beautiful in the abstract, it was merciless | all souls are akin, "men are mortal gods, to the individual. Birth was hateful the gods immortal men. Our life is the (στυγερός).(α) Though souls were sent now death of the gods; our death, their life." (a) from light to darkness, and now back again, (b) individual existence was evanescent. Thought was unable as yet to reconcile the conflicting elements of continuance and decay otherwise than by attaining the conception of an abstract unity, the One, or Being, and sacrificing to it every individual existence. 4. HERAKLEITOS. 5. EMPEDOKLES. Empedokles was an eclectic. On the one side he developed the permanent and unchangeable being of the Eleatics, and so maintained that nothing can begin to be which formerly was not, nothing of what exists perish. On the other, he evolved the Herakleitean strife into two rival forces, love and hate, from whose antagonism the world resulted. The former principle, applied to man, gave both pre- and post-existence. Of mortal beings there In Herakleitos "war is the father of all things." (c) Becoming is the law of the universe: "All is and is not, for though it does in truth come into being, yet it forth-was no natural birth, nor death's destruc tion final. (b) The latter principle traced with ceases to be." (d) Hence, "no man spark or portion, lives as fed by the fire, deathless gods, are no longer mortals.(d) and has in it something infinite.(h) The purer the fire, the more perfect is the soul. "The driest souls are the wisest and best.(i) The dead body is more despicable than a dunghill. According to the doctrine of becoming, there was in man a perishable element; but, according to the doctrine of the primal principle, an imperishable. Man as a corporeal phenomenon stood in the "perpetual flux and reflux;" man as an emanation of the ever-living fire stood above it. Hence "the very birth of man is a calamity - a birth into death." (7) "Death is in our life, and life in our death; for when we live our souls are dead and buried in us, but when we die our souls revive and live." (k) And as (a) Parmenides, xv. 123-30. But see conflicting interpretations of Ritter (Hist, of Philos., i. 467) and Zeller (Philos. der Griechen, i. 415, note 3). (b) Simpl. Phys., fol. 9 a, Ritter and Preller, His 6. ANAXAGORAS. In Anaxagoras pre-Sokratic thought becomes distinctly theistic. Mind had formed the world, was the intelligent and constructive power which had shaped the primal elements in the Kosmos. This mind was infinite (ἀπειρον), absolute (ἀντοκρατες), simple in essence, (μέμικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι), subtlest and purest of things (λεπτότατον τε πάντων χρημάτων και καθαρώτα τον), the unmoved cause of motion, omniscient (πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς), unchangeable.(€) While mind can never mix with things, it yet rules whatever has a soul, is present in rational beings, whether great or small. All mind is similar, homogeneous; difference relates to degree, greater or less, not to kind. (f) And mind, as it existed in man, he did not distinguish from soul.(4) The two were substantially identical, and, toria. §151. (c) Plutarch, Is, et. Osir. 45. (d) Arist. Metaph., iv. 3, 7; Plato, Theat. p. 152. (e) Plato, Kratylos, p. 402. (f) Herakl. in Clem. Alex, Strom. v., p. 599; R. & P., Historia, $34. (9) Arist. De Anim., i. 2. 16. (h) Sext. Emp. Adv. Math, vii, 127-130; Plut. Is. et Osir. 76, 77; R. & P.. Historia. § 39; Diog. L. ix. 7. (1) Zeller, Philos. d. Griechen, f. 450, n. 1. ()) Clem. Alex. viii. 432-4; Ritter, Hist. Anc. Philos.. i. 250. (k) Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hypotyp., iii. 230; R. & P., Historia, §44. (a) Herakl. in Hippolyt. ix. 10; Zeller, Philos. d. Griechen, i. 488, n. 1. (6) Ritter, Hist. Anc. Philos 1. 502 (c) Emped. in Plut. de Exilio, 17; Hippolyt, vii. 29; Plut. de Is. et Osir. 25; R. & P. Historia, $179. (d) Cf. Ritter, Hist. Anc. Philos. i. 510, ff.; Zer. Philos. d. Griechen, i. 547, ff.; Karsten, De Emped., pp. 5-7. (e) Simpl. Phys., i. fol. 33; R. & P., Historia, $53. (f) Zeller, Philos. d. Griechen. 1. 680, L. as Aristotle understood, had the same attributes. While then to Anaxagoras man was mortal, mind was not. The σώμα could, the νοῦς could not, perish. The Atomists, on the one hand, and the Sophists, on the other, had for our belief peculiarly little significance. The materialism of the first and the scepticism of the second were alike inimical to it. Each on ly helped to render a new method necessary, and the new method yielded more certain results. Meanwhile, we can see the most perfect expression possible to the living and creative thought of the people. Each represented in a different way the Greek mind - the one its inquisitive and intellectual side, the other its ideal and ethical. Philosophy was more individual; poetry more national. The first was a search after elements above and behind the accepted faith; the second, a growth from seeds contained in it. While, then, philosophy was the beginning of a new, poetry was the continuation of an old, cy the inevitable tendency of pre-Sokratic cle of Greek spiritual development. The and writes them in the tablets of his mind; a god that destroyeth, an avenger terrible, whose sentence the lewd offender, when he dies, shall not escape.(a) thought. The starting-point had been extra-, though not anti-religious. Greek religion was peculiarly destitute of theological ideas. The words God and Creator were not to the Greek, as to the Hebrew, synonymous. To the Hellenic mind the creative process was Theogonic as well as Kosmogonic. Its primary question was not, How or why did God create the world? but, What created gods and men? Thus in no impious or atheistic spirit did the earlier thinkers attribute the creation to water, or air, or fire. They but obeyed the instinct or intuition which compelled them to seek what their religion did not offer a cause for the world. But this search involved another. As in Mythology, the Chthonian court had to rise as a supplement to the Olympian, so in Philosophy the question as to man's whence involved the question as to his whither. The nature of the cause, too, determined the nature of the effect. The eschatological idea shared the fortunes of the theological, was with it materialized, spiritualized, impersonalized, validated, or dissolved. In the early physical philosophies soul is but life, inseparable from body, common to whatever can move or cause motion. As the cause is refined, so is the soul; as permanence, intelligence, feeling, volition, are attributed to the one, they are attributed to the other. The point where mind becomes the creator is also the point where soul becomes mind. Thought thus drives the thinker to connect the Highest in the universe with the highest in himself; degree, not kind, quantity, not quality, distinguishes the two. The faith which had resulted from the more or less unconscious and collective action of the religious instincts, resulted also from the conscious and deliberate deductions of the reason the faith that, while the body dies, the man survives. vi. THE LYRIC AND TRAGIC POETS. While philosophy was pursuing its quest after ultimate and necessary truth, and succeeding by failure, poetry was giving 1244 two cycles could not fail now and then to touch, and even to blend, but in general their course was parallel, not identical, the one using the mythology of the past as the vehicle of the religious and ethical thought of the present, the other seeking to frame for the future terms to express universal and necessary truth. Hence we must trace in this section the growth of thought in the poetic sphere, so as to bring it abreast of the philosophic. 1. THE LYRIC POETS. The earlier and minor lyric poets need not be examined. Their significance is political rather than religious. In general, what Bunsen says of Solon may be said of the others. They by no means deny or call in question the punishment of the evildoer after death, but they are silent on the point. (a) Otherwise is it with Pindar. He is the pre-eminent religious poet of Greece, penetrated by the sense of the divine in man and nature, inspired by the highest religions ideas of the past and present. (b) The Eleusinian mysteries, the Orphic theosophy, the new-born philosophy, have combined to purify and ennoble his faith. His theology is almost infinitely higher than the Homeric. Olympos has ceased to be in a state of chronic feud. The old names denote new deities. But our belief is the point where the contrast with Homer becomes sharpest. (c) While mortal man is but the dream of a shadow (σκιᾶς ὄναρ), (d) his soul, the εἴδωλον, lives in death, for it alone is from God.(e) "The soul of a man is immortal, and at one time has an end, which is termed dying, and at another is born again, but never perishes." (f) It was meant to attain progressive happiness through progressive ho liness. The souls of the impious, remote | Hence Aides is to him another Zeus, who from heaven, flit in murderous pain beneath gives final judgment to the dead; a stern the inevitable yoke of woe; but the souls inquisitor of men, who views their deeds of the pious dwell in heaven, chanting hymns.(a) Once sin is expiated, the soul returns to earth and becomes a king, or a man great in might or wisdom, a saint to after-ages; (b) and death is followed by a happy life in Hades with the honoured of the gods. Then once they have been thrice tried by birth and death and kept their souls free from sin, they "ascend the path of Zeus to the tower of Kronos, where the Islands of the Blest are refreshed by the breezes of ocean, and golden flowers glitter." (c) 2. THE TRAGIC POETS. The Dramas of Æschylos are more distinctly national, i.e., Homeric, than the odes of Pindar; mirror better the then faith of the people, unmodified by Orphic other alien in or influences.(d) Yet to Sophokles, like Æschylos, recognizes the continued existence of the soul after death. His picture of the future, as of the present, is, as to general effect, more calm and beautiful, more ideal and less mythical, than that of Æschylos, but each is in its ground-lines the same. The dead are conscious, know what transpires on the earth. remember what they suffered here, love or hate as in life, work good or ill to the living.(b) Their form and state resemble their earthly. Oidipos expects to enter Hades eyeless.(c) Kings still rule among the dead.(d) But no happiness or reward can be enjoyed hereafter. The Fragment, which pronounces the initiated thrice happy, stands alone.(e) Antigone, indeed, rejoices to join her beloved dead, but only because death was to her, as to familiar maxims the world over, the end of trouble. (f) Oidipos, the blameless king, the victim of a terrible destiny, purified from his unconscious crime, ennobled into saintliness by suffering, takes a touching farewell of the sunlight and beauty of earth.(g) The chorus begs for him a painless and easy death, an untroubled descent into Hades, (4) but neither king nor But though Æschylos attributes to the chorus anticipates other reward than the dead more reality of being than Homer, | εὐθανασία. His very grave works good to yet he describes their state as cold and the Athenians, ill to the Thebans, but to dreary. The only light they have is coex- himself there is only a joyless life in tensive or commensurate with darkness. Hades. Æschylos the soul has ceased to be a shadow. The mighty jaws of fire cannot consume the spirit of the dead.(e) The dead are actual and potent beings, can hear and answer prayers, receive sacrifices. (f) operate upon earth to bless or ban the living. or awake the Erinyes to the work of retribution.(g) The king retains the semblance of regal dignity, is godlike, ἰσοδαίμων, or divine, θεός, (h)is more miserable without than with the shadows of his ancient honours, before than after he has been revenged. (i) (j) Though Dareios be still a king, Our belief, like the other religious ideas μακαρίτας and θεός, (k) yet he bids the living of Greece, suffers in the hands of Eurienjoy life while they have it, "for the dead | pides. The mythical side is indeed now are shrouded in thick gloom, where wealth and then exhibited, and prayers and woravails not."(1) Perhaps it were incorrect ship offered to the dead heroes, or doubt to say, that the only under-and after-world or hope as to the state of the pious exÆschylos knew was retributive; but cer- pressed. But the poet's own belief was tainly in his idea of the future, as in his hostile to a personal immortality.(i) He idea of the present, the penalties of guilt is indeed at times enigmatical, as in that hide the rewards of righteousness.(m) sentence, which may mean much or little, (m) See his doctrine as to the Erinyes, in such according as it is understood, quoted in Plato's Gorgias, (j) "Who knows if life be not death, and death life?" but elsewhere (i) Nagel-bach, Nach-Hom. Theol., 459-60. texts as Eum. 312, 322, 910-915. (3) P. 492. he quite decisively expresses the imperson- dying Kyros adduce for the soul's possible al view. The mind (ὁ νοῦς) of the dead continuance(a) have often been traced to does not live, but has immortal intelligence Sokratic inspiration, but the point must (γνώμην), falling back into the immortal always remain conjectural. æther.(a) And so he explains that, while With Plato, however, it is different. He what the earth produced returns to the earth, the offspring of the celestial æther returns to the vault of heaven.(b) The attitude of the Greek mind to our belief had hitherto been progressively affirmative. Philosophy, starting without any idea of spirit or permanent being, had been driven to affirm both. Poetry, the mirror of the ideal religion of Greece, had was the true Prophet of our belief, for the Greeks, and for humanity. No man has | contributed more to the culture and faith of the world. Augustine was a Christian Father, Plato a heathen Philosopher; but the heathen was more eminent as a religious thinker than the Christian, There is more of the essence and spirit of Christian theology in the Dialogues of the one than up to this point become more and more in the De Civitate Dei of the other. The positive in its conception of the future, Providence of God has reversed the order and its relation to the present. But the of History, and found for all that was Sophists in philosophy and Euripides in noblest in the Greek a home within the poetry, were similar phenomena resulting Church of Christ. from similar causes, failure producing Plato was in the realm of thought in a empiricism and scepticism. The ethical more eminent sense than any other Greek, idea of righteousness, unqualified by the not excepting even Aristotle, the heir of religious idea of goodness, had given to the past and the creator of the future. the intense and intuitive Greek spirit the He was, indeed, less cosmopolitan and conception of a universe ruled by Nemesis more Grecian than Aristotle, but simply rather than by Eros. The active moral because he was less extensive he was more forces of the world were punitive. Their intense. In him were concentrated all the beneficent action had fallen into the back- hereditable elements of the Greek genius, their retributive alone stood in the fore- but they were combined, sublimed, and ground. The old mythical forms were complemented by a genius peculiarly his made by the stern spirit of Æschylos, the calm yet severe genius of Sophokles, to reflect, for here and hereafter, the action of those terrible forces. But to spirits of gods and men that inspired Homer and more sceptical. less earnest, those stern Hesiod, the aspiration after a happy here ethical religious ideas seemed exaggerated, false as their mythical veil, and so, without the idea of divine goodness to lead to a platform of higher faith, the Greek spirit turned aside in Euripides to a feeble pantheistic materialism which abolished the retributions of Hades by impersonalizing the soul. vii. PLATO. The relation of Sokrates to our belief is rather uncertain. The Memorabilia is silent, and it is perilous to base conjectures own. The sense of the divine presence and providence that lived in the old mythical poems, the faith in the likeness and intercourse after embodied in the mysteries, the Orphic searchings after a system of the universe in which gods and men but became emanations and manifestations of supreme deity, the philosophical attempts to reach a primal substance or first cause, the exalted faith of the Lyric Poets, the ethical conceptions which had received ideal expression in Tragedy, - these, and much more than these, Plato inherited, and his inheritance he harmonized and enlarged with the native wealth of his own splendid intellect. The old metaphysical abstractions ceased on any saying of the Platonie Sokrates. in his hands to be abstract; became per The Sokrates of the Apology, perhaps the nearest approximation to the reality, is dubious. While certain that "no evil can happen to a good man either in life or after death," uncertain whether "death be a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or a change and migration of the soul from this world to the next." (c) The reasons which Xenophon makes the sonal, conscious, moral. The idea of the good qualified the old rigid ethical idea embodied in the Drama. Man ceased to be phenomenal and became real, theogony was sublimed into theology, and the world of eternal ideas made to transcend that of transient appearances. Plato's doctrine of immortality is too integral to his entire system in all its phases to be separable from it, so lives like a subtle essence in all his modes of (a) Cyrop., viii. 7, 17-28. thought as to be hardly translatable the crown and complement of a wise and into another language and other concate- beautiful life; in the Republic, as the regnnations than his own. A philosophy may lative end and realized idea of life in a be analytically as a substance chemically perfect state. In the Symposium it re dissolved, but the decomposed elements have not in either case as single and distinct the same qualities and force as when combined into a body, Plato's arguments for immortality, isolated, modernized, may be feeble, even valueless, but allowed to stand where, and as he himself puts them, they have an altogether different worth. wards the inspired devotee of love; in the Phædros it consummates the pursuit of knowledge and virtue. With deep regret that a worthier exposition of Plato's doctrine of immortality cannot now be attempted, this essay must close. In him our belief reached its culminating point in Greece. The Phædo He foundly ethical, rested on the moral nature of man and the divine moral government. It was, too, profoundly religious, often in its form, almost always in its matter. outgrew as his thoughts ripened the metempsychosis of his earlier dialogues. The same tendencies and habits of thought which made the Greek gods, and even tae highest Platonic abstractions, anthropomorphic and anthropopathic, made the personality of man too decided to allow a continued metempsychosis to be conceived. The ethical idea defined, too, the personal. Responsibility belonged to the individual, and was everlasting in its issues. The man could never cease to be himself, or to bear in himself the results of his actions. Immortality was two-fold - of souls and their acts. The ratiocinative parts of the Phædo "may be regarded as a dialectical approxthrown into syllogisms may be easily de-imation to the truth of immortality." (a) molished by a hostile logician; but in the But Plato's position was not simply the dialogue as a whole there is a subtle spirit metaphysician's. His conception was proand cumulative force which logic can neither seize nor answer. Indeed, the bebelief belongs to the man rather than his philosophy. He holds it at every stage of his mental development, finds reasons for it in almost every principle he formulates. It is involved in his idea of God the divine and therefore immortal part of man is derived from the supreme Creator; (a) in his theory of beauty - the beautiful beheld, not in image, but reality, makes man "the friend of God, and immortal." (b) His psychology in all its forms, whether it describes the individual soul as of the same nature and character as the universal.(c) or as a simple, uncompounded, and so incorruptible principle, (d) or as in its own nature indestructible even by its own evil,(e) or as self-moved and the cause of motion, (f) or as the divine and contemplative reason;(g) his theory of knowledge, whether as reminiscence (h) or as identification of knowing and being, participation of the perceiver in the eternal ideas perceived, (i) or as the intuition or vision of love and beauty, or things in their own immutable nature; (j) his moral conceptions, whether represented in the uneasy conscience of a dying man(k) or in the inevitable retribution which follows crime, or the reward which crowns virtue, or in the divine order and government of the The post-Platonic history of the doctrine need not be here written. It lies upon the broad face of the successive philosophies. Aristotle, true to his severe scientific spirit and purpose, left the question undiscussed, or only touched it with a hesitation which has made his utterances standing puzzles to the student of his philosophy.(6) Epicurean, Stoic, and Sceptic dealt with it as the spirit and principles of their systems demanded. How Christianity found the belief, dead but with a name to live, unannihilated by the vehement denials of Lu universe (1) - are each, singly and collec-cretius, unproved by the balanced but untively, made to imply and prove the immor- persuasive periods of Cicero, ridiculed by tality of man. It stands in the Phædo as the mocking descriptions of Lucian, impo tent amid the dissolution of the old religions; what Christianity made it, a living and commanding faith, indissolubly bound up with the facts and doctrines she sent like a glorious constellation into the dark Jowett, Plato, 1. 391. (b) See Sir Alexander Grant's scholarly and ex (i) Phædo, 1. 65, 66. (1) Sympos. iii. 212. (k) Repub., Bk. i.. ii 330. haustive discussion of the subject, Ethics of Arist., vol i. pp. 236-212, See also the vigorous but more (1) Gorgias, i. 523-7; and the beautiful myth of Er, limited and partial representation of Grote, Aristhe son of Armenius, Repub., Вк. х., іі. 614, ff. totle, ii. 233-5. |