiation in the sphere of Ethics, and to
a recognition of the personal responsibility of the individual mind for
the consequences of its own decisions.[63] It was probably a conviction
of the ethical fruitfulness of the principle thus laid down by Anaxagoras
in the sphere of Physics which induced Aristotle, the greatest of all
ethical philosophers, to assert that its author, as compared with his
predecessors, was a sober thinker by the side of random babblers.[64] The
physical investigations of Democritus were utilized by the Epicureans
to free man from superstitious fears of another world, in order that he
might direct all his powers to making the best of this world, in a moral,
infinitely more than in a physical, sense. He specifically discussed
Virtue, and concluded that happiness consisted in Temperance and
Self-Control.[65] In a book which he wrote under the significant title of
“Tritogeneia,” or “Minerva,” he appears to have applied the principle
of Intelligence to the domain of Ethics, as Anaxagoras had applied it to
the realm of Physics, pointing out that there wanted three things to the
perfection of human society—“to reason well, to speak well, and to do
one’s duty;” and that these three powers all spring from the directing
influence of Intelligence. The author of the “Magna Moralia” says that
Pythagoras was the first to discuss Virtue, and indicates in what manner
the Pythagoreans attempted to apply their theory of Number to the sphere
of Ethics. Their method was wrong, according to the “Magna Moralia,”
since there is a special and appropriate method for the analysis and
discussion of the virtues, and “Justice is not a number evenly even.”[66]
Such a definition, thus crushed by way of a point-blank negative, has,
of course, nothing but a metaphorical significance as applied to Ethics;
but the metaphorical conception of Justice as a perfect number will
not be totally devoid of inspiration to justice of conduct in the mind
of one who loves perfection even when represented by an arithmetical
abstraction; and if by this definition “it was designed to express the
correspondence between action and suffering,”[67] a fruitful, though
incomplete, ethical principle is embodied in their mathematical
phrasing.[68] In a more general sense, Epicharmus has sung how the
Pythagorean Doctrine of Number may be applied to the domain of practice:—
“Man’s life needs greatly Number’s ordered sway:
His path is safe who follows Number’s way.”[69]
But the Pythagorean doctrine of Transmigration probably had a greater
ethical value than the metaphysical conceptions of Number which
constituted the Pythagorean οὐσία; although it is not impossible that
the dogma, when carelessly held or unphilosophically interpreted, might
have a vicious rather than a virtuous effect.[70] The “Golden Verses of
Pythagoras,” whether composed by any individual member of the school,
or officially embodying the teaching of the sect, or representing the
actual work of some philosopher not formally a Pythagorean, have been
universally recognised to express a Pythagorean ideal;[71] and thus
exhibit in the doctrine of the Italian School a far more vigorous and
fruitful ethical tendency than any study of its official doctrines—so far
as they are available for study—would lead us to suppose. And, indeed,
the followers of this Philosophy were conspicuous, even in Plato’s time,
for a special manner of life, the preparation for which involved a
strenuous devotion to a strict and lofty ethical ideal, an ideal which
subsequently formed no small part of the strength of that last school of
Greek Philosophy which nominally sheltered under the ægis of Plato.[72]
Among the philosophers of the Eleatic School we find an equally marked
tendency in the direction of Ethics. The very basis of the anti-theistic
propaganda of Xenophanes is that the gods in their traditional character
do not display those virtues which are incumbent on even ordinarily
decent men. To his strenuous sincerity the removal of the gods from
the sphere of human conduct meant the introduction of a stricter and
better reasoned sanction for morality. Even Parmenides and Melissus
and Zeno were not so absorbed in the creation of abstract metaphysical
conceptions but that Plutarch is able to mention them together, not only
as distinguished for their contributions to the practical wisdom of
their time, but as evincing by the manner of their death their constancy
to a lofty ethical conception of the duties of life.[73] Empedocles is
included in the same category as having conferred great material and
political benefits upon his fellow-citizens, to whom he also addressed a
poem inculcating a pure and noble manner of life based on the doctrine of
Transmigration.
This brief review of the pre-Socratic and pre-Sophistic Philosophers
appears to indicate that, if their ethical doctrines were not formulated
with the scientific detail and precision of later schools, their
speculations had a strongly ethical cast, and tended to work out into
practical morality in the sphere of daily conduct. In spite of the
numerous systems of Ethics which have been propounded in ancient and
modern days, a scientific basis of Morality has not yet been truly laid,
and it was, perhaps, a recognition of the difficulties menacing attempts
in this direction, aided by a feeling that “moral progress has not to
wait till an unimpeachable system of Ethics has been elaborated,”[74]
which led the early Greek Schools to confine their utterances on Morals
to “rugged maxims hewn from life,” which compensated for their lack of
scientific precision by the inspiration they applied to the work of
actual life.
It must, however, be admitted that with the Sophists the concerns of
practical life began to assume that predominant place in philosophical
speculations which they afterwards wholly usurped; and the claim of
the Sophists (whether or not Socrates is to be reckoned among them)
to be regarded as the founders of Ethical Philosophy is not weakened
by the fact that, when Philosophy and Ethics were identified,[75]
the term Sophist was assigned to men whose lives were in diametrical
opposition to everything connoted by the designation philosopher.[76]
The Sophists of the Socratic age, whose varied teachings were lacking
in any philosophical principle to give them unity and dignity, brought
the business of common life into so marked a prominence, and recognized
Conduct as so much larger a fraction of life than it had hitherto been
consciously recognized, that the necessity of finding a scientific basis
for Conduct became apparent, and a sphere was thus opened to the genius
of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
It is not necessary to linger in demonstrating the important part played
by Ethics from this point onward in the development of Greek Philosophy.
“I hold that Socrates, as all are agreed, was the first whose voice
charmed away philosophy from the mysterious phenomena over which Nature
herself has cast a veil, and with which all philosophers before his time
busied themselves, and brought it face to face with social life, so as
to investigate virtue and vice, and the general distinction between
Good and Evil, and led it to pronounce its sentence that the heavenly
bodies were either far removed from the sphere of our knowledge, or
contributed nothing to right living, however much the knowledge of them
might be attained.”[77] Although this well-known passage from Cicero’s
“Academics” has been criticized for the too great emphasis which it lays
on the alienation of Socrates from Natural Philosophy, and, moreover, as
an attempt has been made to show above, it lays in like manner too much
stress on the alienation of previous thinkers from Moral Philosophy, or,
at any rate, from empirical Ethics, it expresses with great clearness the
surpassing importance which the common life of humanity, as illumined by
the light of virtuous ideals, was henceforward to assume as the end and
aim of philosophical investigations and discussions. The overwhelming
importance of Ethics in the philosophical system of Plato is directly or
indirectly apparent in all his teaching; and where he, too, indulges in
physical speculations, it is with the warning that probability is all
that can be expected from such investigations, and that they constitute a
wise and moderate recreation in the course of severer and more legitimate
studies.[78] But it must be conceded that, while no writer has composed
more beautiful panegyrics in praise of Virtue; while no teacher has
depicted its surpassing importance to humanity with greater devotion of
spirit or subtler charm of language; yet the severity of the intellectual
processes which alone lead to a comprehension of what, in the Platonic
system, Virtue is, has had the effect of making Virtue herself appear
almost “too bright and good for human nature’s daily food;” too lofty and
afar for the common man to attain; a mere abstraction to be preserved
as a field appropriate to the gymnastics of metaphysicians, and to be
shielded from the harsh contact of the common world and common men by the
_chevaux de frise_ of dialectical subtlety. Excess of Reason in Plato
has produced a similar result to that produced by excess of Emotion in
modern Religion, and it is not without Justice that a great writer of the
nineteenth century has described Plato as “putting men off with stars
instead of sense,” and as teaching them to be anything but “practical
men, honest men, continent men, unambitious men, fearful to solicit
a trust, slow to accept, and resolute never to betray one.”[79] The
accessibility of Virtue to the common heart is conditioned in Plato’s
system by its intelligibility to the common reason. The dialectic
processes by which the Ideas of the Good, the True, the Beautiful are
pursued are merely repellent to the average man, who does not care for
Metaphysics, but wishes to be good and pure and just in his dealings
with his fellow-men.[80] “Plato acknowledges that the morality of the
multitude must be utilitarian, since none other is attainable save by
the highly trained metaphysician.”[81] Even when the multitude accept
the teachings of the philosopher, it is not because they are capable of
the knowledge of ideal truth, but because the philosopher has compelled
them to recognize, from utilitarian reasons, that it is better to be
virtuous than to be vicious. But this acknowledgment of the inability of
the multitude to be virtuous in the highest sense, and the assertion that
they must submit themselves as clay to be moulded by the philosopher, who
alone has a knowledge of ideal goodness, do not help in a world where
the philosophers are not autocrats, but where every teacher must submit
his claims to the intelligence of the multitude. It may accordingly be
questioned whether Plato’s Ethics have furnished inspiration for goodness
except to those who have already had a predilection for virtue as an
appanage of the highest intellect, or to those more general lovers of
the Beautiful whose taste is gratified by fascinating descriptions of a
quality which, in itself, has no special charm for them, but which, when
depicted by this “master of the starry spheres” in its atmosphere of cold
but radiant splendour, has transfigured their moral life with beams that
do not “fade into the common light of day.” Plato’s teaching, indeed,
has something monastic, exclusive, aristocratic in its import, and the
“esoteric” doctrines which were taught in the grove of Academus to
students already prepared by a special course of instruction to receive
them stand at the very opposite pole of Philosophy to those homely
conversations which Socrates would hold with the first chance passer-by
in the streets of a busy city. “Let no one enter here who has not studied
Mathematics” was a phrase which summed up in a dogmatic canon of the
school the views of the master touching the exclusion of the multitude
from direct participation in Virtue and Philosophy.[82]
Aristotle brings us into a world where there is less of poetry and
beautiful imagery, but in which the common man can see more clearly. If
the landscapes are not so lovely, the roadways are better laid and the
milestones are more legible. The contrast has been often enough already
elaborated. Its essence seems to lie in the recognition by Aristotle
that men are men, and not ideal philosophers. It hardly needed those
famous passages in the “Ethics,” in which Aristotle subjects the Theory
of Ideas to a most searching criticism, to emphasize that predilection
for the practical concerns of daily life, as not only the proper sphere
of Ethics, but their foundation and material, which is conspicuous in
the general character of his work. Over and over again he insists that
happiness depends upon action, not contemplation;[83] and so convinced is
he that Ethics, like every other science, must start from knowledge of
actual facts, that he denies the claim of those to be students of Moral
Philosophy who are inexperienced in the actions of life.[84] And it is,
surely, in allusion to the demand of the Platonic Philosophy that the
multitude shall permit themselves to be moulded by the Platonist potter
even into that inferior form of virtue of which alone they are capable,
that Aristotle reverts to the famous saying of Hesiod that he is second
best only who “obeys one who speaks well,” while assigning the moral
supremacy to the man who makes his own practical experience of life the
basis of his ethical theories and the mainspring of his moral progress.
Thus it seems that Aristotle is the true successor of Socrates, inasmuch
as Philosophy, which under the spells of Platonism had withdrawn again to
the empyrean, is charmed down once more by the Stageirite to the business
and bosoms of mankind. To use the expressive metaphor of Aristotle
himself, though not, of course, in this connexion, if the creator of
the “Republic” shines as one of “the most beautiful and the strongest”
present at the Olympian Games, the author of the “Ethics” is one of the
“Combatants” who have been crowned, because they have descended into
the arena, and by right action have secured what is noble and good in
life.[85] After Aristotle, it was improbable that Philosophy would ever
again render itself obnoxious to the reproach levelled against Plato by
some of his contemporaries that “they went to him expecting to hear about
the chief good, but he put them off with a quantity of remarks about
numbers and things they could not understand.”[86]
Contemporary with the work of Aristotle and his insistence upon the
necessity that each individual man should seek for the chief good in
the sphere of his own actual experience, occurred the relaxation of
the dominant claims of the State to the best part of the energies and
activities of the citizen. The change in the political condition of
Greece consequent upon the Macedonian conquest had turned the Greek
citizen back upon his own soul for inspiration to guide his steps aright.
The philosophical tendency was thus aided by external conditions, and
the joint operation of both these influences established in Stoicism and
Epicureanism the satisfaction of the moral requirements of the individual
man as the aim and end of Philosophy.
Whatever importance the leaders of the Stoics attached to Logic and
Physics—and different philosophers formed different estimates of their
value[87]—all were agreed that these parts of Philosophy were only
useful in so far as they enabled mankind to lead a virtuous life; a life
in harmony with nature and its laws; a life which placed them above the
domination of “_Fear and hope and phantasy and awe, And wistful yearning
and unsated loves, That strain beyond the limits of this life_.”[88]
The Epicureans repudiated Dialectic,[89] and, as already stated,
studied Physics with a view only to freeing the mind of man from those
supernatural fears which hampered him in his attainment of terrestrial
virtue and happiness:—
“Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia cæcis
In tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus
Interdum nilo quæ sunt metuenda magis quam
Quæ pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura.
Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necesse est
Non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
Discutiant, sed naturæ species ratioque.”
Lucretius, whose great poem is devoted to an exposition of the physical
side of Epicureanism, _i.e._ of the Atomic Philosophy of Democritus,[90]
is only on the same ground with Epicurus himself when he makes it clear,
not merely by the general complexion of his argument, but by a large
number of particular passages, and those, too, the most strikingly
beautiful in the poem, that the investigation of natural phenomena is to
serve only as a means of freeing the life of humanity from those cares
and vices which are hostile to its peace:—
“Denique avarities et honorum cæca cupido
Quæ miseros homines cogunt transcendere fines
Juris et interdum socios scelerum atque ministros
Noctes atque dies niti præstante labore
Ad summas emergere opes, hæc vulnera vitæ
Non minimam partem _mortis formidine_ aluntur.”
The investigation of nature with a view to eliminating the fear of
death as a factor in human conduct, clearly enounced as it is in the
poem of the Roman Epicurean, is still more emphatically expressed
in a “fundamental maxim” of Epicurus himself: “If we did not allow
ourselves to be disturbed by suspicious fears of celestial phenomena;
if the terrors of death were never in our minds; and if we would but
courageously discuss the limits of our nature as regards pain and desire:
we should then have no need to study Natural Philosophy.”[91]
The exclusion of Dialectics,[92] and the subordination of Physics to
Ethics, restricted—if, indeed, it were a restriction—the scope of
character and intelligence to the sphere of conduct, and it is in the
light of this limitation that the full significance of the Epicurean
definition of Philosophy lies—“Philosophy is an active principle
which aims at securing Happiness by Reason and Discussion.” Here we
have in practical completion that identification of Philosophy with
Ethics towards which the whole tendency of Greek speculation had been
consciously or unconsciously working, and which was fully consummated in
the later development of the Stoic and Epicurean systems. The combined
effect of this principle of Epicureanism, and of the contemporaneous
failure of political interest, was to direct attention to those less
ostentatious, but, for happiness, more effective virtues, which flourish
in private society and in the daily intercourse of mankind. Because it
excluded Dialectics, and because it was excluded from Politics, the
gospel of the Garden established an ideal of homely virtue which lay
within the reach of the average man, who, like Epicurus himself, was
repelled by Plato’s distance from life, and did not feel called upon to
cherish impracticable schemes of ameliorating society under the dominion
of a Demetrius the Liberator, but was willing to content himself with a
humbler range of duty, with being temperate and chaste in his habits,
simple and healthy in his tastes, cheerful and serene in his personal
bearing, amiable and sympathetic with his friends, and cultivating
courteous relations in those slightly more extended social circles where
comity and tact take the place of the more intimate and familiar virtues
of household life.[93]
By the method of placing in continuous order certain common and
well-known indications, we have endeavoured to illustrate the view that
the natural development of Greek Philosophy led in the direction of
Ethics, and that the natural development of Ethics led in the direction
of a popular scheme of conduct, which, fragmentary and incomplete as
it might be in a scientific sense, had yet the advantage that it was
founded upon the common daily life of the ordinary man, and placed before
the ordinary man in his common daily life an ideal of virtue which, by
efforts not beyond his strength, he might realize and maintain. This type
of character, partly the growth of the circumstances of the time, but
strengthened and expanded by the manner in which Epicureanism adapted
itself to those circumstances, reacted upon the sterner conception of the
Stoic ideal of private virtue, and when we reach the revival of Religion
and Philosophy in the Græco-Roman world of the Empire, it is this ideal
which is the aim and end of every philosopher from Seneca to Marcus
Aurelius, from Plutarch to Apuleius, no matter what the particular label
they may attach to their doctrines to indicate their formal adhesion to
one of the great classical schools.[94] To take an extreme example of
a truth which will subsequently be illustrated from Plutarch, Seneca,
who is a Stoic of the Stoics, is full of praise for the noble and humane
simplicity of the Epicurean ideal of life, and in those inspiring letters
through which he directs the conscience of his friend Lucilius into
the pure and pleasant ways of truth and virtue, it is an exceptional
occurrence for him to conclude one of his moral lessons without quoting
in its support the authority of the Master of the Garden. The absorbing
interest of Plutarch as a moral philosopher lies mainly in the fact
that though, as a polemical writer, he is an opponent, and not always
a fair or judicious opponent, both of the Porch and the Garden,[95]
he collects from any quarter any kind of teaching which he hopes to
find useful in inculcating that ideal of conduct which he believes most
likely to work out into virtue and happiness; and though his most revered
teacher is Plato, the ideal of conduct which he inculcates is one which
Epicurus would have wished his friend Metrodorus to appropriate and
exemplify.[96] This ideal Plutarch thought worth preservation; it is the
last intelligible and practicable ideal presented to us by Paganism;
and the attempts which Plutarch made to preserve it are interesting
as those of a man who stood at a crisis in the world’s history, and
endeavoured to find, in the wisdom and strength and splendour of the
Past, a sanction for purity and goodness, when a sanction for purity
and goodness was being mysteriously formed, in comparison with which
the wisdom and strength and splendour of the Past were to be regarded
but as weakness and darkness and folly. The experiment was not without
success for a considerable time; and had Paganism been defended by
Julian in the pliant form which Plutarch gave it, and in the spirit of
tolerance which he infused into his defence of it, it is probable that
the harmonious co-operation, and perhaps the complete union, of the
classical tradition and the Christian faith would have been the early and
beneficial result.[97] With a view to observing some of the factors which
contributed to the success of Plutarch’s work, we propose to give a brief
glance at the ethical condition of the epoch in which it was carried on.
CHAPTER III.
_Ethical aspect of Græco-Roman Society in the period
of Plutarch: difficulty of obtaining an impartial view
of it—Revival of moral earnestness concurrent with the
establishment of the Empire: the reforms of Augustus a
formal expression of actual tendencies—Evidences of this in
philosophical and general literature—The differences between
various Schools modified by the importance of the ethical end
to which all their efforts were directed—Endeavour made to base
morality on sanctions already consecrated by the philosophies
and religious traditions of the Past—Plutarch’s “Ethics” the
result of such an endeavour._
Few ages have left to posterity a character less easy to define, or more
subjected to the ravages of mutually destructive schools of criticism,
than that which gave the Religion of Christ to the Western world, and
witnessed the moulding of Pagan Religion and Philosophy—or rather of
Pagan religions and philosophies—into that systematized shape which
they afterwards presented against the progress of Christianity. Many
ancient and some modern apologists of Christianity have appeared to
think it essential to the honour and glory of their Creed that the
world, before its rise, should be regarded as sunk in iniquity to such a
depth that nothing but a Divine Revelation could serve to elevate and
purify it.[98] It has been maintained, on the other hand, and that too
by Christian writers, that no epoch of Western civilization has been so
marked, not only by the material well-being of the mass of mankind, but
“by virtue in the highest places and by moderation and sobriety in the
ranks beneath,” as that during which the new Creed was generally regarded
as a base and superstitious sort of Atheism.[99] It may be conceded that
the original authors of this period who have been most read in modern
times have easily been construed into vigorous and effective testimony in
support of the former position. The poets and rhetoricians of the Empire
have had their most exaggerated phrases turned into evidence against
the morals of their own days, and their less emphatic expressions have
been regarded as hinting at the perpetration of vices too monstrous to
be more clearly indicated. If, by chance an author has left writings
marked by a lofty conception of morality, and breathing the purest and
most disinterested love of virtue, this very fact has been sufficient
to justify a denial of their Pagan origin, and the assertion that the
true source of their inspiration must have been Judæa. Hence the curious
struggles of many intelligent men to establish a personal connexion
between Paul and Seneca, and to demonstrate that the Ethics of Plutarch
are coloured by Christian modes of thought.[100] Other authors of the
period who furnish material for correcting this one-sided impression
have been less known to the multitude and less consulted by the learned.
Even were the worst true that Juvenal, and Tacitus, and Martial, and
Suetonius, and Petronius have said about Roman courts and Roman society;
even were it not possible to supply a corrective colouring to the picture
from the pages of Seneca, and Lucan, and Pliny, and Persius, and even
Juvenal himself: yet it should be easy to remember that, just as the
Palace of the Cæsars was not the City, so the City was not the Empire.
_Exeat aula qui volet esse pius_ is a maxim that could with advantage
be applied to the sphere of historical criticism as well as to that of
practical Ethics; and if we leave the factions and scandals of the Court
and the City under the worst of the Emperors, and follow Dion into the
huts of lonely herdsmen on the deserted hills of Eubœa, or linger with
Plutarch at some modest gathering of family friends in Athens or the
villages of Bœotia, we shall find innumerable examples of that virtue
which the Republican poet sarcastically denies to the highest rulers.
Even after the long reign of Christianity, vice has been centralized in
the great capitals of civilization; and Rome and Alexandria and Antioch
are not without their parallels among the cities of Modern Europe. In
Alexandria itself, the populace who could listen to discourses like those
of Dion must have been endowed with a considerable capacity for virtue;
the tone of the orator, indeed, frequently reminds us of those modern
preachers who provoke an agreeable sensation of excitement in the minds
of their highly respectable audiences, by depicting them as involved in
such wickedness as only the most daring of mankind would find courage
to perpetrate.[101] We propose to deal elsewhere with the testimony of
Plutarch as to the moral character of the age in which he lived, and at
present confine our observations to the assertion that his “Ethical”
writings are crowded with examples of the purest and most genuine virtue;
not such virtue as shows itself on striking and public occasions only,
but such also as irradiates the daily life of the common people in
their homes and occupations. And although he is, perhaps, in some of
his precepts, a little in advance of the general trend of his times,
inculcating, in these instances, virtues which, though not unpractised
and unknown, are still so far limited in their application that he wishes
to draw them from their shy seclusion in some few better homes, and to
establish them in the broad and popular light of recognized customs;[102]
yet it is clear to every one of the few students of his pages that the
virtues he depicts are the common aim of the people he meets in the
streets and houses of Chæronea, and that the failings he corrects are
the failings of the good people who are not too good to have to struggle
against the temptations incident to humanity. The indications conveyed by
Plutarch and Dion respecting the moral progress of obscure families and
unknown villagers point to the widespread existence through the Empire of
that same strenuous longing after goodness, which had already received
emphatic expression in the writings of philosophers and poets whose
activities had been confined to Rome.
For there can be no doubt that the establishment of the Empire had been
accompanied by a strenuous moral earnestness which is in marked contrast
to the flippant carelessness of the last days of the Republican Era. The
note of despair—despair none the less because its external aspect was
gay and _debonnaire_—so frequently raised by Ovid and Propertius and
Tibullus; the reckless cry, _Interea, dum fata sinunt, jungamus amores;
Iam veniet tenebris Mors adoperta caput_, is the last word of a dying
epoch.[103] These three great poets utter the swan song of the moribund
Republic. Their beliefs are sceptical, or frankly materialistic; they
shut their eyes at the prospect of death to open them on the nearer
charms of the sensual life: devoting their days and their genius to the
pleasures of a passionately voluptuous love of women. In their higher
moods they turn to the Past, but with an antiquarian interest only, like
Ovid and Propertius, or, like Tibullus, to delight in the religious
customs that still linger in the rural parts of Italy, the relics of a
simpler and devouter time. If they turn their thoughts to the Afterworld
at all, it is to depict in glowing verses the conventional charms of the
classic Elysium, or to find occasion for striking description in the
fabled woes of Ixion and Tantalus.[104] Even these descriptions change
by a natural gradation into an appeal for more passionate devotion on
the part of Corinna, or Delia, or Cynthia.[105] If Propertius thinks
of death, it is but to hope that Cynthia will show her regard for his
memory by visiting his tomb in her old age; to regret, with infinite
pathos, the thousands of “dear dead women” who have become the prey of
the Infernal Deities—_sunt apud infernos tot milia formosarum_; to lament
that his deserted mistress will call in vain upon his scattered dust;
or to postpone all consideration of such matters until age shall have
exhausted his capacity for more passionate enjoyment. If he mentions
the mighty political events of his time, it is with the air of one who
watches a triumphal procession while resting his head on his mistress’s
shoulder.[106] But these poets, wrapped in all the physical pleasures
which their age had to supply, are not ignorant of the malady from which
it suffers; they know that their despair and their materialism are born
of the misery of long years of sanguinary strife; and Tibullus, in one
of the sweetest of his Elegies, utters a wish which is the Ave of the
storm-tossed Republic to the approaching peace of the Empire:—_At nobis,
Pax alma, veni._[107]
_Cum domino Pax ista venit._[108] Virgil and Horace are poets of the
Empire, and strike the dominant note of the new epoch. It was not the
mere courtly complaisance of genius for its patrons that led Virgil and
Horace to identify their muse with the religious and moral reforms of
Augustus. It was rather a conscious recognition of the spiritual needs
of the new age which led poets and statesmen alike to further this joint
work. It is the custom to regard the labours of Augustus as resulting
in the superimposition on the social fabric of mere forms and rituals
which would have been appropriate were society only a fabric, but which
were utterly inadequate to serve as anything better than a superficial
ornament to an expanding and developing organism.[109] But, taken
in conjunction with the poems of Virgil and Horace, they show their
real character as outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual
grace. It is true that Horace at times attributes the disasters from
which his countrymen have suffered to their disregard of the ancient
religious ceremonies; to their neglect of the _templa ædesque labentes
deorum et fœda nigro simulacra fumo_;[110] but in the six famous Odes
which stand at the head of Book III he emphasizes the national necessity
of chastity, fidelity, mercy, loyalty to duty; and he utters not less
emphatic warnings against the general danger from avarice, ambition,
luxury. The essentially religious character of the Æneid is evident to
every reader. That is no mere formalism which inspires with moral vigour
the splendid melodies of the Sixth Book.[111] Although the Poet uses
the conventional machinery of Elysium and Tartarus to emphasize the
contrast between Virtue and Vice by contrasting the fates that await
them hereafter; yet justice, piety, patriotism, chastity, self-devotion;
fidelity to friend and wife and client; filial and fraternal love: never
received advocacy more strenuous and sincere, never were sanctioned
by praise more eloquent, or reprehension more terrible, than in those
immortal verses which it is an impertinence to praise. The question
which presented itself to Augustus, to his ministers and to his poets,
was how to re-invigorate and preserve those qualities by her practice of
which Rome had become _pulcherrima rerum_. And we cannot wonder that an
important part of their answer to this question lay in the direction of
restoring those ancient religious ceremonies and moral practices which
had been most conspicuously displayed when Rome was making her noblest
efforts to accomplish her great destiny. The sanction of antiquity is
the most permanent of all appeals that are ever made to humanity; and,
even in times of revolution, its authority has been invoked by those most
eager to sweep away existing institutions. _Pro magno teste vetustas
creditur._[112] But if Augustus and his friends appealed to antiquity, it
was not merely to recall the shadows of the ancient forms and customs,
but to revivify them with the new life of virtue that was welling up in
their time, and which, in its turn, received external grace and strength
by its embodiment in the ancestral forms.
The strong chord of moral earnestness struck by Horace and Virgil grows
more resonant as the new era advances, until, in literature at least,
it attains the persistence of a dominant. Juvenal is so passionately
moral that he frequently renders himself liable to Horace’s censure of
those who worship virtue too much; but, in his best moods, as in the
famous lines which close the Tenth Satire, he depicts the virtuous man
in a style which is not the less earnest and sincere because it is also
dignified and calm. Persius, whose disposition was marked by maidenly
modesty and gentleness, and who is also described as _frugi et pudicus_,
shows, even when hampered by a disjointed style which only allows him to
utter his thought in fragments, that devotion to the highest moral aims
which we should expect from a writer brought up under the influences
which he enjoyed;[113] and though he, too, exhibits some of the savage
ferocity of Juvenal in his strictures of vice, he yet pays, in his Fifth
Satire, that tribute to virtue in the person of Cornutus which “proves
the goodness of the writer and the gracefulness with which he could
write.”[114] Lucan, too, whose youth, like that of Persius, had the
inestimable advantage of receiving a share of the wisdom which Cornutus
had gained by nights devoted to philosophic studies, exhibits a spirit
of the loftiest morality under the rhetorical phrasing of his great
Republican Epic.[115] Looking back, with something of regret, to the days
of a dominant oligarchy, he does not conceal the licentiousness which
society harboured beneath the sway of the later Optimates, and he turns
mostly to Cato as the type which he would fain accept as representative
of the true Roman patrician:—
“Nam cui crediderim Superos arcana daturos
Dicturosque magis quam sancto vera Catoni?”[116]
The noble lines in which Cato refuses to consult the Libyan oracle—_Non
exploratum populis Ammona relinquens_—are well known, and express a
highly ethical view of the divine administration of the world:—
“Hæremus cuncti superis, temploque tacente
Nil facimus non sponte Dei: nec vocibus ullis
Numen agit: dixitque semel nascentibus auctor
Quicquid scire licet: steriles nec legit arenas
Ut caneret paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum.
Estne Dei sedes nisi terra et pontus et aer
Et cælum et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra?
Juppiter est quodcunque vides quocunque moveris.”[117]
His biting sarcasms on those who exercise the art of Magic are conceived
in the same spirit of lofty reverence for the Divine Nature,[118] and
he would fain believe in the immortality of the soul as a stimulus to
virtue and self-abnegation in the present life.[119]
The philosophers are marked by the same strenuous seriousness as the
poets. The letters of Seneca to Lucilius are still an Enchiridion for
those that love virtue, and though there were, doubtless, in the ranks of
the philosophers some who deserved the ferocity of Juvenal; some who laid
themselves open to the sarcasms of Seneca’s friend, Marcellinus;[120]
some like Euxenus, an early teacher of Apollonius of Tyana, “who did
not care much to conform the actions of his life” to the tenets of the
philosophy he professed;[121] some who resembled the Cynics who haunted
the streets and temple gates of Alexandria, and did nothing, as Dion
said, “but teach fools to laugh at Philosophy;”[122] yet it is beyond
controversy that philosophers at this time were generally recognized as
the moral teachers of society, and contributed largely, both as domestic
chaplains like Fronto, and evangelistic preachers like Apollonius of
Tyana, to the spread of that virtue whose praise and admiration are so
conspicuous and sincere in the Greek and Roman writers of the period.
The contrast presented by the Sophists, with their artificial graces
and their luxurious lives, only served to emphasize the worth of the
true philosopher, and when a Sophist turned round upon his career, and
determined to lead a virtuous life, he joined the ranks of those who
professed philosophy.[123]
One of the most frequently recurrent signs of the essential love of
virtue exhibited by this age is the constant and strenuous insistence
that practice must conform to profession; and that hypocrisy is almost in
the condition of a cardinal vice. It may, of course, be asserted that the
passionate eagerness displayed touching the importance of being true in
act to the explicit utterances of Philosophy is but a sign of conscious
weakness in well-doing; and that a truer virtue would have given effect
to itself without all this noisy preaching. But a recognition of one’s
own feebleness has subsequently become one of the most lauded elements of
the saintly character, and it is given to very few to blossom gently and
naturally into that goodness which does neither strive nor cry. Juvenal’s
diatribes against the Egnatii of Rome are not very different in language,
and hardly different at all in spirit, from the attacks of New Testament
writers on hypocritical members of the Churches. So far as Greece was
concerned, this love of sincerity was but a return—from a somewhat
distant lapse—to the ideal of personal openness presented in the famous
words of Achilles:—
“For like hell mouth I loath
Who holds not in his words and thoughts one indistinguished troth.”[124]
And not only is practice regarded as the culmination of theory, the
habit formed upon the active principle, Philosophy, but the question
of personal honour is involved in the harmony between creed and deed;
and one mark of distinction between sophist and philosopher is that
the external apparatus of the former—“his contracted brows and studied
gravity of aspect”—do not indicate the possession of the virtues which
are the pride of the latter.[125]
Plutarch frequently lays strenuous weight on this point;[126] Seneca,
Dion, Aurelius, Epictetus, Apuleius, are crowded with sermons on its
importance.[127] And if pure professions are to be carried out into
pure actions, there is a growing sense that neither may impure words
be indulged in, even by those whose lives are pure. Even so far as
the composition of light verse was concerned, a new sensitiveness
was making itself evident. Catullus had said in the old days that a
chaste and pious man might legitimately write verses of a licentious
character, and the catchword had been repeated by all the society poets
down to Martial.[128] But, even when addressing Domitian, Martial, who
asserts that his life is pure, begs the Emperor to regard his lightest
epigrams with the toleration due to the licence of a court jester.
Pliny, the excellent and respectable Pliny, could not read his naughty
hendecasyllables “merely to a few friends in my private chamber” without
subjecting his compositions to serious criticisms in the homes of these
friends, criticisms which he strives to meet by a long display of great
names who have sinned in the same direction; but beneath this display his
uneasiness peeps forth at every word.[129]
The moral reformation officially inaugurated by Augustus appears, in the
light of these indications, as corresponding to an increased tendency to
virtue actually leavening Græco-Roman society. The formal acts of the
Cæsar, the policy of his ministers, the religious sentiment of Horace
and Virgil, the Stoic fervour of Seneca and Lucan, the martyr spirit of
the Thraseas and the Arrias, the tyrannizing morality of Juvenal, the
kindly humanity of Pliny the Younger, the missionary enthusiasm of Dion,
the gentle persuasiveness of Plutarch, are all common indications of
the good that still interfused the Roman world; all point, as indeed,
many other signs also point, to the existence of a widespread belief
that virtuous ideals and virtuous actions were an inheritance of which
mankind ought not to allow itself to be easily deprived. Philosophers
and politicians, as they were at one in recognizing the value of this
heritage, so they were also at one touching the general means by which
its precious elements were to be invigorated and maintained. As we have
already suggested, it is a remarkable characteristic of the philosophic
writers of this period—of Seneca and Dion, of Plutarch, and even of
Epictetus—that there is in them no pedantic adhesion to the fixed tenets
of a particular school. The half-playful boast of Horace at one end of
the period—_nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri_[130]—is reiterated
with something of sarcastic emphasis in Epictetus at the other: “Virtue
does not consist in having understood Chrysippus.”[131] Seneca gives
expression to this prevalent spirit of compromise with great courage
and clearness. After quoting _suo more_ a certain _nobilis sententia_
of Epicurus, he says: “You must not regard these expressions as peculiar
to Epicurus; they are common property. The practice which obtains in the
Senate should, I think, be adopted in Philosophy. When a speaker says
something with which I partly agree, I ask him to compromise, and then
I go with him.”[132] Anything in the whole gathered wealth of the Past
which promised support to a man in his efforts to regulate his life in
accordance with the dictates of reason and virtue was welcomed and made
available for the uses of morality by the selective power of Philosophy.
Hence Plutarch levies contributions on philosophers, poets, legislators;
on Hellenic and Barbarian Religions; on Mysteries, Oracles, private
utterances; on the whole complex civilization of the Græco-Roman world,
and the civilizations which it had absorbed or dominated; on everything,
in fact, which, from its antiquity, or its possession of national or
individual authority, could be made available for establishing the
practice of virtue on the sanction of an ancient and inalienable
foundation. The object of the following pages is to scrutinize the
results of this appeal to the Past, as they are presented in the “Ethics”
of Plutarch, and to arrange in some kind of order the various elements of
which they are composed.
CHAPTER IV.
_Plutarch’s attitude towards Pagan beliefs marked by a
spirit of reverent rationalism—The three recognized sources
of Religion: Poetry, Philosophy, and Law or Custom—The
contribution of each to be examined by Reason with the
object of avoiding both Superstition and Atheism: Reason the
“Mystagogue” of Religion—Provisional examples of Plutarch’s
method in the three spheres—His reluctance to press rationalism
too far—His piety partly explained by his recognition of the
divine mission of Rome—Absence of dogmatism in his teaching._
The question which meets us on the very threshold of an inquiry into
the religious views and moral teachings of Plutarch is that involved in
a definition of his attitude towards the popular faith. His desire to
form a consistent body of doctrine out of its heterogeneous and chaotic
elements is not so intense as to blind him to the difficulties of the
task. Poets, legislators, and philosophers have jointly contributed to
the formation of the “ancient and hereditary Faith,” and Philosophy, Law,
and Poetry, avoid reconciliation to as great a degree as, in the days of
Solon, the famous Attic factions of the Paraloi, the Epakrioi, and the
Pedieis, to the pacification of whose internecine animosities the policy
of that statesman was directed. The gods of the philosophers are like the
Immortals of Pindar:—
“Not death they know, nor age, nor toil and pain,
And hear not Acheron’s deep and solemn strain.”[133]
Philosophy, too, rejects the Strifes, the Prayers, the Terrors, and
the Fears, which Homeric poesy elevates to the divine rank.[134] Its
teachings, moreover, are often at variance with religious practices
established or recognized by Law and Prescription, as when Xenophanes
chid the Egyptians for lamenting Osiris as a mortal, while yet
worshipping him as a god. Poets and legislators, in their turn, refuse
to recognize the metaphysical conceptions—“Ideas, Numbers, Unities,
Spirits”—which philosophers—Platonists, Pythagoreans, and Stoics—have
put in the place of Deity.[135] This clashing of discordant elements in
the mass of the popular tradition is audible in Plutarch’s exposition
of his own views; a fact which is less to be wondered at when we accept
the hint furnished in the allusion to Osiris just quoted, and note
that Plutarch will not confine his efforts, as “arbitrator between
the three Factions which dispute about the nature of the Gods,” to
the sphere of Græco-Roman Mythology.[136] But although he will sit in
turn at the feet of poets, philosophers, and legislators, borrowing,
from Science, Custom, Tradition alike, any teaching which promises
ethical usefulness, he frequently insists, both in general terms and in
particular discussions on points of practical morals, that Reason must
be the final judge of what is worthy of selection as the basis of moral
action. Philosophy, in his beautiful metaphor, so full of solemn meaning
to a Greek ear, must be our Mystagogue to Theology: we must borrow
Reason from Philosophy, and take her as our guide to the mysteries of
Religion, reverently submitting every detail of creed or practice to her
authority.[137] We shall then avoid the charge that we take with our
left hand what our teachers—our legislative, mythological, philosophic
instructors—have offered with their right. The selecting and controlling
power of Reason, applied to philosophical discussions, will enable us to
attain to a becoming conception of the nature of the Deity; applied to
the matter of Mythology, it will enable us to reject the narratives, at
once discreditable and impossible, which have become current respecting
the traditional gods; and, in the sphere of Law and Custom, it will
enable us correctly to interpret the legal ordinances and established
rules connected with sacrifices and other religious celebrations.
The assumption which inspires all Plutarch’s arguments on matters of
Religion is that these three sources supply a rational basis for belief
and conduct: but that superstition on the one hand, and atheistic
misrepresentation on the other, have done so much to obscure the true
principles of belief that Philosophy must analyse the whole material over
again, and dissociate the rational and the pure from crude exaggerations
and unintelligent accretions.[138] It must be admitted that he applies
no definite rules of criticism, constructs no scientifically exact
system of analysis, propounds no infallible dogmas. His canon is the
general taste and good sense of the educated man; a canon which, vague
as it may seem, is based upon an intelligent knowledge of the practical
needs of life, and produces results which are applicable in a remarkable
degree to the satisfaction of such needs. As provisional illustrations
of Plutarch’s method in the three spheres of Philosophy, Mythology, and
National Custom, we may note the discussion on the nature of God in the
“De Ε apud Delphos,” the criticism of the great national poets of Greece
in the “Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat,” and the remarks in
the “De Iside et Osiride” concerning certain religious practices in the
worship of these two Egyptian deities.
In the first-named tract the ostensible subjects of discussion are the
nature and attributes of Apollo; but it soon becomes quite clear that the
argument is concerned with the nature of Deity itself rather than with
the functions of the traditional god. “We constantly hear theologians
asserting and repeating in verse and in prose that the nature of God
is eternal and incorruptible, but that this nature, by the operation
of an intelligent and inevitable law, effects certain changes in its
own form. At one time God reduces all nature to uniformity by changing
His substance to fire; and, again, in a great variety of ways, under
many forms, enters into the phenomenal world.[139] ... Philosophers,
in their desire to conceal these high matters from the common herd,
call God’s transmutation into fire by two names—Apollo, to express His
unity; Phœbus, to describe His clear-shining purity. To denote God’s
suffering the change of His nature into air and water and earth and
stars, and the various species of plants and animals, they figuratively
tell of ‘tearings asunder’ and ‘dismemberings,’ and in these aspects He
is variously called Dionysus, Zagræus, Nyktelius, and Isodaites, and His
‘destructions’ and ‘disappearances,’ His ‘death’ and His ‘resurrection,’
are inventions, enigmas, and myths, fittingly expressing, for the general
ear, the true nature of the changes in God’s essence in the formation of
the world.”[140] Plutarch here represents himself as the speaker; and
while Ammonius, who was Plutarch’s master,[141] and is always spoken
of by him with the greatest reverence, is subsequently introduced as
taking a different view of the processes by which God produced the world
of phenomena, yet neither does he depart from the rational standpoint
in his view of the terms under discussion.[142] In allusion to these
terms, as explained by Plutarch from the Stoical view of the Divine
Nature,[143] he says, “Surely God would be a less dignified figure than
the child in the poem,[144] since the pastime which the child plays with
mere sand, building castles to throw them down again, God would thus be
ever playing with the universe. On the contrary, God has mysteriously
cemented the universe together, overcoming that natural weakness in it
which tends perpetually to annihilation. It is the function of some
other god, or, rather, of some dæmon, appointed to direct nature in
the processes of generation and destruction, to do and suffer these
changes.” In both these views the literal acceptation of the mythological
names is repudiated, and the two differ only in that the Stoics quoted
in Plutarch’s speech make the Supreme Ruler modify His essence to the
production of phenomena, while Ammonius relegates that function to
a subordinate power; keeping his Platonic Demiurgus pure from these
undignified metamorphoses. It will subsequently appear, when we come
to deal with the Dæmonology of Plutarch, that the latter view is the
one he also actually accepted. The discussion, at any rate, furnishes
a capital instance of what Plutarch means by his assertion that Reason
must be Mystagogue to Theology. Mythological terms must be examined by
Reason before their meaning can be accepted as an element in religious
teaching. The particular view taken of the expressions is left to the
taste or philosophic bent of the individual critic: to Academic or Stoic
reasonings; the only essential is that the crude literal meaning of the
terms shall be repudiated as discordant with a rational estimate of the
Divine Nature.[145]
In the critical essay, “Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat,” the
same method is applied to the whole religious and moral teaching of the
national poets. However great Plutarch’s admiration for Plato as man and
philosopher may be, his sound sense of what is practicable in common life
prevents him from subjecting the ancient poetry of Greece, as an element
in ethical culture, to the impossible standard of the “Republic,” and
he therefore, on this question, opposes Stoic and Peripatetic wisdom to
the teaching of a Master with whose sublime views he often finds himself
in agreement.[146] Throughout the whole work he applies the touchstone
of common sense to all the beauties and all the barbarities of the
traditional legends as embodied in Epic and Tragic poetry. Reason and
common sense admit the high value of imaginative literature in ethical
education, and reason and common sense decide what practical advice shall
be given to youthful students of fiction, in order that moral lessons
may be driven home, immoral incidents, descriptions, and characters
made harmless, or even beneficial, while, at the same time, even purely
æsthetic considerations are not neglected.
At the commencement of the “De Iside et Osiride” Plutarch deals fully
with numerous examples of religious practices coming under his third
description of the sources of religious belief, that, namely, of Law
or established Custom. He discusses their meaning in the light of a
principle which he states as follows:—“In the religious institutions
(connected with the worship of Isis and Osiris) nothing has become
established which, however it may appear irrational, mythical,
superstitious, has not some moral or salutary reason, or some ingenious
historical or physical explanation.”[147] He is not always successful
in his search after a moral meaning, or even an ingenious historical
or physical explanation, in the customs which he subjects to analysis.
The rational attitude, however, is unmistakable, and these introductory
remarks, personal as they may be to the priestess Clea, and detached from
the main body of the work, yet stand in a true harmony with what we shall
hereafter see to be its essential purpose, to show, namely, that while
Philosophy can grasp the Highest without the intervention of myth or
institution, it can also aid a pure conception of the Highest by studying
the myths and institutions which foreign peoples have discovered and
created as intermediaries betwixt themselves and the Highest.
But in spite of the important part thus assigned to Reason in settling
disputed matters of faith, and arbitrating on points of national and
individual ethics, Plutarch makes it clear that Piety and Patriotism
have claims in this matter which are actually enforced by Reason in her
selecting and purifying _rôle_. If he had seen, as his age could not see,
and as we can see, that Reason can only be the Mystagogue to Religion
in a very limited degree, he would probably have been patriot first and
philosopher afterwards, or would, perhaps, have accepted the compromise
of Cotta, and played each part in turn as public or private necessities
dictated. But the crux does not arise, and Plutarch’s position never
really has the inconsistency which, carelessly considered, it appears
to have, because he is honestly convinced that what Reason rejects in
the national faith, it is good for the national faith that it should
be deprived of. Hence it is possible to give examples of Plutarch’s
views in this direction without assuming that he forgot what prospect
lay in exactly the opposite direction. Hence he can quote Ammonius as
beautifully tender in his expressions towards those who are bound up in
the literal realisms of the Hellenic faith. “Yet must we extend gratitude
and love to those who believe that Apollo and the Sun are the same,
because they attach their idea of God to that which they most honour and
desire of anything they know. They now see the God as in a most beautiful
dream: let us awaken them and summon them to take an upward flight, so
that they may behold his real vision and his essence, though still they
may revere his type, the Sun, and worship the life-giving principle in
that type; which, so far as can be done by a perceptible object on behalf
of an invisible essence, by a transient image on behalf of an eternal
original, scatters with mysterious splendour through the universe some
radiance of the grace and glory that abide in His presence.”[148] Not
only through the dramatic medium of another personality, but also when
speaking his own thought directly, Plutarch alludes with a sincere and
touching sympathy to the duties and practices of the ancient faith.
The first hint of consolation conveyed to his friend Apollonius on the
death of his son is given in words which feelingly depict the youth as
embodying the ancient Hellenic ideals in his attitude towards the gods,
and his conduct towards his parents and friends.[149] The converse of
this attitude is indicated in many passages where he deprecates a too
inquisitive bearing in the face of questions naturally involved in the
doubt clouding many ancient traditions of a religious character. The
great discussion on “The Cessation of the Oracles” commences with a
reproof directed at those who “would test an ancient religious tradition
like a painting, by the touch” and in the “Amatorius” full play is
allowed to the exposition of a similar view, a view, indeed, which
dominates the whole of this fascinating dialogue. Pemptides, one of the
speakers, who rails lightly at love as a disease, is willing to learn
what was in the minds of those who first proclaimed that passion as a
god. He is answered by the most important speaker in the conversation,
a speaker whose name is not given in the report, which is represented
as furnished by one of this speaker’s sons from their father’s account.
“Our father, addressing Pemptides by name, said, ‘You are, in my opinion,
commencing with great rashness to discuss matters which ought not to be
discussed at all, when you ask a reason for every detail of our belief
in the gods. _Our ancient hereditary faith is sufficient, and a better
argument than this could not be discovered or described._ But if this
foundation and support of all piety be shaken, and its stability and the
honoured beliefs that cling to it be disturbed, it will be undermined and
no one will regard it as secure. And if you demand proofs about every
one of the gods, laying a profane hand on every temple, and bringing
sophistical smartness to bear on every shrine, nothing will be safe from
your peering eyes and prying fingers. What an abyss of Atheism opens
beneath us, if we resolve every deity into a passion, a power, or a
virtuous activity!’”[150] This is, of course, an extreme conventional
view, but the fact, that it is put so fully, at least argues Plutarch’s
sympathy with it, though he would not, in his own person, have pinned
himself down to so unqualified an expression of it. It will be noted that
in this part of the dialogue the gods only are under discussion, whereas
in regard to tradition on other elements in the ancient faith the same
speaker subsequently represents himself as neither altogether a believer
nor a disbeliever, and he proceeds to search, in Plutarch’s own special
way, for “faint and dim emanations of truth dispersed about among the
mythologies of the Egyptians.”[151] Plutarch’s lofty idea of the passion
of Love may have induced him in this, as his strenuous moral aim did
in so many other instances, to emphasize for the moment any particular
aspect of the ancient faith which appeared likely to furnish inspiration
to the realization of noble ethical ideals. He is anxious, at all
events, that his purely rational arguments shall not carry him too far,
as, on one occasion, after a long disquisition, the undoubted purport
of which is to refer oracular inspiration to subterraneous fumes and
exhalations, or, as one of the speakers says, “to accident and natural
means,” Plutarch (“Lamprias” here is clearly a thin disguise of Plutarch
himself) is disturbed and confused that he should be thought desirous of
refuting any “true and religious” opinions recognized with respect to the
Deity; and he forthwith proceeds to prove that it is quite possible to
investigate natural phenomena for secondary causes, while recognizing a
final cause in the creative Deity.[152] Not only does Plutarch sympathize
with those who accept with pious simplicity the tenets of the “ancient
and hereditary Faith;” not only does he deprecate too severe a handling
of religious questions; but he is also eager to support his view of a
subject by showing that it is not out of harmony with the traditions or
prescriptions of the national belief. Concluding that consolatory letter
to his wife upon the death of their little daughter, which is the most
humane and natural expression of sympathy left us by antiquity, he tries
to show that those who die young will earlier feel at home in the other
world than those whose long life on earth has habituated their souls
to a condition so different from that which exists “beyond the gates
of Hades,” and he says that this is a truth which becomes clearer in
the light of the ancient and hereditary customs.[153] No libations are
poured for the young that are dead. They have no share in earth, nor in
the things of earth. The laws do not allow mourning for children of such
tender years, “_because they have gone to dwell in a better land, and
to share a diviner lot_.” And he adds, “I know that these questions are
involved in great uncertainty; but since to disbelieve is more difficult
than to believe, in external matters let us act as the laws enjoin,
while within we become more chaste, and holy, and undefiled.”[154] It
must not be overlooked that Plutarch was long a priest of the Delphian
Apollo, and that the duties of this position responded to some internal
need of his soul, and were not regarded by him as a merely official
dignity, is proved by the manner in which he alludes to the subject. He
is speaking on one occasion of the many indications which the shrine
gives of resuming its former “wealth, and splendour, and honour,” and
he congratulates himself on the zealous and useful part he has taken
in aiding the work of this revival.[155] He mentions two friends as
co-workers in the sacred task, and appears also to felicitate a certain
Roman Governor of Achaia on similar grounds. But he reverently proceeds
to make it quite clear that it is the god himself who is the ultimate
cause of these returning blessings. “But it is not possible that so great
a transformation should have taken place in so short a time through
human activity, unless the god were present and continuing to inspire
his oracle,” and he concludes by censuring those who, in their inability
to discern the motive actuating the divine methods with mankind, “depart
condemning the god, instead of blaming us or themselves, that they
cannot, by reason, discover the intention of the god.”[156]
Plutarch’s attitude of more than tolerance to the “ancient and hereditary
Faith,” an attitude which is, of course, not inconsistent with his desire
to place that Faith on a rational basis, is partly explicable in the
light of his emphatic gratitude to the existing political constitution
of the Græco-Roman world. He would have been an admirable co-worker with
Mæcenas—πρόθυμος καὶ χρήσιμος[157]—in carrying out the religious reforms
of Augustus. He regarded the welfare of Society and the State, of the
family and the individual citizen, as bound up with a belief in the gods
whose agency was so clearly visible in bringing the world to that state
of perfection which it now enjoyed, and which promised to be eternal. No
one now even dreamed of doubting the identity of the gods of Rome with
those of Greece, and Plutarch carries the identification to the extent
of including the gods of almost every people constituting the Roman
Empire.[158] These universal powers had the world in their providential
care, and Rome was the divinely chosen instrument of their beneficent
purposes. The Emperor is the depository of the sacred governing power
of the world.[159] When Tiberius shut himself up in Capreæ, this divine
potency never left him. And though expressions of this kind may be
interpreted as a merely formal recognition of the official dignity
of the Head of the World, Plutarch’s many eloquent descriptions of
the blessings of the _Pax Romana_ leave us in no doubt respecting the
character of his views on this subject. “I welcome and approve,” says
Theon, “the present position of affairs, and the subjects about which
we now consult the oracle. For there now reigns among us a great peace
and calm. War has ceased. Expulsions, seditions, tyrannies, are no
more, and many other diseases and disasters which tormented Greece, and
demanded powerful remedies, are now healed. Hence the oracle is no longer
consulted on matters difficult, secret, and mysterious, but on common
questions of everyday life. Even the most important oracles addressed
to cities are concerned with crops and herds, and matters affecting
the public health.”[160] In the “Præcepta Gerendæ Reipublicæ” he is
still more outspoken in his praise of the Roman administration, and in
his recognition of the opportunities which it gives for the culture of
the individual character within the limits of a greatly generous sway.
Plutarch, as is well known, was gifted with a patriotic regard for the
old achievements of the Hellenic name, but he recognizes with so keen
an insight the great work being accomplished by Rome in the fostering
of municipal institutions, and the establishment of a peace which meant
the undisturbed happiness of millions of obscure families,[161] that, in
the sphere of practical politics, he deliberately turns away from the
group of inspiring ideas connected with ancient Hellenic patriotism. He
alludes coldly, perhaps even sneeringly, to such of his contemporaries
as fancied they could apply the ancient traditions of glory to those
late and unseasonable times, like little children who would try to
wear their father’s sandals;[162] counsels a complete submission to
the duly appointed Roman authorities; fully persuaded that within the
limits of their supremacy there is as much freedom as a reasonable man
could desire to enjoy; and honestly claims to find scope, in a little
Bœotian township, for such political ambition as could be safely and
wisely indulged.[163] It is not difficult to sneer at the prudential
limitation of patriotism to such petty, insignificant, and meagre efforts
as the superintendence of bricks and mortar and the carting of municipal
rubbish; but the wiser thing is to note that Plutarch’s opposition to
vain fancies of the revival of the ancient Hellenic splendour, except
perhaps in such a form as a Hadrian might be inclined to revive it in
an artificial Panhellenium, is based on the conviction that happiness
depends upon the free development of individual character, the
unrestricted enjoyment of domestic peace, the undisturbed intercourse
of social life; and he knew that the Roman sway made it possible, for
Greeks at any rate, to enjoy these blessings to a degree never previously
known in their chequered history.[164] With a clear recognition of the
historical causes of the political decadence of Hellenism, he regards
civic discord as the evil which most demands the attention of those
who still seek opportunities for public action, and he is particularly
grateful to the strong hand of Rome for controlling the internecine
animosities of Greek cities. “Consider,” says he, “our position with
regard to those blessings which are counted as the greatest that a city
can enjoy: Peace, Freedom, Fertility of Soil, Increase of Population,
Domestic Concord. As regards Peace, our peoples have no present need of
politicians. Every Greek war, every Barbarian war, has vanished from
among us. For Freedom, our peoples enjoy as much as their rulers allow
them, _and a greater share would perhaps not be any better for them_.
For fine seasons and plentiful harvests, for families of ‘children like
their sires,’ and for gracious aid to the new-born child, the good man in
his prayers will invoke the gods on behalf of his fellow-citizens.”[165]
As for civic concord, that, he says, is in our own power, and those who
desire a life of political activity could not do better than devote
themselves to the task of spreading harmony and friendship among their
fellow-citizens. The peace which the Romans have established in the world
makes it possible to develop character on these social lines, and he
recognizes, in a pregnant comparison, that the freedom which the Greeks
enjoy is sufficient to allow the fullest play to the development of their
own moral character. The drama is composed and staged: the prompter
stands behind the scene ready with the cue: but the player can give his
own interpretation of the character he represents, though remembering
that a slip _may_ meet with a worse fate than mere hissing in the
audience.[166]
Plutarch is clearly of opinion that this state of things is best for his
fellow-countrymen. He is as firmly convinced of the divine mission of
Rome as ever was Virgil or any other patriotic Roman.[167] In his tract
“De Fortuna Romanorum,” he discusses the question whether the greatness
of Rome was due to Τύχη or Ἀρετή, or, as he expresses the antithesis
in another place, to Τύχη or Πρόνοια—to Chance or to Providence, we
may translate, if we recognize that here Chance is the divine element,
and Providence the human.[168] In other words, is the grandeur of Rome
the result of human virtue and forethought, or is it a direct gift of
the Deity to mankind? He decides in the latter sense, though conceding
much to the valour of individual Romans; and his incidental expressions
of opinion bear as much evidence to the divinely inspired and divinely
guided character of Roman administration as is borne by his definite
conclusion. He says that, whichever way the question is decided, it can
only redound to the glory of Rome to be the subject of a discussion
which has hitherto been confined to the great natural phenomena of the
universe—the earth, the sea, the heavens, and the stars. His very words
are curiously reminiscent of Virgil’s _rerum pulcherrima, Roma_ (τῶν
ἀνθρωπίνων ἔργων τὸ κάλλιστον),[169] as he tells how Time, in concert
with the Deity, laid the foundations of Rome, harmonizing to that end
the influence of Fortune and Virtue alike, thus establishing for all
the nations of mankind a sacred hearth, a harbour and a resting-place,
“an anchorage from the wandering seas” of human stress and turmoil,
a principle of eternity amid the evanescence and mutability of other
things. He describes with great vigour of language the instability of the
world under the domination of other Empires, until Rome acquired her full
strength and splendour, and brought peace and security and permanence
among these warring elements.[170]
Being so satisfied with the constitution of the world, it is natural
that Plutarch should have nothing but reverent words for the eternal
powers whose guidance had led to so happy a disposition of human affairs.
However much Philosophy should endeavour to free the mind from the crude
and vulgar elements in the “ancient and hereditary Faith,” she must never
be tempted to profess other than the most pious belief in its fundamental
truth and right; and the ultimate aim of Philosophy must be to strengthen
and revive the ancient Religion by freeing it from inconsistencies and
crudities which, so long as they appeared to be an essential part of the
system, only existed to shock the pious and to encourage atheism.
Plutarch’s attitude towards the ancient Faith may thus be defined as
one of patriotic acceptance modified by philosophic criticism; not that
criticism which tries everything from the fixed standpoint of a set of
rules logically irrefutable: but that which is really the spirit of
rationalism pervading all philosophies alike. If Plutarch’s attitude
is that of a Platonist, it is that of a Platonist whose experience of
ordinary human affairs, and whose recognition of their importance in
Philosophy, have compelled him to modify the genuine teaching of the
Master into something like the spirit of compromise characterizing the
later Academics. His teaching is not the philosophic despotism of Plato;
it might easily be characterized as “plebeian,”[171] as Epicureanism
was by Cicero, or “commonplace,” as Aristotle has been described by
Platonists. It breathes that free spirit of truth which bids every man,
whether he is a practised philosopher or not, or even if he has not
studied mathematics, to give a reason for the faith that is in him:
to apply the touchstone of his own practical experience and native
intelligence to the domain of Ethics and Religion as to the domain of
every-day life, because, as a matter of fact, the domain of every-day
life is the domain of Religion and Ethics. The dictum of Hesiod, enforced
by Aristotle and applied in practice by the Epicureans, and by the
Stoics, is the keynote of the teaching of Plutarch:—“He is most excellent
of all, who judges of all things for himself.”
CHAPTER V.
_Plutarch’s Theology—His conception of God not a pure
metaphysical abstraction, his presentment of it not
dogmatic—General acceptance of the attributes recognized
by Greek philosophy as essential to the idea of God—God
as UNITY, ABSOLUTE BEING, ETERNITY—God as INTELLIGENCE:
PERSONALITY of Plutarch’s God intimately associated with
his Intelligence—God’s Intelligence brings him into contact
with humanity: by it he knows the events of the Future and
the secrets of the human heart—From his knowledge springs
his Providence—God as Father and Judge—the DE SERA NUMINIS
VINDICTA—Immortality of the Soul._
It will readily be understood that on no question of Religion is Plutarch
more willing to act as “Arbitrator” than on that concerned with the
Nature and Attributes of the Deity. He knows and, as we have seen,
recognizes to the full the discordant nature of the elements which, by
force of circumstances, have been driven into some kind of cohesion in
the formation of the popular belief, and it must be admitted that his
efforts to harmonize them into a rational consistency are not completely
successful. His own conception of the Divine nature resembles the popular
notion in being a compound of philosophy, myth, and legalized tradition.
From Philosophy he accepts the Unity of God; from popular Mythology he
accepts certain names of deities, and certain traditional expressions,
which he understands, however, in a sense quite different from any
interpretation current in the popular views, while, at the same time,
he never uses these names and expressions without an air and attitude
of the most pious regard. The philosophical part of his teaching on the
nature of God is largely Greek, but by no means entirely so, and neither
is it the teaching of any particular school of Greek philosophy. The
Demiurgus of the Timæus: the One and Absolute of the Pythagoreans: the
Πρῶτον κινοῦν, the νόησις, νοήσεως νόησις of Aristotle; the material
immanent World-Soul—the λόγος ὁ ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ—of the Stoics:—one and all
contribute qualities to the Plutarchic Deity, and show how irresistible
the necessity for unity had become in the spiritual, as in the political,
world. The metaphysical Deity thus created from these diverse elements
is made personal by the direct ethical relation into which He is brought
with mankind (as in the punishment of sin), while the suggestion of
personality is aided by the use of the Greek popular names of the deities
to describe the attributes of the One Supreme God. Thus it has already
been noted that while Plutarch is ostensibly discussing the attributes of
Apollo he is actually defining his position with reference to abstract
Deity. This ill-harmonizing combination of metaphysics and popular belief
is further placed in contact with views originated by Oriental creeds,
with Zoroastrianism, with Manichæism, with “certain slight and obscure
hints of the truth, which are to be found scattered here and there in
Egyptian Mythology,”[172] the whole presenting a strange conglomeration,
which appears to defy any attempt to make a consistent theology of it,
until we see Plutarch’s method conspicuously emerging with its twofold
aim, of proving that all these different views of God are merely
different ways of striving after belief in the same Supreme Power, and
of inculcating a sympathetic and liberal attitude of mind, which is far
more conducive to unity than a detailed agreement on points of minor
importance.[173] This endeavour after unity is supported by a strenuous
and sincere belief in what at first sight appears to be a principle of
diversity—the belief, namely, in Dæmons—but which Plutarch uses to great
effect in his attempts after unity, by assigning, with Pythagoras,[174]
every recognized tradition unworthy of the Highest to these subordinate
beings whose influence is everywhere felt in nature and in human life,
and whose presence, at any rate, interpenetrates and overruns the whole
of Plutarch’s views on religion.[175]
It is no unfitting circumstance in a priest of Apollo that his noblest
utterances respecting the nature of God should be contained in
discourses connected more or less with the temples and traditions of
the god. In the discussion, for instance, on the syllable “E” written
over the narrow entrance of the Amphictyonic Temple at Delphi, Ammonius
is represented as expressing views of the Divine Nature which are
unsurpassed for sublimity in any other part of Plutarch’s writings, or
even in Greek literature generally. We quote them here as embodying
Plutarch’s beliefs on the Unity, Eternity, and Absoluteness of the Divine
Nature. “Not then a number, nor an arrangement, nor a conjunction or
any other part of speech, do I think the inscription signifies. It is
rather a complete and concise form of address, an invocation of the God,
bringing the speaker with the very word, into a conscious recognition
of His power. The God salutes each of us, as we approach His shrine,
with the great text, ‘Know thyself,’ which is His way of saying χαῖρε
to us; and we in our turn, replying to the God, say εἶ—‘Thou art,’ thus
expressing our _belief in His true and pure and incommunicable virtue of
absolute being_.[176]... Now we must admit that God absolutely is; not
that he _is_ with reference to any period of time, but with reference
to an immovable, immutable, timeless eternity, before which there was
nothing, after which there is nothing, in respect to which there is
neither future nor past, than which there is nothing older or younger.
But being Unity, the Unity that he is _now_ is the same Unity with which
he occupies eternity; and nothing really exists but that which is
endowed with the same absolute existence as he—neither anything that has
come into existence, nor shall come into existence, nor anything which
had a beginning, or shall have an end. In worshipping him, therefore, we
ought assuredly to salute and address him in a manner corresponding to
this view of him; as, _e.g._, in the phrase already used by some ancient
philosophers, the phrase, ‘Thou art one.’ For the Divine principle is not
many, as we are, each of us compacted of countless different passions,
a mingled and varying conglomerate of assembled atoms. But Being must
necessarily be Unity, and Unity must be Being. It is Diversity—that is,
the principle of discrepancy from Unity—which issues to the production of
non-Being, whence the three names of the God are one and all appropriate.
He is _Apollo_ (ἀ πολύς), because he repudiates and excludes the many
(τὰ πολλὰ); _Ieius_ (ἵος = εἶς) because he is Unity and Solitude; and
_Phœbus_, of course, was the name given by the ancients to anything that
was pure and unsullied.... Now Unity is pure and unsullied; defilement
comes by being mixed with other elements, as Homer says that ivory
dipped in purple dye ‘is defiled,’ and dyers say that colours mixed are
colours ‘corrupted,’ the process being called ‘corruption.’ A pure and
incorruptible substance must therefore be one and whole.”[177]—“The
Inscription εἶ seems to me to be, as it were, at once the antithesis and
the completion of the inscription, ‘Know thyself.’ The one is addressed
in reverence and wonder to the God as eternally existent, the other is a
reminder to mortality of the frail nature that encompasseth it.”[178]
Nowhere is the necessity which Plutarch feels for believing in one
supreme ruler of all the imaginable universe more apparent than in a
passage in which he is seeking a regulating Intelligence for an admitted
plurality of worlds, to account for whose administration a Greek of
almost any period would have been constrained to resort to the hypothesis
of a plurality of gods, supreme as each individual god might be in his
own individual world. The passage in question initiates a discussion on
this subject somewhat episodical to the main argument of the “De Defectu
Oraculorum.” Plutarch himself is the speaker, though he represents
his interlocutors as addressing him by the name of Lamprias.[179] He
is inclined to agree that there may be more worlds than one, though
repudiating an infinity of worlds. “It is more consonant with reason to
assert that God has made more than one world. For He is perfectly good,
and deficient in no virtue whatsoever, least of all in those virtues
that are associated with Justice and Friendship, which are the fairest
of all virtues, and those most appropriate to the divine nature. And as
God is not wanting in any respect, so also He possesses no redundant or
superfluous characteristics. There must exist, therefore, other gods
and other worlds than ours, whose companionship furnishes a sphere for
the exercise of these social virtues. For it is not upon Himself, nor
upon a part of Himself, but upon others, that He discharges the claims
of justice, kindliness, goodness. Hence it is not probable that He is
unneighboured and unfriended, or that this world of ours floats alone in
the emptiness of infinite space.”[180] Plutarch, however, is merely on
tentative ground here; the plurality of worlds was an abstract academic
question no less in those days than in these. Admitting a plurality of
worlds, it does not necessarily follow that each should be under the
dominion of a separate Deity. “What objection,” he asks, in answer to the
Stoics, “what objection is there to our asserting that all the worlds
are beneath the sway of the Fate and Providence of Zeus, and that He
bestows His superintendence and direction among them all, implanting in
them the principles and seeds and ideas of all things that are brought
about therein? Surely it is no more impossible that ten, or fifty, or a
hundred worlds should be animated by the same rule of Reason, or should
be administered in accordance with one and the same principle of action,
than that a public assembly, an army, or a chorus, should obey the same
co-ordinating power. Nay, an arrangement of this kind is in special
harmony with the Divine Character.”[181] Plutarch cannot get away from
his fixed belief in the absolute Unity of God, and with God’s Unity, as
we have already seen, his Eternity and Immutability are involved. But
Plutarch re-asserts this truth in various places and forms. In the tract
“De Stoicorum Repugnantiis,” though chiefly dealing polemically with the
inconsistencies and self-contradictions of Chrysippus and other early
Stoics, he clearly exhibits his own views in several passages. In one
place[182] he asserts that even those who deny the benevolence of God, as
the Jews and the Syrians, do not imagine him as other than eternally and
immutably existent, and quotes with approval a sentence from Antipater of
Tarsus, to the effect that God is universally regarded as uncreate and
eternal. A little later in the development of the argument[183] he adopts
the Stoic position—which Chrysippus is represented as contradicting—that
the idea of God includes the ideas of happiness, blessedness,
self-sufficiency, which qualities are elsewhere shown to exist absolutely
and independently of all conceivable causes of opposition.[184] “They
are wrong who assert that the Divine Nature is eternal because it avoids
and repels anything that might tend to its destruction. Immutability and
Eternity must necessarily exist in the very nature of the Blessed One,
requiring no exertion on his part to preserve and defend them.”
The intermingling of the doctrines of various philosophic sects is
interestingly conspicuous throughout these discussions on the nature
of God; and not less than elsewhere in the noble observations of the
Platonist Ammonius, which have been quoted from the “De Ε apud Delphos.”
It is equally interesting to note that all the speakers in that
dialogue, while looking with their mind’s eye far beyond any individual
member of the Olympian Pantheon to that divine power whose functions
correspond with the essential requirements of the loftiest monotheism,
yet use the name of Apollo as the professed nucleus of their religious
beliefs, and thus bring themselves into formal harmony with the demands
of the “ancient and hereditary Faith.” The same tendency, at once
orthodox and unifying, is visible in the philosophic import attached,
in accordance with the Stoic practice, to the popular names for the god
in his various functions. In other tracts and essays the same aim is
conspicuous, the same method of treatment is applied. In his fascinating
account of the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris—which will be dealt with
later from the material which it furnishes for investigating Plutarch’s
attempts to identify foreign gods with the gods of Greece—he uses both
these divine names as a means of approach to the Divine Nature, that One
Eternal, Absolute Being, which is the real object of the philosopher’s
clarified insight—πολλῶν ὀνομάτων μορφὴ μία.[185] The true object of the
service of Isis, for example, is “the knowledge of that First and Supreme
Power which is compact of Intelligence; that Power whom the goddess
(Isis) bids her servants seek, since He abides by her side and is united
with her. The very name of her temple expressly promises the knowledge
and the understanding of _Being_, inasmuch as it is called the Ision
(εἰς—ἰὼν), indicating that we shall know _Being_ if we _enter_ with piety
and intelligence into the sacred rites of the goddess.”[186]
The passage just quoted shows the intimate connexion between _Being_ and
_Intelligence_—the “Supreme Power is compact of Intelligence;” and we are
left in little doubt respecting Plutarch’s views on this second aspect
of the Divine Nature. The conception of the Deity as νοῦς, an ancient
abstraction in Greek philosophy, is at once strengthened and brought
nearer to the intelligence of humanity by Plutarch’s simple treatment of
it, and by his connecting it, wherever possible, with the traditions of
the popular creed. God is not only Intelligence, but intelligent. “The
Divine Nature,” says he, “is not blessed in the possession of silver
and gold, nor mighty through the wielding of thunders and thunderbolts,
but in the enjoyment of knowledge and understanding; and of all the
things that Homer has said concerning the gods, this is his finest
pronouncement:—
‘Yet both one goddess formed
And one soil bred, but Jupiter precedence took in birth
_And had more knowledge_’[187]
—a pronouncement in which he gives the palm for dignity and honour to
the sovereignty of Jove, inasmuch as he is older in knowledge and wisdom.
And I am of opinion that the blessedness of that eternal life which
belongs to God consists in the knowledge which gives Him cognizance of
all events; for take away knowledge of things, and the understanding of
them, and immortality is no longer _life_, but mere _duration_.”[188]
The free, unfettered exercise of intelligence is therefore a function
of the Divine Nature; but although Plutarch is clearly thinking of the
νοῦς of Anaxagoras as embodied by Plato in his conception of the Chief
Good, yet he succeeds in bringing the Divine Nature, by the exercise of
intelligence, into an intimate relation with humanity which the Platonic
Demiurgus never attains. The true successors of Plato in the realm of
Idealism were the neo-Platonists, who maintained that “the sum total of
the Ideas exists in the Divine _nous_, not outside of it, ‘like golden
statues,’ which God must search and look up to before He can think. It
is not to be supposed that He must needs run about in search of notions,
perhaps not finding them at all, perhaps not recognizing them when
found. This is the lot of man, whose life is spent often in the search,
sometimes in the vain search, after truth. But to the Deity all knowledge
is always equally present.”[189] The vicious weakness of Platonism,
whether Old or New, lies in the fact that no real reason exists why God
should ever leave the contemplation of “worlds not realized” to create
this world after an eternally existing pattern, in the intellectual
contemplation of which he was already happy.[190] The “absence of envy”
is not a philosophic reason: it is a Platonic leap over an unbridged
chasm. The aloofness of the Epicurean gods in their _sedes quietæ_ is the
logical outcome of this aspect of Platonism. Plutarch gives the Divine
Intelligence an interest in the beings He has created. Apollo (here again
the popular name is used for the Divine Being) knows all the difficulties
that trouble the public and private lives of humanity, and he knows their
solutions also. “In private matters we inquire of Apollo as a seer, in
public matters we pray to him as a god. In the philosophic nature of
the soul he is the author and inspirer of intellectual difficulties and
problems, thus creating therein that craving which has its satisfaction
in the discovery of Truth;”[191] _e.g._, “when the oracle was given out
_that the altar of Delos should be doubled_, the god, as Plato says,
not only conveyed a particular command, but also indicated his desire
that the Greeks should study geometry; the task assigned involving an
operation of the most advanced geometrical character.”[192] In another
place this paternal interest in the doings of mankind is attributed to
the Deity direct without the intrusion of any traditional name for a
particular god. “It is not, as Hesiod supposes,[193] the work of human
wisdom, but of God’s, to discriminate and distinguish predilections and
antipathies in character before they become conspicuous to the world by
breaking out into gross evil-doing under the influence of the passions.
_For God is assuredly cognizant of the natural disposition of every
individual man_, being, by His nature, more fitted to perceive soul than
body: nor does He await the outbreak of actual sin before He punishes
violence, profanity, obscenity.”[194] Thus, although Plutarch accepts
the philosophic phrasing current respecting the nature of the Deity,
his ardent, sympathetic temperament brings down the philosophers’ Deity
from its majestic isolation, and makes it “meet halfway” the gods of the
popular faith, so that both may be of service to humanity, the latter
being purified and elevated, the other actualized and humanized. We
discern with sympathy Plutarch’s attempt to satisfy the eternal craving
of men for a mediator between themselves and the unapproachableness of
the Highest; and we are prepared for his exposition of the doctrines
of Dæmonology. This tendency to give warmth and life to philosophic
abstractions is occasionally visible in an unconscious attempt to
assimilate the qualities possessed by the Deity to those displayed in
a less degree by mankind. Thus, he implicitly accepts the Platonic
position that Eternity is all present to God,[195] a position which is
also accepted by modern European Theology: but he elsewhere regards the
Deity (formally using the name of Apollo) as a scientific observer, with
infallibly acute reasoning powers directed upon phenomena retained in
an unshakable memory. His predictions of events are, therefore, really
predictions, not statements of present facts; and the “rigorous certainty
and universality” which they possess are the certainty and universality
attaching to the human discoveries of the laws of geometry and the law
of causation, and not to a divine insight which is omniscience because
it is always regarding events as present, whether they are actually
past, present, or to come. “Apollo is a prophet, and prophecy is the art
of ascertaining the future from the present or the past. Now nothing
exists without a cause, and prediction, therefore, depends upon reason.
The present springs inevitably from the past, the future from the
present. The one follows naturally upon the other by a succession which
is unbroken from beginning to end, and, accordingly, he who knows the
natural causes of past, present, and future events, and can connect their
mutual relationships, can predict the future, knowing, in the words of
Homer, ‘things that are now, things that shall be, and things that are
over.’ The whole art of Dialectics consists in the knowledge of the
Consequent.”[196]
Already in these passages, which represent philosophers as discussing
God in the terms familiar in Greek philosophy, we can discern a gradual
breaking down of that metaphysical exclusiveness which had hitherto
marked the philosophic conception of the Deity. We see God again becoming
personal, and reverting to that interest in the affairs of mankind from
which the philosophers, starting with Xenophanes, had, in their revulsion
from the anthropomorphic realisms of the Epic traditions, excluded him.
We can already note that Plutarch believes in the “goodness” of God in
a sense quite distinct from the “absence of envy” distinguishing the
Platonic Creator, or even from the sense involved in Plato’s admission
that the gods love the just, since one always loves that which is made
in one’s own image.[197] We can see him going further, indeed, than
Aristotle, who compares the love of men for the gods to the love of
children for their parents, a love which is based upon a recognition of
their goodness and superiority, and of their having been the authors
of the greatest benefits to humanity.[198] But we are not left without
many explicit texts asserting the goodness of God to mankind in emphatic
phrases. Plutarch agrees with those statesmen and philosophers who
assert that the majesty of the Divine Nature is accompanied by goodness,
magnanimity, graciousness and benignity in its attitude towards
mankind.[199] We have already seen that Justice and Love are regarded
by Plutarch as the most beautiful of all virtues, and those most in
harmony with the Divine Nature,[200] and many isolated sentences could
be quoted to demonstrate how firmly the belief in God’s goodness to man
was fixed in Plutarch’s mind. We are fortunate, however, in possessing a
special tract in which the personal character of the Divine Goodness is
so clearly exhibited that a modern translator of the tract, writing from
a “Theological Institution,” is able to say, “I am not aware, indeed,
that even Christian writers who have attempted to defend the same truth
within the same limits of natural theology, have been able to do anything
better than to reaffirm his position, and perhaps amplify and illustrate
his argument.”[201] The tract referred to is, of course, the famous
production known as the “De Sera Numinis Vindicta.” It is a bold and
beautiful attempt to reconcile the existence of an actively benevolent
Deity with the long-continued, often permanent, impunity of wickedness
in this world; an endeavour to solve the question raised, especially by
Epicureans, but not unfraught with solicitude for philosophers of other
schools, respecting the patent fact that human virtue and human vice have
no natural and necessary connexion with human happiness on the one hand
and human misery on the other. Christian translators of the piece, from
Amyot down to the writers just quoted, have hailed it as an effective
vindication of the ways of God to man, and Comte Joseph de Maistre, whose
paraphrase is designed, as he says, to please “ladies and foreigners,”
is quite convinced that such a justification could not possibly have
been written by one who was not a Christian.[202] Even Wyttenbach, whom
de Maistre attacks for repudiating this view, is willing, with all his
scholarly caution, to admit that Plutarch, in this tract, touches the
excellences of the Christian faith.[203]
The position which Plutarch sets himself to overthrow is that which is
expressed most concisely in the famous verses of Ennius:—
“Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam cœlitum,
Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus;
Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest”
—a sentiment in exact harmony with the Epicurean view of the matter.[204]
While, however, establishing the providence and goodness of God as
against the practical Atheism of the Epicureans, it will be seen that he
is equally temperate, and equally consistent with himself, in avoiding
the exaggerated zeal of those Stoics who, in their eager desire to do
something for the honour of Providence, had subjected the minutest
and commonest actions of life to the jealous watching of an arbitrary
omniscience, so that, as Wyttenbach puts it, “that most gracious name
of Providence was exposed to ridicule and contempt, being alternately
regarded as a _fortune-telling old crone_, and as _a dreadful spectre to
alarm and terrify mankind_.”
Let us see in what way Plutarch establishes the providential benevolence
of God without detracting from his majesty.
A company of philosophic students, Plutarch himself; Patrocleas, his
son-in-law;[205] Timon, his brother; and Olympichos, a friend;[206] are
found, at the opening of the dialogue, regarding each other in silence
beneath a Portico of the Delphic Temple, in wonder at the discourtesy
of an Epicurean who has suddenly disappeared from the party, after
expounding the doctrines of his school in the manner, doubtless, of
Velleius in the “De Natura Deorum,” though with a more limited scope
as expressed by the famous line of Ennius already quoted. According to
Plutarch, he had “gathered together, from various sources, an undigested
mass of confused observations, and had then scattered them in one
contemptuous stream of spleen and anger upon Providence.” The company,
deprived of their legitimate opportunity for reply, determined to
discuss the question of Providence as if the departed opponent were
still present, although it cannot be doubted that his absence, and the
consequent want of direct necessity to “score off” him, lead to a more
thorough and impartial discussion of the topic. Patrocleas, at any rate,
states the difficulty with almost Epicurean boldness. “The delay of the
Deity in punishing the wicked seems to me to be a strange and mysterious
thing. The wicked are so eager and active in their wickedness, that
they, least of all, ought to be the object of inactivity on the part of
God. Thucydides rightly said that the advantage of delay was on the side
of evil-doers.[207] Present immunity from the punishment due to crime
encourages the criminal, and depresses the innocent sufferer. Bias knew
that a certain reprobate of his days would be punished, but feared that
he would not live to see it. Those whom Aristocrates betrayed at the
Battle of Taphrus were all dead when his treachery was punished twenty
years after. So with Lyciscus and the Orchomenians.[208] This delay
encourages the wicked. The fruit of injustice ripens early and is easily
plucked, but punishment matures long after the fruit of evil has been
enjoyed.” This demand of the natural man to see their deserts meted out
to the wicked is reinforced in a more philosophical manner by Olympichos,
who maintains that delay in the punishment of sin deprives it of that
salutary effect which its immediate infliction would have upon the
sinner, who regards it as accidental, and not necessarily connected with
his crimes. The fault of a horse is corrected if bit and lash be applied
at once; but all the beating and backing and shouting in the world at a
later time will only injure his physique without improving his character.
“So that I am quite unable to see what good is done by those Mills of
God[209] which are said to grind so late, since their delay brings
justice to naught, and thus deprives vice of its restraining fear.”[210]
Plutarch, before replying to these weighty arguments, preaches a short
and eloquent sermon on the text, “God moves in a mysterious way.” His
thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor His ways our ways. We must imitate
the philosophic caution of the Academy. Men who never saw a battle may
talk of military affairs, or discuss music who never played a note; “but
it is a different thing for mere men like ourselves to peer too closely
into matters that concern Divine Natures; just as if unskilled laymen
were to try to penetrate the intention of an artist, the meaning of a
physician’s treatment, the inner significance of a legal enactment, by
fanciful guesses and surmises.... It is easier[211] for a mortal to
make no definite assertion about the gods, but just this—that _He_[212]
knows best the proper time to apply His treatment to wickedness. He
can truly discriminate in the character of the punishment required by
each offence.” These preliminary observations are in the proper Academic
style; they are designed to indicate that the end of a discourse on such
intricate matters can only be the modification of doubt by probability,
not its settlement by absolute logical certainty.[213] The assumption
of the Platonic attitude is appropriately followed by a Plutarchic
reading of the teaching of Plato, who is understood as asserting that
God, when he made Himself the universal pattern for all beautiful and
noble things, granted human virtue to those who are able to follow Him,
in order that they might thus in somewise grow like unto Him.[214]
Further, as Plato says,[215] the universal nature took on order and
arrangement by assimilation to and participation in the Idea and in the
Virtue of the Divine Nature. Again, according to Plato, Nature gave us
eyes that our soul might behold the order and harmony of the heavenly
bodies, and become harmonious and ordered herself, free from flighty
passions and roving propensities.[216] Becoming like God in this way,
we shall emulate the mildness and forbearance with which He treats the
wicked; shall eradicate from our minds the brutish passion for revenge;
and shall wait to inflict our punishments until long consideration has
excluded every possibility that we may repent after the deed is done. The
purport of this argument, and of the examples which Plutarch, always rich
in illustration, furnishes in support of it, is clearer than the need
of attaching it to the Platonic scheme of creation. Plutarch believes
that “God is slow to anger”; because gentleness and patience are part
of His nature, and because by speedy punishment, He would save a few,
but by delaying His justice He gives help and admonition to many. God,
moreover, knows how much virtue He originally implanted in the heart of
every man. He knows the character and inclination of every guilty soul;
and His punishments are, therefore, different from human penalties, in
that the latter regard the law of retaliation only, while the former
are based on a knowledge of character which does not quench the smoking
flax, but gives time and opportunity for a repentant return to the path
of virtue.[217] The world, too, would have been deprived of many a
virtuous character, lost the advantage of many a noble deed, had prompt
punishment for early sins been inflicted. There is, moreover, a soul of
good in things evil; the careers of great tyrants have been prolonged,
and the world has been the better for the movements which their tyranny
compelled. Evil is a “dispensation of Providence” in Plutarch’s eyes, as
in those of many modern Christians. “As the gall of the hyæna, and the
rennet of the seal, both disgusting animals in other respects, possess
qualities useful for medicinal purposes, so upon certain peoples who need
severe correction God inflicts the implacable harshness of a tyrant or
the intolerable severity of a magistrate, and does not take away their
trouble and distress until they are purified of their sins.” Sometimes,
too, the Deity delays His vengeance in order that it may take effect in a
more strikingly appropriate manner.[218]
But these external punishments are not the most terrible that can be
inflicted on the sinner. It would be difficult, even in Christian
literature, to find so striking a tribute to the power of conscience
in inflicting its immaterial tortures on the criminal who has escaped
material recompense. Plutarch bases his observations on this head on a
repudiation of Plato’s statement[219] “that punishment is a state that
follows upon injustice,” asserting, as he finds in Hesiod, that the two
are contemporaneous and spring up from the same soil and root; a view
which he supports by many conspicuous and terrible examples from history,
the force of which may be summarized in the fine and truthful phrase—the
antithetical effect of which would be destroyed by translation—οὐδὲ
γηράσαντες ἐκολάσθησαν ἀλλ’ ἐγήρασαν κολαζόμενοι.[220] The conclusion
which Plutarch arrives at by considering this aspect of the case is that
“there is no necessity for any god, or any man, to inflict punishment
on evildoers, but it is sufficient that their whole life is tormented
and destroyed by their sense of their impiety;” and that the time cannot
but come when the glamour and the tinselled glory of successful crime
will be torn away, and nothing shall remain but the base and dreadful
memory to torture awakening conscience with the pangs of an unquenchable
remorse.[221]
A fresh perplexity as to the goodness and justice of God is here raised
by Timon, who cannot see that it is in harmony with these divine
qualities that the sins of the fathers should, as Euripides complained,
be visited upon the children.[222] The punishment of the innocent is no
compensation for the escape of the guilty. God, in this case, would be
like Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, who ravaged Corcyra because
the Homeric Corcyreans had given a welcome to Odysseus, and retorted
the blinding of the mythical Cyclops upon the Ithacensians when they
complained that his soldiers had looted their sheepfolds. “Where,
indeed,” asks Timon, “is the reason and justice of this?”[223] Plutarch
can only reply that, if the descendants of Hercules and Pindar are held
in honour on account of the deeds of their progenitors, there is nothing
illogical in the descendants of a wicked stock being punished. But he
knows that he is on difficult ground, and repeats the Academic caution
against too much dogmatism in these intricate matters. He falls back
upon natural causes here, as if seeking to exonerate the Deity from
direct responsibility for a striking injustice. An hereditary tendency
to physical disease is possible, and may be transmitted from ancestors
who lived far back in antiquity. Why should we marvel more at a cause
operating through a long interval of time, than through a long interval
of space? If Pericles died, and Thucydides fell sick, of a plague that
originated in Arabia, why is it strange that the Delphians and Sybarites
should be punished for the offences of their ancestors?[224] Moreover,
a city is a continuous entity with an abiding personality; just as
child, and boy, and man are not different persons, but are unified by
the consciousness of identity;—nay, less marked changes take place in a
city than in an individual. A man would know Athens again after thirty
years of absence, but a far shorter period serves to obliterate the
likenesses of our personal acquaintance. A city rejoices in the glory
and splendour of its ancient days; it must also bear the burden of its
ancient ignominies. And if a city has this enduring personality which
makes it a responsible agent throughout its existence, the members of the
same family are much more intimately connected. There would, therefore,
have been less injustice inflicted had the posterity of Dionysius been
punished by the Syracusans than was perpetrated by their ejection of his
dead body from their territories. For the soul of Dionysius had left his
body, but the sons of wicked fathers are often dominated by a good deal
of their parents’ spirit.[225]
We are conscious of some artificial straining of the argument in this
place, and shortly perceive that the mention of the soul of Dionysius is
intended to prepare the way for a discussion on the immortality of the
soul. Plutarch cannot believe that the gods would show so much protective
care for man—would give so many oracles, enjoin so many sacrifices and
honours for the dead—if they knew that the souls of the dead perished
straightway, leaving the body like a wreath of mist or smoke, as the
Epicureans believed.[226] He shrinks from the thought that the Deity
would take so much account of us, if our souls were as brief in their
bloom as the forced and delicate plants that women grow in their fragile
flower-pots, their short-lived Gardens of Adonis. He is convinced that
the belief in the after-existence of the soul stands or falls with the
belief in the Providence of God.[227] If there is a Providence, there
is existence after death; and if there is existence after death, then
there is stronger reason for supposing that every soul receives its due
reward or punishment for its life on Earth. But here Plutarch, after
just touching one of the cardinal principles of Christian teaching,
the dogma of Heaven and Hell, starts away from the consequence which
almost seems inevitable, and which Christianity accepted to the full—the
belief that our life here should be modelled in relation to the joys and
penalties that await us in the other world. He clearly believed that
their ethical effect upon life is small.[228] The rewards and punishments
of the soul hereafter are nothing to us here. Perhaps we do not believe
them, and in any case we cannot be certain that they will come. This
is the position at which Plutarch arrives in the course of rational
argument, and he at once returns to the sphere of our present life to
find surer sanctions for goodness. Such punishments as are inflicted in
this world on the descendants of an evil race are conspicuous to all that
come hereafter, and deter many from wickedness. Besides, God does not
punish indiscriminately. He has a watchful care even over the children
of those who have been notorious for evildoing, and instead of delaying
the punishment in their case, early checks their hereditary disposition
to vice by appropriate restraints born of His intimate knowledge of the
character and inclination of the human heart. But if, in spite of this, a
man persists in the sinful courses of his ancestors, it is right that he
should inherit their punishment as he has inherited their crimes.
The dialogue concludes with a myth of the type of Er the Armenian, in
which, after the manner of Plato, Plutarch embodies views on the state
of the soul after death, for which no place could be found in the
rational argumentation of mere prose. Thespesius of Soli, an abandoned
profligate, has an accident which plunges him into unconsciousness for
three days. In this period his soul visits the interstellar spaces, where
the souls of the dead are borne along in various motion; some wailing
and terror-struck; others joyous and delighted; some like the full moon
for brightness; others with faint blemishes or black spots like snakes.
Here, in the highest place, was Adrastea, the daughter of Zeus and
Ananke, from whom no criminal could hope ever to escape. Three kinds of
justice are her instruments. Poena is swift to punish, chastising those
whose sin can be expiated while they are still on earth. Those whose
wickedness demands severer penalties are reserved for Justice in the
afterworld. The third class of sinners, the irretrievably bad, are cast
by Justice into the hands of Erinnys, “the third and most terrible of
the servants of Adrastea,” who pursues them as they wander hither and
thither in reckless flight, and finally thrusts them all with pitiless
severity into a place of unspeakable darkness.[229] In these acts of
immortal justice the soul is bared utterly, and her sins and crimes are
relentlessly exposed. All this is explained to Thespesius by a kinsman
who recognizes him. He is then shown various wonders of the afterworld:
the place of Oblivion, a deep chasm by which Dionysus and Semele had
ascended into heaven, above which the souls hovered in rapture and mirth,
caused by the fragrance of the odours which were breathed by a soft and
gentle air that issued from the “pleasing verdure of various herbs and
plants” which adorned the sides of this wonderful chasm. He sees the
light of the Tripod of the Delphic oracle, or would have seen it had he
not been dazzled with the excess of its brightness; and hears the voice
of the Pythia uttering various oracles. Then follow Dantesque scenes of
the punishments allotted to various kinds of wickedness, among which it
is interesting to note that hypocrisy is tortured with greater severity
than open vice. A lake of boiling gold, a lake of frozen lead, a lake of
iron, with attendant Dæmons to perform the usual functions, are allotted
to the punishment of avarice.[230] But the most terrible fate is that of
those whose punishment never ends, who are constantly retaken into the
hands of Justice; and these, it is important to note, in the light of
the argument which preceded the story, are those whose posterity have
been punished for their transgressions. We can see how little Plutarch is
satisfied with his own reasonings on this point; they are, as Wyttenbach
says, _acutius quam verius dicta_: the punishment of the children for
the sins of the fathers clearly leaves the advantage, so far as concerns
this world, on the side of the transgressors. Plutarch, with his firmly
pious belief in the justice and goodness of God, feels driven to assert
that the balance must be redressed somewhere, and he invokes the aid
of Myth to carry him, in this case, whither Reason refuses to go; and
taking the myth as a whole, and in relation to the tract in which it is
embodied, we cannot doubt that its object is to enforce that doctrine
of rewards and punishments in the Hereafter, from which Plutarch, as
we have seen, shrinks when an occasion arises for pressing it from the
standpoint of Reason. The punishments which Thespesius has witnessed
in his visit to the Afterworld have the effect of turning him into a
righteous man in this world, and Plutarch clearly hopes that the story
will likewise convince those who are not convinced by his reasons. We may
gather, however, that inclined as he was to believe that the providence
of God extended into the Afterworld, his attitude, as fixed by reason
and probability, is summed up in the words already referred to—“Such
rewards or punishments as the soul receives for the actions of its
previous career are nothing to us who are yet alive, being disregarded or
disbelieved.”[231] But whatever may be the condition of the soul after
death, and its relation to the Deity in that condition, Plutarch has made
it quite certain that he believes in the goodness of God as safeguarding
the interests of humanity in this world. It is clear in every part of
this interesting dialogue that the God whom Plutarch believes in is
a personal deity, a deity full of tender care for mankind, supreme,
indeed, by virtue of his omnipotence and justice, but supreme also by
virtue of his infinite patience and mercy.[232]
CHAPTER VI.
_Plutarch’s Dæmonology—Dæmonology as a means of reconciliation
between the traditional Polytheism and philosophic
Monotheism—Dæmonlore in Greek philosophers and in the popular
faith—Growth of a natural tendency to identify the gods of the
polytheistic tradition with the Dæmons—Emphasis thus given to
the philosophic conception of the Deity—Dæmons responsible for
all the crude and cruel superstitions attaching to the popular
gods—Function of the Dæmons as mediators between God and man._
How, then, does Plutarch reconcile this lofty conception of a Deity who
is Unity, Eternity, and Supreme Intelligence, with the multitude of
individual deities which form so essential a part of the “hereditary
Faith” of Græco-Roman civilization, and which are universally admitted
as displaying qualities discrepant from even a far lower notion of God
than that which Plutarch actually maintained? Further, since the Empire
includes other nationalities than the Greeks, and the Roman Pantheon is
not the exclusive habitation of native-born deities, how shall he find a
place in his theological scheme for the gods of other peoples, so that
there may be that Catholic Unity in faith which shall correspond to the
one political dominion under which the world dwells in so great a peace
and concord?
The difficulty of reconciling Polytheism with philosophic Monotheism
was, of course, not new. In earlier days it had been necessary for
philosophers to secure their monotheistic speculations from the charge of
Atheism by finding in their systems a dignified position for the popular
gods. And even those philosophers who sincerely believed in the existence
of beings corresponding to the popular conceptions felt the need of
accounting, in some more or less specious way, for the ill deeds that
were traditionally attributed to so many of them. The ancient doctrine
of Dæmons, emanating from some obscure source in Antiquity,[233] had
been adopted by the Pythagoreans in the latter sense,[234] while Plato,
who believed in none of these things, had, on one or two occasions, by
the use of philosophic “myth” replete with more than Socratic irony,
described these beings as playing a part between God and man which might
be tolerantly regarded as not greatly dissimilar from that popularly
assigned to the lesser deities of the Hellenic Olympus.[235] In the
“Statesman,” the creation-myth, to which the Stranger invites the
younger Socrates to give his entire attention, “like a child to a story,”
describes how the Deity himself tended men and was their protector,
while Dæmons had a share, after the manner of shepherds, in the
superintendence of animals according to genera and herds.[236] Another
story which Socrates, in the “Banquet,” says that he heard from Diotima,
that wonderful person who postponed the Athenian plague for ten years,
tells how Eros is a great Dæmon; how Dæmons are intermediate between
gods and mortals; how the race of Dæmons interpret and transmit to the
gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and interpret and transmit to
men the answers and commands of the gods.[237] For God, we are told, is
not directly associated with man; but it is through the mediation of the
Dæmons, who are many and various, that all communion and converse take
place between the human and the Divine.
But apart altogether from the philosophic use of Dæmonology, there are
evidences that the belief in Dæmons was held in some sort of loose
combination with the popular polytheistic faith. The Hesiodic poems were
a compendium of early Hellenic theology,[238] and Hesiod, according
to Plutarch himself, was the first to indicate with clearness and
distinctness the existence of four species of rational beings—gods,
_dæmons_, heroes, and men.[239] In the passage of Hesiod referred to
(_Works and Days_, 109 sqq.) two kinds of Dæmons are described. The
dwellers in the Golden Age are transformed, after their sleep-like death
on earth, into Terrestrial Dæmons:—
“When earth’s dark breast had closed this race around,
Great Jove as demons raised them from the ground;
_Earth-hovering spirits_, they their charge began,
The ministers of good, and guards of man.
Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide,
And compass earth and pass on every side;
And mark, with earnest vigilance of eyes,
Where just deeds live, or crookèd wrongs arise.”[240]
They are virtuous, holy beings, endowed with immortality—“Jove’s
immortal guardians over mortal men.”[241] The races of the Silver Age
become Subterranean powers, blessed beings, but inferior in honour to
the former class, and distinctly described as mortal.[242] Hesiod says
nothing about Evil Dæmons, although the disappearance of the Brazen
Race furnished an opportunity for their introduction into his scheme
of supernatural beings. But once the existence of beings inferior to
the gods in the celestial hierarchy obtained a recognition in popular
tradition, however vague the recognition might be, the conception would
tend to gather strength and definiteness from the necessity, first
expressed by the philosophers, but doubtless widely spread among the
people, of safeguarding the sanctity of the gods, while at the same
time recognizing the substantial validity of tradition. This tendency
would be also probably aided by the fact that in Homer, as Plutarch
points out, and in the dramatists and prose writers generally, as is
well known, the designations of “gods” and “dæmons” were mutually
interchanged.[243] Plutarch, at all events, who boldly uses the Dæmons
to perform such functions, and to bear the blame for such actions, as
were inappropriate to the divine character, is enabled to make one of
his _dramatis personæ_—Cleombrotus, the traveller, who was specially
devoted to the study of such matters—assert that “it can be demonstrated
by unexceptionable testimony from antiquity that there do exist beings
of a nature intermediate between that of God and man, beings subject
to mortal passions and liable to inevitable changes, but whom we must,
_in accordance with the established custom of our fathers_, regard and
invoke as Dæmons, giving them all due reverence.”[244] It is natural,
therefore, in the light of these indications, to believe that, side by
side with the popular gods, there existed, in the popular imagination,
subordinate beings of two kinds, both described as Dæmons: the first
class comprising the good and benevolent Dæmons of Hesiod, the second
including Dæmons of an evil character and disposition, the belief in
which had developed naturally out of the Hesiodic conception, from the
necessity of fixing the responsibility of evil deeds on supernatural
beings different in nature from the purity and goodness of Deity.[245]
Such a classification of supernatural beings—gods, Dæmons, and evil
Dæmons—could not, of course, be rigidly maintained; the more the good
Dæmons were discriminated from their evil brethren, the more they would
tend to become identified with the gods of the popular tradition, and the
line of demarcation between the divine and the dæmonic nature would be
broken down,[246] Dæmons and gods would be identified, and the splendour
and purity of the Supreme God of all would shine out more fully when
contrasted with those other gods, who, after all, were only Dæmons.
Such, at least, is the process which appears to be taking place in the
numerous contributions which Plutarch makes to the subject of Dæmonology.
He is evidently a sincere believer in the existence of Dæmons, not a
believer in the Platonic sense, and not a believer merely because he
wishes to come to terms with popular ideas. But the final result, so it
appears to us, is that the popular gods become identified with Dæmons,
and are prepared, even in Pagan times, to take that position which was
assigned to them with such whole-hearted sincerity by the early Christian
Fathers;[247] to become the fiends and devils and sprites of another
dispensation; to aid Saladin in excluding the Crusaders from the Holy
Land; to “drink beer instead of nectar” as day labourers in German
forests; or to shine with a sinister splendour on the lives of monks and
peasants in the rural districts of France.[248]
Plutarch gives emphatic indications of his own attitude on the subject
by drawing attention to such expressions of the earlier philosophers as
pointed to the recognition of two opposite descriptions of Dæmons—the
virtuous and the vicious. In one place, as we have seen, he admits that
Homer does not distinguish between the terms “Gods” and “Dæmons,” and
in his historical _résumé_ of Dæmonology in the “Isis and Osiris,”[249]
he is compelled to make a parallel admission that the Homeric epithet
derived from Dæmons is indiscriminately applied to good and bad actions.
He makes this admission, however, the basis of a subtle conclusion to
the effect that Homer wished to imply that the Dæmons had a confused
and ill-defined character, involving the existence of both good and bad
specimens of the race. Nothing definitely distinguishing between the
two sorts of Dæmons is to be obtained from Plato,[250] and Plutarch
accordingly dwells with special emphasis upon the views of Empedocles and
Xenocrates, who maintained, the one, that Dæmons who had been guilty of
sins of commission or omission were driven about between earth and sky
and sea and sun, until this purifying chastisement restored them to their
natural position in the dæmonic hierarchy;[251] the other, that certain
disgraceful and ill-omened sacrificial observances “are not properly
connected with the worship of the _gods or of good Dæmons_,[252] but that
there are surrounding us certain beings, great and potent, but malignant
too, and hateful, who rejoice in such repulsive ceremonies, and are
thereby restrained from the perpetration of greater evils.” Democritus
and Chrysippus are elsewhere quoted as supporters of the same view.[253]
Plutarch, accordingly, faithful to his principle of making Philosophy
Mystagogue to Religion, has obtained from the philosophers a conviction
that there are two kinds of dæmonic beings, two sets of supernatural
characters with attributes inferior to those of the Divine Nature, and
yet superior to those displayed by the human family. It has already been
shown how naturally the good Dæmons would tend to become identified
with the gods: a passage has just been quoted in which we can see this
process of identification taking place. But Plutarch furnishes still more
emphatic testimony to the necessity of such a consummation.
The group of philosophers gathered together at Delphi to discuss the
cessation of the oracles have fallen into an argument on the nature of
Dæmons, and certain considerations have been introduced which indicate a
liability to vice and death as inherent in their nature. This conclusion
shocks one of the speakers, but the pious Cleombrotus wants to know
in what respect Dæmons will differ from gods if they are endowed with
immortality and immunity from sin.[254] It is most significant, however,
that the famous and beautiful story which Cleombrotus tells in support
of his belief in the mortality of Dæmons, the story of the death of “the
great Pan,” is actually concerned with an announcement of the death of
one whom the popular faith accepted as a deity.[255] Demetrius, who had
just come from Britain, near which were many scattered desert islands,
some of them named after Dæmons and heroes, gives an authentic account
of the death of a Dæmon in the island of Anglesea.[256] Cleombrotus
then shows how a belief in the nativity and mortality of the Dæmons is
not unknown in Greek philosophy, “for the Stoics,” says he, “maintain
this view, _not only with regard to the Dæmons but also with regard to
the gods_—holding one for the Eternal and Immutable, while regarding
the remainder to have been born, and to be subject to death.”[257] The
whole course of the argument, even though the speakers are represented
as unconscious of the fact, leads to the identification of the popular
deities with the Dæmons. This strain of thought elsewhere loses the
unconscious quality, and becomes as definitely dogmatic as Plutarch’s
Academic bent of mind would allow. In the “Isis and Osiris,” for example,
he argues for the probability of the view which assigns the legends of
these two deities not to gods or men, but to Dæmons;[258] and proceeds
still further to breach the partition wall between the two natures by
introducing into his Dæmonology such legends as have raised Osiris and
Isis, on account of their virtue, from the rank of good Dæmons to that of
the gods,[259] and describes them as receiving everywhere the combined
honours of gods and Dæmons; and he appropriates the argument to Greek
religion by comparing this promotion to those of Herakles and Dionysus;
by identifying Isis with Proserpine, and subsequently Osiris with
Dionysus.[260]
But whatever may have been the views explicitly maintained by Plutarch in
this connexion, it is his constant practice to shift on to the shoulders
of the Dæmons the responsibility for all those legends, ceremonies, and
practices, which, however appropriate and necessary parts of the national
faith they may be, are yet inconsistent with the qualities rightly
attributable to Deity.[261] We have already noticed his unwillingness
to impugn the immutability of the Creator by regarding His essence as
capable of metamorphosis into the phenomena of the created world.[262]
“It is,” says Ammonius, “the function of some other god to do and suffer
these changes—or, rather, of some Dæmon appointed to direct Nature in
the processes of generation and destruction.” This relationship of the
Dæmons to the supreme power as conceived by philosophy is more completely
stated in the short tract, “De Fato,”[263] where we are told that (1)
there is a first and supreme Providence which is the intelligence of
the First Deity, or, as one may regard it, His benevolent will towards
all creatures, in accordance with which all _divine_ things universally
received the most admirable and perfect order; (2) the second Providence
is that of the second gods, who move through the sky, by which _human_
affairs are duly ordered, including those relating to the permanence
and preservation of the various species; (3) the third Providence may
properly be regarded as the superintendence of the Dæmons who are
situated near the earth, observing and directing the actions of men. But,
as we have already noted, this formal distinction between (2) and (3)
is not maintained in practice. Cleombrotus, who knows more about these
things than most people, insists that it is not possible that the gods
could have been pleased with festivals and sacrifices, “at which there
are banquets of raw flesh and victims torn in pieces, as well as fastings
and loud lamentations, and often ‘foul language, mad shrieks, and tossing
of dishevelled hair,’” but that all such dread observances must have had
the object of pacifying the anger of the mischievous Dæmons.[264] It was
not to the gods that human sacrifices were welcome; it was not Artemis
who demanded the slaughter of Iphigenia;[265] these were the deeds of
“fierce and violent Dæmons,” who also perpetrated those many rapes, and
inflicted those pestilences and famines which are anciently attributed
to the gods. “All the rapes here, and the wanderings there, that are
celebrated in legends and sacred hymns, all the hidings and flights and
servitudes, _do not belong to the gods_, but represent the chances and
changes incident to the careers of Dæmons.” It was not “holy Apollo” who
was banished from Heaven to serve Admetus;—but here the speech comes to
an end with a rapid change of subject, as if Cleombrotus shrinks from
the assertion that a Dæmon was the real hero of an episode with which
so many beautiful and famous legends of the “hereditary Faith” were
connected. When some of the most celebrated national myths concerning the
gods are assigned to Dæmons, we are not far away from the identification
of the former with the latter, and the consequent degradation of the
gods to the lower rank. It is true that the various speakers on the
subject do not, in so many words, identify the Dæmons with the gods of
the Mythology.[266] They deprive the gods of many of their attributes,
and give them to the Dæmons; they deprive them of others, and give them
to the One Eternal Deity. It is difficult to see how the Gods could
maintain their existence under this twofold tendency of deprivation,
supported as they might be by formal classifications which assigned
them a superior place. Even the Father of Gods and Men—the Zeus of
Homer—turns his eyes “_no very great way ahead_ from Troy to Thrace and
the nomads of the Danube, but the true Zeus gazes upon beauteous and
becoming transformations in many worlds.”[267] To contrast the Zeus “of
Homer” with the “true” Zeus is to do little else than to place the former
in that subordinate rank proper not to the Divine, but to the Dæmonic
character. Plutarch is perfectly consistent in applying this method of
interpretation to the gods of other nations no less than to the gods of
Greece. In the “Isis and Osiris,” he inclines to the belief that these
great Egyptian Deities are themselves only Dæmons, although he refuses
to dogmatize on the point, and gives a series of more or less recognized
explanations of the Egyptian myth. He cannot refrain, however, from using
so appropriate an occasion of denouncing the absurdity of the _Greeks_ in
imputing so many terrible actions and qualities to their gods—“For the
legends of Giants and Titans, handed down among the Greeks, the monstrous
deeds of Cronus, the battle between Pytho and Apollo, the flight of
Dionysus, the wanderings of Demeter, fall not behind the stories told
of Osiris and Typhon, and other legends that one may hear recounted by
mythologists without restraint.”[268]
Such, then, is the relation in which the Dæmons stand to the Divine
nature: they are made the scapegoat for everything obscene, cruel,
selfish, traditionally imputed to the gods; and the Supreme Deity rises
more conspicuously lofty for its freedom from everything that can tend
to drag it down to the baseness of human passions. For Plutarch makes
it very clear that it is the human element in these mixed natures that
originates their disorderly appetites. Although the Dæmons “exceed
mankind in strength and capacity, yet the divine element in their
composition is not pure and unalloyed, inasmuch as it participates in
the faculties of the soul and the sensations of the body, is liable
to pleasure and pain, and to such other conditions as are involved in
these vicissitudes of feeling, and bring disturbance upon all in a
greater or less degree.”[269] It is by virtue of this participation in
the “disturbing” elements of human nature that they are fitted to play
that part between God and man which Plutarch, after Plato, calls the
“interpretative” and the “communicative.”[270] This enables the Dæmons
to play a loftier part than that hitherto assigned them; to respond, in
fact, to that universal craving of humanity for some mediator between
their weakness and the eternal splendour and perfection of the Highest.
The whole question of inspiration and revelation, both oracular and
personal, is bound up with the Dæmonic function, and to both these
spheres of its operation, the public and the private, Plutarch gives
the fullest and most earnest consideration. Previous, therefore, to
discussing this aspect of the Dæmonic character and influence, it will
be necessary to ascertain what were Plutarch’s views on the subject of
inspiration and prophecy, and what was his attitude to that question
of Divination which exercised so great a fascination on the mind of
antiquity.
CHAPTER VII.
_Necessity for a Mediator between God and Man partly met by
Oracular Inspiration—General failure of Oracles in the age of
Plutarch—Plutarch’s “Delphian Essays”—The DE PYTHIÆ ORACULIS:
nature of Inspiration: oracles not verbally inspired—The DE
DEFECTU ORACULORUM—Various explanations of Inspiration—Plutarch
inclines to accept that which assumes an original Divine
afflatus placed under the superintendence of Dæmons, whose
activities are subject to the operation of natural causes._
An age which attempts to reinvigorate its own ethical life by draughts of
inspiration from springs hallowed by their duration from an immemorial
antiquity, will naturally regret that currents, which once ran full,
now flow no longer in their early strength, but have dwindled to
insignificant rills, or are dried up altogether in their courses. And
there is no source of religious inspiration so greatly held in honour
as that which comes from the communication of mankind with the Divine
Being.[271] Visions, dreams, incantations, inspired writings, omens, and
prophecies have been valued as means of bringing man into communication
with God, and as furnishing an unerring way of indicating the Divine will
to humanity. But it would be difficult to mention any institution or
practice having this ostensible aim which has had such absolute sway over
the minds of those who came within reach of its influence, as the group
of oracles which were celebrated in the ancient Hellenic world. It is no
wonder, therefore, that in the age of Plutarch the present silence of the
oracles was a common topic of speculation, of anxious alarm to the pious,
of ribald sarcasm to the profane. Juvenal[272] satirically describes the
meaner methods which the cessation of the Oracle at Delphi has imposed
upon those who yet wish to peer through the gloom that hides the future.
Lucan laments the loss which his degenerate time suffers from this cause:
“_non ullo secula dono Nostra carent majore Deum, quam Delphica sedes
Quod siluit_;”[273] and speculates as to the probable reason for the
failure of the ancient inspiration.[274] That Plutarch should have shown
solicitude on this aspect of the ancient faith is natural, and one cannot
but be grateful that the chances of time have preserved the exhaustive
tracts in which he and his friends are represented as discussing various
questions connected with the inspiration of the Delphic Oracle, and the
manner in which this inspiration was conveyed to humanity. No extant work
gives us so intelligible and natural an explanation of the significance
which oracular institutions possessed for the ancient world, nor so
close an insight into the workings of the minds of educated men at one
of the most important periods of human history, in face of one of the
most interesting and, perhaps, most appalling of human problems. We have
already made copious quotations from the two tracts in question; we now
propose to use them mainly for the light which they cast on the question
of oracular inspiration. We refer to the tracts known as the “De Pythiæ
Oraculis” and the “De Defectu Oraculorum.” These two tracts (together
with the one entitled the “De Ε apud Delphos”)[275] purport to be reports
of conversations held by philosophical friends and acquaintances of
Plutarch at the shrine of Apollo at Delphi.
The dialogue, briefly called “On the Pythian Responses,” deals, as
the Greek title indicates, with the fact that the Pythia at Delphi no
longer uses verse as the instrument of her inspired utterances. It takes
the form of a conversation in the Delphic temple, between Philinus,
Diogenianus, Theon, Serapion, and Boethus—the first of whom reports
the conversation to his friend Basilocles, who has grown quite weary
of waiting while the rest of the party conduct Diogenianus, a visitor,
on a tour of inspection among the sacred offerings in the Temple.[276]
Philinus[277] tells how “after the Ciceroni (οἱ περιηγηταὶ) had gone
through their wonted programme, disregarding our requests that they
would cut short their formal narratives and their explanations of most
of the inscriptions,” the conversation had turned by a series of natural
gradations from the interesting objects, that so strongly attracted
the attention of visitors, to the medium through which the oracles of
the God had been conveyed to humanity.[278] Diogenianus had noted that
“the majority of the oracular utterances were crowded with faults of
inelegance and incorrectness, both of composition and metre.” Serapion,
to whom previous reference has been made, and who is here described as
“the poet from Athens,” will not admit the correctness of this impious
indictment.[279] “You are of opinion, then,” said he, “that, believing
these verses to be the work of the god, we may assert that they are
inferior to those of Homer and Hesiod? Shall we not rather regard them as
being the best and most beautiful of all compositions, and reconstitute,
by the standard which they supply, our own taste and judgment, so long
corrupted by an evil tradition?” Boethus, “the geometrician,” who has
lately joined the Epicureans, uses a neat form of the _argumentum ad
hominem_ in refutation of Serapion, paying him a polished compliment
at the same time.[280] “Your own poems,” says he, “grave, indeed,
and philosophic in matter, are, in power and grace and finish, much
more after the model of Homer and Hesiod than of the Pythia;” and he
gives concise expression to the two opposing mental attitudes in which
questions of this kind are universally approached. “Some will maintain
that the oracles are fine poems because they are the god’s, others that
they cannot be the god’s because they are not fine poems.” Serapion
emphatically re-asserts the former of these two views, maintaining that
“our eyes and our ears are diseased. We have become accustomed, by long
indulgence in luxury and effeminacy, to regard sweetness as identical
with beauty.”[281] Theon[282] is the exponent of a compromise not unknown
in modern discussions on the “Inspiration of the Scriptures”—“Since
these verses are inferior to those of Homer, it cannot be maintained
that the god is their author. He supplies the primary inspiration to
the prophetess, who gives expression thereto in accordance with her
natural aptitude and capacity. He only suggests the images, and makes
the light of the future shine in her soul.” The conversation then turns
upon certain events which had accompanied, or been preceded by, portents
and wonders happening to statues and other gifts consecrated in the
Temple. On this subject Philinus asserts his firm belief that “all the
sacred offerings at Delphi are specially moved by divine forethought to
the indication of futurity, and that no fragment of them is dead and
irresponsive, but all are filled with divine power.” Boethus, as a newly
converted Epicurean, makes a mock of this view, this “identification of
Apollo with brass and stone, as if chance were not quite competent to
account for such coincidences,” and he subsequently enlarges his view
as follows:—“What possible condition of temporal affairs, my friend,
cannot be assigned to natural causes? What strange and unexpected event,
occurring by sea or by land, to cities or to individual men, could one
predict without some chance of hitting the mark?[283] Yet you would
hardly call this prediction; it would be merely assertion, or, rather,
the dissemination at random, into the abyss of infinity, of bare words
without any guiding principle leading them to a particular end, words
which, as they wander about, are sometimes met by chance events which
correspond with them.” And Boethus continues to insist that, though some
predictions may have by accident come true, the original assertions
were not the less false on that account. Serapion admits that this
may be true about vague predictions, but maintains that such detailed
prophecies as those he proceeds to quote from history do not owe their
accomplishment to chance.[284]
The attention of the disputants—if these calm and dignified colloquies
can be called disputes—is here again attracted to the objects of artistic
and historical interest surrounding them, among which the guide takes
occasion to point out the place where formerly had reposed the iron
spits dedicated by the courtezan Rhodopis under the circumstances
detailed by Herodotus.[285] Diogenianus warmly protests against such
offerings having ever been admitted into the Temple, but Serapion draws
his attention to the golden statue of the more notorious Phryne, “that
trophy of Greek incontinence,”—as Crates had called it—and condemns the
inconsistency of these objections in people who see, without a protest,
the temple crowded with offerings made by the Greek cities for victories
in their internecine warfare. “It were fitting,” exclaims he, “that
kings and magistrates should consecrate to the god offerings of justice,
temperance, and magnanimity, and not tributes of a golden and luxurious
wealth, which the most evil livers often abound in.”[286]
The concluding portion of this somewhat discursive tract is devoted to
a speech by Theon on the question with which the title only has so far
dealt, the cessation of the oracle to use verse. Theon, as we have seen,
believes that the god inspires the thought, and not the expression,
of the Pythia, and his explanation of the change of medium is purely
natural, being based upon the general tendency towards prose which
early became evident in Greek Literature and Philosophy. Besides, the
matters on which the oracle is now consulted are not such as to require
the mystery and magnificence of verse.[287] “In these cases it would be
absurd to employ the diction, metre, and imagery of poetry, when what is
required is a simple and concise reply. It would be like a vain Sophist
to turn an oracle finely for the sake of show. The Pythian priestess,
moreover, is noble and virtuous in her own character, and when she mounts
the tripod and approaches the god, she is more intent on truth than
appearance, more regardful of the god’s message than of the praise or
blame of men.”[288] “In old days,” continues Theon, “were not wanting
those who accused the oracles of uncertainty and ambiguity, and there are
now those who accuse them of excessive simplicity. But the ways of such
persons are childish and silly: for just as children take more delight in
looking at rainbows and aureoles and comets than at the sun and moon, so
do these desire enigmas and allegories and metaphors to fill the heart
of man with wonder and mystery. In their ignorance of the true reason of
the change (in the oracle’s mode of expression), they depart, blaming
the god instead of charging the defect to the weakness of our human
intellect, which cannot comprehend the purposes of the Deity.”[289]
In this defence of the Deity Theon has apparently committed himself to
a view of the manner in which the process of inspiration takes place.
“The body employs many organs, while the soul employs the body and its
parts. The soul, in like manner, is God’s instrument. Now the virtue of
an instrument consists in imitating, subject to its natural limitations,
the power that makes use of it, and in exhibiting the thought of that
power in operation. This it cannot do to the extent of reproducing the
purity and perfection of the Divine Creator, but its work is mixed with
alien matter. The Moon reproduces the splendour of the Sun, but in a dim
and weak form. These images are representations of the way in which the
Pythia reproduces for the service of mankind the thoughts of God.”[290]
We may be tempted, while reading this explanation, to assert that
Plutarch wishes to maintain that the inspiration of the Pythia by the
Deity is direct. But these illustrations are intended only to explain why
the Pythian verses are not divinely perfect. They come through a human
soul, which has the weakness of an instrument, and is prevented by its
limitations from expressing the purity and beauty of the divine thought.
The manner of this inspiration is more fully discussed in the following
dialogue, the “De Defectu Oraculorum.”
This tract is in the form of a letter addressed to Terentius Priscus,
and although the person speaking as “I” in the dialogue is alluded
to as “Lamprias”[291] by the other speakers, it is clearly Plutarch
himself who is modestly represented under this guise. After a warning,
characteristic of Plutarch both as regards its purport and the manner
in which it is conveyed (by means of a historical reminiscence), that
these questions are not to be tested “like a painting by the touch,” the
writer brings a party of philosophers together at Delphi “shortly before
the Pythian games held under Callistratus.” Two of these philosophers
are already known to us. Like the eagles or swans of the ancient legend
they had met at Delphi coming from opposite quarters of the globe;[292]
Demetrius, of Tarsus, returning home from Britain, and Cleombrotus, of
Lacedæmon, from prolonged journeyings by land and sea, in Egypt and the
East. Cleombrotus, being possessed of a competence, employed his means
and his leisure in travel, for the purpose of accumulating evidence to
form the basis of that branch of philosophy whose end and aim, as he
expressed it, was Theology.[293] A preliminary discussion takes place
respecting the “everlasting lamp” which Cleombrotus had been shown
in the Temple of Ammon, a discussion involving abstract consideration
of Mathematics and Astronomy. In this conversation, Plutarch’s three
favourite characters, doubtlessly representing three common types of
the day, are again depicted in the pious belief of Cleombrotus, the
scepticism of Demetrius, and the judicial pose of the Academic Ammonius.
The mention of the Temple of Ammon naturally leads Plutarch to raise the
question of the present silence of that famous oracle.[294] Demetrius
diverts this particular topic into a general inquiry respecting the
comparative failure of oracles all the world over.[295] Bœotia, for
example, once so renowned in this respect, suffers from an almost total
drought of oracular inspiration. While Demetrius is speaking, the
party—Demetrius, Cleombrotus, Ammonius, and Plutarch—had walked from
the shrine towards the “doors of the Hall of the Cnidians,[296] and,”
proceeds Plutarch, “entering therein we came upon our friends sitting
down and waiting for us.” Demetrius playfully suggests that their
listless attitude and idle expression do not indicate attention to any
important subject of discussion; but Heracleon of Megara retorts sharply
upon the grammarian that people who try to solve trifling questions of
grammar and philology naturally contract their brows and contort their
features;[297] but there are subjects of importance which people discuss
with their eyebrows composed in their natural way. “Such,” amiably
replies Cleombrotus, “such is the subject we now propose to discuss;”
and, the two groups having joined company, he proceeds to explain the
topic to his hearers. His observations excite the cynic Didymus, surnamed
Planetiades, in a remarkable manner.[298] Striking his cynic’s staff
upon the ground, he inveighs against the wickedness of the times, and
wonders that the Divine Providence has not gathered up its oracles on
every side and taken its departure long ago, like the Aidos and Nemesis
of Hesiod. “I would suggest for your discussion the question why some god
has not repeated the feat of Hercules and shattered the tripod, filled to
overflowing, as it has been, with disgraceful and atheistical requests.
Some of us have questioned the god as if he were a sophist, anxious to
show off his rhetorical skill. Some of us have appealed to him about
riches and treasures; some about legacies; some about unlawful marriages.
Surely Pythagoras was utterly wrong when he said that men were at their
best when approaching the gods. Do we not expose, naked and unashamed,
to the eyes of the god such vices and diseases of the soul as we should
shun mentioning even in the presence of an old and experienced man?”[299]
He was going to add more, when Heracleon twitched his cloak, “but I,”
writes Plutarch, “being on more familiar terms with him than were the
others, said to him, ‘My dear Planetiades, cease your efforts to provoke
a god who is really amiable and gentle, and who has been, as Pindar says,
“Adjudged exceeding mild to mortal men.”
And whether he is the sun, or lord and father of the sun and of the whole
perceptible world, it is not right to believe that he would deprive the
men of to-day of the help of his utterances, for he is the author and
supporter of our life, and the master of our intelligence. Nor is it
reasonable to suppose that Providence, which, like a kind and tender
mother, has given us all that we possess, should wish to punish us in
one single point alone—by taking away from us that prophetic aid which
was once given to us. Just as if the wicked were not as numerous when
the oracles were firmly established in many parts of the earth! Sit down
again, and, in honour of the Pythian games, make a truce for once with
vice, which you are always eager to chastise, and help us to find out
the cause of the failure of the oracles.’ The only result of my remarks
was that Planetiades went out-of-doors in silence.[300] After a brief
silence, Ammonius turned to me and said, ‘Come, Lamprias, we must be
careful not to deprive the god of all agency in this matter. For if we
maintain that the cessation of the oracles is due to any other cause
than the will of God, we can hardly escape the conclusion that their
foundation also was not His work. If the prophetic power of the oracles
is, indeed, the work of God, we can imagine no greater or stronger power
than that required to destroy it. Planetiades’ remarks were displeasing
to me, particularly on account of the inconstancy which he attributes
to God in His attitude towards men’s wickedness, now punishing and now
protecting it, as if God were some king or tyrant excluding vicious men
at one door while welcoming and rewarding them at another. We ought
to start with the principle that God’s action is always marked by an
adaptation of means to ends, that He does not furnish an excess of what
is not required, and should then observe that Greece has shared in a
particular degree that general depopulation which wars and revolutions
have effected in all parts of the world, to such an extent, indeed, that
the whole of Greece could now barely furnish the 3000 hoplites which
were Megara’s contingent to Platæa.[301] If we were to do this we should
accurately display our own judgment; for how could the god leave his
oracles with us for the mere purpose of marking the desolation of our
land? For who would be the better if its ancient oracle were still left
to Tegyra, or at Ptoum, where after searching whole days you can hardly
find a single herdsman tending his cattle? Even this most ancient and
famous oracle at Delphi is related to have been for a long period reduced
to a state of desolation and inaccessibility by a terrible monster in the
shape of a serpent. But this desolation is not rightly explained. The
solitude brought the serpent, not the serpent the solitude. But when,
in the great purpose of God, Greece again grew strong in its cities,
and the land was replenished with mankind, the temple was served by two
priestesses, who took alternate duties on the tripod, and a third was
appointed to be available in case of emergency. But now there is but
one Pythia; and her we find enough for all our needs. For the prophetic
inspiration that yet remains is sufficient to send all comers away with
their requirements satisfied. Agamemnon employed nine heralds; and
even so he was hard put to it to control the assembly of the Greeks,
so numerous it was. But within a few days you will have an opportunity
of observing that one voice will easily reach the ears of everybody
in the Theatre here. In a similar manner the prophetic influence of
the god issued by a greater number of voices when the population was
greater. But as things at present are, the real cause for astonishment
would be that the god should allow the prophetic agency to waste like
water, or his voice to sound in vain like the cries of shepherds and
sheep re-echoing among the rocky solitudes.’[302] Ammonius ceased, and
I remained silent. But Cleombrotus, turning to me, said: ‘Was it not
you who, just now, maintained that it is the god himself who not only
gives, but also takes away the oracles?’ ‘No, indeed,’ replied I, ‘on
the contrary, I assert that the god has taken away neither oracle nor
sacred shrine. But just as the god bestows upon us many other things
which are subject to decay and destruction by natural processes—or,
rather, the original substance, containing a principle of change and
movement in its own nature, often dissolves itself and reshapes itself
without the intervention of the original creator—so in like manner, I
think, the oracles undergo darkenings and declines, being included in
the truth of the statement that the god bestows many fair gifts on men,
but not one of them to last for ever; or, as Sophocles has it, “the
gods immortal are, but not their works”’”—“The foundation of oracles
is rightly assigned to God,” continues Plutarch, “but the law of their
existence and its operation we must seek for in nature and in matter.
For it is nothing but the most childish folly to look upon God as a sort
of ventriloquist: like the fellows once called Eurycleis and nowadays
Pythons, inserting Himself into the bodies of the prophets, using their
mouths and vocal chords as instruments of His messages. For he who puts
God into this personal contact with human weaknesses and necessities,
sins against His glory, and deprives Him of the excellence and grandeur
of His Virtue.” This strong insistence upon the splendour of the Divine
Nature is, as we know, one of the most characteristic elements of
Plutarch’s philosophy, and, so long as he can preserve this intact,
he is not careful of consistency in his arguments on less important
points of doctrine. We have seen him shrinking in conversation from
too close an identification with Rationalism; and we are also prepared
to find him giving importance to a view which introduces a supernatural
element even into the operation of secondary causes. Hence Cleombrotus
is represented as saying how difficult it is to draw the line exactly
at the direct interposition of Providence in human affairs; since those
who exclude God from second causes, and those who see Him everywhere,
are equally in error. Hence the pious student of Theology is permitted
to give a full exposition of the doctrines of Dæmonology as applied to
the question of Oracles and Inspiration. “Plato delivered Philosophy
from many difficulties when he discovered Matter as the substratum of
phenomenal qualities; but those who invented the science of Dæmonology
have solved greater difficulties still.” We are already familiar with
the nature and activities of the Dæmons; it remains to see how their
existence is applied to the question under discussion. “Let us not
listen,” says Cleombrotus, “to those who say that oracles are not
divinely inspired, or that religious rites and ceremonies are disregarded
by the gods: nor, on the other hand, let us approve of the view that God
is actively, personally, and directly concerned in these matters; but let
us believe that the Dæmons are superintendents of, and participators in,
the sacred sacrifices and mysteries, justly assigning these functions to
Lieutenants of the gods, as it were to Servants and Secretaries, while
others go about and punish great and notorious acts of injustice.”[303]
This belief, in the opinion of Cleombrotus, furnishes an explanation
of the silent periods of the oracles. “I am not afraid to say, as many
others have said before me, that when the Dæmons who have been appointed
to administer prophetic shrines and oracles leave them finally, then
the shrines and oracles finally decline. If these guardians flee and go
elsewhither, and then return after a long interval, the oracles, silent
during their absence, become again, as of old, the means of conveying
responses to those who come to consult them.” “But,” says Demetrius,
“it is impossible to assert that the oracles are silent owing to their
desertion by the Dæmons, unless we are first reassured respecting the
method by which the Dæmons, when in actual superintendence of the
oracles, make them actively inspired.”[304] Plutarch here introduces a
rationalistic argument imputing prophetic inspiration to subterrestrial
exhalations, and draws down upon himself the reproof from Ammonius that
he has followed up the abstraction of Divination from the gods by now
depriving the Dæmons of that power and referring it to “exhalations,
winds, and vapours.” Plutarch, however, though adhering to Rationalism to
the extent of insisting on the operation of secondary causes, saves his
piety by explicitly placing them under the superintendence of the Dæmons.
“There are two causes of generation: the Zeus of the ancient poets and
theologians, and the physical causes of the natural philosophers. The
study of either of these sets of causes, to the exclusion of the other,
leads to defective philosophy. But he who first made use of both these
principles, combining creative Reason with created Matter, freed us
from fear of criticism either on the ground of impiety or unreason. For
we deprive prophetic inspiration neither of God nor of Reason when we
allow as its material the human soul, and assign as its instrument the
inspiring exhalation.[305] The Earth, indeed, breeds these exhalations,
but he that implants in the earth its tempering and transforming power—I
mean the Sun—is regarded as a god in our ancestral religion. Then, if we
leave the Dæmons as presidents and attendants and guardians, to secure
the due harmonizing of the various elements of the inspiring exhalation,
now slackening and now tightening it, now restraining its excessive power
of phrensy and confusion, and gently tempering its stimulating force so
that it becomes harmless and painless to those under its influence—if
we adopt these views, we shall be in perfect harmony with reason and
possibility.”[306]
The one thing that is conspicuously evident throughout these discussions
on important questions of Religion is the earnest sincerity with which
they are universally approached. We notice everywhere that combination
of piety with philosophy, which is characteristic of Plutarch’s own
genius, and which appears to be no less characteristic of the society
in which he constantly moves. Even the Epicurean Boethus, an excellent
man with his witty stories and courtly compliments, finds it somehow
in his power to defend the dignity of the prophetic God against those
who would “mix Him up with every piece of stone or brass,” while those
who are most solicitously inclined to a pious reverence of the ancient
faith—Serapion for a prominent example—never for long forget that spirit
of critical detachment proper to the inquiring philosopher.[307] “There
is no one here present,” says Heracleon,“who is profane and uninitiated,
and holds views of the gods inconsistent with our own; but we must take
care that we ourselves do not unconsciously admit absurd and far-reaching
hypotheses in support of our arguments.”[308] But it is Plutarch himself
who, shunning the “falsehood of extremes,” most conspicuously represents
this spirit of compromise. It is Theon-Plutarch who finds a middle way
between the views of Boethus and those of Serapion on the subject of
prophecy, and it is Lamprias-Plutarch who, knowing that these things
involve many contentions and are open to numerous contradictions,
combines the belief in an original divine inspiration, with a recognition
of the scientific importance of subsidiary causes, moving unchecked in
the sphere of Nature. “The power of the exhalation which inspires the
Pythia is in truth divine and dæmonic, but it is not exempt from the
operation of causes that bring silence, age, decay and destruction on
all that lives between the earth and moon.”[309] Plutarch here strikes
with clear emphasis a note not out of harmony with the spirit of modern
Theology; and had he pushed this view to its logical conclusion, as the
Epicurean Boethus[310] did, the Dæmons would have disappeared, and their
places would have been wholly occupied by natural causes operating under
the Divine impetus inspired by the great First Cause. But the necessity
for a _personality_, human on one aspect, Divine on the other, to stand
between God and man, was too strongly felt by Plutarch to enable him
to accept without qualification the conclusions of pure rationalism.
The blank between the Creator and His creatures is occupied, therefore,
partly by natural causes, partly by the Dæmons, whose existence and mode
of operation are now involved in the working of natural causes regarded
as under their superintendence, and now appear as supernatural agencies
vaguely dependent upon the will of the Supreme Power.
CHAPTER VIII.
_Sincerity of Plutarch’s belief in Dæmons—Function
of the Dæmons as Mediators not confined to oracular
inspiration—Dæmons in their personal relationship with the
human soul—The DE DÆMONIO SOCRATIS—This tract not a formal
treatise on Demonology—Various explanations of the Socratic
“Dæmon”—Ethical value of the conception of Dæmons as spiritual
guardians of individual men—“Men may rise on stepping-stones
of their dead selves to higher things”—Dangers of the
conception—Superstition: Plutarch’s general attitude towards
that Vice._
The evident sincerity of Plutarch’s piety—his attitude of more than
toleration towards everything consecrated by the religious tradition of
his age and country—render it impossible for us to regard his system of
Dæmonology as a mere concession made by Rationalism to Superstition.[311]
But it is not the less clear that Plutarch thinks he has found in the
existence of Dæmons not only a means of communication between God and
man, but a means of reconciliation between Philosophy and Piety, between
Boethus and Serapion. It is a very happy circumstance for a man’s
moral progress when he finds Religion and Reason in an agreement so
plausible; and when Reason has in some way furnished the very means of
agreement—for was it not Plato himself to whom most people had gone for
their Dæmonology?—the resulting tendency will have the strength of two
harmonizing influences, instead of the halting weakness of a compromise
between two mutually conflicting elements.[312] Plato’s Dæmonology is a
trick of fence: an ironical pose of sympathetic agreement with popular
ideas: but Plutarch does not see this, and can honestly think himself a
Platonist, a philosopher, even on a question whose settlement demands
philosophical concessions all along the line. It is true that there was
one gain for Philosophy which, in Plutarch’s mind, would compensate for
even greater sacrifices than it was actually called upon to make: the
gain, namely, that each concession to the belief in Dæmons would bring
into greater prominence the pure splendour and naked simplicity of the
idea of God. As God was withdrawn not only from participation in the
ignoble adventures of the Homeric legends, but also from the direct
inspiration of oracular and prophetic phrensy, His character would become
more worthy of the adoration of the Best, while His omnipotence would
be maintained by virtue of the controlling power exercised by Him over
all subordinate powers. The gain for a philosophic conception of the
Deity was so great in this direction, that we are without surprise in
seeing Plutarch proceed still further on the same path. The Dæmons by
their divine alloy come into close contact with the nature of God: they
perform many functions as interpreters of the Divine Will to humanity.
But by virtue of the human element in their character, they are fitted
for assuming a personal relationship with individual men, and for
becoming the instruments by means of which God enters into those ethical
relations with humanity which we have seen described in the “De Sera
Numinis Vindicta.” The hint for this aspect of their work and influence
Plutarch has found in the Hesiodic people of the golden age, whose death
promoted them to the duty of keeping watch over the actions of men. We
have seen him already develop this hint in an assertion that the Dæmons,
in addition to attending on shrines and religious ceremonies, are endowed
with punitive authority over great sinners; and the ethical value of
the doctrine is enforced in a passage in which the love of justice, the
fear of dishonour, the adoration of virtue, the amenities and graces
of civilized life, are intimately associated with the belief that good
deities and Dæmons keep a watch upon our career.[313] This belief in
an intimate personal relation between men and Dæmons received its most
notorious expression in the famous philosophic tradition of the Dæmon of
Socrates, and it is naturally in a tract with this title that we have the
fullest information respecting Plutarch’s view of the personal connexion
between Dæmons and men. The essay, “On the Dæmon of Socrates,” does
not, however, contain an exhaustive and scientific discussion of this
interesting aspect of Theology similar to that given by Apuleius in his
tract with the same designation. At first we find ourselves plunged into
the midst of a most dramatically told piece of history—the famous Return
of the Theban Exiles under Pelopidas after the treacherous seizure of
the Cadmea by the Spartans. In the pauses of the plot the Thebans—averse
from such studies as their character is supposed to have been—discourse
on these high questions of religious philosophy, and one would almost
guess that Plutarch’s subsidiary intention was to indicate, by the
broken character of the discussion, the difficulty of attaining to a
complete and final view of the subject. Various rational and supernatural
explanations of the well-known Socratic expression are suggested,
explanations which vary in harmony with the different types of character,
or mental attitude, already familiar in Plutarch. Galaxidorus takes the
extreme rationalistic view. He rebukes Philosophy for promising to pursue
scientific methods in the investigation of “the Good and the Expedient,”
and then, in contempt of Reason, falling back upon the gods as principles
of action, thus relying on dreams instead of demonstrations.[314]
He thinks the Dæmon of Socrates was nothing but the “last straw”
which inclines, in one direction or the other, a man whose close and
experienced study of every aspect of the case has not enabled him to come
to a practical decision. A sneeze might be the grain which turned the
balance. Phidolaus will not allow so “great a phenomenon of prophetic
inspiration” to be explained by a sneeze, a method of divination which
“is only jestingly used by common people in small matters.”[315] A
statement of Simmias to the effect that he had heard Socrates often
inveighing against those who asserted they had seen a divine vision,
while he always listened sympathetically to those who said they had
heard a voice, leads to a general surmise that the Dæmon may have been
“not an apparition, but the perception of a voice or the interpretation
of a word, which had occurred to him under extraordinary circumstances,
just as in a dream there is no actual voice, but we have fancies and
notions of words, and imagine that we can hear people speaking.”[316]
Archidamas, who is narrating the dialogue and its events to Caphisias,
here expounds his own views on the subject in the light of the foregoing
explanation. He thinks that the voice, or the perception of a voice,
which influenced Socrates, was the speech of a Dæmon, who, without the
intermediation of audible sound, made this direct appeal to the mind of
the pure and passionless sage;[317] it was the influence of a superior
intelligence and of a diviner soul, operating upon the soul of Socrates,
whose calm and holy temper fitted him “to hear this spiritual speech
which, though filling all the air around, is only heard by those whose
souls are freed from passion, and its perturbing influence.”[318] Here
we have the extreme religious view placed, as usual, in contrast with
the sceptical rationalism of Galaxidorus, which has also been indirectly
opposed by a narrative of the events, involving the hearing of a Dæmonic
voice, connected with the death and burial of a Pythagorean philosopher,
Lysis, from which it appears that the Pythagoreans believed that a few
men only were under the guardian care of the Dæmons.[319] These two
opposing views having been fully expounded by their respective defenders,
we should now expect the dialogue to be concluded, in the usual manner of
Plutarch, with a compromise between the rationalistic and the religious
attitudes. But on this occasion we are disappointed. Plutarch abandons
the _rôle_ of rationalist and gives himself up entirely to the view of
Dæmonic influence expounded by Archidamas, taking Myth for his guide
again whither Philosophy refuses to go. He is careful, however, as in the
parallel case in the “De Sera Numinis Vindicta,” at once to still the
suspicion of the philosopher and to put the pious reader on his guard,
by suggesting a contrast between Myth and Reason before entering on the
narrative, a warning which is strongly emphasized by the fact that even
Theocritus, “the Soothsayer,” can only claim for Myth, that it is not to
be depended upon for scientific accuracy, but only sometimes comes in
contact with Truth.[320] The Myth in this case describes the experiences
in the Cave of Trophonius of the young philosopher Timarchus, a friend
of Socrates, who desired to ascertain the true nature of the “Dæmon” of
that great man. The story is told with considerable beauty of imagery, an
example of Plutarch’s skill in which we have already seen in the similar
story of Thespesius of Soli. The soul of the philosopher leaves his body
through the sutures of the cranium. In the subterranean regions he stays
two nights and a day, receiving from an invisible spirit much information
concerning the afterworld and the beings who inhabit it. The main object
of the story seems to be to establish and elucidate the ethical value
of the doctrine of Dæmonology, while at the same time we note that a
mystical significance now begins to be attached to certain principles
long the topic of discussion in the schools. Timarchus is informed by the
invisible spirit that there are four principles which operate throughout
the universe: the first of Life, the second of Motion, the third of
Generation, the fourth of Corruption. The sphere of Life is united to the
sphere of Motion by the _Monad_ in the world of invisibility; the sphere
of Motion is united to the sphere of Generation by _Nous_ in the Sun; the
sphere of Generation is united to the sphere of Corruption by _Nature_ in
the Moon. Over each of these unions a Fate presides. The other “islands”
are peopled by gods: but the Moon is inhabited by Epichthonian Dæmons,
being raised only a little above Styx, which is “the way to Hell.”[321]
Styx periodically seizes upon many of these souls in the Moon, and they
are swallowed up in Hell. Other souls, at the end of their participation
in the life of generation, are received into the Moon from below, except
such as are “polluted and unpurified,” these being driven away from her
by thunder and lightning to undergo another period of generation. As in
the myth of Thespesius, there is a chasm through which the souls pass
and repass to and from the life of earth. “What,” asks Timarchus, “are
these stars that dart about the chasm, some descending into its depths,
others arising from it?” “These are Dæmons,” he is told; and we can
only conclude that they are identical with the souls already described
as inhabiting the Moon. These Dæmons are incarnated in mankind. Some
are altogether dominated by the passions and appetites of the body,
others enter into it only partly, retaining the purest portion of their
substance unmingled with the human frame. “It is not dragged down, but
floats above the top of the head of a man, who is, as it were, sinking
in the depths, but whose soul is supported by the connexion so long as
it is submissive to this influence, and is not controlled by its bodily
passions. The part beneath the waves in the body is called the soul; but
the eternal, uncorrupted part is called the mind, by those who think it
is within the body.—Those who rightly judge, know it to be outside, and
describe it as a Dæmon.” The point of this narrative is emphasized by
Theanor, who expresses his belief that “there are very few men whom God
honours by addressing his commands directly to them. The souls of such
men, freed from the domination of passion and earthly desires, become
Dæmons, who act as guardian angels to certain men, whose long-continued
struggles after the good excite their attention, and at last obtain their
assistance.” Each of these Dæmons loves to help the soul confided to its
care, and to save it by its inspirations. The soul who adheres to the
Dæmon, and listens to its warnings, attains a happy ending; those who
refuse to obey are abandoned by it, and may expect no happiness.[322]
“The connexion which attaches the Dæmon to the soul is, as it were, a
restraint upon the irrational part thereof. When Reason pulls the chain
it gives rise to repentance for the sins which the soul has committed
under the influence of passion, shame for illicit and immoderate
indulgences, and finally produces a tendency to submit in quiet patience
to the better influence of the Dæmon. The condition of absolute
submission does not come all at once, but those who have been obedient
to their Dæmon from the very beginning constitute the class of prophets
and god-inspired men.” The Dæmons have here assigned to them a protective
care of humanity; they assist the souls who struggle after goodness,
and desert those who refuse to obey their injunctions. A few good men,
specially honoured by the deity, may themselves become Dæmons, and act as
guardian angels to others. Plutarch repeats this view more systematically
elsewhere, giving it a more general application. “It is maintained by
some that ... just as water is perceived to be produced from earth, from
water, air, and from air, fire, in a constantly ascending process, so
also the better souls undergo a transformation from men to heroes, from
heroes to dæmons, and from dæmons, some few souls, being purified through
prolonged practice of virtue, are brought to a participation in the
divine nature itself.”[323]
This examination of the story of Timarchus lends a strong support to
the statement already made respecting Plutarch’s use of myth. In the
“De Sera Numinis Vindicta” we saw that he could not accept as a subject
of rational demonstration the theory of rewards and punishments in a
future life; but so convinced is he of the ethical value of that belief
that he has recourse to a most solemn myth, which he clearly hopes
will operate for goodness through the imagination if not through the
intellect. The myth embodied in the “De Dæmonio Socratis” has a similar
origin and an identical aim. How important to a man in his efforts after
Goodness to know that he is under the observation of a Being whose
half-human, half-divine nature, fits him equally to feel sympathy and
administer aid! That is an aspect of Plutarch’s teaching which requires
no emphasis to-day.... With the Plutarchean doctrine of Dæmons is also
involved the sublimely moral notion of eternal endeavour after a higher
and more perfect goodness. The human being who earnestly strives to be
good within the limits of his present opportunities will have a larger
sphere of activity thrown open to him as a Dæmon in the Afterworld. The
human soul transfigured into the strength and splendour of this higher
nature has work to perform which may develop such qualities as will bring
their owner into closer proximity with the Highest Divine. The doctrine
of Dæmons, as expounded by Plutarch, involves the profound moral truth
that there is no limit to the perfectibility of human nature; and we can
surely forgive much that is irrational and fantastic in a scheme which
embodies so effective an inspiration to goodness.[324]
But the value and moral dignity of any principle depend upon the method
of its interpretation and application. That sense of personal dependence
upon a benevolent supernatural power which Plutarch associates with
the teachings of Dæmonology may be identical with the purest and
loftiest religion, or may degenerate into the meanest and most degrading
superstition, according to its development in the mind of the individual
believer. If this intercourse is regarded as spiritual only, the
communion of soul with soul in the “sessions of sweet, silent thought,”
high religious possibilities issue which no form of faith can dispense
with. Any attempt to degrade this intercourse to material ends, or to
appeal to it through material channels, involves recourse to magical
rites, and superstitious practices of the grossest description. It is
necessary, too, that even where there is no recourse to materialistic
avenues of access to the spiritual world, the mind should cultivate a
belief in the benevolence of the Higher Powers so that it may maintain a
rational dignity and fearlessness in its communion with them. Plutarch
is aware of these clangers. He knows that Dæmonology, and even Theology,
may involve Superstition, and he takes pains to close those avenues to
its approach, which a misunderstanding of the subject, a mistaken mental
attitude towards it, may easily throw widely open. He seldom misses an
opportunity of inculcating the proper attitude of mind to assume in face
of questions of Religion, or of placing such questions in an atmosphere
of clear and rational daylight, which is equally unlike the dim gloom of
Superstition, and the blinding glare of Atheism. In a word, he continues
to make Reason his Mystagogue to Religion. Polemically, as against the
Epicureans, he is inclined to argue that Atheism is an unmixed evil,
since it deprives mankind of Hope, Courage, and Pleasure, and leaves us
no refuge in God from the sorrows and troubles of life.[325] He adds
that Superstition should be removed as a dimming rheum from before our
eyes; but, if that is impossible, we must not knock the eye out for the
sake of removing the rheum, or turn the sight of Faith to the blindness
of Atheism in order to destroy false ideas of the Deity. Although he
admits that there are some men for whom it is best to be in fear of God;
although he knows that a much greater number combine with their honour
and worship of the Deity a certain superstitious fear and dread of Him;
yet he insists most strongly that these feelings are totally eclipsed
by the hope and joy that attend their communion with God.[326] He
draws a beautiful picture of the happiness accompanying participation
in divine services, asserting, in a lofty strain of religious feeling,
that it is from a recognition of the presence of God in these services
that the sense of happiness proceeds. “He that denies the Providence of
God has no share in this exceeding joy. For it is not abundance of wine
and well-cooked meats that gladden our hearts in a religious festival;
it is our good hope and belief that God Himself is graciously present
and approving our acts.” Without this conviction, he insists, the
religious value of the ceremony is utterly lost.[327] To approach the
gods with cheerfulness and courage and openness is the soul of Plutarch’s
religion, and he is faithful to this principle on the most diverse
occasions. Fond of Literature as he is, there are many famous passages
of classical verse which he will not permit youthful students to carry
away into their lives as factors in ethical progress until they have
been harmonized with the claims of a rational criticism. Thus he quotes
a verse of Sophocles—“God is a cause of fear to prudent men”—and insists
that “fear” should be changed to “hope,” lest those should be justified
who regard “with suspicion and dread as the cause of injury the power
that is the principle and origin of all good.”[328] And when dealing with
the sanctities of domestic life he insists that one important element of
conjugal happiness lies in the avoidance of separate worship on the part
of the wife, and in a closing of the door on superfluous ministrations
and the practices of foreign superstition. “For,” says he, “there is no
god who takes delight in stolen and secret sacrifices on the part of a
wife.”[329] These passages, selected from various portions of Plutarch’s
ethical teachings, show how strongly it is his practice to emphasize a
note of cheerful and open courage in worship as an essential part of
religious belief. But it is in the well-known essay “on Superstition”
that he most thoroughly expounds this aspect of his philosophy, and
no endeavour to understand Plutarch’s mental attitude in face of a
problem which always affects humanity would be successful without a
careful analysis of that treatise. The “De Iside et Osiride” attempts to
safeguard the mind from the attacks of Superstition on the side of the
Intellect, as the “De Superstitione” does on the side of the Imagination,
and the two tracts have therefore an organic connexion which renders it
necessary to treat them together as expounding different aspects of the
same question.
CHAPTER IX.
_Relation between Superstition and Atheism: Atheism an
intellectual error: Superstition an error involving the
passions: the DE SUPERSTITIONE—Moral fervour of Plutarch’s
attack on Superstition—His comparative tolerance of
Atheism—The greatest safeguard against both alike consists
in an intellectual appreciation of the Truth—The DE ISIDE ET
OSIRIDE—The Unity underlying national differences of religious
belief._
“The profoundest, the most essential and paramount theme of human
interest,” says Goethe, “is the eternal conflict between Atheism and
Superstition.”[330] Plutarch’s tract, “De Superstitione,” is a classical
sermon on this text, although in his presentment of the subject the
mutual antagonism of the two principles receives less emphasis than the
hostility which both alike direct against the interests of true Religion.
He has no sympathy with any notion similar to that current since his
days, in many religious minds, that Superstition is but a mistaken form
of Piety, deserving tenderness rather than reprehension, and he maintains
that absolute disbelief in God is less mischievous in its effects upon
human conduct and character than its opposite extreme of superstitious
devotion. With this hint of Plutarch’s point of view we proceed to a
brief analysis of the tract in which his view is mainly expounded.
At the very commencement he describes the two evils as springing from an
identical source. Ignorance of the Divine Nature has a twofold aspect:
in people of stern dispositions it appears as Atheism; in minds of more
yielding and submissive mould it shows itself as Superstition. Merely
intellectual errors, such as the Epicurean Theory of Atoms and the Void,
or the Stoic notion that virtue and vice are corporeal substances, are
unaccompanied by any passionate mental disturbance: they are silly
blunders, but not worth tears. But is a man convinced that wealth is
the highest good? or does he regard virtue as a mere empty name?—these
are errors that cannot be distinguished from moral disorders. Atheism
is an intellectual error: Superstition a moral disorder—an intellectual
error “touched with emotion.”[331] The moral disorder of Superstition is
depicted in a few paragraphs of striking power, opulent with historical
and literary allusion. The effect of the description is to leave a
conviction of the utter inability of the superstitious man to free any
portion of his life from the influence of his awful fear of the gods.
“He does not dread the sea who never sails; nor he a war who never goes
to camp; nor he a robber who keeps his home; nor he an informer who has
no wealth; nor he envy who lives retired; nor he an earthquake who
dwells in Gaul; nor he a thunderbolt who inhabits Æthiopia. But they
who fear the gods fear all things—land, sea, air, sky, darkness, light,
sound, silence, dream.[332] By day as well as night they live in prey to
dreadful dreams, and fall a ready victim to the first fortune-telling
cheat they come upon. They dip themselves in the sea: they pass all day
in a sitting posture: they roll themselves on dunghills: cover themselves
with mud: keep Sabbaths:[333] cast themselves on their faces: stand in
strange attitudes, and adopt strange methods of adoration.—Those who
thought it important to maintain the recognized laws of Music, used to
instruct their pupils to ‘sing with a just mouth’; and we maintain that
those who approach the gods should address them with a just mouth and a
righteous, lest, in our anxiety to have the tongue of the victim pure and
free from fault, we twist and defile our own with strange barbarian names
and expressions, and thus disgrace the dignified piety of our national
Faith.”[334] Not only is this life full of torture to the Superstitious,
but their terrified imagination leaps the limits of the Afterworld, and
adds to death the conception of deathless woes. Hell-gate yawns for
them; streams of flame and Stygian cataracts threaten them; the gloom is
horrid with spectral shapes, and piteous sights and sounds, with judges
and executioners, and chasms crowded with a myriad woes.
The condition of the Atheist is far to be preferred. It was better for
Tiresias to be blind than it was for Athamas and Agave to see their
children in the shape of lions and stags. The Atheist does not see God
at all: the superstitious man sees Him terrible instead of benign, a
tyrant instead of a father, harsh instead of tender. The troubles of
actual life are assigned by the Atheist to natural causes, to defects in
himself or his circumstances; and he endeavours to mitigate or remove
them by greater care. But to the victim of Superstition his bodily
ailments, his pecuniary misfortunes, his children’s deaths, his public
failures, are the strokes of a god or the attacks of a dæmon, and cannot
therefore be remedied by natural means, which would have the appearance
of opposition to the will of God.[335] Hence light misfortunes are often
allowed to become fatal disasters.[336] Thus, Midas was frightened to
death by his dreams; Aristodemus of Messene committed suicide because
the soothsayers had alarmed him about a trifling omen;[337] Nicias lost
his life and his great army because he was afraid when a shadow crept
over the moon. Let us pray to the gods, but let us not neglect reasonable
human endeavour. “While the Greeks were praying for Ajax, Ajax was
putting on his armour; for God is the hope of bravery, not the pretext
for cowardice.”[338] Participation in religious ceremonies, which should
be the most cheerful and happy act of life, is an additional cause of
dread to the Superstitious, whose case is worse than that of the Atheist
who smiles sarcastically at the whole business. The Atheist, true, is
guilty of impiety: but is not Superstition more open to this charge?
“I, for my part, would greatly prefer that men should say about me that
there was not, and never had been, such a man as Plutarch, than that
they should say that Plutarch is a fickle, irascible, vindictive fellow,
who will pay you out for not inviting him to supper, or for omitting to
call upon him, or for passing him in the street without speaking to him,
by committing a violent assault upon you, giving one of your children a
thorough caning, or turning a beast into your cornfield.”[339] The fact
of the matter is, that the Atheist believes there are no gods, while the
superstitious man wishes there were none;[340] the former is an Atheist
pure and simple, while the latter is an Atheist who professes to believe
because he has not the moral courage to utter his secret desires. And,
as in the individual mind Superstition involves Atheism, so historically
the latter has developed out of the former. The Epicureans were Atheists,
not because they did not perceive the splendour and perfection of the
universe, but because they desired to deliver humanity from the thraldom
which Superstition had cast about it—from its ridiculous passions and
actions, its spells of speech and motion, its magic and witchcraft, its
charmed circles and drum-beating, its impure purifications and its filthy
cleansings, its barbaric and unlawful penances and its self-torturings at
holy shrines. If these practices are pleasant to the gods, mankind is no
better off than if the administration of the world were in the hands of
the Typhons or the Giants.
But no disease is so difficult to cope with as Superstition. We must fly
from it, but we must so fly from it that we do not run into the other
extreme. “_Aussi y en a il qui fuyans la Superstition, se vont ruer et
precipiter en la rude et pierreuse impieté de l’atheisme, en sautant par
dessus la vraye Religion, qui est assise au milieu entre les deux._”
Such is a brief account of the contents of this famous tract. One thing
becomes clear from its perusal, the fact that the advantage is altogether
regarded as on the side of Atheism. Amyot, from whose translation we
have taken its concluding sentence, sounds a note of serious alarm in
a prefatory note to his version: “_Ce traicté est dangereux à lire, et
contient une doctrine fausse: Car il est certain que la Superstition est
moins mauvaise, et approche plus pres du milieu de la vraye Religion, que
ne fait l’Impieté et Atheisme._” Others have followed Amyot in his view
of this “dangerous” treatise; while Plutarch has not been without his
champions against those who have thus accused him of irreligion.[341]
So far as concerns the views expounded in the treatise, it appears to us
that the alarm of Amyot is justified. But Amyot, who knew his Plutarch
well, should have observed that there is a note of rhetoric in this
work which is totally different from the teacher’s usually quiet and
unimpassioned method of argument. There is an emphasis, an exaggeration,
of everything that tells against the victim of Superstition, a restraint,
a gentleness in minimizing the faults which could have been made into a
serious indictment against Atheism. This, as we know, is not Plutarch’s
favourite method of discussion. In ordinary circumstances an Epicurean
would have attacked Superstition, a Stoic would have inveighed against
Atheism, and an Academic friend of Plutarch’s would have taken the
judicial mean. As a matter of fact, however, Plutarch—and he connects
his own name with the argument in the most emphatic manner—assumes a
position in this tract scarcely discrepant from the peculiarly Epicurean
attitude. From this point of view, Wyttenbach’s epithet of _vere
Plutarcheus_ applied to the tract is incorrect, and even Wyttenbach
admits the possibility that Plutarch may have written another tract, “in
which the cause of _Superstition_ was defended against Epicurus.”[342]
How Plutarch could have accomplished a successful defence without going
back on all the arguments in the treatise “on Superstition” will not
be clear to a modern reader. It appears to us that Plutarch, having an
acute perception of the gross evils inherent in the many superstitious
practices of the day, has been disturbed from his usual philosophic pose,
and has been carried, by a feeling of almost personal resentment, to draw
a picture which was intended to be one-sided, because it was intended to
be alarming. Plutarch’s Philosophy, his Religion, here touch the vital
interests of life, and come to close combat with a gigantic moral evil.
What is lost in philosophic detachment is gained in moral fervour, a
change of balance which gives quite other than a theoretical interest
to those many short sermons in which Plutarch is _aux prises_ with the
sins and vices and follies of his day. The main importance of the “De
Superstitione” is its contact with practical affairs, and its translation
of philosophic and religious conceptions into terms of everyday life.
Philosophy and Religion have displayed to Plutarch the Purity, the Unity,
the Benevolence of God; it is a question of Ethics to expose and destroy
practices which are repellent to this conception of the Divine Nature.
Plutarch’s way of solving that question in one direction is expounded in
the tract “De Superstitione.”[343]
While Plutarch, in his anxiety to safeguard the emotional aspects of
Religion from the incursions of Superstition, departs in this tract
from his ordinary attitude of intellectual moderation, he reverts
very markedly to his usual manner in his treatise on the two Egyptian
divinities, Isis and Osiris. Knowledge of the Truth is here depicted as
the very heart of devotion, and the pursuit of this is regarded as the
only means of holding a middle path between the bog of Superstition and
the precipice of Atheism. The main object of this treatise is to show
how principles of rational inquiry may be applied to religious myths, so
that Reason and Piety may both be satisfied with the result. Wyttenbach
explains this purpose in a few words of terse Latinity which might
safely be quoted as descriptive of Plutarch’s attitude towards Religion
in general. “_Consilium scriptoris videtur fuisse, ut amicam de horum
Ægyptiorum numinum ortu et cultu saniora, quam quæ vulgo ferrentur,
doceret, religionemque fabularum deliriis cærimoniarumque ineptiis
mirifice deformatam et apud prudentiores homines in contemtum adductam,
istis quoad ejus fieri posset sordibus purgaret, omnique literarum et
philosophiæ instrumento ad historiæ fidem, naturæ rationem dignamque
divinitate speciem reformaret._” But while serving as an example of
Plutarch’s general method of inquiry, a particular motive for the choice
of this special myth as subject would doubtless be furnished by the great
prevalence and popularity of the worship of Isis during the Græco-Roman
Empire of this period. Its passionate excitements were hostile to the
calm cultivated by the Roman in matters of Religion, and Isis had
undergone a prolonged struggle before her temples were allowed to stand
erect in Rome. The patrician indignation of Lucan—_nos in templa tuam
Romana accepimus Isin!_[344]—expressed, however, rather the sentiment
of the Republic than the conviction of the Empire. Juvenal alludes to
the _Isiacæ sacraria lenæ_—the _fanum Isidis_—the temple of the goddess
in the Campus Martius, in terms which, however severe from the moral
standpoint, leave no historical doubt as to the established character of
the cult and its institutions. In the later romance of Apuleius, the hero
Lucius owes his re-transformation into human shape to the power of Isis,
and makes a pilgrimage of gratitude to the very temple to which Juvenal
makes so scathing an allusion.
The detailed description given by Apuleius of the ceremonies connected
with the worship of the goddess in so important a place as Cenchreæ, the
port of Corinth, bears emphatic witness to the established popularity
of her rites.[345] Even in Plutarch’s tract the fact is everywhere
indirectly evident. Clea, to whom it is addressed, was officially and
intimately associated with the worship of Dionysus at Delphi, but she
had also been instructed from her childhood in the rites appertaining
to the worship of Isis and Osiris.[346] It is only in accordance with
Plutarch’s well-known character that he should be anxious to explain
anything in the Isiac ceremonies and traditions, the misunderstanding
of which was likely to generate superstitious and licentious practices
and lead indirectly to Atheism. And if, by explaining absurdities,
excising crudities, refuting false interpretations, he could at the
same time demonstrate the unity of God, the identity of religious basis
lying beneath these various beliefs of other peoples, we can recognize
in the task one eminently suited to the character and aims of Plutarch.
In the “Isis and Osiris” Plutarch has, therefore, a twofold object. He
endeavours to explain, from a rationalistic point of view, the meaning of
Isiac and Osirian ceremonies and legends; and he develops his theories on
these matters into an exposition of his attitude towards Myth in general,
showing that the various beliefs of other nations are not, when rightly
understood, mutually destructive and opposite, but simply different ways
of envisaging the same essential and eternal truth. We proceed to explain
these assertions by an examination of the treatise.
Plutarch gives early indication of his point of view. “The philosophy
of the Egyptian priests was generally concealed in myths and narratives
containing dim hints and suggestions of truth.” It was to indicate this
“enigmatic” character of their theological wisdom that they erected
Sphinxes before their temples; that, too, is the meaning of their
inscription on the shrine of Athene-Isis at Sais, “_I am all that was,
and all that is, and all that shall be, and my veil hath yet no mortal
raised_.”[347] It follows from this that we must on no account attach a
literal significance to their narratives.[348] Thus they represent the
sun as a newborn child sitting on a lotus flower, but this is an enigma
teaching the derivation of the solar heat from moisture.[349] “It is in
this way,” says he, clearly indicating the twofold object he has in view
throughout this work, “it is in this way that you are to hear and accept
traditions of the gods, taking their meaning from such as interpret them
_in a spirit at once pious and philosophic_. This spirit of reverent
inquiry must be accompanied by a constant observance of the recognized
forms of worship, and by a conviction that no religious or other action
is more grateful to the gods than the acceptance of true opinions
concerning them. This harmonious co-operation of Piety and Philosophy
saves equally from Atheism and its cognate evil, Superstition.”[350]
It is in this spirit—the spirit in which every Religion justly claims
that it should be approached—that Plutarch gives an account of the
Egyptian myth “in the briefest possible terms, denuded of such
particulars as are quite useless and superfluous”; denuded also, as we
are told later, “of its most blasphemous features,”[351] “such as the
dismemberment of Horus and the decapitation of Isis.” Piety absolutely
rejects these tales concerning beings who participate “in that blessed
and eternal nature which marks our conception of the Divine”; although
Philosophy will not be equally severe on these legends, regarding
them not solely as unsubstantial tales and empty fictions spun, like
spiders’ webs, by poets and romancers out of their own imagination, but
also as indirectly reflecting the pure light of some ancient narrative
whose meaning has now been utterly broken up as are the sun’s rays when
reproduced in the multitudinous hues of the rainbow.[352] Plutarch
clearly regards it as a pious duty to accept the Osirian legend as
containing a substratum of truth, embodying the religious lore of the
Egyptian priesthood, but he reserves to himself the right of interpreting
the expression of this truth in the light of his own philosophy. His
attitude is identical with that assumed by the authors of the various
explanations of the myth which he reports as current in antiquity.
“These interpretations,” in the lively expression of Mr. Andrew Lang,
“are the interpretations of civilized men, whose method is to ask
themselves: ‘Now, if _I_ had told such a tale as this, or invented such
a mystery play of divine misadventures, what meaning could _I_ have
intended to convey in what is apparently blasphemous nonsense?’”[353] It
will be seen that Plutarch does not himself finally adopt any special
interpretation, although he emphatically rejects those which are not
pious as well as philosophic. He is desirous rather of showing in what
way the investigation of such questions should be approached, than of
imposing any definite conclusion on the understanding; of cultivating an
aptitude for rational and reverent inquiry, than of establishing a final
and inflexible dogma.
He deals first with the Euhemerists, or “Exanthropizers.” Euhemerus of
Tegea, or, as Plutarch here calls him, Euhemerus[354] of Messene, first
treated with scientific precision that tendency to regard the gods as
kings and rulers whose surpassing greatness and merit had been rewarded
by an imaginary apotheosis. He had embodied the result of his researches,
which he claims to have made during an expedition sent by Cassander to
the Red Sea, in a work called the “Sacred Record.” He asserted, according
to Lactantius, that he had seen in the Island of Panchaia (Plutarch
calls it _Panchon_) a column of gold with an inscription indicating
its erection by Zeus himself, _in qua columna gesta sua perscripsit ut
monimentum esset posteris rerum suarum_. This “humanizing” of Zeus was
extended to other deities; and Plutarch, who sarcastically denies that
these inscriptions had ever been seen by anybody else, whether Greek or
Barbarian, asserts that the principles of Euhemerus had been applied to
the explanation of the tombs and other monuments commemorating in Egypt
the events embodied in the Osirian myth. Although it has been asserted
that Euhemerus admitted the existence of the elemental deities, such
as the sun and the heavens, the atheistical tendency of his theory
is evident, and the author of the tract “De Placitis Philosophorum,”
whose bias is distinctly Epicurean and atheistic, says that Euhemerus
absolutely denied the existence of the gods, associating him in this
connexion with Diagoras the Melian, and Theodorus of Cyrene.[355]
Plutarch himself has no doubts as to the tendency of Euhemerism. Those
who have recourse to these theories,“transferring great names from heaven
to earth, almost entirely uproot and destroy the reverence and faith
implanted in all of us at our birth, and open wide the temple doors to
the profane and atheistical mob.”[356]—“They bring divinity to the level
of humanity, and fair occasion of unfettered speech to the impostures of
Euhemerus, who scattered Atheism the wide world over, degrading all the
recognized deities alike to the names of generals, admirals, kings of
a pretended eld.” Good and great kings are rewarded with the gratitude
of posterity, while disgrace and obloquy have been the portion of
those whose insolence has led them to assume the titles and temples of
gods.[357]
The hypothesis of Dæmonic natures, next applied by Plutarch to the
explanation of the legend, we have already examined. Naturally he
expresses a preference for this theory over that of the Euhemerists, but
will still proceed to discuss with philosophic detachment the hypotheses
of other schools, taking, as he says, the simplest first.[358] These
are the Physical Allegorists. “Just as the Greeks assert that Cronus is
an allegorical symbol for Time, Hera for Air, the birth of Hephaistos
for the transformation of Air into Fire, so also among the Egyptians
there are those who maintain that Osiris symbolizes the Nile, Isis the
Earth, fecundated in his embrace, Typhon the Sea, into which the Nile
falls to disappear and be scattered, except such part of him as has
been abstracted by the Earth to make her fruitful.”[359] He shows how
this identification of Typhon with the sea explains certain sayings,
beliefs, and practices of the Egyptians, but he regards it as rather
crude and superficial,[360] and passes on to an explanation given by
the more learned priests, who, with a more philosophic application of
the principles of allegorical interpretation, identify Osiris with the
_Moist_ Principle of the Universe, and Typhon with the _Dry_ Principle,
the former being the cause of Generation, the latter being hostile to
it.[361] The similarity of these views to early Greek speculation is
pointed out by a statement that the Egyptians held that Homer, like
Thales, had learnt from them that Water is the generative principle
of all things, Homer’s Ocean being Osiris, and his Tethys, Isis. This
ancient theory is fully discussed by Plutarch, showing how the Egyptians
applied it to the myth, but also indicating similarities of detail and
identities of principle between the Egyptian and Greek mythologies.[362]
“Those who combine with these physical explanations certain points
borrowed from astronomical speculation,” are next dealt with. These
Astronomical Allegorists maintained that Osiris is the Lunar World and
Typhon the Solar: the Moon’s light being regarded as favourable to the
reproductiveness of plants and animals, from its greater moistening
tendency, while the light of the Sun is parching, and so hostile to life
and vegetation that “a considerable portion of the earth is rendered
by his heat totally uninhabitable.”[363] After a brief description of
another class of astronomical Allegorists who regard the myth as an
enigmatical description of Eclipses,[364] he puts the whole of these
particular explanations of the Physical and Astronomical Allegorists in
their proper place as merely partial and distorted expressions of the
ancient and universal belief in the existence of two opposing principles,
two mutually hostile influences which operate throughout the universe,
giving Nature its mixed and uncertain and fluctuating character.[365]
One of the most conspicuous features in Plutarch’s Theology, as already
examined in these pages, is his anxiety to avoid any kind of Dualism in
his conception of Deity; and it is a necessary corollary of his religious
and philosophical conviction on this point that there should be no place
in the constitution of the world for a Being regarded as a coequal rival
to the One Supreme Omnipotence. As Plutarch, however, himself points out,
if nothing can be conceived as originating without a cause, and Good
cannot be regarded as furnishing the cause of Evil, it follows that
Evil as well as Good must have an originating principle of its own.[366]
But neither on the religious nor on the purely philosophic side does
he carry this admission to the extent of accepting an Evil personality
or principle equivalent in power to the Deity. On the one hand, he
accepts the doctrine of subordinate Dæmons, whose evil propensities are
ultimately under the control of the Omnipotent Author of Good, inasmuch
as they are liable to pains and penances for their infraction of the
laws He has imposed upon them; and on the other, he has learned from
Greek philosophy the conception of τὸ ἄπειρον, that infinite, formless
“Matter,” out of which the Demiurgus, making it the nurse and receptacle
of the ideas, had created the Universe. He insists, indeed, that the
two conceptions are familiar to Greek philosophers: Empedocles opposed
φιλότητα καὶ φιλίαν to νεῖκος οὐλόμενον; the Pythagoreans had two
well-known lists of contrary expressions.[367] Anaxagoras expressed the
antithesis by νοῦς and ἄπειρον; Aristotle by εἶδος and στέρησις. In all
these philosophical distinctions the inferiority of the second term is
implied, and Plutarch asserts this inferiority in unmistakable terms.
“The creation and formation of this world arose out of opposing, but not
equal, Principles, the supreme sway being the portion of the Better.”[368]
It is clear from these considerations that Plutarch’s own mind is
made up on the subject; but he cannot refrain from giving sympathetic
consideration to so ancient, widespread, and respectable a belief as that
involved in the myth of Osiris and Typhon, of Ormuzd and Ahriman; and
he devotes considerable space, and displays considerable ingenuity, in
connecting the Egyptian and Zoroastrian beliefs with the legends of Greek
Mythology and the principles of Greek Philosophy.[369] But his object,
even when he makes indulgent concessions to an opposite view, is never
lost sight of, and towards the conclusion of his search for parallelisms
and similarities, he expresses his aim in unmistakable and peculiarly
Plutarchean language. After passing severe criticism on the impiety of
those who give the names of gods to the productions of Nature, asserting
that Dionysus is _Wine_, and Hephaistos _Flame_ (which, says he, is like
identifying sail and cable and anchor with the pilot, the thread with
the weaver, or the draught with the physician), he adds, “God is not
lifeless, unintelligent, subject to man, as these things are. But it is
from these blessings that we conclude that those who bestow them upon us
for our use, and give us a constant and never-failing supply thereof,
are gods, _not different gods among different peoples, not Barbarian
gods, nor Greek gods, not gods of the south nor gods of the north; but
just as the sun, the moon, the earth, the sky, and the sea are common to
all, but receive different names among different peoples, so likewise
are different honours assigned and different invocations addressed to
the gods in different places according to the customs there established.
Yet is it one Reason which admonishes, and one Providence which directs,
while subordinate powers have been appointed over all things. Certain
peoples make use of sacred symbols which, with greater or less clearness,
direct the understanding to divine knowledge, and yet not without
danger, since some in their desire to shun the swamp of Superstition
have unconsciously slipped over the precipice of Atheism_.”[370] Here we
have, combined in one sentence, Plutarch’s belief in the Unity of God,
his acceptance of the theory of Dæmons, his recognition of the truth of
foreign creeds, his desire, so frequently expressed, and so consistently
acted upon, to follow the guidance of a reverent yet inquiring philosophy
on a path which is equally distant from the two great moral evils which
loom so large in his mental vision. Hence this tract is organically
connected with the treatise on Superstition; the former aims at securing
by purely intellectual and rational processes what the latter attempts by
appealing to the Intellect through the medium of the Imagination.[371]
CHAPTER X.
_Conclusions respecting the general character of Plutarch’s
Religion—Monotheism and Dæmonology both essential parts
of his Theodicy—His strong belief in the personality
of God—Metaphysical weakness but Moral strength of his
Teaching—Close connexion between his Religion and his
Ethics—Plutarch not an “Eclectic,” nor a Neo-Platonist—Contrast
between Plutarch’s Religion and Philosophy and the Religion
and Philosophy of the Neo-Platonists—Christianity and
Neo-Platonism—The struggle between them and its probable effect
on later religious history—Conclusion._
We have endeavoured in the preceding pages to ascertain, from Plutarch’s
own account of his views, the principles, the method and the character of
his Religion; to learn in what manner he conceives the supernatural world
and its relation to the human mind and to human interests; to discover
and illustrate the processes by which these results are attained; to
note their philosophic bearing and tendency; and to exemplify their
application in the sphere of practical ethics. We have seen how clearly
he recognizes the existence, and demonstrates the attributes, of a
Supreme Being, and have observed how he raises the humility of mankind
nearer to the Majesty of the Highest by admitting the activities of an
intermediate and mediatory race of supernatural beings, whose mingled
nature allies them equally to God and Man, and forms a channel of
communication between human wants and divine benevolence. These are
the two fundamental truths of the religion of Plutarch. The whole of
his exegesis, in whatsoever direction operating, whether examining the
doctrines of Philosophy, the legends of popular Myth, or the traditions
embodied in ceremonial observances, is involved with a recognition of
this twofold conception as the essential characteristic of a religious
attitude of mind. Those, indeed, who have emphasized too exclusively
that element in Plutarch’s Religion which he owes to Philosophy, have
concluded that his religious beliefs were purely Monotheistic: just as
a misunderstanding of his Dæmonology has resulted in the assertion that
he was trammelled in the meshes of a superstitious Polytheism.[372]
It could, if necessary, be plausibly argued, against those who have
maintained this latter view, that the elaboration of the belief in
Dæmons, and the multiplication of the functions of these lesser divine
beings, are factors which tend to emphasize the unity and purity of
the Supreme God; and that Plutarch’s Monotheism is no more destroyed
by the recognition of a Dæmonic Race than is the Catholic Trinity
overthrown by the Church’s acceptance of the Celestial Hierarchy of
Dionysius “the Areopagite,” with its thrice-repeated triplets of Thrones,
Cherubim, Seraphim; Powers, Dominions, Mights; Angels, Archangels,
Principalities. But, in the first place, Plutarch does not keep his
Religion and his Philosophy in separate mental compartments: they are
fused into one operation in his thought; and we should adopt a false
method of interpretation were we to separate the result as expounded in
his writings. Further, we should obtain a totally misleading view of
Plutarch’s teaching were we to insist that he was fully conscious of
all the conclusions that by a strict use of logic could conceivably be
deduced from his tenets. An examination of the opinions and beliefs which
he states that he actually maintained leads inevitably to the conviction
that his Dæmonology was as sincere as his Theology. There can, we think,
be no doubt that his reverence for the national tradition gave him as
real a belief in the polytheistic activities of the Dæmons as his love of
Philosophy gave him in the Unity, Perfection and Eternity of the Deity.
The strength of this belief was increased by his recognition of the
important part it might play, in one direction by solving perplexities
and removing stumbling-blocks from the national tradition, in another by
responding to that eternal craving of humanity for a god-man, a mediator,
which had already begun to receive a purer, a simpler, and a more perfect
satisfaction. The conscious expression, therefore, which Plutarch gives
in his writings to the belief in Dæmons, we are bound to accept as
corresponding with a conviction actually existing in his mind, quite as
much as we admit the sincerity of his reiterated belief in a Supreme and
Universal Deity.
But it is one of the most interesting suspects of Plutarch’s Theology—not
the less interesting, perhaps, because it has a certain inconsistency
with other parts of his Religion—that, even were we to confine our
investigations to the philosophic elements of his idea of the Divine
Nature: even if we could totally exclude from consideration all the
functions which he ascribes to the Dæmonic character: we should still
find ourselves face to face with a God different, in one of the qualities
now regarded as essential to a complete conception of Deity, from any
of the theological representations current in the schools of Greek
Philosophy. The essential basis of all these representations is the God
of Plato, partly regarded as the creative Demiurgus of the “Timæus;”
partly as the World-Soul, that “blessed god” produced by the operation of
the Creator’s “Intelligence”; and partly as that ultimate ideal Unity,
the final abstraction reached by a supreme effort of dialectic subtlety.
The last of these three conceptions is essentially and truly that of
Plato; it is the native and unalloyed product of Dialectic, owing naught
of its existence to the illustrative or ironical use of Myth, out of
which the other two conceptions spring. The element of personality is
totally absent from this conception,[373] nor did the Stoics introduce
this element into their adoption of the Soul of the Universe as
Deity.[374] But Plutarch’s God is a personal God. The God of the “De Sera
Numinis Vindicta” approaches nearer to the Christian conception of God
as a Father than the Deity as conceived by any Faith which has not been
permeated by Christian feeling, and the God of the “De Superstitione”
presents the same characteristics as the God of the “De Sera Numinis
Vindicta.” Plutarch’s feeling of the intimate relation existing between
the Divine Knowledge and the secret weaknesses and sins, and the feeble
strivings after virtue in the human heart, does not require an elaborate
and contentious process of ratiocination before we can discern its
presence. It is the basis of his finest arguments, and the inspiration of
his most earnest and fruitful teachings. This weakness of Plutarch on the
side of Metaphysics, this revolt of his nature against the coldness and
distance of the Deity of the Platonic Dialectic, constitutes his strength
as a religious and moral teacher. This inconsistency makes him the type
of certain modern theologians who will expound to a formal Congregation
the Eternity, Self-Existence, Necessity, and Unity of God the First
Cause, while in their private devotions their hearts and their lips turn
naturally to the simple and touching petitions of “Our Father, which
art in Heaven;” or, while composing a sermon in which the particular
attributes of the Persons of the Trinity and their mutual relationships
are defined and enumerated with more than scholastic precision, will
turn and teach their children to pray to God as the “gentle Jesus.” In
a similar manner, there is the Plutarch of the “De Ε apud Delphos,” the
Plutarch of the “De Sera Numinis Vindicta,” and the Plutarch of the
Dæmonology. He contributes his share to the discussions of philosophic
theologians; he depicts God in direct spiritual relationship with his
human children; and he describes the Dæmons as aiding mankind in their
internal struggles towards perfection of moral character. He will allow
neither Reason nor Emotion to run away with him; he is as far removed
from the dialectic severities of Plato, as he is from the superstitious
beliefs and practices of the later Platonists. He has no special and
peculiar message either to the theologian in the pulpit, or to the child
at its mother’s knee. He appeals to humanity at large; to the people who
have work to do, and who want to get it done with honesty and dignity; to
students, teachers, politicians, members of a busy society; to people who
are liable to all the temptations, and capable of all the virtues, which
naturally arise in the ordinary life of highly civilized communities.
He analyses and illustrates such common vices as anger, avarice, envy,
hate, flattery;[375] he penetrates and exposes such ordinary failings
as garrulity, _gaucherie_, personal extravagance, and interfering
curiosity.[376] His sympathetic pen, as of one who knows the value of
such things, depicts with rare charm the loveliness of friendship, and
of affection for brother, child, and wife; while he applies a more
religious consolation to those who are suffering under the bitterness of
exile, the sadness of bereavement by death.[377] To connect Plutarch’s
Religion with his Ethics at all these points of contact would carry us
beyond the natural limits of our present aim.[378] As an illustration of
his method as operating in this direction, we may recall how intimately
Plutarch’s conception of the Divine Nature is interwoven with his ethical
aim in face of so serious a moral evil as Superstition. We may also add
that he is consistent with himself in constructing no scientifically
accurate system of Ethics any more than he maintains a dialectically
impeccable scheme of Theology. He criticizes the ethical results attained
by various Schools of Philosophy, and selects from this one and that
one such elements as promise to give greater clearness and strength to
his own convictions.[379] He quotes Plato and Aristotle to show that
Reason and Passion are both necessary elements in the production of
practical virtue. Superior power as Reason is in the constitution of
man, she cannot act by herself towards the accomplishment of her own
virtuous aims. Although he refuses to agree with Aristotle that all
Virtue is a mean between two extremes, since the virtue of Intelligence
as employed, for example, in the contemplation of a mathematical problem,
being an activity of the pure and dispassionate part of the soul, needs
no admixture of the unreasoning element to make it effective; he yet
insists that the virtues of practical life demand for their realization
the instrumental agency of the passions, and are thus, in effect, a mean,
correcting excess or defect of either of the co-operating agencies.[380]
Referring to a favourite illustration, he maintains that the passions are
not to be uprooted and destroyed as Lycurgus uprooted and destroyed the
vineyards of Thracia, but are to be treated with the fostering gentleness
of a god who would prune the wild, trim the rank, and carefully cultivate
the healthy and productive portions of the plant.[381] If we wish to
avoid drunkenness we need not throw our wine away; we must temper it
with water. In like manner, Reason will not act “by harsh and obstinate
methods, but by gentle means, which convey persuasion and secure
submission more effectively than any sort of compulsion.”[382] It is
quite in harmony with this essentially practical view of life that he
holds that Virtue can be taught, and that it is through the persuasion,
and by the guidance, of Reason and Philosophy that a happy life can be
secured, inasmuch as their efforts are directed at counterbalancing the
exaggerated picture which passion draws of all the circumstances of life,
whether they are fortunate or the reverse.[383] It is this principle
which he applies to the discussion of topics of practical morality, as
he applies it to the discussion of questions of Religion. The practice
of the virtues based upon this principle is most vividly exhibited in
his “Symposiacs,” a work which is of considerable value for the light it
throws upon the family and private habits of the Græco-Roman empire of
that age, but which is chiefly interesting because it shows to what an
extent the simple and humane moralities of Epicureanism had permeated
Society, and brought a calm and gentle happiness in their train.
It may be admitted that the positive additions made by Plutarch to the
intellectual and moral wealth of his age were small and unimportant. He
made no great discoveries in any of the great branches of philosophical
activity which had so long been the special pride and prerogative of the
Hellenic Race. There was not a tendency of Greek Philosophy with whose
history and results he was not familiarly acquainted; there was not a
School from which he did not borrow something for introduction into the
texture of his own thought. It is in this sense that he is, as he has
been called, an Eclectic; but his teaching surrounds his appropriated
thoughts with none of the weakness so often attaching to great and
original utterances when torn out of the systems in which they were
originally embodied. Nor was his Eclecticism that spurious Eclecticism
of the later Platonists, which imagined it had harmonized discordant
systems when it had tied them together with the withes of an artificial
classification. Plutarch’s Eclecticism was unified by the Ethical
aim which constantly inspired his choice, and gave to old sayings of
philosophers, old lines of verse, old notions of the people, a new and
richer significance in his application of them to the uses of practical
life. Thus, if Plutarch did not add to the gathered wealth of Hellas, he
taught his countrymen new ways of passing their ancient acquisitions into
the currency. There are periods in the intellectual and moral progress
of humanity when the world is exhausted with the accumulation of its
riches; when its appetite for acquisition is satiated; when it needs to
find what its possessions are, and how best they can be put to their
legitimate uses. At these periods the cultivation of a mental attitude
is of greater service to humanity than the accumulation of mental
stores. Plutarch came at such a period in the history of the Hellenic
race; and we, who are once again beginning to recognize that the end of
education should not be the mere accumulation of facts, but rather the
strengthening of the intellect and the formation of the character, can
properly estimate the value of the work accomplished by one who, on the
side of intellect, inculcated the necessity of sympathetically watching
for signs of a rational basis in beliefs however _primâ facie_ strange
and abhorrent, and on the side of character, that a man could become
virtuous by learning what his faults were, and endeavouring to check them
by practice and habit. In him Religion and Philosophy went hand in hand,
operating on the same body of truth, and directing their energies to the
realization of the same end. That rational influence which we saw working
in the sphere of early Roman Religion: which subsequently gave Roman
Morality a source of inspiration in Greek Philosophy: which associated
Greek Religion and Greek Philosophy as factors in Ethics, until the
latter became the predominating power: this influence had its final
classical expression in Plutarch and in the other thinkers and workers of
his epoch and that immediately succeeding, in Seneca, in Dion, in Marcus
Aurelius. These men avoided extravagance in Religion, as they avoided
it in their philosophical studies and in the practical affairs of life.
They are the last legitimate outcome of the Greek spirit in Pagan times.
Plutarch collected the wisdom, and fixed the emotions, of Antiquity, in a
manner which the best men of many Christian ages have found efficacious
for goodness. In his own more immediate age his spirit predominated for
a century, and was then absorbed to form a thin vein of common sense in
that mingled mass of Oriental mystery and Hellenic metaphysics which was
known as Neo-Platonism.[384]
Neo-Platonism, which claimed to represent the perfect harmony of Religion
and Philosophy, substantiated its claim by annihilating the historic
foundations of both, and by thus compelling Christianity to dispense
with the accumulated wisdom of ages in its reorganization of human
relationships with the eternal. In Plutarch’s teaching, each element
of the combination was at once assisted and restrained by the other,
and the fusion was natural and effective. In Neo-Platonism, Reason,
the principle of Philosophy, and Emotion, the inspiration of Religion,
were each carried to an impossible extent of extravagance; and it was
only the existence of the two elements in the minds of a few strenuous
and original characters, who were assisted in their attempts at unity
by the refinements of an ultra-Platonic Dialectic, which secured even
the appearance of harmony between the discrepant conceptions which they
borrowed from various differing and even mutually hostile schools.
Even in Plato the conspicuousness of the Ethical element compensates
to some extent for the abstractness of his conception of the Deity.
But Neo-Platonism forced the idealism of Plato to a more extravagant
metaphysic; and, although upon Dialectics the rational part of their
doctrine was nominally based, the abstractness of its processes lent
itself to mysticism as effectively as the purely religious element which
lost itself in the vagaries of Oriental rapture, and debased itself by
its miraculous methods of intercourse with the spiritual world. Reason,
in the pursuit of the One, was attenuated to Mathematics. Mathematics,
having arrived at the conception of the One, and finding it without any
qualities, gave way to the raptures of the “perfect vision.”
How far this twofold extravagance was due to the personality of the
founders of the new System, and how far to its express object of
rivalling Christianity, is a doubtful problem. Maximus was a Tyrian;
Numenius came from Apamea in Syria; Ammonius Saccas, the first great
Neo-Platonist, was of Alexandria. Plotinus came from Lycopolis in Egypt,
and was perhaps a Copt; Porphyry and Iamblichus were Syrians. Plutarch,
as Bishop Theodoret said, was a Hellene of the Hellenes.[385] But the
necessity of competing with the rising Faith doubtless operated very
strongly in developing the mystical tendencies always tacitly inherent in
Platonism, and proclaimed by the Neo-Platonists at the very commencement.
This rivalry emphasized that out-Platonizing of Plato which culminated
in the Alexandrian Trinity, and that competition with the Christian
miracles which issued in the triple folly of Magic, Theurgy, and
Theosophy. Plutarch, knowing that the necessity of confuting an adversary
is liable to cause exaggeration and distortion, removed his Epicurean
from the scene when he wished to discuss the providential dispensation
of human affairs. The circumstances of his time, and the bent of his own
character, which inclined him to seek points of agreement rather than to
emphasize points of difference, saved him from the prejudices of the
_odium theologicum_. But in the third century Christianity could not be
disposed of by contemptuous phrases, or equally contemptuous silence.
The Neo-Platonists came into direct contact with the new Religion, both
in its literature and in its practice. Ammonius Saccas, the teacher
who satisfied all the yearning aspirations of Plotinus, had been a
Christian in the days when he was young and carried a porter’s knot on
the quays.[386] Porphyry informs us that he had met Origen, and Socrates,
the Church historian, asserts that Porphyry had himself been a Christian.
The evidence of Bishop Theodoret, which cannot be accepted as regards
Plutarch, may easily be admitted as regards Plotinus.[387] Porphyry wrote
fifteen books against the Christians, which were publicly burned by
Theodosius 200 years later. He demonstrated that the prophecies of Daniel
were composed after the event, and in the Third Book of his _Collection
of Oracles_, he devotes a chapter to “the foolishness of the Christians,”
and finds a place for Christ in his lowest rank of supernatural beings.
Plutarch’s thoughts were not disturbed either by anti-Christian polemic,
or by the necessity of finding a place for Christ in his spiritual world.
The modifications which these influences wrought in that body of
Hellenic wisdom which had been the material of Plutarch’s work were
most conspicuous in the Theology and Dæmonology of the Neo-Platonists.
Plutarch had been content to state the Unity, Eternity, Absoluteness of
God. He needed such a conception to make the world intelligible; but
he defined his conception with a rare simplicity which satisfies the
practical mind as well as meets the essential requirements of Philosophy.
But the Neo-Platonist theology refines and subdivides and abstracts to
an extent which puzzles and bewilders its most earnest students, and
removes God infinitely further from mankind than even the Ideas of Plato
are removed. “According to Plotinus, God is Goodness without Love. Man
may love God, but God cannot love man.” Even the “Divine Soul,” the
third Hypostasis of the Neo-Platonist Trinity, that which lies nearest
the comprehension of the common intellect, “is of little intellectual
or religious significance in the mind of Plotinus.” Dogmatism would be
unbecoming on a subject where Kirchner and Zeller are at variance, and
where the French lucidity of Vacherot and Saisset casts little more
light than the close and careful analysis of Dr. Bigg.[388] But it is
necessary to a full understanding of Plutarch’s position to consider
his relation to his successors as well as to his predecessors, and we
are therefore compelled to a brief analysis of the Neo-Platonic Theology
and Dæmonology, putting ourselves under more competent guidance than we
can ourselves hope to supply. “The Supreme Cause,” says Dr. Bigg, “God,
in the proper sense of the word, ... embraces in Himself a unity of
Three Hypostases.... Hypostasis signifies the underlying cause of the
phenomenal manifestation. Hence it can be applied to all three Persons of
the Platonic Trinity, while Being could only be used of the second and
third.—Each Hypostasis is a person, but a purely intellectual person.
All three are one, like three mutually enfolding thoughts, and where
one is there is the All in the fullness of its power. All are eternal,
but the second is inferior to the first, because ‘begotten,’ and the
third to the second, for the same reason.” “God,” says M. Saisset, “is
threefold, and yet a whole. The divine nature, conceived as absolutely
simple, admits of division; at the pinnacle of the scale soars Unity;
beneath it Intelligence, identical with Being, or the Logos; in the third
rank, the Universal Soul, or the Spirit. We have not here three gods,
but three hypostases of the same God. An Hypostasis is not a substance,
it is not an attribute, it is not a mode, it is not a relation. Unity is
above Intelligence and Being, it is above Reason; it is incomprehensible
and ineffable; without Intelligence itself, it generates Intelligence;
it gives birth to Being, and is not itself Being. Intelligence, in its
turn, without motion or activity as it is, produces the Soul, which is
the principle of activity and motion. God conceived as a perfect type of
which the human soul is a copy, the infinite and universal Soul, is the
third hypostasis. God conceived as absolute, eternal, simple, motionless
Thought, superior to space and time, is the second hypostasis.” But soul
and thought and being are terms relative to the human mind. “God is above
thought, above Being: He is, therefore, indivisible and inconceivable. He
is the One, the Good, grasped by Ecstasy. This is the third hypostasis.”
M. Saisset continues: “Such are the three terms which compose this
obscure and profound Trinity. Human reason, reason still imperfectly free
from the meshes of sense, stops with the conception of the Universal
Soul, the active principle of motion; the reason of the Philosophers
rises higher, to the Motionless Intelligence, the depository of the
essences and types of all things; it is love and ecstasy alone that can
carry us to the conception of Absolute Unity.”
Almost the only thing that is easy to understand in the Neo-Platonic
theology is its adoption of the conceptions of various schools of Greek
Philosophy. This Eclecticism has a superficial resemblance to that of
Plutarch: but it is Eclecticism formally enumerating and classifying
its results, not harmonizing and unifying them. The third hypostasis
is the λόγος ὁ ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ of the Stoics; the second hypostasis is the
Intelligence, the eternal, absolute, and motionless Νοῦς of Aristotle,
while the first has striking affinities with the Pythagorean One. But, by
a forced process of interpretation, all the three Hypostases are found in
Plato. In the “Laws” and the “Phædrus” Plato stopped with the conception
of the Third Hypostasis, the World Soul, the origin and cause of movement
in the created world, which in the “Timæus” is represented as a creation
of the Demiurgus. In the God of the “Banquet” and the “Republic,” who is
the source of Being and Intelligence, Plato was anticipating the Second
Hypostasis; while in the “Parmenides” he describes the First Hypostasis,
that absolute Unity which has no relation with either Being or Reason,
or with anything else either actual or conceivable. The placing of these
three different conceptions of God in three different compartments of
thought, in three different Scales of Existence, is not to unify them:
nor is that process made any the more feasible by the invention of the
term Emanation, by which the Second Hypostasis proceeds from the First,
and the Third from the Second.[389] Plutarch’s Eclecticism is based
upon the needs of the moral life: that of Neo-Platonism was actuated
by a desire for formal harmony, and was steeped in a mysticism which
operated in drawing the soul away from action to a divine contemplation.
The Perfect Vision, the revelation of the First Hypostasis, is the
culmination of the soul’s progress. The Second and Third Hypostases,
being subject to relations and conditions, are susceptible of approach
through the Reason; but the First Hypostasis, being unconditioned,
cannot be grasped by Reason, which moves in the sphere of conditions and
relations. Hence, the Perfect Vision repudiates that Reason of which it
is the culmination: “for thought is a kind of movement, but in the Vision
is no movement.” In the Revelation of the Perfect Vision, as well as in
the formal development of the Trinity, we see the influence of a desire
to compete with Christianity.
This ecstatic contemplation of the highest conception of their Theology
exhibited a mysticism which had a more degrading side, one which is
specially conspicuous in the Neo-Platonist Dæmonology. There also the
Mysticism is in combination with refinements of logical definition.
Plotinus takes the floating conceptions of Dæmonology and makes them
submit to a rigid classification in formal harmony with the tripartite
character of the Divine Nature. Divine Powers he divides into three
classes. The first Power is that which dwells in the world of Ideas,
apart from the perception of man and in close touch with the Divine
Intelligence. The next is the race of visible Gods, the Stars, Nature,
Earth: the third is that of the Dæmons. The Dæmons are again subdivided
into three ranks: Gods, Loves, and Dæmons. Porphyry insists on a similar
classification. In one of the oracles collected by him and preserved by
Eusebius, the beings of the Dæmonic hierarchy are classified with equal
strictness, but with greater simplicity than that shown by Plotinus.
His highest rank corresponds with that of his Master. The second rank
corresponds with Plotinus’ third class, but does not here undergo a
tripartite subdivision. His third class, unlike the first, which moves in
the presence of God, is far away from communion with Him, and corresponds
with the created and visible gods in the second class of Plotinus. He
is not always faithful to this simplicity. In the third book of his
“De Philosophia ex Oraculis” he admits another class of Dæmons called
Heroes, admitting Christ to their number. Elsewhere he divides the Dæmons
into archangels, angels, and dæmons. Proclus will have six ranks: and
Dionysius the Areopagite, who classified this Dæmonlore for the Christian
Church, will have nine. We can equally discern here the operation of
that spurious Eclecticism which fits its thefts into the clamps of a
preconceived system. The simple notion of Beings intermediate between
God and Man, breaking the distance between the two by participating
in the Divine and Human nature, is rendered absurd and impossible by
its compulsory harmonizing with the demand of the Alexandrine Trinity.
Plotinus thought he had made Aristotle agree with Plato, but the harmony
was of the same character as that secured between Christianity and
Neo-Platonism by making the Christian God-man a Neo-Platonist Dæmon. The
Ideas of Plato, the νόησις τῆς νοήσεως of Aristotle, and the World Soul
of the Stoics: how easy to reconcile these different conceptions of the
Deity, if they are placed in different spheres of thought, and connected
by the mysterious process of Emanation! The Neo-Platonist school was
damned by its fatal proclivity for trinities. There were three kinds
of gods, three kinds of dæmons, and three methods of approach to the
supernatural world. These three methods were of course systematic, almost
scientific, constructions. Before Porphyry there were Magic (γοητεία) and
Theosophy (θεοσοφία). That philosopher introduced a third and middle term
Theurgy (θεουργία). Theosophy was the process by which the philosopher
attained the Perfect Vision, arrived at the consummation of ἕνωσις. Magic
was the process by which the evil Dæmons, whom Porphyry puts under the
dominion of Serapis and Hecate, were approached. The object of Theurgy
was communion with the good Dæmons. Aided by Oriental fervour, we know
the absurdities which these systems developed in the world of practice.
But the development of these sciences on the theoretical side was enough
to drag them down with their own weight. In Proclus the practical and
the theoretic sides of Neo-Platonism are both driven to a culmination
which passes the intelligence of humanity. “From the Incommunicable One
spring—one knows not how—a host of Henads. Each has the character of
absolute being, yet each has distinctive qualities. The Henads run down
in long lines; the Intelligible are followed by the Intellectual, these
by the Overworldly, these again by the Inworldly. From the Intelligible
springs the family of Being, from the Intellectual that of Intelligence,
from the Overworldly that of Soul, from the Inworldly that of Nature.
These principal ‘chains’ are mainly like brooks falling into one river;
that which has a body may also have a soul and an intelligence; but they
subdivide as they go down, there are different kinds of intelligences
and different kinds of souls dependent on them, so that the river is
perpetually branching off into other rivers. Yet, further, the principal
chains have to be multiplied by the number of Henads, for each chain is a
family depending on a God, and exhibiting throughout the characteristic
of that God. It includes not only Angels, Heroes, Demons, and human
beings, but stones, plants, animals, which bear the signature of the
deity, and have sacramental virtues with respect to him.”
If Proclus believed all this, we can understand his being a victim to
the grossest superstition, both in belief and in practice. In the life
of Proclus, second Aristotle as he was, we see the natural culmination
of that excess of Reason and that exaggeration of Emotion which had
marked the Neo-Platonic attitude from the beginning. When Justinian
closed the School of Athens in the Sixth Century its professors, the last
representatives of Neo-Platonism, were being hunted down as practitioners
of magic of the meanest description. The “De Superstitione” of Plutarch
marked a stage in the history of the human mind which the Neo-Platonists
left behind, and which the European world has only just attained
again after centuries of horrible crimes born of a sincere belief in
witchcraft.[390]
It is a natural subject of speculation to those who are interested in
the history of this period, how far the character of modern civilization
would have been modified, had not the free and tolerant traditions of
Greece been clamped into the systematized absurdities of Neo-Platonism.
The struggle for social and political ascendancy reacted also upon the
liberal and gentle spirit of the Man of Nazareth, whose teachings were
thus embedded in a theological formalism which robbed them of half their
meaning and all their inspiration. Christianity fought the enemy with its
own weapons, and the scientific terminology of the Neo-Platonists gave
definiteness to the Christian conception of the Trinity and the celestial
hierarchy, while the whole system of Dæmonology, which has played so
sinister a part in modern civilization, was to be found entire in the
works of Porphyry and Proclus. It has even been asserted that the chief
merit of the Neo-Platonist school lay in the fact that it prepared the
educated circles of Pagan Society for the acceptance of the Gospel, and
laid the foundations for the construction of Christian Theology.[391]
But it is conceivable that had Christianity come face to face with the
calm rationalism and gentle piety of Pagan Religion and Philosophy as
they appear in Plutarch, more of the spirit, if less of the form, of the
old tradition might have passed into the teachings of the new Faith. We
should, perhaps, then have been spared the martyrdom of Christians at the
hands of Christians, the Inquisition, and the whole terrible consequences
of the _Odium Theologicum_. Plutarch suggested a frame of mind rather
than inculcated a body of dogma, and in that he resembled the founder
of Christianity a great deal more than the most honoured theologians
of the Church have done. But Paganism girt on its armour in direct
hostility to the new Creed, and from these clenched antagonisms sprang
that accentuation of points of difference which broke the continuity of
civilization, and separated the modern from the classical world by a
chasm which the efforts of four centuries have not succeeded in bridging
over.[392] Is it not possible that Paganism, which out of the multitude
of separate gods had evolved the idea of the One Pure and Perfect
Deity, might also, out of the many-sided activities of the half-human,
half-divine Dæmons, have arrived at the belief in a single mediatory
power, and, with a perception unblinded by polemic bitterness, have been
prepared to merge this conception in the Divine Man of the Catholic
Church?[393]
But though the spirit of Plutarch was not destined in this way to pass
directly on to the believer in Christianity, the time was to come when,
among the best and purest adherents of that faith, his teachings would be
regarded as efficacious for the sincerest goodness. “The works of Jeremy
Taylor,” says Archbishop Trench, “contain no less than two hundred and
fifty-six allusions or direct references made by him to the writings of
Plutarch.” But direct indebtedness of this kind does not necessarily
imply similarity of spirit, and fortunately the mental attitude of
Plutarch is one which appears essential to human progress, and does not
depend upon the continuity of a tradition. “Plutarch,” wrote Emerson,
“will be perpetually rediscovered from time to time as long as books
last.”[394] He will be perpetually rediscovered because there will be a
perpetually recurring necessity to look at life from his point of view.
But he will be perpetually rediscovered because he is perpetually allowed
to disappear. There will always be those among the disciples of Religion
and the followers of Science who maintain that there can be no truce,
no toleration between the two, and the history of the human race will
be formulated into an indictment against the Superstition of the one,
and the most terrible anathemas of the Church will be fulminated against
the Atheism of the other. Meanwhile those who take a middle course and
recognize the “immortal vitality of Philosophy and the eternal necessity
of Religion,”[395] and would leave the individual mind to select its
appropriate support from the dogmas of the one or the discoveries of the
other, without dressing Philosophy in the fantastic garb of Religion, as
the Neo-Platonists did, or turning Religion into a matter of rules and
regulations as the Clerical Rationalists of the Eighteenth Century did,
will be regarded by the extremists as traitors at once to the cause of
progress and the cause of morality, and will be placed among the—
“Anime triste di coloro
Che visser senza infamia, e senza lodo.
Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro
Degli Angeli, che non furon ribelli
Nè fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sè foro.”[396]
But so long as human nature is composite: so long as it is compelled
to feel an interest in the home joys of earth, and is endowed with an
imagination which soars beyond the actual realities of life to the
possibilities that lie beyond its limits: so long will the spirit which
dominated Plutarch operate in inducing men “to borrow Reason from
Philosophy, making it their Mystagogue to Religion:” so long will it be
recognized that the most subtle Dialectic and the most spiritualized
rapture are dangerous at once to Reason and Religion unless they are
brought into contact with the necessities of daily life, and made to
subserve the ends of practical goodness in the sphere of man’s natural
and immediate interests. This recognition of Ethics as the dominating
end of all Thought and Emotion will lead men on that firm path of
reasonable happiness which, in Plutarch’s own favourite expression,
lies midway between the headlong precipice of Atheism and the engulfing
quagmire of Superstition.
FINIS.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
FOOTNOTES
[1] See the Heading of the Lamprian Catalogue: BERNARDAKIS. vol. vii. p.
473.
[2] PLUTARCHI CHÆRONENSIS _Moralia_ recognovit GREGORIUS N. BERNARDAKIS
(Leipzig. Teubner. 7 vols. and Appendix).
[3] _Classical Review_, vol. iv. (1890), p. 306.
[4] (Then of Goettingen.) See the _Præfatio_ to BERNARDAKIS’ Second
Volume.
[5] The Treatise of PLUTARCH, _De Cupiditate Divitiarum_, edited by W. R.
PATON. (David Nutt. 1896.) We have also consulted Mr. Paton’s _Plutarchi
Pythici Dialogi tres_ (Berlin, 1893). (An emendation of Mr. Paton’s is
noted _infra_, p. 90.)
[6] _Leben, Schriften und Philosophie des Plutarch von Chæronea_, von R.
VOLKMANN (Berlin, 1869).
[7] _De la Morale de Plutarque_, par OCTAVE GRÉARD (Paris, 1866).
[8] _Plutarch, his Life, his Parallel Lives, and his Morals._ Five
Lectures by RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., &c. (London, 1873).
[9] _The Greek World under Roman Sway, from Polybius to Plutarch_, by J.
P. MAHAFFY, D.D., &c. (London, 1890).
[10] MAHAFFY, p. 321. How Plutarch could possibly have “_taken pains
to understand_” Christianity when, in Professor Mahaffy’s own words
(p. 349), he “_seems never to have heard of it_,” we must leave it to
Professor Mahaffy to explain.
[11] _Ibid._ p. 321.
[12] _Ibid._ p. 349.
[13] VOLKMANN, vol. ii. cap. 1.
[14] GRÉARD, Preface to Third Edition, p. iii.
[15] _De Apologetica Plutarchi Chæronensis Theologia_ (Marburg, 1854).
Seibert refers to two other authors who had dealt with some aspects of
his own subject—Absolute demum opusculo _Schreiteri_ commentationem _de
doctrina Plutarchi theologica et morali_ scriptam ... _necnon Nitzchii
Kiliensis de Plutarcho theologo et philosopho populari_ disquisitionem
1849 editam conferre licuit.—We have been unable to see a copy of either
of these dissertations, although Trench also alludes to Schreiter’s work.
They did not, in Seibert’s opinion, render his work unnecessary; but _he_
enjoyed the inestimable advantage of the friendship of Zeller, who helped
him “libris consilioque.”
[16] _Politik und Philosophie in ihrem Verhältniss, &c._, by H. W. J.
THIERSCH (Marburg, 1853).—Damals stand Plutarch, dem bereits Trajan
consularische Ehren bewilligt hatte, auf der höchsten Stufe des
Ansehens. (For M. Gréard’s destruction of this Legend see his first
chapter.—_Légende de Plutarque._)
[17] _The Essays of Plutarch_, by W. J. BRODRIBB. _Fortnightly Review_,
vol. 20, p. 629.
[18] “_He cared not for the name of any sect or leader, but pleaded
the cause of moral beauty in the interests of truth only._”—Merivale’s
“_Romans under the Empire_,” cap. 60, where there is an excellent, but
unfortunately too brief, account of our author.
[19] _Œuvres Morales de Plutarque_, traduites du grec par DOMINIC
RICARD (1783-1795).—“Rapprochée un texte, la version de Ricard est,
dans sa teneur générale, d’une élégance superficielle et d’une fidélité
peu approfondie.”—GRÉARD. TRENCH also severely condemns some of the
translations in the edition issued in Dryden’s name.
[20] _Plutarch’s Morals_, translated from the Greek by several hands,
corrected and revised by W. W. GOODWIN, Ph.D. (London, 1870).—“It may
have been a fortunate thing for some of our translators that Bentley
was too much occupied with the wise heads of Christ Church to notice
the blunders of men who could write notes saying that the Parthenon
is a ‘Promontory shooting into the Black Sea, where stood a chappel
dedicated to some virgin godhead, and famous for some Victory thereabout
obtain’d.’”—Editor’s Preface.
[21] Plutarch’s Morals. _Theosophical Essays._ Translated by the late
C. W. KING, M.A. (London, 1889). _Ethical Essays_ translated by A. R.
SHILLETO, M.A. (London, 1888).
[22] TERTULLIAN: _De Carne Christi_, 5.—“Crucifixus est Dei filius; non
pudet, quia pudendum est. Et mortuus est Dei filius; prorsus credibile
est, quia ineptum est. Et sepultus resurrexit; certum est, quia
impossibile est.”
[23] ST. AUGUSTINE: _Confessiones_, vi. 5.—“Ex hoc tamen quoque jam
præponens doctrinam Catholicam, modestius ibi minimeque fallaciter
sentiebam juberi _ut crederetur quod non demonstrabatur_ (sive esset
quid demonstrandum, sed cui forte non esset, sive nec quid esset), quam
illic temeraria pollicitatione scientiæ credulitatem irrideri; et postea
tam multa fabulosissima et absurdissima, quia demonstrari non poterant,
credenda imperari.”—The principle inherent in the five italicized words
is identical with that which the writer exposes as an example of the
absurd credulity of the Manichæans. The difference is merely one of
degree.
[24] Attempts have, of course, been made at various times to rationalize
a Religion whose cardinal principle is Faith. Paley and Butler are
conspicuous examples in the history of Anglican Christianity but neither
the one nor the other supplied any widespread inspiration to the
religious life of the day. Butler, “who had made it his business, ever
since he thought himself capable of such sort of reasoning, to _prove_
to himself the being and attributes of God,” who “found it impossible to
dissociate philosophy from religion in his own mind,” and “would have
agreed with South that what is nonsense upon a principle of Reason will
never be sense upon a principle of Religion,” was yet compelled to admit
that “it was too late for him to try to support a falling Church;” and it
is a matter of national history that Wesley, with his direct appeal to
the principle of “justification by _faith_,” did more to reinvigorate the
religious life of England than all the cultured rationalists who adorned
the English Church in those days. And in these later days Butler has not
escaped the charge of “having furnished, with a design directly contrary,
one of the most terrible of the persuasives to Atheism that has ever been
produced.” (_Butler_, by the Rev. W. Lucas Collins, M.A.) Paley likewise
thought it a just opinion “that whatever renders religion more rational
renders it more credible,” and devoted his genius to the task of making
religion more rational, but has done little more than furnish a school
text-book for theological students. Further, what Christian, in his heart
of hearts, and at those moments which he would regard as his best, does
not respond more readily to the sublime sentiment of Tertullian than to
the ratiocinations of the _Analogy_ or the _Evidences_?
[25] M. CONSTANT MARTHA’S _Études morales sur l’Antiquité_, from which
we have taken this just and striking phrase of Bossuet, gives an
interesting account of the passionate and anguished manner in which the
calm precepts of the famous “Golden Verses of Pythagoras” were applied
by Christianity:—“Le philosophe, si sévère qu’il fût, se traitait
toujours en ami; ... le chrétien au contraire, ... passe souvent par des
inquiétudes inconnues à la sereine antiquité.” (_L’Examen de Conscience
chez les Anciens._)
[26] “Belief is a virtue, Doubt is a sin.”—Quoted by J. A. Froude, _Short
Studies_, vol. i. p. 243.
[27] Certain emotional aspects of Greek Religion are dealt with in the
subsequent analysis of Plutarch’s teaching.
[28] HORACE: _Epist._ i. 6, 15, 16.
[29] GASTON BOISSIER: _De la Religion Romaine_, vol. i. p. 21. Cf.
CICERO: _De Natura Deorum_, ii. 28.
[30] Cf. the remark of SENECA: _Epistolæ ad Lucilium_, i. 21.—“Quod
fieri in senatu solet, faciendum ego in philosophia quoque existimo.
Quum censuit aliquis, quod ex parte mihi placeat, jubeo illum dividere
sententiam, et sequor.”—For a summary of interesting examples of the
manner in which this spirit of compromise worked out in practical
religious questions, see Boissier, pp. 22, sqq.
[31] VIRGIL: _Georgics_, 1. 268-272.—Cf. the note of Servius on this
passage: “Scimus necessitati religionem cedere.” On the general character
of Roman Religion, cf. CONSTANT DE REBECQUE: _Du Polythéisme Romain_.—“On
dirait que les dieux ont abjuré les erreurs d’une jeunesse fougueuse pour
se livrer aux occupations de l’âge mûr. La religion de Rome est l’âge mûr
des dieux, comme l’histoire de Rome est la maturité de l’espèce humaine.”
[32] MACROBIUS: _Saturnalia_, iii. 9.—“Si deus, si dea est, cui populus
civitasque Carthaginiensis est in tutela, teque maxime ille,” etc.
[33] PLUTARCH: _De Iside et Osiride_. (Passages subsequently quoted.) Cf.
DION CHRYSOSTOM: _De Cognitione Dei_. (Vol. i. p. 225, Dindorf’s Text.)
[34] DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS: _De Antiquitatibus Romanorum_, ii.
18.—Though Livy’s account of the administrative measures of Numa is
written in a totally different spirit from that of Dionysius, it may
be noted that Numa is depicted as introducing religion as an aid to
political stability.—“Ne luxuriarentur otio animi, quos metus hostium
disciplinaque militaris continuerat, _omnium primum_, rem ad multitudinem
imperitam et illis sæculis rudem efficacissimam Deorum metum injiciendum
ratus est.” (LIVY, i. 19.) Cicero confesses that the auspices had been
retained for the same reason. (_De Div._, ii. 33.)
[35] The indignant phrases with which Horace scathes the degeneracy of
his own times in this respect clearly indicate the religious aspect of
the patriotic self-immolation of Regulus:—
“Milesne Crassi conjuge barbara
Turpis maritus vixit et hostium
(Proh curia inversique mores!)
Consenuit socerorum in armis
Sub rege Medo Marsus et Apulus
_Anciliorum et nominis et togæ_
_Oblitus æternæque Vestæ_
_Incolumi Jove et urbe Roma?_” (_Od._, iii. 5.)
[36] Cf. BOISSIER: _De la Religion Romaine_, vol. i. p. 17.—“Nonseulement
la religion romaine n’encourage pas la dévotion, mais on peut dire
qu’elle s’en méfie. C’est un peuple fait pour agir; la rêverie, la
contemplation mystique lui sont étrangères et suspectes. Il est avant
tout ami du calme, de l’ordre, de la regularité; tout ce qui excite
et trouble les âmes lui déplaît.” Boissier quotes as the remark of
Servius on _Georgics_, 3. 456, the words, “_Majores religionem totam in
experientia collocabant_;” but what Servius really wrote was, “_Majores
enim expugnantes religionem, totum in experientia collocabant_,” and he
gives an apt reference to Cato’s speech on the Catilinarian conspiracy
as reported by Sallust:—“Non votis neque suppliciis muliebribus auxilia
deorum parantur: vigilando, agendo, _bene consulendo_, prospere omnia
cedunt.” Propertius (iii. 22) boasts that Rome is free from the more
extravagantly emotional legends of Greek mythology.
[37] CICERO: _De Nat. Deor._ lib. iii.—Cf. the “theory of Twofold Truth,”
which was “accepted without hesitation by all the foremost teachers in
Italy during the sixteenth century,” who “were careful to point out, they
were philosophers, and not theologians.”—_The Skeptics of the Italian
Renaissance_, by John Owen (p. 186, second edition).
[38] CICERO: _Tusc. Disp._ i. 1.—“Iam illa quæ natura, non literis,
adsecuti sunt, neque cum Græcia neque ulla cum gente sunt conferenda; quæ
enim tanta gravitas, quæ tanta constantia, magnitudo animi, probitas,
fides, quæ tam excellens in omni genere virtus in ullis fuit, ut sit cum
majoribus nostris comparanda?”
[39] A situation forecast in the well-known passage of Plato’s
_Republic_, 619 C, in reference to the soul who has chosen for his lot in
life “the most absolute despotism he could find.”—“He was one of those
who had lived during his former life under a well-ordered constitution,
and hence a measure of virtue had fallen to his share, _through the
influence of habit, unaided by philosophy_.” (Davis and Vaughan’s
translation.) What could more accurately describe the character of early
Roman morality than these words?
[40] It was inability to grasp this truth that explained the “patriotic”
opposition of the Elder Cato to the lectures of Carneades, Critolaus,
and Diogenes. He was “unwilling that the public policy of Rome, which
for the Roman youth was the supreme norm of judgment and action, and
was possessed of unconditional authority, should, through the influence
of foreign philosophers, become subordinated, in the consciousness of
these youths, to a more universal ethical norm.” UEBERWEG: _Grundriss der
Geschichte der Philosophie_ (Morris and Porter’s translation, p. 189,
vol. i.). (Cf. M. MARTHA: _Le Philosophe Carnéade à Rome_.)
[41] CICERO: _De Officiis_, i. 43.—“_Princepsque omnium virtutum illa
sapientia quam σοφίαν Græci vocant_—prudentiam enim, quam Græci φρόνησιν,
aliam quandam intellegimus, quæ est rerum expetendarum fugiendarumque
scientia; illa autem sapientia quam principem dixi rerum est divinarum
et humanarum scientia, in qua continetur deorum et hominum communitas et
societas inter ipsos—ea si maxima est, ut est certe, necesse est quod a
communitate ducatur officium id esse maximum.”—He is here emphasizing the
social duties of the individual man.
[42] _De Divinatione_, ii. 2.—“Quod enim munus reipublicæ afferre majus
meliusve possumus, quam si docemus atque erudimŭs juventutem? his
præsertim moribus atque temporibus, quibus ita prolapsa est, ut omnium
opibus refrænenda ac coërcenda sit.”—We shall venture to believe that
personally Cicero was not a religious man, in spite of the religious
usefulness of his philosophic work, and also notwithstanding Trollope’s
contention that “had Cicero lived a hundred years later I should
have suspected him of some hidden knowledge of Christian teaching.”
(TROLLOPE’S _Life of Cicero_, chapter on “Cicero’s Religion.”) Cicero’s
Letters have as much religion in them as Lord Chesterfield’s—and no more.
[43] HEROD. ii. 53.
[44] HESIOD: _Works and Days_, 280 sqq. (cf. 293-326). Here also is to be
found that famous description of the hard and easy roads of Virtue and of
Vice. The reward held out to progress in Virtue is that this road, too,
becomes pleasant and easy at last.
[45] Οὗτος μὲν πανάριστος ὃς αὐτῷ πάντα νοήσῃ. (HESIOD: _Works and
Days_, 293.)—It is not surprising that Aristotle quotes this verse with
approval, or that it commended itself to the genius of Roman writers.
(Cf. LIVY, xxii. 29; CICERO: _Pro Cluentio_, c. 31.)
[46] Pindar: _Olymp._, 1, v. 28, sqq. (Christ’s _Teubner_ Edition).
[47] PLUTARCH: _De Ε apud Delphos_, 385 B.D.
[48] See _The Ethics of Aristotle_, by Sir ALEXANDER GRANT, Essay II.
[49] Horace’s “Mutatus Polemon” is well known. The details of the story
are given in practically the same form by Diogenes Laertius, Valerius
Maximus (vi. 6. 15), and by Lucian in his dramatic version in the _Bis
Accusatus_ (16, 17). Philostratus—_Lives of the Sophists_, i. 20—gives an
intensely _modern_ account of the conversion of the sophist Isæus. (See
also _Note_ on p. 28.)
[50] PLATO: _Laws_, 642 C. (Jowett’s translation.)
[51] BROWNING’S _Asolando_, “Development.” (P. 129, first edition.)
[52] For the influence of the Greek Myths in this direction, cf.
PROPERTIUS, Book iii. 32.
“Ipsa Venus, quamvis corrupta libidine Martis,
Nec minus in cælo semper honesta fuit,
Quamvis Ida palam pastorem dicat amasse
Atque inter pecudes accubuisse deam.
...
Dic mihi, quis potuit lectum servare pudicum,
Quæ dea cum solo vivere sola deo?”
St. Augustine’s criticism of the famous passage in the _Eunuchus_ of
Terence (Act iii. sc. 5), where Chærea is encouraged in his clandestine
amour by a picture of Jupiter and Danaë, is, of course, painfully
justified by the facts as reported by the dramatist. (_Confessiones_,
lib. i.)
[53] PLATO: _Phædo_, 69 B.
[54] “Before the fifth century, philosophy had been _entirely_ physical
or metaphysical.”—Sir A. GRANT: _Aristotle_. (Essay already quoted.) The
word italicized is surely too sweeping. (The thought is repeated with
some qualification on page 67.) Cf. DIOGENES LAERTIUS: i. 18, and i. 13.
CICERO: _Tusc. Quæst._, v. 4; _Acad._, i. 4, 15. ARISTOTLE speaks with
greater truth and moderation.—_Metaph._, i. 6. The distinction between
Socrates and previous philosophers lies not so much in the fact that they
were not ethical philosophers as that he was not a physical philosopher.
[55] HEROD. i. 75. Cf. the amusing story told by Plutarch (_De Sollertia
Animalium_, 971 B, C), in which a mule laden with salt lightens its load
in crossing a river by soaking its packages well under the water. Thales
enters the ranks against the clever mule, and comes off easy winner by
giving him a load of _sponges and wool_.
[56] HEROD. i. 170. Cf. PLUTARCH: _Cum Principibus Viris Philosopho esse
disserendum_, 779 A.
[57] RITTER and PRELLER, p. 10. (Quoting SIMPLICIUS: _Physica_, 6, a.)
[58] SIMPLICIUS: _Physica_. (Quoted by RITTER and PRELLER, p. 10.)
[59] “Heraclitus used to say that Homer, and Archilochus as well, ought
to be expelled from the Contests and cudgelled.”—_D. L._, ix. 1.
[60] See PLUTARCH: _Adversus Coloten_, 118 C; and STOBÆUS: _Anthologion_,
v. 119, and iii. 84. (Vol. i. pp. 94 and 104.—_Tauchnitz_ Edition.)
[61] PLUTARCH: _De Exilio_, 604 A.
[62] DIOGENES LAERTIUS, ii. 6.
[63] ALEX. APHROD: _De Fato_, ii., quoted by RITTER and PRELLER, p. 28.
Cf. PSEUDO-PLUTARCH: _De Placitis Philosophorum_, 885 C, D.
[64] ARISTOTLE: _Metaphysics_, i. 3.
[65] RITTER and PRELLER, p. 52.—Cf. UEBERWEG on Leucippus and Democritus,
“The ethical end of man is happiness, which is attained through justice
and culture.”
[66] _Magna Moralia_, i. 1, and i. 34. Cf. ARISTOTLE: _Eth. Nich._,
v. 5.—“The Pythagoreans defined the just to be simply retaliation—and
Rhadamanthus (in Æschylus) appears to assert that justice is this: ‘that
the punishment will be equitable when a man suffers the same thing as he
has done.’” (Thomas Taylor’s translation of _The Works of Aristotle_.)
[67] UEBERWEG, p. 47. See also citations in last note.
[68] _How_ fruitful, the whole Attic Tragedy demonstrates.
[69] RITTER and PRELLER, p. 79 (from CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS).
[70] Cf. MARLOWE’S _Dr. Faustus_:—
“Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
Ah, Pythagoras’ metempsychosis, were that true
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Unto some brutish beast! All beasts are happy,
For when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.”
[71] MARTHA: _L’Examen de Conscience chez les Anciens_ (“études morales
sur l’Antiquité”).—“Ce poème, attribué par les uns à Pythagore lui-même,
par d’autres à Lysis, son disciple, par d’autres encore ou à Philolaüs
ou à Empédocle, ne remonte pas sans doute à une si haute antiquité, mais
il est certainement antérieur au christianisme, puisque des écrivains
qui ont vécu avant notre ère, entre autres le Stoïcien Chrysippe, y ont
fait quelquefois allusion ... Hieroclès dit formellement que les _Vers
d’or_ ne sont pas l’œuvre d’un homme, mais celle de tout le sacré collège
pythagoricien.”—The author of the verses is, doubtless, unknown, but
their general attribution in antiquity to a Pythagorean source is in
harmony with the universal recognition that they cohere with the ethical
doctrine of the school. M. Martha subjects ancient philosophers and
critics to a severe reprehension on the ground that they saw in these
verses a mere inculcation of the practice of the memory—“Un certain
nombre d’anciens sont tombés dans la plus étrange méprise. Ils ont cru
qu’il s’agissait ici d’un exercice de mémoire.” But, giving all the force
which M. Martha assigns to the passages he quotes in support of this
view, we must not leave out of consideration the important part which
a good memory was believed to subserve in practical ethics. See the
pseudo-Plutarchic tract _De Educatione Liberorum_, 9 F. Cf. EPICTETUS,
lib. iii. cap x.
SENECA (_De Ira_, 3, cap. 36) learned the practice inculcated by the
golden verses from Sextus, who was claimed as a Pythagorean (RITTER and
PRELLER, 437).
[72] PLATO: _Republic_, 600 B.
[73] PLUTARCH: _Adversus Coloten_, 1126; cf. _D. L._, ix. 23. See also
PLATO’S _Parmenides_, and cf. UEBERWEG on Parmenides.
[74] LESLIE STEPHEN: _The Science of Ethics_ (concluding sentence).
[75] For a brief expression of this identity, see DION. CH. _De Exilio_,
xiii. p. 249.—“_To seek and strive earnestly after Virtue—that is
Philosophy._” Cf. SENECA: _Epist._, i. 37; _et passim_.
[76] See MARTHA: _La prédication morale populaire_ (“Les moralistes sous
l’empire romain,” pp. 240, 241).—“A cette époque la philosophie était
une espèce de religion qui imposait à ses adeptes au moins l’extérieur
de la vertu. Les sophistes se reconnaissent à leur mœurs licencieuses
et à leurs manières arrogantes, les philosophes à la dignité de leur
conduite et de leur maintien. On entrait dans la philosophie par une
sorte de conversion édifiante: on ne pouvait en sortir que par une
apostasie scandaleuse.” See the passages referred to by M. MARTHA, and,
in addition, DION’S account of his “conversion” in _Oratio_ xiii. (_De
Exilio_), and his comparisons between the sophist and the peacock, and
the philosopher and the owl, in _Oratio_ xii. (_De Dei Cognitione_).
[77] CICERO: _Acad. Poster._, i. 4. (Reid’s translation.) Cf. RITTER
and PRELLER: sec. 204, note “a” on XENOPHON: _Memorabilia_, iv. 3.
1, and i. 4. 4.—“Socratem quodam modo naturæ studuisse vel ex nostro
loco luculenter cernitur, ubi deprehendis eum teleologicam quæ dicitur
viam ingressum, quæ ratio transiit ad Socraticos. Inde corrigendus
Cicero _Acad. Poster._, i. 4.” Cf. BENWELL’S Preface to his edition of
the _Memorabilia_: “Quam graviter de Dei providentia et de admirabili
corporis humani structura Socratem disserentem inducit!”—It must be
conceded, however, that in Xenophon’s account Socrates is described as
discussing natural phenomena still with a view to ethical edification.
(_Memorab._, iv. 3.)
[78] PLATO: _Timæus_, 59 C.
[79] W. S. LANDOR: _Diogenes and Plato (Imaginary Conversations)_.—“Draw
thy robe around thee; let the folds fall gracefully, and look majestic.
That sentence is an admirable one, but not for me. I want sense, not
stars.” Cf. Dr. MARTINEAU: _Plato (Types of Ethical Theory)_.—“The
perfection which consists in contemplation of the absolute, or the
attempt to copy it, may be the consummation of Reason, but not of
character.”
[80] Cf. LANDOR: _loc. cit._—“The bird of wisdom flies low, and seeks her
food under hedges; the eagle himself would be starved if he always soared
aloft and against the sun. The sweetest fruit grows near the ground, and
the plants that bear it require ventilation and lopping.”
[81] ARCHER-HIND: _The Phædo of Plato_, Appendix I.
[82] Cf. MARTINEAU: “Types of Ethical Theory”: _Plato_, p. 97, vol.
i.—“For the soul in its own essence, and for great and good souls among
mankind, Plato certainly had the deepest reverence; but he had no share
in the religious sentiment of democracy which dignifies man _as man_, and
regards with indifference the highest personal qualities in comparison
with the essential attributes of common humanity.—He rated so high the
difficulty of attaining genuine insight and goodness that he thought
it much if they could be realized even in a few; and had no hope that
the mass of men, overborne by the pressure of material necessity and
unchastened desires, could be brought, under the actual conditions of
this world, to more than the mere beginnings of wisdom.”
[83] ARISTOTLE: _Ethics_, i. cap. 3. Cf. i. 6 and i. 8.
[84] _Ethics_, i. 3, 4, where also the verse from the _Works and Days_ is
quoted; cf. sec. 6.
[85] _Ethics_, i. 8.
[86] GRANT’S _Aristotle_, vol. i. p. 155.
[87] See RITTER and PRELLER, sec. 392, for the authorities on this head.
[88] _A Voice from the Nile_, by JAMES THOMSON. An Epicurean would have
heartily responded to the verse following those quoted in the text from
this fine poem—“And therefore Gods and Demons, Heaven and Hell.”
[89] DIOGENES LAERTIUS (RITTER and PRELLER, 380. Cf. CIC.: _De Finibus_,
i. 7).
[90] Cf. PSEUDO-PLUTARCH: _De Placitis Philosophorum_. 877 D.
[91] DIOGENES LAERTIUS, x. 142. Cf. CIC.: _De Finibus_, i. 19.—“Denique
etiam _morati melius erimus_ quum didicerimus _quid natura desideret_.”
(RITTER and PRELLER, p. 343).
[92] Cf. the statement of SENECA (_Epist._, 89, 9).—“Epicurei duas
partes philosophiæ putaverunt esse, naturalem atque moralem: rationalem
removerunt.”
[93] “Through the great weight which, both in theory and in their
actual life with each other, was laid by the Epicureans on Friendship
(a social development which only became possible after the dissolution
of the bond which had so closely united each individual citizen to the
Civil Community), Epicureanism aided in softening down the asperity
and exclusiveness of ancient manners, and in cultivating the social
virtues of companionableness, compatibility, friendliness, gentleness,
beneficence, and gratitude, and so performed a work whose merit we should
be careful not to under-estimate.”—UEBERWEG: _Grundriss_. Cf. HORACE:
_Sat._, I. iv. 135—“dulcis amicis.” The other elements of the Epicurean
ideal are also realized in Horace’s character, as his writings have left
it to us.
[94] This breaking away of the barriers between the teaching of various
schools was, doubtless, largely due to the increasing importance
which they universally attached to Ethics. The fact, at any rate,
is indisputable. Every history of Greek philosophy, from the Third
Century onward, is freely scattered with such phrases as these from
Ueberweg:—“The new Academy returned to Dogmatism. It commenced with
Philo of Larissa, founder of the Fourth School.... His pupil, Antiochus
of Ascalon, founded a Fifth School, by combining the doctrines of Plato
with certain Aristotelian, and more particularly with certain Stoic
theses, thus preparing the way for the transition to Neo-Platonism.”—“In
many of the Peripatetics of this late period we find an approximation to
Stoicism.”
[95] As regards Epicureanism, see the _Adversus Coloten_, the _De
latenter vivendo_, and the _Non posse suaviter viri secundum Epicurum_.
Plutarch’s polemic against Stoicism is specially developed in the three
tracts, _Stoicos absurdiora Poetis dicere_, _De Stoicorum Repugnantiis_,
and _De communibus Notitiis_. Plutarch’s attitude is purely critical: he
is by no means constructive. His criticism has been severely dealt with
by H. Bazin in his dissertation, _De Plutarcho Stoicorum Adversario_. It
is worthy of note that Plutarch deals entirely with the founders of the
two schools, not with the later developments of their teachings.
[96] Thiersch, who regards Plutarch as the inaugurator of that moral
reformation which, as we attempt to show in the next chapter, was
operating before he was born, asserts that at the time when Plutarch
began his work, the prevailing manner of life was based upon an
Epicurean ideal. (_Der Epikureismus war die Popularphilosophie des
Tages, denn in ihr fand die herrschende Lebensweise ihren begrifflichen
Ausdruck._—THIERSCH: _Politik und Philosophie in ihrem Verhältniss,
etc._, Marburg, 1853.) If this be so, and we willingly make the
admission, there was little need for reform here, although, as Seneca
found (_Ad Lucilium_, xxi. 9), it may have been necessary to explain to a
misunderstanding world what Epicureanism really was. Whatever Plutarch,
as nominal Platonist, may polemically advance against Epicureanism, the
ideal of Epicurus and Metrodorus is realized in the conduct of the group
of people whose manner of life is represented in the _Symposiacs_.
[97] For some considerations on this subject see the concluding chapter.
[98] _E.g._, Dr. August Tholuck.—At the termination of an article,
“_Ueber den Einfluss des Heidenthums aufs Leben_,” in which he ransacks
classical authors and Christian fathers for anything which may serve
to exhibit the degradation of Pagan society, he quotes the words of
Athanasius to give expression to the conclusion referred to in the text.
The whole of Champagny’s brilliant and fascinating work on the Cæsars is
dominated by the same spirit, a spirit utterly inconsistent with that
attitude of philosophical detachment in which history should be written,
(_Études sur l’Empire Romain_, tome iii., “_Les Césars_.”) Archbishop
Trench, too, says of our period that it “was the hour and power of
darkness; of a darkness which then, immediately before the dawn of a new
day, was the thickest.” (_Miracles_, p. 162.) Prof. Mahaffy, in the same
uncritical spirit, refers to the “singular” and “melancholy” spectacle
presented by Plutarch in his religious work, “_clinging to the sinking
ship, or rather, trying to stop the leak and declare her seaworthy_.”
(_Greeks under Roman Sway_, p. 321.)
[99] See Dean Merivale, _Romans under the Empire_, vol. vii.
[100] See “St. Paul and Seneca” (Dissertation ii. in Lightfoot on
“Philippians”) for a full account of the question from the historical and
critical standpoints. The learned and impartial Bishop has no difficulty
in proving that the resemblances between Stoicism and Christianity were
due to St. Paul’s acquaintance with Stoic teaching, and not to Seneca’s
knowledge of the Christian faith.
Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, in Syria (consecrated A.D. 420), appears
to have been the first to assert the operation of Christian influences
on Plutarch:—“_Plotinus, Plutarch, and Numenius, and the rest of their
tribe, who lived after the Manifestation of our Saviour to the Gentiles,
inserted into their own writings many points of Christian Theology._”
(Theodoretus, _Græcarum affectionum curatio_—Oratio ii., De Principio.)
In another place he makes a still more definite assertion: “_Plutarch and
Plotinus undoubtedly heard the Divine Gospel._” (Oratio x., De Oraculis.)
Rualdus, in the ninth chapter of his _Vita Plutarchi_, given towards
the end of the first volume of the Paris edition of 1624, dare not be
so emphatic as Theodoret:—“_There are, in the writings of Plutarch,
numerous thoughts, drawn from I cannot say what hidden source, which,
from their truth and importance, could be taken for the utterances of
a Christian oracle. I do not hesitate, therefore, to say of him, as
Tertullian said of Seneca, that he is ‘often our own man.’_” And he
even goes so far as to admit that, though Plutarch never attacked the
Christian faith, and might have read the New Testament as well as the
Old, it is quite impossible to claim him as a believer.—Brucker, in a
slight account of Plutarch in his _Historia Critica Philosophiæ_, takes
a more critical view.—“The fact that Plutarch, in his numerous writings,
nowhere alludes to the Christians, I do not know whether to attribute to
his sense of fairness, or even to actual favour, or whether to regard it
as an indication of mere neglect and contempt.” That Brucker is inclined
to the alternative of contempt is shown by a comment in a footnote on
Tillemont’s assertion (_Histoire des Empereurs_), that Plutarch ignored
the Christians, “not daring to speak well, not wishing to speak ill.” “It
appears to me,” says Brucker, “that the real reason was contempt for the
Christians, who were looked upon as illiterate.”
Of modern examples of this tendency one may be sufficient. In the
introduction to an American translation of the _De Sera Numinis
Vindicta_, the editor, after enumerating the arguments against any
connexion between Plutarch and Christianity, concludes:—“Yet I cannot
doubt that an infusion of Christianity had somehow infiltrated itself
into Plutarch’s ethical opinions and sentiment, _as into those of
Seneca_.” (“Plutarch on the Delay of the Divine Justice,” translated,
with an introduction and notes, by ANDREW P. PEABODY, Boston, 1885.)
[101] See DION: _Ad Alexandrinos_, p. 410 (Dindorf). See also p. 402. Cf.
PHILOSTRATUS: _Vitæ Sophistarum_, i. 6.
[102] E.g., _Conjugalia Præcepta_, 140 A.—“_Those who do not associate
cheerfully with their wives, nor share their recreations with them, teach
them to seek their own pleasures apart from those of their husbands._”
[103] TIBULLUS: _Eleg._, i. 1. Cf. PROPERTIUS: _Eleg._, iii. 15. “Dum nos
fata sinunt, oculos satiemus amore: Nox tibi longa venit, nec reditura
dies.”
[104] TIBULLUS: _Eleg._, i. 3. “Quod si fatales iam nunc explevimus
annos,” to the end of the Elegy.
[105] TIB. i. 3 (sub finem).
[106] PROPERTIUS: _Eleg._, ii. 13, 28; iv. 5, 23 sqq.; iv. 4.
[107] TIB., i. 10.
[108] LUCAN: _Pharsalia_, i. 670.
[109] The basis of the work of Augustus, and of the religious reforms
inaugurated or developed by him, is laid in the recognition of a fact
noted by Balbus in CIC., _De Nat. Deorum_, lib. ii. 3. “Eorum imperiis
rempublicam amplificatam qui religionibus paruissent. Et si conferre
volumus nostra cum externis, ceteris rebus aut pares aut etiam inferiores
reperiemur; religione, id est, cultu deorum, multo superiores.” Cf.
HORACE: _Od._, iii. 6, vv. 1-4; LIVY, xlv. 39.
[110] HOR.: _Od._, iii. 6.
[111] See BOISSIER: _Religion Romaine_, vol. i. cap. 5.—_Le Sixième
Livre de l’Enéide_. St. Augustine must surely have felt the _religious_
influence of the Æneid when he experienced the emotion which he describes
in the well-known passage in the First Book of the Confessions—_plorare
Didonem mortuam (cogebar), quia se occidit ob amorem: cum interea meipsum
morientem, Deus Vita mea, siccis occulis ferrem miserrimus_. (Lib. i.
cap. xiii.)
[112] OVID: _Fasti_, 4, 203; cf. _Meta._, i. sec. 8.
[113] See the Life of Persius, included, with the Lives of Terence,
Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, and Pliny the Elder, in the writings of Suetonius.
[114] MACLEANE’S _Persius_.—Introduction.
[115] PERSIUS: _Sat._, v. 62-64.—_At te nocturnis juvat impallescere
chartis, Cultor enim juvenum purgatas inseris aures Fruge Cleanthea._
[116] _Pharsalia_, ix. 554-555.
[117] _Pharsalia_, ix. 570. We have not been able to refrain from quoting
these—as other—well-known verses in the text. They are the highest
expression of the Stoic Pantheism. “_Virtus_” has the appearance of a
rhetorical climax; but has it been noticed that the great modern poet of
Pantheism—for what else was Wordsworth?—also makes humanity the highest
embodiment of that “presence ... Whose dwelling is the light of setting
suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, _and in
the mind of man_?”
[118] _Quis labor hic superis_, &c., vi. 490, _et passim_.
[119] _Felices errore suo_, &c., i. 459.
[120] Scrutabitur scholas nostras, et obiiciet philosophis congiaria,
amicas, gulam: ostendet mihi alium in adulterio, alium in popina, alium
in aula.—SENECA: _Epist._, i. 29.
[121] PHILOSTRATUS, i. 7. The quaint turn of the version in the text is
from BLOUNT’S 1681 translation of the _Life of Apollonius_.
[122] DION: _Oratio_ 32, pp. 402-3 (Dindorf).
[123] See DION: _De Cognitione Dei_ (pp. 213-4) for an interesting
comparison between the owl and the philosopher on the one hand, and the
sophist and the peacock on the other. (Cf. _Ad Alexandrinos_, p. 406,
where the sufferings of the faithful philosopher are in implied contrast
to the rewards that await the brilliant sophist.)
[124] _Iliad_, ix. 312-3 (Chapman’s translation). This actual text is
quoted in PHILOSTRATUS’ _Lives of the Sophists_ (i. 25) as a criticism on
some of the false and fantastic exercises of the Sophists. The “distant
lapse” referred to in the text is constantly evident in the dramas of the
best Athenian period. And history shows that there was a strong tendency
in the Hellenic character agreeing with that indicated by the evidence of
the dramatists, notwithstanding the outcry raised when Euripides summed
up the whole matter in his famous line in the Hippolytus (_Hipp._ 612).
[125] PHILOSTRATUS: _Vitæ Sophistarum_, lib. i. sec. 24.
[126] E.g., _De Stoic. Repug._, 1033 A, B; _De Audiendo_, 43 F.
[127] See frequent passages in Seneca’s letters to Lucilius, e.g. _Ep._
i. 16, 20. Cf. _De Vita Beata_, cap. 18, where Seneca defends himself and
other philosophers against the charge “_aliter loqueris: aliter vivis_.”
He will not be deterred from the pursuit of virtue by any truth human
weakness may have to admit in the charge.
This note is well marked in both Aurelius and Epictetus (ii. 19. Cf.
AULUS GELLIUS, xvii. 19). The praise of Ulysses at the end of the _De Deo
Socratis_ of Apuleius is couched in the same strain.
[128] CATULLUS, xvi. 4, 5; OVID: _Tristia_, ii. 353-4; MARTIAL, i. 5.
[129] PLINY: _Ep._ v. 3. Plutarch, also, is legitimately offended at
the loose language of the founders of Stoicism (see _De Stoic. Repug._,
1044 B), and his expressions, as are those of Pliny’s friends, are quite
in harmony with the modern attitude on the question. Apuleius defends
himself against a similar charge to that brought against Pliny by a
similar display of great names.—“Fecere tamen et _alii talia_” (De Deo
Socratis).
[130] HORACE: _Ep._ i. 1, 14.
[131] EPICTETUS: _Encheir._, 49; _Discourses_, iii. 2; i. 17.
[132] SENECA: _Epist. ad Lucilium_, i. 21. Here are a few of the _egregia
dicta_ which Seneca takes from the teachings of Epicurus, or Metrodorus,
or _alicujus ex illa officina_.—“_Honesta res est læta paupertas_,”
“_Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus_,” “_Philosophiæ servias
oportet ut tibi contingat vera libertas_,” “_Si cui sua non videntur
amplissima, licet totius mundi dominus sit, tamen miser est_,” “_Quid est
turpius, quam senex vivere incipiens?_” “_Is maxime divitiis fruitur,
qui minime divitiis indiget_,” “_Immodica ira gignit insaniam_,” “_Sic
fac omnia, tanquam spectet Epicurus_,” “_Initium est salutis, notitia
peccati_,” &c. Yet Seneca was the _acerrimus Stoicus_ of Lactantius
(_Div. Inst._, i. 5).
[133] Fragment 120 in Bergk’s third edition, 144 in his fourth edition,
and 107 in Böckh’s edition. W. Christ includes it in his selections—ἐξ
ἀδήλων εἰδῶν (No. 4).
[134] _Iliad_, ix. 498; xi. 3, 73; iv. 440.
[135] _Amatorius_, 763 C, sqq.; cf. _De Placitis Philosoph._, lib. i.
879-880 A. This tract cannot be quoted as authority for Plutarch’s views;
it is in several places distinctly, even grossly, anti-Platonic, and
in other places even more distinctly Epicurean. As an example of the
reverence with which Plutarch constantly alludes to Plato, the first
conversation in the Eighth Book of the _Symposiacs_ may be quoted.
The conversation arises out of a celebration of Plato’s birthday, and
Plutarch gives a sympathetic report of the remarks of Mestrius Florus,
who is of opinion that those who impute the philosopher’s paternity
to Apollo do not dishonour the God. Cf. this and hundreds of other
similar examples with the bitterly contemptuous expressions in the _De
Placitis_, 881 A, a section which concludes with an emphatic exposition
of that Epicurean view which Plutarch exerts himself so strenuously to
confute in the _De Sera Numinis Vindicta_. Bernardakis “stars” the _De
Placitis_, though Zimmerman quotes it as evidence against the sincerity
of Plutarch’s piety (_Epistola ad Nicolaum Nonnen_, cap. 7: “aperte
negat providentiam”). Wyttenbach says the _De Placitis_ was “e perditis
quibusdam germanis libris compilatum.” Christopher Meiners (_Historia
Doctrinæ de Vero Deo_, p. 246) attacks the boldness of the writer, “quâ
deorum numen et providentiam impugnavit, quæque a Plutarchi pietate et
moribus longe abhorret.” Corsini seems to think that the incredible
labour involved in the compilation makes it worthy of Plutarch. His
edition, with notes, translation, and dissertations, makes a very
handsome quarto, which is a monument of combined industry and simplicity.
He makes no comment on the anti-Platonic expressions alluded to above
(CORSINUS: _Plutarchi De Placitis Philosophorum_, libri v., Florence,
1759), nor does Mahaffy either, who regards the _De Placitis_ as genuine,
though he calls it jejune. I have been unable to see a copy of Beck’s
1787 edition, which Volkmann highly praises. It may be observed with
regard to the passage referred to at the head of this note that Plutarch
would never have limited the contribution of philosophy to the knowledge
of God to τὸ φυσικόν. Dion Chrysostom (_De Dei Cognitione_, 393, sqq.)
mentions the same three sources of the knowledge of the Divine nature as
Plutarch, but also postulates a primeval and innate cognition of God.
[136] Cf. the Pseudo-Plutarchic _De Placit. Phil._, 880 A.
[137] Λόγον ἐκ φιλοσοφίας μυσταγωγὸν ἀναλαβόντες. _De Iside et Osiride_,
378 A, B. “_Un lien pieux se formait entre le myste et son mystagogue,
lien qui ne pouvait plus se rompre sans crime._”—Maury, vol. ii. cap.
xi. For the saying of Theodorus about “taking with the left hand what is
offered with the right,” see _De Tranquillitate Animi_, 467 B.
[138] _De Iside et Osiride_, and _De Superstitione_, passim.
[139] Cf. DIOG. LAERT. vii. 134 (RITTER and PRELLER, sect. 404).—“God, by
transformation of His own essence, makes the world.”—Grant’s _Aristotle_,
Essay vi., “_The Ancient Stoics._” Cf. PLUT: _De Stoic. Repugn._ 1053.
[140] _De Ε apud Delphos_, 388 F.
[141] _Quomodo Adulator_, 78 E. Cf. EUNAPIUS on _Historians of
Philosophy_. “No one has written any careful account of the lives of
philosophers, among whom we count not only Ammonius, teacher of divinest
Plutarch, but also Plutarch himself, the darling and delight of all
Philosophy.” Eunapius thinks that the _Parallel Lives_ were Plutarch’s
finest work, but adds that “all his writings are thickly sown with
original thoughts of his own, as well as with the teachings of his
Master.”
[142] 393 E.
[143] Plutarch elsewhere comments upon the εὑρησιλογία of the Stoics
in finding explanations of the various names of the popular Deities
(_Quomodo Adolescens_, 31 E). CICERO (_De Natura Deorum_, iii. 24)
represents Cotta as charging the Stoics with supporting the crudest
superstitions of the popular faith by the skill which they displayed
in finding a mysterious significance in the current names and
legends:-“Atque hæc quidem et ejusmodi ex vetere Græcia fama collecta
sunt; quibus intelligis resistendum esse, ne perturbentur religiones.
Vestri autem non modo hæc non repellunt, verum etiam confirmant,
interpretando quorsum quidque pertineat.”
[144] _Iliad_, xv. 362-4.
[145] In another place Plutarch expresses the view that the original
Creator of the world bestowed upon the stuff of the phenomenal world a
principle of change and movement by which that stuff often dissolves
and reshapes itself under the operation of natural causes without the
intervention of the original Creator (_De Defectu Orac._, 435-6).
[146] Plutarch, in this Essay, distinctly places himself in opposition to
Plato, whose views, for the purposes of contrast, may be summarized from
two well-known passages of the Republic. In 337 B, C, the greater part
of the myths current in the popular poets are repudiated. Then, after
that famous series of criticisms applied to particular passages taken
from Homer and Hesiod and other poets, after his analysis of the various
kinds of “narration,” and his implicit inclusion of the great poets of
Greece among the masters of that kind of imitative narration which a man
will the more indulge in, the more contemptible he is, Plato concludes
with that ironical description of the reception which a Homer or a Hesiod
would have to meet in a state founded on the Platonic ideal. “_We shall
pay him reverence as a sacred, admirable, and charming personage; we
shall pour perfumed oil upon his head and crown him with woollen fillets;
but we shall tell him that our laws exclude such characters as he, and
shall send him away to some other city than ours._”—398 A, B (Davies and
Vaughan’s translation). Plutarch, however, takes the world as it is.
He admits that poetry is a siren, but refuses to stop the ears of the
young people who listen to her fascinating strains. Lycurgus was mad
in thinking he could cure drunkenness by cutting down the vineyards;
he should rather have brought the water-springs nearer to the vines.
It is better to utilize the vine of poetry by checking and pruning its
“fanciful and theatrical exuberance” than to uproot it altogether. We
must mingle the wine with the pure water of philosophy, or, to use
another image, poetry and philosophy must be planted in the same soil,
just as the mandragora, which moderates the native strength of the wine,
is planted in vineyards (_Quomodo Adolescens_, 15 E).
August Schlemm, in his _De fontibus Plutarchi Commentationum De Aud.
Poetis et de Fortuna_ (Göttingen, 1893), subjects the structure of
the _De Audiendis_ to a very close and careful analysis, and comes to
the conclusion that the main sources of Plutarch’s material are to be
found in the writings of Stoic and Peripatetic philosophers. He notes
that Plutarch’s examples are taken from the same Homeric, verses as
Plato’s, and adds, “Quæ cum ita sint, quomodo hæ Plutarchum inter et
Platonem similitudines ortæ sint dubium jam esse non potest. Plutarchus,
ut in eis quæ antecedunt, ita etiam hic, usus est libro Peripatetici
cujusdam, qui, _ut criminationes a Platone poetis factas repelleret_,
hujus modi fictiones in natura artis poeticæ positas esse demonstravit
et commentationi suæ inseruit poetarum versus a Platone vituperatos.”
Chrysippus had composed a work on _How to study Poetry_, Zeno one
entitled _On Poetical Study_, and Cleanthes another, called _On the Poet_.
The opinion of so conscientious a scholar on Plutarch’s “appropriations”
is worth quoting:—“tenendum est ... Plutarchum non eum fuisse qui more
compilatorum libros aliorum ad verbum exscriberet sed id egisse ut ea quæ
legisset atque collegisset referret, sed ita ut modo sua intermisceret,
modo nonnulla omitteret vel mutaret.”
[147] _De Iside et Osiride_, 353 E.
[148] _De Ε apud Delphos_, 393 D. Cf. _De Defectu_, 433 E. Ammonius
is here evidently referring to a remark made (386 B) by “one of those
present” to the effect that “practically all the Greeks identify Apollo
with the Sun.” The words of Ammonius quoted in the text are strikingly
similar in spirit to the famous verses in the “In Memoriam:”—
“O thou that after toil and storm
May’st seem to have reached a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
“Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
“Her faith through form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good:
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!”
[149] _Consolatio ad Apollonium_, 102 A.—“He was a very sage and virtuous
youth, conspicuous for the reverence which he paid to the gods, to his
parents, and to his friends.” This is nearly the old Hellenic ideal
as expressed, _e.g._, in the lines from the “Antiope” of Euripides,
preserved by Stobæus, “On Virtue”—
“There be three virtues for thy practice, child:
Honour the gods, revere thy loving parents,
Respect the laws of Greece.”
[150] _Amatorius_, 756 B.
[151] _Amatorius_, 762 A.
[152] _De Defectu Orac._, 435 E.
[153] _Consolatio ad Uxorem_, 612. Cf. _De Defectu Orac._, 437 A.
[154] Supplying, as Bernardakis does after Wyttenbach, καὶ οὐκ ἀγνοῶ ὁτι
ταῦτα πολλὰς ἔχει ἀπορίας.
[155] _De Pythiæ Orac._, 409 C. Cf. _De Rep. Ger._, 792 F.
[156] Plutarch puts these words into the mouth of Theon, a literary
man, and a most intimate friend of his own. But Theon is here a mere
modest disguise of Plutarch, just as “Lamprias” is in the _De Defectu
Oraculorum_. The argument is, in any case, not affected—the statement is
clearly Plutarch’s own. (See the note on that dialogue in a subsequent
chapter.)
[157] _De Pythiæ Orac._, 409 B.
[158] The antiquarian regret of Propertius for the old simple worships of
Rome—“Nulli cura fuit externos quærere divos Cum tremeret patrio pendula
turba sacro” (_Eleg._, v. 1)—touched a chord which very few Romans would
have responded to in Plutarch’s time.
[159] _De Exilio_, 602 E. This recognition of the sacred character of the
Emperor does not preclude criticisms of individual rulers, _e.g._, Nero:
_De Sera Num. Vindicta_, 567 F; and Vespasian: _Amatorius_, 771 C.
[160] _De Pythiæ Orac._, 408 B.
[161] Cf. the fate of Chæroneia under Antony, as told by Plutarch’s
grandfather (see _Life of Antony_, 948 A, B).
[162] 814 A.
[163] _Præcepta Reip. Ger._, 813, et passim:—He insists, however (814
E, F), that subservience must not go too far, and he is also careful to
point out such brilliant openings for political ambition as are left by
the peculiar conditions of the time (805 A, B).
[164] Plutarch states that the aim of his political advice is to enable
a man not only to become “a useful citizen,” but also “to order his
domestic affairs with safety, honour, and justice” (_De Unius in Repub._,
&c., 826 C).
[165] _Præcepta Reip._, 824 C.
[166] _Præcepta Reip._, 813 F.
[167] PROPERTIUS, iv. 11. “Hæc Di condiderant, hæc Di quoque mœnia
servant.” Plutarch’s essay reads like an exposition of this text of the
Roman poet.
[168] “Et hoc verbo monere satis est, Τύχης nomine contineri omnem
rerum actionumque efficientiam, quæ a Virtute disjuncta, nec in hominis
potestate posita est; sive illa ut casus et temeritas, sive ut divina
providentia informetur.”—WYTTENBACH. Schlemm says that this tract and
the _De Alexandri sive virtute sive fortuna_ are “meræ exercitationes
rhetoricæ in quibus certam quandam philosophiam persequi in animo non
habebat.” Yet the rhetoric of the _De Fortuna Romanorum_ is in wonderful
harmony with Plutarch’s mature opinion as deliberately expressed in the
_De Republica Gerenda_.
[169] VIRGIL: _Georgics_, ii. 534; PLUT: _De Fortuna Romanorum_, 316
E. This may be a conscious reminiscence of Virgil’s line. If Plutarch
had not read Virgil, he may have heard so famous a verse quoted by
his friends at Rome. He himself translates a passage from “the poet
Flaccus” in his _Life of Lucullus_ (518 C—HORACE: _Ep._, i. 6, 45). The
question of Plutarch’s acquaintance with Latin is very important for
investigations into the historical sources of his “Lives;” but it lies
beyond our present limits. It is fully dealt with by WEISSENBERGER in his
_Die Sprache Plutarchs_ (1895). He exculpates Plutarch from some of the
grosser mistakes in Latinity imputed to him by Volkmann.
[170] 317 B, C.
[171] CICERO: _Quæst. Tusc._, i. 23.
[172] _Amatorius_, 762 A.
[173] One need scarcely go so far as Professor Lewis Campbell, who
says that the main result of the “Ethics” of Plutarch is to show “how
difficult it was for a common-sense man of the world to form distinct and
reasonable opinions on matters of religion in that strangely complicated
time” (_Religion in Greek Literature_, 1898). But Professor Campbell is
also of opinion that “the convenient distinction between gods and demons,
which he (_i.e._ Plutarch) and others probably owed to their reading
of Plato, is worth dwelling on _because it was taken up for apologetic
purposes by the early Christian fathers_.” Surely its religious value
to an age which did not anticipate the coming of “the early Christian
fathers” makes the distinction worth study from a point of view quite
different from that represented in Christian apologetics.
[174] See MAURY, vol. i. p. 352.—“Pythagore admet l’existence de démons
bons et mauvais comme les hommes, et tout ce qui lui paraissait indigne
de l’idée qu’on devait se faire des dieux, il en faisait l’œuvre des
démons et des héros.” (For a fuller discussion of this question see the
chapters on Dæmonology.)
[175] Plutarch devotes so much of his work to an exposition of his views
of the Divine character, that one feels inclined to regard him less as
a philosopher in the general sense than as a theologian. A kindly piece
of description of his own (see _De Defectu Orac._, 410 A), in which he
mentions Cleombrotos of Lacedemon as “a man who made many journeys, not
for the sake of traffic, but because he wished to see and to learn,” and
says that as a result of his travels and researches he was compiling a
practically complete _corpus_ of philosophical material, the end and
aim of philosophy being, as he used to put it, “_Theology_”—may be
spoken with equal truth of Plutarch himself. We cannot, perhaps, do
better than apply the term Θεόσοφος to him, and support the appellation
with an interesting passage from M. Maury, in which he deals with the
distinction between theosophs and philosophers in the early stages of
Greek philosophy and religion:—“Les uns soumettant tous les faits à
l’appréciation rationelle, et partant de l’observation individuelle,
pour expliquer la formation de l’univers substituaient aux croyances
populaires un système créé par eux, et plus ou moins en contradiction
avec les opinions du vulgaire: c’étaient les philosophes proprement
dits. Les autres acceptaient la religion de leurs contemporains, ...
ils entreprenaient au nom de la sagesse divine, dont ils se donnaient
pour les interprètes, _non de renverser mais de réformer les notions
théologiques et les formes religieuses_, de façon à les mettre d’accord
avec leurs principes philosophiques” (MAURY, vol. i. p. 339). Cf. C. G.
SEIBERT, _De Apologetica Plutarchi Theologia_ (1854):-“Finis autem ad
quem tendebat ipsa erat religio a majoribus accepta, qua philosophiæ
ope purgata æqualium animos denuo implere studebat.” He thinks Plutarch
was a theologian first and a philosopher after. (In the passage quoted
above from the _De Defectu_ it is difficult not to regard Mr. Paton’s
emendation of φιλόθεος μὲν οὖν καὶ φιλόμαντις as more in accordance
with the character of Cleombrotos than the φιλοθεάμων καὶ φιλομαθής of
Bernardakis’ text, although, of course, he was a great traveller and an
ardent student.)
[176] _De E_, 392 A. Cf. PLATO: _Laches_, 240 C.
[177] 393 A-D.
[178] 394 C.
[179] _De Defectu_, 413 D.
[180] 433 D, E.
[181] 426 B.
[182] 1051 E.
[183] 1052 E.
[184] _De Defectu Orac._, 420 E.
[185] ÆSCHYLUS: _Prometheus Vinctus_, 210.
[186] _De Iside et Osiride_, 352 A. We need not here trouble with
Plutarch’s fanciful philology, almost as fanciful as that of some
modern Aryanists. His meaning is clear—Absolute Being is the object of
the worship of Isis—cf. MAX MÜLLER: _Selected Essays_, vol. i. p. 467:
“Comparative philologists have not yet succeeded in finding the true
etymology of Apollo.” (Plato’s derivations are given in the _Cratylus_,
266 C.)
[187] _Iliad_, xiii. 354. (Chapman’s translation.)
[188] _De Iside et Osiride_, 351 E.
[189] _Neoplatonism_, by C. BIGG, D.D. (“Chief Ancient Philosophies”), p.
216.
[190] Cf. the _De Placitis Philosophorum_, 881 B.
[191] _De Ε apud Delphos_, 384 F.
[192] 386 E.
[193] Alluding to HESIOD—_Works and Days_, 735 sq.
[194] _De Sera Numinis Vindicta_, 562 B.
[195] _De Ε_, 393 A.
[196] _De Ε_, 387 B, C.
[197] PLATO: _Philebus_, 39 E.
[198] ARISTOTLE: _Ethics_, viii. 12.
[199] _De Superstitione_, 167 E.
[200] _De Defectu Orac._, 423 E.
[201] PLUTARCH on _The Delay of the Deity in Punishing the Wicked_:
revised edition, with notes, by Professors H. B. Hackett and W. S. Tyler.
(New York, 1867.)
[202] _Sur les Délais de la Justice Divine dans la punition des
coupables_, par le Comte JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. (Lyons et Paris,
1856.)—“_J’ai pris_,” says de Maistre, “_j’ai pris quelques libertés
dont j’espère que Plutarque n’aura point se plaindre_;” and, speaking
of the _jeunesse surannée_ of Amyot’s style, he adds: “_Son orthographe
égare l’œil, l’oreille ne supporte pas ses vers: les dames surtout et les
étrangers le goûtent peu._” Another French critic justly remarks on these
“liberties” of de Maistre: “_C’est trop de licence. Plutarque n’est pas
un de ces écrivains qui laissent leurs pensées en bouton_” (Gréard, p.
274). Yet it is upon de Maistre’s “paraphrase” that Gréard bases his own
analysis!
[203] WYTTENBACH: _De Sera Numinis Vindicta_ (_Præfatio_). It is pleasant
to repeat the praise which Christian writers have poured on this tract.
“_Diese Schrift_” says Volkmann, “_gehört meines Erachtungs unbedingt
mit zu dem schönsten, was aus der gesammten nachclassischen Litteratur
der Griechen überhaupt auf uns gekommen ist_.” (VOLKMANN, vol. ii. p.
265.) One may wonder a little, perhaps, at the limitation conveyed in
the _nach_ of _nachclassischen_.—Trench says that some of Plutarch’s
arguments “would have gone far to satisfy St. Augustine, and to meet the
demands of his theology.”
[204] The Epicurean author of the _De Placitis_, still inveighing against
“that tall talker, Plato,” is bitterly emphatic on this point.—“_If there
is a God, and human affairs are administered by His Providence, how
comes it that bareness prospers, while the refined and good fall into
adversity?_” And he instances the murder of Agamemnon “_at the hands
of an adulterer and an adultress_,” and the death of Hercules, that
benefactor of humanity, “_done to death by Dejaniras drugs_.” (881 D.)
[205] _Symposiacs_, 642 C, 700 E.
[206] _Symposiacs_, 654 C.
[207] THUCYD., iii. 38. Cleon’s famous speech on the Mytilenean question.
[208] “Hujus rei aut omnino Lycisci ne vestigium quidem uspiam
reperi.”—WYTTENBACH.
[209] In allusion, of course, to the famous verse of an unknown poet:—
Ὀψὲ θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτὰ.
[210] 540 E.
[211] Deleting ἢ after ῥάδιον with BERNARDAKIS. 549 F.
[212] Note the change of number: θεῶν—εἰδὼς.
[213] Cf. the well-known passage in the _Timæus_ (_Timæus_, 29 C, D).
[214] 550 D. “Etsi hæc sententia disertis verbis in Platone, quod sciam,
non exstet, ejus tamen ubique sparsa sunt vestigia.” WYTTENBACH adds:
“Summam autem hominum virtutem et beatitudinem in eo consistere, ut
imitatione Deorum eis similes evadant, communis fere omnium Philosophorum
fuit sententia.”
[215] Plutarch has another well-known passage of the _Timæus_ in his
memory here.—_Timæus_, 29 D.
[216] “Neque hoc disertis verbis in Platone legere me memini; sed cum
variis locis ... confer.”—WYTT.
[217] 551 D.
[218] 553 A, 553 F.
[219] _Laws_, 728 C. The reference is to HESIOD: _Works and Days_, 265,
266, though Plutarch quotes verse 265 in a form different from the
vulgate. GOETTLING (_Ap._ Paley) thinks Plutarch’s version “savours more
of antiquity.” ARISTOTLE: _Rhetoric_, iii. 9, quotes the vulgate.
[220] 554 D. Literally, “_they were not punished when they grew old, but
grew old in punishment_.”
[221] 555 E, F.
[222] STOBÆUS: _Anthologion_, Tit. 79, 15.
[223] 557 D. Cf. the sarcasm of the Academic COTTA in the _De Natura
Deorum_, iii. 38: “Dicitis eam vim Deorum esse ut, etiam si quis morte
pœnas sceleris effugerit, expetantur eæ pœnæ a liberis, a nepotibus, a
posteris. O miram æquitatem Deorum!”
[224] 558 F.
[225] 559 E.
[226] 560 C. WYTTENBACH quotes LUCRETIUS, iii. 437 and 456: “Ergo
dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animai Naturam ceu fumus in altas aeris
auras.” He might have added, iii. 579, sqq.: “Denique, cum corpus nequeat
perferre animai Discidium, quin id tetro tabescat odore, Quid dubitas
quin ex imo penitusque coörta, Emanarit uti fumus diffusa animæ vis?”
Plutarch is probably thinking of Plato’s “intelligent gardener” (PHÆDRUS,
276 B), although, as Wyttenbach says, “_Horti Adonidis proverbii vim
habent._” The English reader will think of Shakespeare’s beautiful lines—
“_Thy promises are like Adonis’ gardens,_
_That one day bloom’d, and fruitful were the next._”
_Henry VI._, Pt. 1, act i. sc. 6.
[227] 560 F.
[228] 561 A.
[229] 564 C.
[230] Cf. _Timon of Athens_, act iii. sc. 1: “_Let molten coin be thy
damnation._”
[231] 561 A.—In the long extract, preserved by Stobæus, from Plutarch’s
_De Anima_ (_Anthologion: Tit. 120, 28._—The _Tauchnitz_ edition of 1838,
however, ascribes this passage to Themistius, perhaps by confusion with
extract No. 25), Plutarch allows his imagination to play freely with the
fortunes of the soul in the afterworld. In a beautiful passage, Timon
compares death to initiation into the Great Mysteries—an initiation in
which gloom and weariness and perplexity and terror are followed by
the shining of a wondrous light, which beams on lovely meadows, whose
atmosphere resounds with sacred voices that tell us all the secret of the
mystery, and whose paths are trod by pure and holy men. Timon concludes
with Heraclitus that, if the soul became assuredly convinced of the fate
awaiting it hereafter, no power would be able to retain it on earth. But
Plutarch himself is not convinced: he is charmed and seduced, but Reason
holds him back from accepting as certainties the “airy subtleties and
wingy mysteries” of Imagination. Under the stress of a desire to console
his wife for the loss of her little daughter, he reminds her that the
“hereditary account” and the Mysteries of Dionysus—in which, he says,
both of them were initiated—equally repudiate the notion that the soul
is without sensation after death (_Consolatio ad Uxorem_, 611 D). In
his polemic against the Epicureans he chiefly emphasizes the emotional
aspect of the desire for immortality;—the Epicurean denial of immortality
destroys “the sweetest and greatest hopes of the majority of mankind”—one
of these “sweetest and greatest hopes” being that of seeing retribution
meted out to those whose wealth and power have enabled them to flout
and insult better men than themselves; it robs of its satisfaction that
yearning of the thoughtful mind for unstinted communion with the great
masters of contemplation; and deprives the bereaved heart of the pleasant
dream of meeting its loved and lost ones in another world (_Non posse
suav._, 1105 E). There is no doubt that Plutarch wished to believe in the
immortality of the soul, but the evidence is not conclusive that he did;
at the most it is with him a “counsel of perfection,” not an “article of
faith.”
[232] “_It it not clear from the writings of Plutarch to what extent
he was a monotheist._” This is the opinion of Charles W. Super, Ph.D.,
LL.D., and it is supported by the irrefragable proof that Plutarch
“_uses θεὸς both with and without the article_.” This judgment is
given, of all places in the world, at the conclusion of a translation
(a very indifferent one, by the way) of the _De Sera Numinis Vindicta_.
(“Between Heathenism and Christianity:—Being a Translation of Seneca’s
_De Providentia_ and Plutarch’s _De Sera Numinis Vindicta_.” by Charles
W. Super, Ph.D., LL.D., Chicago, 1899.)
[233] Plutarch himself is ignorant of its origin, and does not know
whether it was Magian, Orphic, Egyptian, or Phrygian. (_De Defectu
Orac._, 415 A. Cf. _Isis and Osiris_, 360 E, “following the Theologians
of old.”) Those who believed, like Rualdus, that Plato had read the
Old Testament (see note, page 45), had no difficulty in assigning the
doctrine of Dæmons to a Jewish source. Wolff, speaking of the systematic
dæmonology constructed by the neo-Platonists, alludes to this passage in
Plutarch, and says:—“Hæc omnia artificiosa interpretatione ex Platonis
fluxerunt fabulis; ex oriente fere nihil assumebatur. Namque Judæi aliis
principiis, ac reliqui, profecti decem dæmonum genera constituerant;
Chaldæi vetustiores non dæmonum genera, sed septem archangelos planetis
præfectos colebant; nec credendum Plut., _De Defectu Orac._, 415 A.
Studebat enim Plutarchus, _præsertim in Comm: de Iside et de Socratis
dæmonio, Græcorum placita ad Ægypti Asiæque revocare sapientiam_, et
quum ab Orpheo et Atti sancta quædam mysteria dicerentur profecta esse,
arcanis his ritibus summam de diis doctrinam significari suspicabatur”
(Wolff, _op. cit._).—Volkmann, who had carefully studied Plutarch’s
relationship both to his philosophical predecessors and to foreign forms
of religious faith, had previously arrived at a different conclusion
from that embodied in the words italicized above.—“Er war darum kein
Eklektiker oder Synkretist, und was man nun gar von seiner Vorliebe für
Orientalische Philosophie und Theologie gesagt hat gehört ledeglich in
das Gebiet der Fabel. Plutarchs philosophisch-allegorische Auslegung aber
der Ægyptischen Mythen von Isis und Osiris geht von der ausdrücklichen
Voraussetzung aus _dass diese Gottheiten wesentlich Hellenische sind_”
(Volkmann, vol. ii. p. 23). But these varying views are simply two
different ways of regarding the real fact, which is that Plutarch regards
foreign myths and Greek alike as different expressions of the conception
of Divine Unity—such Unity not being either Hellenic or Egyptian, but
simply absolute (see subsequent analysis of the _De Iside et Osiride_).
[234] DIOGENES LAERTIUS, viii. 32. RITTER and PRELLER also refer to
APULEIUS’ _De Deo Socratis_: “Atenim Pythagoricos mirari oppido solitos,
si quis se negaret unquam vidisse Dæmonem, satis, ut reor, idoneus auctor
est Aristoteles.” (Below this passage in my edition of Apuleius (the
_Delphin_, of 1688) appears the note “Idem scribit Plutarch, in libello
περὶ θαυμασίων ἀκουσμάτων.” This _libellus_ I cannot identify with any
enumerated in the catalogue of Lamprias.)
[235] “Plato, ne Anaxagoræ aut Socratis modo impietatis reus succumberet,
præterea ne sanctam animis hebetioribus religionem turbaret, intactos
reliquit ritus publicos et communem de diis dæmonibusque opinionem;
quæ ipse sentiat, significat quidem, sed, ut solet in rebus minus
certis _et a mera dialectica alienis_, obvoluta fabulis” (WOLFF, _De
Dæmonibus_, _loc. cit._). Is it permissible to suppose that the third
consideration—that expressed in the italicized words—operated more
strongly on Plato than either or both of the first two? Aristotle,
at any rate, takes up a much firmer attitude in face of the popular
mythology, which he regards as _fabulously introduced for the purpose
of persuading the multitude, enforcing the laws, and benefiting human
life_ (_Metaphysics_, xi. (xii.) 8, T. Taylor’s translation). This famous
passage is as outspoken as Epicureanism.
[236] PLATO: _Politicus_, 271 D. A similar “dispensation” is provided in
the _Laws_, 717 A.
[237] PLATO: _Symposium_, 202 E.
[238] HERODOTUS: ii. 53.
[239] _De Defectu Orac._, 415 B.
[240] HESIOD: _Works and Days_, 122-125 (Elton’s translation).
[241] _Works and Days_, 253. Cf. the beautiful fragment from Menander
preserved by Plutarch, _De Tranquillitate Animi_, 474 B:—
“By every man, the moment he is born,
There stands a guardian Dæmon, who shall be
His _mystagogue_ through life.”
[242] _Works and Days_, 141-2.
[243] _De Defectu Oraculorum_, 445 B.—Pluto, too, though perhaps
not quite with the innocent purpose of Homer, gives “dæmons” as an
alternative to “gods”—_Timæus_, Sec. 16. (A passage charged with the most
mordant irony against the national religious tradition.)
[244] _De Defectu Orac._, 416 C.
[245] Cf. WOLFF: “Neque discrepat hac in re communis religio: multi enim
dæmones mali Græcorum animos terrebant, velut Acco, Alphito, Empusa,
Lamia, Mormo, sive Mormolyce,” &c.—Considering the numerous references
made to the subject of Dæmonology by Greek poets and philosophers from
Hesiod and Empedocles downwards, with all of which, as is clear from
the citations made in our text, Plutarch is perfectly familiar, Prof.
Mahaffy’s note on this point is a little mysterious.—“Mr. Purser points
out to me that Plutarch rather popularized than originated this doctrine,
and himself refers it to various older philosophers.” (Mahaffy, p.
313.)—It needs no very close study of Plutarch to see for one’s self that
he does not claim to have originated the doctrine, and that he knows
himself to be dealing with a long-standing and widespread tradition.
[246] For a similar process, cf. the quotation from Dr. JACKSON’s
_Treatise on Unbelief_, given by Sir WALTER SCOTT in _Demonology and
Witchcraft_, p. 175, _note_: “Thus are the Fayries, from difference of
events ascribed to them, divided into good and bad, when it is but one
and the same malignant fiend that meddles in both.”
[247] Cf. GÖTTE: _Das Delphische Orakel: “In Zeiten, wo dasselbe keine
Bedeutung mehr hatte, wo es nur dazu dienen konnte, den finstersten
Aberglauben fortzupflanzen und zu erhalten, und die Menschen über die
wahre Leitung der Dinge in der Welt, über die wahren Mittel, durch welche
sich Jeder sein Glück bereitet, zu täuschen, wurde das Orakelwesen
von den frommen Vätern unserer Kirche für die Ausgeburt des Teufels
angesehen,” &c._—Cf. also, 1 Corinthians x. 20-22.
[248] See, for these illustrations, SCOTT’s _Demonology and Witchcraft_,
PATER’s _Apollo in Picardy_, and HEINE’s _Gods in Exile_. (“_Unter
solchen Umständen musste Mancher, dessen heilige Haine konfisciert waren,
bei uns in Deutschland als Holzhäcker taglöhnern und Bier trinken statt
Nektar._”)
[249] 361 A. sqq.
[250] The author of the _De Placitis_ (882 B.) gives a very vague and
slight account of the history of Dæmonology, probably from motives
of Epicurean contempt, if one may judge from the curt sentence which
concludes his brief note:—“Epicurus admits none of these things.”—He
merely says that Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics asserted
the existence of spirits called “Dæmons,” and adds that the same
philosophers also maintained the existence of Heroes some good, some
bad. The distinction between good and bad does not apply to the Dæmons.
The identical words of this passage in the _De Placitis_ are used by
Athenagoras (_Legat: pro Christ._, cap. 21) to express a definite
statement about Thales, who is asserted to have been the first who made
the division into God, dæmons, heroes.
[251] Plutarch has here preserved some very beautiful verses of
Empedocles, in which this punishment is described. Another fragment of
verse from Empedocles (_De Exilio_, 607 C) depicts with equal force and
beauty the punishment by the Dæmons of one who has been handed over to
them to atone for his crimes.
[252] Here should be noted the tendency to assimilate the good Dæmons to
the gods—a tendency to which reference has already been made.
[253] _De Defectu Orac._, 419 A.
[254] _De Defectu Orac._, 419 A.
[255] 419.—Mrs. Browning could hardly have read the _De Defectu_ when
she stated that her fine poem “The Dead Pan” was “partly founded on a
well-known tradition mentioned in a treatise of Plutarch (‘_De Oraculorum
Defectu_’), _according to which, at the hour of the Saviour’s agony, a
cry of ‘Great Pan is dead!’ swept across the waves in the hearing of
certain mariners,—and the oracles ceased_.” (It was one of the mariners
who uttered the cry, “The great Pan is dead!” having been thrice
requested by a supernatural voice to do so. But such errors of detail are
unimportant in view of the fact that the whole spirit of the story is
misunderstood by the poetess.)
[256] So one may conjecture from the description given by Demetrius,
who “sailed to the least distant of these lonely islands, which had few
inhabitants, and these all held sacred and inviolable by the Britons.”
Plutarch’s Demetrius has been identified with “Demetrius the Clerk” who
dedicated, “to the gods of the imperial Palace,” a bronze tablet now in
the Museum at York.—See King’s translation of the _Theosophical Essays_
in the “Bohn” series, p. 22.
[257] 420 B.
[258] 360 D.
[259] 361 E. We shall see elsewhere that, just as a good Dæmon may
be promoted to the rank of a god, so a good man may be lifted to the
status of a Dæmon, like Hesiod’s people of the Golden Age. (_De Dæmonio
Socratis_, 593 D. Cf. _De Defectu Orac._, 415 B.)
[260] 361 F. 364 E.
[261] Cf. APULEIUS, _De Deo Socratis_.—“Neque enim pro majestate Deûm
cælestium fuerit, ut eorum quisquam vel Annibali somnium pingat,
vel Flaminio hostiam conroget, vel Accio Nævio avem velificet, vel
sibyllæ fatiloquia versificet, etc. Non est operæ Diis superis ad hæc
descendere. Quad cuncta” (he says elsewhere) “cælestium voluntate et
numine et auctoritate, sed Dæmonum obsequio et opera et ministerio fieri
arbitrandum est.”
[262] _De Ε apud Delphos_, 394 A.
[263] _De Fato_, 572 F, sqq.—Bernardakis “stars” this tract as doubtfully
Plutarch’s. But the passage quoted, at any rate, is not discrepant from
Plutarch’s views elsewhere, though expressing them more concisely, and
with more appearance of system than usual with him. The similarity to
Plato’s tripartite division of the heavenly powers in the _Timæus_ is, of
course, evident, but the text has a note of sincerity which is lacking in
the Platonic passage.
[264] _De Defectu_, 417 C. (For the verse quoted in the original, cf. W.
CHRIST’s _Pindar_, p. 232.)
[265] 417 D.
[266] The nearest approach to this identification is made by the
mysterious stranger whom Cleombrotus finds near the Red Sea, who appeared
once every year among the people living in that neighbourhood, and who
gave the pious traveller much information concerning Dæmons and their
ways; which he was well fitted to do, as he spent most of his time in
their company and that of the pastoral nymphs. He said that Python (whom
Apollo slew) was a dæmon; that the Titans were dæmons; that Saturn may
have been a dæmon. He then adds the significant words, “There is nothing
to wonder at if we apply to certain Dæmons the traditional titles of the
gods, since a Dæmon who is assigned to a particular god, deriving from
him his authority and prerogatives, is usually called by the name of that
same god” (421 E). But this somewhat daring testimony is, we are not
surprised to find, preceded by a hint that in these matters we are to
drink from a goblet of mingled fact and fancy.—(421 A.)
[267] _De Defectu Orac._, 426 D.
[268] _Isis and Osiris_, 360 E.
[269] _Isis and Osiris_, 360 F.
[270] _Isis and Osiris_, 361 C. The passage in the “Banquet” referred to
has been already quoted (see p. 123).
[271] It would be otiose to illustrate by examples the universal and
splendid fame of the Delphic oracle. One may perhaps be given which is
not commonly quoted. Pliny the elder, who in one passage sneeringly
includes the _oraculorum præscita_ among the _fulgurum monitus,
auruspicum prædicta, atque etiam parva dictu, in auguriis sternutamenta
et offensiones pedum_, by means of which men have endeavoured to discover
hints of divine guidance, nevertheless, in another passage, quotes two
wise oracles as having been “velut ad castigandam hominum vanitatem a Deo
emissa.” (Lib. ii. cap. 5, and vii. cap. 47.)—The political, religious,
and moral influence of the Delphic oracle has been exhaustively dealt
with by Wilhelm Götte in the work already cited (see p. 127, _note_), and
by Bouché-Leclerq in the third volume of his “_Histoire de la Divination
dans l’Antiquité_.” On the general question of divination it would,
perhaps, be superfluous to consult anything beyond this monumental work,
with its exhaustive references and its philosophic style of criticism.
[272] JUVENAL: _Sat._ vi. 555.
[273] LUCAN, v. 111, sq.
[274]
—“Muto Parnassus hiatu
Conticuit, pressitque Deum: seu spiritus istas
Destituit fauces, mundique in devia versum
Duxit iter: seu barbarica cum lampade Pytho
Arsit, in immensas cineres abiere cavernas,
Et Phœbi tenuere viam: seu sponte Deorum
Cirrha silet fatique sat est arcana futuri
Carmine longævæ vobis commissa Sibyllæ:
Seu Pæan solitus templis arcere nocentes,
Ora quibus solvat nostro non invenit ævo.”
[275] The main argument of the third and shortest of the Delphic tracts
has been already given. A brief description of its contents is added by
way of note, to show its connexion with the two larger tracts. The tract
takes the form of a letter from Plutarch to Serapion, who acts as a means
of communication between Plutarch and other common friends. Its object is
to ascertain why the letter Ε was held in such reverence at the Delphic
shrine. A series of explanations is propounded, probably representing
views current on the subject, varying, as they do, from those proper
to the common people to those which could only have been the views
of logicians or mathematicians. Theon, a close friend of Plutarch’s,
maintains that the syllable is the symbol of the logical attributes of
the God, Logic, whose basis is Ει (“if”), being the process by which
philosophical truth is arrived at. “If, then, Philosophy is concerned
with Truth, and the light of Truth is Demonstration, and the principle
of Demonstration is Connexion, it is with good reason that the faculty
which includes and gives effect to this process has been consecrated
by philosophers to the god whose special charge is Truth.”... “Whence,
I will not be dissuaded from the assertion that this is the _Tripod of
Truth_, namely, Reason, which recognizing that the consequent follows
from the antecedent, and then taking into consideration the original
basis of fact, thus arrives at the conclusion of the demonstration.
How can we be surprised if the Pythian God, in his predilection for
Logic, is specially attentive to this aspect of Reason, to which he sees
philosophers are devoted in the highest degree?” This connexion of Reason
with Religion, a familiar process in Plutarch, is followed by a “list
of the arithmetical and mathematical praises of the letter Ε” involving
Pythagorean speculations, and the culmination of the whole piece lies
in the splendid vindication by Ammonius of the Unity and Self-Existence
and Eternity of the Deity. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of his
argument is the assignation to Apollo of the functions of the Supreme
Deity: an easy method of bringing Philosophy and Mythology to terms; a
mode of operation perhaps not unaffected by that Mithraic worship which,
on its classical side, was to culminate in Julian’s famous prayer to
Helios. The tract also furnishes, as already stated, a clear example of
the method by which the literal terms known in the worship of Dionysus
and Apollo are refined from their grosser elements and idealized by
the subtleties of the philosophic intellect, which then accepts them
as appropriate designations for the various functions of the God. The
pleasant seriousness, too, of all the interlocutors is worthy of note, as
presenting a type of religious discussion of whose calmness and dignity
the modern world knows little. It would be interesting, for example, to
hear a group of classical philosophers discuss the excommunication of
Professor Mivart by Cardinal Vaughan, or of Tolstoi by Pobedonostzeff.
[276] This Diogenianus does not appear to be identical with the
Diogenianus of Pergamos, twice mentioned in the _Symposiacs_, although
Bernardakis does not distinguish them in his Index.
[277] Philinus was an intimate friend of Plutarch’s (_Symposiacs_, 727
B; _De Sollertia Animalium_, 976 B); and, except in this Dialogue and
in the _De Soll. Anim._, appears only as taking his part in the social
intercourse of the _Symposiacs_, and as contributing his share to the
discussion of the various quaint and curious problems forming so large
a portion of the “Table Talk” of Plutarch and his friends. He has
Pythagorean tendencies; eats no flesh (727 B); objects to a rich and
varied diet, being of opinion that simple food is more easily digestible
(660 F); explains somewhat crudely why Homer calls salt θεῖος (685 D);
proves that Alexander the Great was a hard drinker (623 E); explains
why Pythagoras advised his followers to throw their bedclothes into
confusion on getting up (728 B, C); and tells a story of a wonderful tame
crocodile which lay in bed like a human being (_De Soll. Anim._, 976 B).
A very charming account of Plutarch’s friends has been given by M. A.
Chenevière, in his “_De Plutarchi familiaribus_,” written as a Litt.D.
thesis for a French University in 1886.
[278] 395 A.
[279] 396 D. Cf. _Symposiacs_, 628 A.
[280] 396 E. Boethus, a genial and witty man, with whom, notwithstanding
his Epicureanism, Plutarch lives on terms of intimate social intercourse.
In _Symposiacs_, 673 C, Boethus, now described as an Epicurean _sans
phrase_, entertains, in Athens, Plutarch, Sossius Senecio, and a number
of men of his own sect. After dinner the company discuss the interesting
question why we take pleasure in a dramatic representation of passions
whose exhibition in real life would shock and distress us. At another
time he appears, together with Plutarch and a few other friends, at a
dinner given by Ammonius, then _Strategos_ at Athens for the third time,
and explains, upon principles of Epicurean Science (_Symposiacs_, 720 F),
why sounds are more audible at night than by day.
[281] 396 F.
[282] See note, p. 149.
[283] Cf. CICERO: _De Divinatione_, ii. 50.—“_Quis est enim, qui totum
diem jaculans, non aliquando collineet? Totas noctes dormimus; neque ulla
fere est, qua non somniemus: et miramur, aliquando id, quod somniarimus,
evadere? Quid est tam incertum quam talorum jactus? tamen nemo est quin,
sæpe jactans, venereum jaciat aliquando, nonnumquam etiam iterum, ac
tertium_,” _&c._ Also ii. 971.—“_Casus autem innumerabilibus pæne seculis
in omnibus plura mirabilia quam in somniorum visis effecerit._”
[284] 399.
[285] Cf. HERODOTUS: ii. 135.
[286] 401 E.
[287] “Pyrrhi temporibus iam Apollo versus facere desierat.”—CICERO: _De
Div._, ii. 56. Plutarch, however, is able to say, “Even nowadays some
oracles are published in verse,” and to cite a very interesting instance
(_De Pyth. Orac._, 404 A).
[288] 408 C, D.
[289] 409 D.
[290] 404 C.
[291] _Lamprias._ The writer of this letter to “Terentius Priscus” is
addressed by the name of “Lamprias” in the course of the dialogue (413
E). This Terentius is not mentioned elsewhere by Plutarch, but one may
venture the guess that he was one of the friends whom, as in the case
of Lucius the Etrurian, and Sylla the Carthaginian, Plutarch had met at
Rome (_Symposiacs_, 727 B). Sylla and Lucius, whom we know to have been
on intimate terms with Plutarch, are interlocutors in the dialogue _De
Facie in Orbe Lunæ_, and one of them uses the same form of address to
the writer of that dialogue as is employed by Ammonius in this passage
(940 F). There is not the faintest doubt as to the genuineness of either
of these two dialogues, and it is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that
Plutarch, desiring perhaps to pay a compliment to a relative, veils his
own personality in this way: “Omnium familiarium et propinquorum ante
ceteros omnes Lampriam fratrem, et ejusdem nominis avum Lampriam, eos
imprimis fuisse qui Plutarchi amicitiam memoriamque obtinuerint, nobis
apparet” (_De Plutarchi Familiaribus_—CHENEVIÈRE). He pays a similar
compliment to his friend Theon, who sums up and concludes the argument
of the _De Pythiæ Oraculis_. (For the closeness of Theon’s intimacy with
Plutarch, see especially _Consolatio ad Uxorem_, 610 B, and _Symposiacs_,
725 F.) Cf. GRÉARD’S _La Morale de Plutarque_, p. 303: “Plutarque a
ses procédés, qu’on arrive à connaître. D’ordinaire ils consistent à
accorder successivement la parole aux défenseurs des systèmes extrèmes
et à réserver la conclusion au principal personnage du dialogue. Or
ce personnage est presque toujours celui qui a posé la thèse; et le
plus souvent il se trouve avoir avec Plutarque lui-même un lien de
parenté.”—Plutarch delights to such an extent to bring his friends into
his works, that it has even been suggested that no work is authentic
without this distinguishing mark. Readers of Plutarch know that one
characteristic of his style is the avoidance of hiatus, and that he puts
himself to all kinds of trouble to secure this object. In this connexion,
Chenevière remarks: “Mirum nobis visum est quod, ne in uno quidem
librorum quos hiatus causa G. Benseler Plutarcho abjudicavit, nullius
amici nomen offenditur. Scripta autem quæ nullo hiatu fœdata demonstrat,
vel amico cuidam dicata, vel nominibus amicorum sunt distincta.” (The
work by Benseler referred to is, of course, his _De Hiatu in Oratoribus
Atticis et Historicis Græcis_.)
[292] Plutarch does not, of course, wish to convey the suggestion that
Apollo’s shrine is still the centre of the earth, and that Britain is
as far away in one direction as the Red Sea is in another. The oracle’s
repulse of Epimenides, who wished to be certain on the point, indicates
that the question is one surrounded with difficulty, and that the wise
man will do best to leave it alone. Bouché-Leclerq has a startling
comment: “_Plutarque ajoute que, de son temps, la mesure avait été
verifiée par deux voyageurs partis l’un de la Grande Bretagne et l’autre
du fond de la mer Rouge_” (_La Divination_, iii. p. 80).
[293] 410 A, B. Cf. note, p. 90.
[294] 411 E.
[295] The cessation of the oracles was only comparative. WOLFF, in his
_De Novissima Oraculorum Ætate_, examines the history of each oracle
separately, and comes to a conclusion that the oracles were not silent
even in the age of Porphyry (born A.D. 232): “_Nondum obmutuisse numina
fatidica Porphyrii tempore. Vera enim ille deorum responsa censuit; quæ
Christianis opposuit, ne soli doctrinam divinitus accepisse viderentur._”
Strabo alludes to the failure of the oracle at Dodona, and adds that
the rest were silent too (STRABO: vii. 6, 9). Cicero alludes with great
contempt to the silence of the Delphic oracles in his own times: “_Sed,
quod caput est, cur isto modo jam oracula Delphis non eduntur, non modo
nostrâ ætate, sed jamdiu; ut modo nihil possit esse contemtius? Hoc loco
quum urgentur evanuisse aiunt vetustate vim loci ejus, unde anhelitus
ille terræ fieret, quo Pythia, mente incitata, oracula ederet.... Quando
autem ista vis evanuit? An postquam homines minus creduli esse cœperunt_”
(_De Div._, ii. 57). When Cicero wrote this passage he had probably
forgotten the excellent advice which the oracle had once given him when
he went to Delphi to consult it (PLUT.: _Cicero_, cap. 5).
[296] 412 D.
[297] Some of these points of grammar which attracted the scorn of
Heracleon were whether βάλλω loses a λ in the future; and what were
the positives from which the comparatives χεῖρον and βέλτιον, and the
superlatives χεῖριστον and βέλτιστον were formed (412 E).—“_Quelques
années après les guerres médiques, le pinceau de Polygnote couvrit la
Lesché des Cnidiens à Delphes de scènes empruntées au monde infernal._”
(Bouché-Leclerq: iii. 153.)—It would have been more interesting to a
modern student if Heracleon had replied that the pictures of Polygnotus
were quite sufficient to keep one mentally alert, and had seized the
opportunity to give us an exact description of the scenes depicted
and the meaning they conveyed to the men of his time. “‘Not all the
treasures,’ as Homer has it, ‘which the stone threshold of the Far-darter
holds safe within, would now,’ as Mr. Myers says, ‘be so precious to us
as the power of looking for one hour on the greatest work by the greatest
painter of antiquity, the picture by Polygnotus in the Hall of the
Cnidians at Delphi, of the descent of Odysseus among the dead.’”
[298] Didymus, “surnamed Planetiades,” is a picturesque figure, evidently
drawn from life. It is interesting to compare his attitude with that
imposed upon the ideal cynic of Epictetus: “It is his duty then to be
able with a loud voice, if the occasion should arise, and appearing on
the tragic stage to say, like Socrates, ‘Men, whither are you hurrying?
what are you doing, wretches? Like blind people you are wandering up and
down: you are going by another road, and have left the true road: you
seek for prosperity and happiness where they are not, and if another
shows you where they are you do not believe him’” (LONG’s _Epictetus_,
p. 251). Planetiades certainly endeavours to play this _rôle_ on the
occasion in question, though he is doubtless as far below the stoic ideal
as he is above the _soi-disant_ cynics whom Dion met at ALEXANDRIA.
[299] Cf. BLOUNT: _Apollonius of Tyana_, p. 37. Blount collects a number
of ancient and modern parallels to the thought of Plutarch here. HORACE,
_Epist._ i. 16. 59, readily occurs to the memory. (For the Pindaric
fragment, see W. Christ, p. 225.)
[300] 413 D.
[301] “Plutarch does not mean to say that Greece was not able at all to
furnish 3000 men capable of arms, but that if burgess armies of the old
sort were to be formed they would not be in a position to set on foot
3000 ‘hoplites.’”—MOMMSEN.
[302] 414 C.
[303] 417 A, B. Cf. _De Facie in Orbe Lunæ_, 944 C, D.
[304] 431 B.
[305] 436 F.
[306] 437 F.
[307] _De Pythiæ Orac._, 398 B.
[308] _De Defectu Orac._, 418 E.
[309] _De Defectu Orac._, 438 D.
[310] Plutarch, in reply to Boethus the Epicurean, uses an interesting
example to illustrate the two opposite views maintained on this point.
“Even you yourself here are beneficially influenced, it would seem, by
what Epicurus wrote and spoke three centuries ago; and yet you are of
opinion that God could not supply a Principle of Motion or a Cause of
Feeling, unless He took and shut Himself up in each individual thing and
became an intermingled portion of its essence” (398 B, C).
[311] “As to Plutarch’s theology, he was certainly a monotheist. He
probably had some vague belief in inferior deities (demons he would have
called them) as holding a place like that filled by angels and evil
spirits in the creed of most Christians; _yet it is entirely conceivable
that his occasional references to these deities are due merely to the
conventional rhetoric of his age_” (ANDREW P. PEABODY: Introduction to
a translation—already referred to—of the _De Sera Numinis Vindicta_).
It is a little difficult to be patient with the ignorance displayed in
the italicized part of this citation. That Plutarch’s “references to
these deities” are not “occasional” is a matter of fact; that they are
not “due merely to conventional rhetoric” it is hoped that the analysis
in the text—incomplete as it may be in other respects—has at least made
sufficiently clear. It is, however, gratifying to find that this American
translator, unlike Dr. Super, of Chicago, recognizes that Plutarch “was
certainly a monotheist.”
[312] Plutarch found the existence of the Dæmons recognized in each
of the three spheres which contributed to the formation of religious
beliefs—in philosophy, in popular tradition, and in law. STOBÆUS: _Tit._
44, 20 (“_On Laws and Customs_”—_Tauchnitz_ edition of 1838, vol. ii.
p. 164) has an interesting quotation, headed “_Preamble of the Laws of
Zaleucus_,” in which the following passage occurs:—“If an Evil Dæmon
come to any man, tempting him to Vice, let him spend his time near
temples, and altars, and sacred shrines, fleeing from Vice as from
an impious and cruel mistress, and let him pray the gods to deliver
him from her power.” Zaleucus may, of course, have been embodying the
teaching of his Pythagorean colleagues, but the fact remains that the
belief in the influence of Dæmons on human life received the authority
of a celebrated system of law, unless we are to be more incredulous than
Cicero himself—_Quis Zaleucum leges scripsisse non dixit?_ (_Ad Atticum_,
vi. 1).—(“His code is stated to have been the first collection of written
laws that the Greeks possessed.”—_Smaller Classical Dictionary_, Smith
and Marindin, 1898.)
[313] _Adversus Coloten_, 1124 D. The religious value of the belief in
Dæmonology is indicated in an interesting passage in the “_De Iside et
Osiride_” in which Isis, by her sufferings, is described as “having given
a sacred lesson of consolation to men and women involved in similar
sorrows.” 361 E. (In the next sentence she and Osiris are raised from the
dæmonic rank to the divine.)
[314] Accepting Bernardakis’ first emendation—εἰς θεοὺς ἐπαναφέρει τὰς
τῶν πράξεων ἀρχὰς. 580 A.
[315] 581 F.—Phidolaus would not have been at home among Xenophon’s
troops (_Anabasis_, iii. 2, 9).
[316] 588 C, D.
[317] 588 E.
[318] 589 D.
[319] 586 A.
[320] 589 F.
[321] 591 A.
[322] 594.
[323] _De Defectu_, 415 B, C. In the _De Facie quæ apparet_ the connexion
between mankind and the dæmons in described in similar terms to those
employed in the _De Dæmonio Socratis_. The Dæmons do not spend all their
time on the moon; they take charge of oracles, assist at initiatory
rites, punish evildoers, help men in battle and at sea, and for any want
of fairness or competence in the discharge of these duties they are
punished by being driven again to earth to enter human bodies once more
(944 D; cf. 944 C).
[324] That this truth is one which appeals to the Imagination more
cogently than to the Reason, resembling in that respect the belief in the
soul’s immortality, is evident to Plutarch. It is on this account that he
illustrates it by Myth instead of arguing it by Reason, and takes every
precaution to prevent his readers from regarding it as a complete and
final presentation of a logically irrefutable belief.
[325] _Non posse suaviter_, &c., 1101 B, C.
[326] 1101 D.
[327] 1102 B.
[328] _De Audiendis Poetis_ 34 B.
[329] _Conjugalia Præcepta_, 140 D. Champagny sees a reference here to
Christianity. But why not also in PLATO’s _Laws_, 674 F, and 661 C?—It
is quite in harmony with Plutarch’s love of openness in Religion that to
the general reticence displayed by the Greeks on the subject of their
religious Mysteries, he seems to add a personal reticence peculiarly his
own. Considering how anxiously he hovers about the question of the soul’s
immortality (see above, p. 118, and cf. _Consolatio ad Apollonium_, 120
B, C: “_If, as is probable, there is any truth in the sayings of ancient
poets and philosophers ... then must you cherish fair hopes of your
dear departed son_”—a passage curiously similar in form and thought to
TACITUS, _Agric._ 46: “_Si quis piorum manibus locus, si, ut sapientibus
placet_,” _&c._), it is remarkable that only once—and then under the
stress of a bitter domestic bereavement—does he specifically quote the
Mysteries (those of Dionysus) as inculcating that doctrine (_Ad Uxorem_,
611 D). His adoption of an unknown writer’s beautiful comparison of Sleep
to the Lesser Mysteries of Death (_Consol. ad Apoll._, 107 E), and his
repetition of the same idea elsewhere (see above, p. 118), may also be
indications how naturally the teaching of the Mysteries suggested the
idea of immortality. But he most frequently alludes to the Mysteries
as secret sources of information for the identification of nominally
different deities (_De Iside et Osiride_, 364 E), or for the assignation
of their proper functions to the Dæmons (_De Defectu_, 417 C), who are
regarded as responsible for what Mr. Andrew Lang (“Myth, Ritual, and
Religion,” _passim_) calls “the barbaric and licentious part of the
performances” (_De Iside et Osiride_, 360 E, F). We should perhaps
conclude, from the few indications which Plutarch gives of his views on
this subject, that he regarded the Mysteries in a twofold light; they
were a source of religious instruction, or consolation, respecting the
future state of the soul, and they were also a means of explaining and
justifying the crude legends which so largely intermingled with the purer
elements of Greek religion. Though, as Plutarch hints, many of these
barbaric legends were not suited to discussion by the profane, yet the
mind, when purified by sacred rites, and educated to the apprehension of
sacred meanings, could grasp the high and pure significance of things
which were a stumbling-block to the uninitiated, and could make them an
aid to a loftier moral life.
[330] “_Das eigentlich einzige und tiefste Thema der Welt- und
Menschengeschichte, dem alle übrigen untergeordnet sind, bleibt der
Conflict des Unglaubens und des Aberglaubens._”—GOETHE, _Westöstlicher
Divan_ (quoted by THOLUCK).
[331] 165 C.
[332] 165 D.
[333] BERNARDAKIS adopts Bentley’s emendation βαπτισμούς, which _might_
be an allusion to Christianity, but would more probably refer to such
a process as that already described in the words βάπτισον σεαυτὸν εἰς
θάλασσαν. We have previously discussed the general question involved
(see p. 45), but may here add the opinion of so unprejudiced a Christian
writer as Archbishop Trench, “_strange to say. Christianity is to him
(Plutarch) utterly unknown._”—(See also note, p. 202).
[334] 166 B.
[335] 166 B.
[336] 168 F.
[337] Bello primo, Aristodemum Messeniorum regem per superstitionem
animum ac spes omnes despondisse, seque ipsum interfecisse, narrat etiam
Pausanias, iv. 3.—WYTTENBACH.
[338] 169 C. _Iliad_, vii. 193, 194.
[339] 170 A. Trench quotes Seneca _Epist._, 123—“Quid enim interest utrum
deos neges, an infames?”
[340] 170 F.
[341] To the numerous citations made by Gréard (p. 209), we may add an
expression of opinion by Dr. Tholuck, given with special reference to
Plutarch’s views on Superstition:—“Wir haben in Alterthum einen hohen
Geist, Plutarch, welcher dem, was das Alterthum Aberglaube nannte, viele
Betrachtungen gewidmet hat, dem Gegenstande zwar nicht auf den Grund
gekommen, _aber in der Betrachtuug desselben doch so tiefe religiöse
Wahrheiten ausgesprochen_, dass wir nicht umhin können, ihn hier
ausführlicher dem Leser vorzuführen” (_Ueber Aberglauben und Unglauben_).
[342] WYTTENBACH bases this possibility on the 150th entry in the
Lamprian catalogue, “_On Superstition, against Epicurus._” (Entry No. 155
in the catalogue as given in BERNARDAKIS, vol. vii. pp. 473-7.) But the
discussion on this point in the _Non posse suaviter_ forms so important a
part of that tract that the title “_On Superstition, against Epicurus_”
would be no inapt title for the whole treatise.
[343] The view taken in the text as to the character of this strenuous
and noble sermon on _Superstition_ is, of course, quite at variance with
the opinion of Prof. Mahaffy, who regards it as “one of those sophistical
exercises practised by every one in that age—I mean, the defence of a
paradox with subtlety and ingenuity, _taking little account of sober
truth in comparison with dialectical plausibility_.”—_Greeks under Roman
Sway_, p. 318.
[344] _Pharsalia_, viii. 831.
[345] APULEIUS, _Meta_: Lib. xi. Lucius (a descendant of Plutarch, by the
way), in his pious gratitude, enters the service of the goddess who had
_uncharmed_ him.—Rursus donique, quam raso capillo, _collegi vetustissimi
et sub illis Sullæ temporibus conditi_ munia, non obumbrato vel obtecto
calvitio, sed quoquoversus obvio, gaudens obibam.
[346] 364 E.
[347] 354 C.
[348] 355 B.
[349] Cf. _De Pyth. Orac._, 400 A.
[350] 355 D.
[351] 358 E. Mr. Andrew Lang justly remarks, “Why these myths should be
considered ‘more blasphemous’ than the rest does not appear” (_Myth,
Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. pp. 116, 117).
[352] 358 F. This is a difficult passage. It seems necessary to
read ἀνακλάσει for ἀναχωρήσει (cf. ἀνάκλασις δή που περὶ τὴν ἶριν,
_Amatorius_, 765 E), but even then the meaning is difficult to elicit,
and it is not confidently claimed that the rendering in the text has
elicited it. Three translations are appended: “_For as mathematicians
assure us that the rainbow is nothing else but a variegated image of
the sun, thrown upon the sight by the reflexion of his beams from the
clouds, so ought we to look upon the present story as the representation,
or reflexion rather, of something real as its true cause_” (Plutarchi
_De Iside et Osiride_ Liber: Græce et Anglice, by SAMUEL SQUIRE,
A.M., Cambridge, 1744).—“_Und so wie die Naturforscher den Regenbogen
für ein Gegenbild der Sonne erklären, das durch das Zurücktreten der
Erscheinung an die Wolke bunt wird, so ist hier die Sage das Gegenbild
einer Wahrheit, welche ihre Bedeutung auf etwas anderes hin abspiegelt_”
(Plutarch _über Isis und Osiris_ herausgegeben von G. PARTHEY, Berlin,
1850).—_Legendum ἀναχρώσει vel ἀνακλάσει, ut Reisk._ “_Et quemadmodum
mathematici arcum cælestem Solis tradunt esse imaginem variatam visus
ad nubem reflexu: Sic fabula hoc loco indicium est orationis alio
reflectentis intellectum._”—WYTTENBACH.
[353] _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p. 120.
[354] In our spelling of this name we use the freedom of choice so
graciously accorded by Xylander—_Si Euhemerus mavis, non repugno._
[355] _De Placitis Philosophorum_, 880 D. Cf. CICERO, _De Natura
Deorum_. i. 42. “Ab Euhemero autem et mortes et sepulturæ demonstrantur
deorum. Utrum igitur hic confirmasse videtur religionem, an penitus
totam sustulisse?” See MAYOR’s note on this passage. The references to
Lactantius and Eusebius and many others bearing on the question are
collected by Corsini in his first dissertation on the _De Placitis_.
Zimmerman is very indignant with Plutarch on account of the charge here
brought against Euhemerus and Diagoras, and has defended them against
our author with great energy and spirit. (_Epistola ad Nicolaum Nonnen
qua Euemerus Messenius et Diagoras Melius ab Atheismo contra Plutarchum
aliosque defenduntur._)
[356] 360 A.
[357] The language here seems curiously outspoken in view of the now
established apotheosis of the Emperors.
[358] 360 D.
[359] 356, 357. Cf. _De Dædalis Platæensibus_.
[360] 364 A.
[361] 366 C.
[362] 364 D.
[363] 367 D.
[364] 368 D.
[365] 369 C. It is clear from a careful examination of the text that
Plutarch gives only a critical examination of this theory: he does not
adopt it as his own, as has frequently been asserted.
[366] 369 D. “It is impossible,” argued these ancient thinkers, “that
moral life and death, that good and evil, can flow from a single source.
It is impossible that a Holy God can have been the author of evil. Evil,
then, must be referred to some other origin: it must have had an author
of its own.”—“_Some Elements of Religion_,” by Canon LIDDON (Lecture iv.
sect. i.).
[367] 370 E.
[368] 371 A.
[369] See especially the quotations from Plato in 370 F, and the
application of Platonic terms in the interpretation of the Isiac and
Osirian myth in 372 E, F, 373 and 374. Hesiod, too, is made to agree
with this Platonic explanation of the Egyptian legend (374 C), and the
Platonic notion of matter is strained to allow of its being identified
with Isis (372 E, 374 F). In 367 C, a parallelism is pointed out between
Stoic theology and an interpretation of the myth; and in 367 E the death
of Osiris on the 17th of the month is used to illustrate, if not to
explain, the Pythagorean ἀφοσίωσις of that number.
As regards the identification of particular deities in this tract,
reference may be made to 364 E, F and 365 A, B, where Dionysus is
identified with Osiris; and to 365 F, where Mnaseas of Patara is
mentioned with approval as associating with Epaphus, not only Dionysus,
but Serapis and Osiris also. Anticleides is also referred to as asserting
that Isis was the daughter of Prometheus and the wife of Dionysus. In 372
D, Osiris is identified with the Sun under the name of Sirius, and Isis
with the Moon, in 375, a fanciful philology is called in to aid a further
identification of Greek and Egyptian deities; but not much importance
is attached to similarities derived in this way. In the next sentence
Isis is stated to have been identified with Athene by the Egyptians; and
the general principle of identity is boldly stated in 377 C:—“_It is
quite legitimate to regard these gods as common possessions and not the
exclusive property of the Egyptians—Isis and the deities that go in her
train are universally known and worshipped. The names, indeed, of certain
of them have been borrowed from the Egyptians, not so long ago; but their
divinity has been known and recognized for ages._”
[370] 378 A.
[371] There is a strain of mysticism in the _De Osiride_ which is alien
from the cheerful common sense which usually marks Plutarch; a remark
which also applies to the _De Facie quæ apparet in Orbe Lunæ_. But the
same strain appears in others of his authentic tracts, though mostly
operating through the medium of Platonic dreams and myths, _e.g._ the
story of Thespesius in the _Sera Num. Vindic._, and that of Timarchus in
the _De Dæmonio Socratis_. Besides, one would not ceteris paribus deny
the authenticity of Browning’s “_Childe Roland_” because he had written
“_The Guardian Angel_,” or that of “_The Antiquary_” because Scott was
also the author of “_The Monastery_.” The tract was probably composed
after that return from Alexandria to which Plutarch so charmingly alludes
in _Sympos._, 678 C. Moreover, the very nature of the subject, and the
priestly character of the lady to whom it was addressed, as well as
the mysterious nature of the goddess whose ministrant she was, are all
parts of a natural inducement to mysticism. We must admit that Plutarch
here participates in that spirit of mysticism which, always inherent in
Platonism, was kept in check by his acutely practical bent, to be revived
and exaggerated to the destruction of practical ethics in the dreams and
abstractions of the Neo-Platonists.
[372] A very slight acquaintance with Plutarch’s writings will serve
to dispose of the charge of Atheism brought against him by Zimmerman,
the professor of Theology in the Gymnasium of Zurich:—Credo equidem
Plutarchum inter eos fuisse qui cum Cicerone crediderint eos qui dant
philosophiæ operam non arbitrari Deos esse.—It is true that Zimmerman
supports his case by quoting the pseudo-Plutarchean _De Placitis_ (Idem
de providentia non minus male loquitur quam ipsi Epicurei), and seems
himself afraid to accept the conclusion of his own demonstrations:—Atheum
eum fuisse non credo, sed quomodo asserere potuerit Superstitione
Atheismum tolerabiliorem esse, simul tamen eos, quos atheos fuisse minime
probare potuit, Superstitioni autem inimicissimos, omnem malorum mundum
intulisse, consociare nequeo.—But the learned author is too intent on
exculpating _Noster Euhemerus_ from Plutarch’s “injustice” to have
justice to spare for Plutarch himself.—(J. J. ZIMMERMAN, _Epistola ad
Nonnen_). Gréard quotes other authors of this charge against Plutarch (p.
269).—We cannot allow this opportunity to pass of protesting against the
attitude of those who assumed, even in the Nineteenth Century, that it
was a sign either of moral depravity, or mental incapacity, in Plutarch
not to have been a believer in the Christian faith. Even Archbishop
Trench, who admits, concerning such writers as our author, that “many
were by them enabled to live their lives after a far higher and nobler
fashion than else they would have attained” cannot rid himself of the
notion that had Plutarch actively opposed Christianity he would have
committed an offence which our generosity might have pardoned, though our
justice must recognize that it _needed_ pardon. “Plutarch himself may
be entirely acquitted of any _conscious_ attempt to fight against that
truth which was higher than any which he had” (p. 13).—“I have already
mentioned that, _through no fault of his own_, he stood removed from all
the immediate influences of the Christian Church” (p. 89). But suppose
the facts to have been just the opposite of those indicated in the words
we have italicized, it would involve the loss of all sense of historical
perspective to draw the conclusion which would clearly have been drawn by
Trench himself. The use of similar language by Prof. Mahaffy has already
been noted. (Pref. p. xii.) The position assumed by writers who maintain
this view, is one quite inappropriate for historical discussion, and its
natural expression, if it must be expressed at all, is through the medium
of such poetical aspirations as that breathed in the epigram of John, the
Metropolitan of Euchaita:—
“If any Pagans, Lord, Thy grace shall save
From wrath divine, this boon I humbly crave,
Plato and Plutarch save: Thine was the cause
Their speech supported: Thine, too, were the laws
Their hearts obeyed; and if their eyes were blind
To recognize Thee Lord of human kind,
Needs only that Thy gift of grace be shown
To bring them, and bring all men, to the Throne.”
[373] Dr. Martineau (_Types of Ethical Theory_, vol. i. p. 91) thinks
that “we must go a little further than Zeller, who decides that Plato
usually conceived of God as if personal, yet was restrained by a doctrine
inconsistent with such conception from approaching it closely or
setting it deliberately on any scientific ground,” and devotes several
closely-reasoned pages to show that, although there was no room for
a personal god in Plato’s philosophy, Plato himself was in distinct
opposition to his own views as systematically expounded in his writings.
“We may regard him as fully aware of the conditions of the problem,
and, though unable to solve it without lesion of his dialectic, yet
deliberately pronouncing judgment on the side of his religious feeling.”
But _pace tantorum virorum_ it will be admitted that the personality of
God is not very evident in Plato when those who understand him best can
only maintain that it is not essentially interwoven with his philosophy,
having only an indirect and accidental existence which is not possible
“without lesion of his dialectic.”
[374] “Abstractedly, the theology of the Stoics appears as a
materialistic pantheism; God is represented as a fire, and the world
as a mode of God.” (GRANT, _The Ethics of Aristotle_, vol. i. p. 265.)
In the famous “hymn of Cleanthes,” preserved, like so many other of
the great wonders of classical literature, by Stobæus, Grant sees an
emphatic recognition of the personality of God, but it is equally natural
to regard the hymn as a more detailed expression of that necessity of
submitting to Destiny—of living in accordance with nature—which Cleanthes
enounces in that other famous fragment which Epictetus would have us hold
ready to hand in all the circumstances of life:—
“Lead me, O Zeus, and thou O Destiny,
The way that I am bid by you to go:
To follow I am ready. If I choose not,
I make myself a wretch, and still must follow.”
—EPICTETUS, _Encheir._ lii. (Long’s translation.) Epictetus, indeed, and
Seneca, late comers in the history of Stoicism, have undoubtedly attained
to a clear recognition of the personality of God.
[375] See the “_De cohibenda ira_,” “_de cupiditate divitiarum_,” “_de
invidia et odio_,” “_de adulatore et amico_.”
[376] “_De garrulitate_,” “_de vitioso pudore_,” “_de vitando aere
alieno_,” “_de curiositate_.”
[377] “_De amicorum multitudine_,” and “_de adulatore et amico_”; “_de
fraterno amore_,” “_de amore prolis_”; “_conjugalia præcepta_,” “_de
exilio_,” “_consolatio ad uxorem_,” “_consolatio ad Apollonium_.” (“I
can easily believe,” says Emerson, “that an anxious soul may find in
Plutarch’s ‘Letter to his Wife Timoxena,’ a more sweet and reassuring
argument on the immortality than in the Phædo of Plato.”)
[378] Zeller says that “the most characteristic mark of the Plutarchian
Ethics is their connexion with religion.”—(_Greek Philosophy_, translated
by Alleyne and Abbott.)
[379] _De Virtute Morali_, 440 E.
[380] 444 C, D. (Cf. 451.)
[381] 444 D. Cf. _Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat_, 15 E.
[382] 445 C.
[383] “_An virtus doceri possit_,” “_de virtute et vitio_,” 101, C, D.
[384] Trench follows Zeller in regarding Plutarch as a forerunner of
the Neo-Platonists:—“Plutarch was a Platonist, with an oriental tinge,
and thus a forerunner of the new Platonists, who ever regarded him with
the highest honour. Their proper founder, indeed, he, more than any
other man, deserves to be called, though clear of many of the unhealthy
excesses into which, at a later date, many of them ran” (Trench, p. 90).
We hope our pages have done something towards putting Plutarch in a
different light from that which surrounds him here. As a matter of fact,
did the “new Platonists regard him ever with the highest honour?” The
testimony of Eunapius we have already quoted (p. 67, note). Himerius is
equally laudatory. “Plutarch, who is the source of all the instruction
you convey.”—_Eclogæ_, vii. 4. “I weep for one who, I fondly hoped,
would be gifted with speech excelling Minucianus in force, Nicagoras in
stateliness, Plutarch in sweetness” (_Orat._ xliii. 21—Monody on his
son’s death). But this is rather late in the history of Neo-Platonism.
What about Plotinus, and Porphyry, and Proclus? Trench gives no
references in proof of his statement, and we have been unable to find any.
[385] Theodoretus: _De Oraculis_, 951.—“_Plutarch of Chæronea, a man who
was not Hebrew, but Greek—Greek by birth and in language, and enslaved to
Greek ideas._” Cf. MOMMSEN: _The Provinces, from Cæsar to Diocletian_,
Lib. viii. cap. vii.—“In this Chæronean the contrast between the Hellenes
and the Hellenized found expression; such a type of Greek life was not
possible in Smyrna or in Antioch; it belonged to the soil like the honey
of Hymettus. There were men enough of more powerful talents and of deeper
natures, but hardly any second author has known how, in so happy a
measure, to reconcile himself serenely to necessity, and how to impress
upon his writings the stamp of his tranquillity of spirit, and of his
blessedness of life.”
[386] Dr. Bigg calls him a renegade, as the Church has called Julian
an apostate. A comment of M. Martha’s on this uncharitable practice is
worthy of frequent repetition:—“Ainsi donc, que l’on donne à Julien
tous les noms qu’il plaira, qu’on l’appelle insensé, fanatique, mais
qu’on cesse de lui infliger durement ce nom d’apostat, de peur qu’un
historien, trop touché de ses malheurs, ne s’avise un jour de prouver
que l’apostasie était excusable.” (“_Un chrétien devenu païen._”—_Études
Morales_.)
[387] See note, p. 45.
[388] Though having also carefully studied both Zeller and Vacherot
(ZELLER: _Die Philosophie der Griechen_, vol. iii.; VACHEROT: _Histoire
critique de l’Ecole d’Alexandrie_), we have specially used for the
purposes of the text the close analysis of the various aspects of
Neo-Platonism presented by Dr. Bigg in his “Neo-Platonism,” and the
interesting account given by M. Saisset in his article “De l’Ecole
d’Alexandrie,” written for the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” of September,
1844, as a review of Jules Simon’s work on the Alexandrian School.—For
the Neo-Platonist Dæmonology we have largely consulted Wolff.
[389] “In so far as the Deity is the original force, it must create
everything. But as it is raised above everything in its nature, and needs
nothing external, it cannot communicate itself substantially to another,
nor make the creation of another its object. Creation cannot, as with
the Stoics, be regarded as the communication of the Divine Nature, as a
partial transference of it into the derivative creature; nor can it be
conceived as an act of will. But Plotinus cannot succeed in uniting these
determinations in a clear and consistent conception. He has recourse,
therefore, to metaphors.”—ZELLER.
[390] “In the year 1722, a Sheriff-depute of Sutherland, Captain David
Ross, of Littledean, took it upon him to pronounce the last sentence of
death for witchcraft which was ever passed in Scotland. The victim was an
insane old woman who had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice at
the sight of the fire which was destined to consume her.”—Sir W. SCOTT:
“_Demonology and Witchcraft_,” cap. 9.
[391] See Volkmann, vol. i. cap. i.
[392] Cf. M. MARTHA, “Un chrétien devenu païen,” in his _Études Morales_:
“La philosophie prit tout à coup des allures mystiques et inspirées,
elle entoura de savantes ténèbres la claire mythologie compromise par
sa clarté; à ses explications symboliques elle mêla les pratiques
mystérieuses des cultes orientaux, à sa théologie subtile et confuse les
redoutables secrets de la magie: elle eut ses initiations clandestines
et terribles, ses enthousiasmes extatiques, ses vertus nouvelles souvent
empruntées au christianisme, ses bonnes œuvres, ses miracles même. En
un mot, elle devint la théurgie, cet art sublime et suspect qui prétend
pouvoir évoquer Dieu sur la terre et dans les âmes. Le christianisme
rencontrait donc non plus un culte suranné, facile à renverser, mais
une religion vivante, puisant son énergie dans sa défaite, défendu par
des fanatiques savants dont le sombre ferveur et l’éloquence illuminée
étaient capables d’entraîner aussi une armée de prosélytes.”
[393] As it was, the later Neo-Platonists had to content themselves with
Apollonius of Tyana, instead of Jesus Christ.—“Apollonius of Tyana, who
was no longer a mere philosopher, _but a being half-human, half-divine_”
(EUNAPIUS, _op. cit._).
[394] See Emerson’s “Introduction” to Goodwin’s translation of the
“Morals.”
[395] Saisset, _op. cit._
[396] DANTE: _Inferno_, Canto iii.
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