36

SECESSION OF HISTORIANS.

Instead of uniting scientific interpretations to ancient traditions, it modified and moulded the old traditions to suit the apparent requirements of science. We shall subsequently see what was the necessary issue of this, that the Divinity became excluded from the world he had made, the supernatural merged in natural agency; Zeus was superseded by the air, Poseidon by the water; and, while some of the philosophers received in silence the popular legends, as was the case with Socrates, or, like Plato, regarded it as a patriotic duty to accept the public faith, others, like Xenophanes, denounced the whole as an ancient blunder, converted by time into a national imposture.

As I shall have in a detailed manner occasion to speak of Greek philosophy, it is unnecessary to enter into other particulars here. For the present purpose it is enough to understand that it was radically opposed Antagonism of to the national faith in all countries and at all times, from its polytheism. origin with Thales down to the latest critic of the Alexandrian school.

science and

As it was with philosophers, so it was with historians; the rise of Secession of true history brought the same result as the rise of true philoshistorians. ophy. In this instance there was added a special circumstance which gave to the movement no little force. Whatever might be the feigned facts of the Grecian foretime, they were altogether outdone in antiquity and wonder by the actual history of Egypt. What was a pious man like Herodotus to think when he found that, at the very period he had supposed a superhuman state of things in his native country, the ordinary passage of affairs was taking place on the banks of the Nile? And so indeed it had been for untold ages. To every one engaged in recording recent events, it must have been obvious that a chronology applied where the actors are superhuman is altogether without basis, and that it is a delusion to transfer the motives and thoughts of men to those who are not men. Under such circumstances there is a strong inducement to decline traditions altogether; for no philosophical mind will ever be satisfied with different tests for the present and the past, but will insist that actions and their sequences were the same in the foretime as now.

belief of the

Thus for many ages stood affairs. One after another, historians, philosophers, critics, poets, had given up the national faith, and lived under a pressure perpetually laid upon them by the public, adopting generally, as their most convenient course, an outward compliance with the Universal dis- religious requirements of the state. Herodotus can not reconlearned. cile the inconsistencies of the Trojan War with his knowledge of human actions; Thucydides does not dare to express his disbelief of it; Eratosthenes sees contradictions between the voyage of Odysseus and the truths of geography; Anaxagoras is condemned to death for impiety, and only through the exertions of the chief of the state is his

ATTEMPTS AT A REFORMATION.

37

sentence mercifully commuted to banishment. Plato, seeing things from a very general point of view, thinks it expedient, upon the whole, to prohibit the cultivation of the higher branches of physics. Euripides tries to free himself from the imputation of heresy as best he may. Eschylus is condemned to be stoned to death for blasphemy, and is only saved by his brother Aminias raising his mutilated arm-he had lost his hand in the battle of Salamis. Socrates stands his trial, and has to drink hemlock. Even great statesmen like Pericles had become entangled in the obnoxious opinions. No one has any thing to say in explanation of the marvelous disappearance of demigods and heroes, why miracles are ended, or why human actions alone are now to be seen in the world. An ignorant public demands the instant punishment of every suspected man. In their estimation, to distrust the traditions of the past is to be guilty of treason to the present.

But all this confusion and dissent did not arise without an attempt among well-meaning men at a reformation. Some, and they Attempts at a were, perhaps, the most advanced intellectually, wished that reformation. the priests should abstain from working any more miracles; that relics should be as little used as was consistent with the psychical demands of the vulgar, and should be gradually abandoned; that philosophy should no longer be outraged with the blasphemous anthropomorphisms of the Olympian deities. Some, less advanced, were disposed to reconcile all difficulties by regarding the myths as allegorical; some wished to transform them so as to bring them in harmony with the existing social state; some would give them altogether new interpretations. With one, though the fact of a Trojan War is not to be denied, it was only the eidolon of Helen whom Paris carried away; with another, expressions, perhaps once intended to represent actual events, are dwindled into mere forms of speech. Unwilling to reject the attributes of the Olympian divinities, their human passions and actions, another asserts that they must once have all existed as men. While one denounces the impudent atheists who find fault with the myths of the Iliad, ignorant of its allegorical meaning, another resolves all its heroes into the elements; and still another, hoping to reconcile to the improved moral sense of the times the indecencies and wickednesses of the gods, imputes them all to demons; an idea which found much favor at first, but became singularly fatal to polytheism in the end.

perstition of

In apparent inconsistency with this declining state of belief in the higher classes, the multitude, without concern, indulged in the most surprising superstitions. With them it was an age of relics, of Inveterate suweeping statues, and winking pictures. The tools with which the vulgar. the Trojan horse was made might still be seen at Metapontum, the sceptre of Pelops was still preserved at Charoneia, the spear of Achilles at Phaselis, the sword of Memnon at Nicomedia; the Tegeates could still

38

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF POLYTHEISM.

show the hide of the Calydonian boar, very many cities boasted their possession of the true palladium from Troy. There were statues of Athene that could brandish spears, paintings that could blush, images that could sweat, and endless shrines and sanctuaries at which miraclecures were performed. Into the hole through which the deluge of Deucalion receded the Athenians still poured a customary sacrifice of honey and meal. He would have been an adventurous man who risked any observation as to its inadequate size. And, though the sky had been proved to be only space and stars, and not the firm floor of Olympus, he who had occasion to refer to the flight of the gods from mountTheir jealous intol- ain tops into heaven would find it to his advantage to erance of doubts. make no astronomical remark. No adverse allusions to the poems of Homer, Arctinus, or Lesches were tolerated; he who perpetrated the blasphemy of depersonifying the sun went in peril of death. They would not bear that natural laws should be substituted for Zeus and Poseidon; whoever was suspected of believing that Helios and Selene were not gods, would do well to purge himself to public satisfaction. The people vindicated their superstition in spite of all geographical and physical difficulties, and, far from concerning themselves with those contradictions which had exerted such an influence on the thinking classes, practically asserted the needlessness of any historical evidence.

decline and fall

It is altogether erroneous to suppose that polytheism maintained its Slowness of the ground as a living force until the period of Constantine and of Polytheism. Julian. Its downfall commenced at the time of the opening of the Egyptian ports. Nearly a thousand years were required for a consummation. The change first occurred among the higher classes, and made its way slowly through the middle ranks of society. For many centuries the two agencies-geographical discovery, arising from increasing commerce and the Macedonian expedition, and philosophical criticism—silently continued their incessant work, and yet it does not appear that they could ever enforce a change on the lowest and most numerous division of the social grade. In process of time, a third influence was added to the preceding two, enabling them to address themselves even to the humblest rank of life; this influence was the rise of The secondary the Roman power. It produced a wonderful activity all over downfall. the Mediterranean Sea and throughout the adjoining countries. It insured perpetual movements in all directions. Where there. had been only a single traveler there were now a thousand legionaries, merchants, government officials, with their long retinues of dependents and slaves. Where formerly it was only the historian or philosopher in his retirement who compared together the different laws and creeds, habits and customs of different nations incorrectly reported, now the same things were vividly brought under the personal observation of multi

causes of its

REPETITION OF THESE EVENTS IN EUROPE.

39

tudes. The crowd of gods and goddesses congregated in Rome served only to bring one another into disrepute and ridicule.

Long, therefore, previous to the triumph of Christianity, paganism must be considered as having been irretrievably ruined. Doubtless it was the dreadful social prospect before them-the apparent impossibility of preventing the whole world from falling into a totally godless state, that not only reconciled so many great men to give The alarm of good their support to the ancient system, but even to look with- and religious men. out disapprobation on that physical violence to which the uneducated multitude, incapable of judging, were so often willing to resort. They never anticipated that any new system could be introduced which should take the place of the old, worn-out one; they had no idea that relief in this respect was so close at hand; unless, perhaps, it might have been Plato, who, profoundly recognizing that, though it is a hard Plato's remedy and tedious process to change radically the ideas of common for the evil. men, yet that it is easy to persuade them to accept new names if they are permitted to retain old things, proposed that a regenerated system should be introduced, with ideas and forms suited to the existing social state, prophetically asserting that the world would very soon become accustomed to it, and give to it an implicit adhesion.

ment has been

great scale by all

In this description of the origin and decline of Greek religion I have endeavored to bring its essential features into strong relief. Its fall was not sudden, as many have supposed, neither was it accomplished by extraneous violence. There was a slow, and, it must be emphatically added, a spontaneous decline. But, if the affairs of men pass in recurring cycles-if the course of events with one individual has a resemblance to the course of events with another-if there are analogies in The Greek movethe progress of nations, and things reappear after due peri- repeated on the ods of time, the succession of circumstances thus displayed Europe. before us in the intellectual history of Greece may perhaps be recognized again in grander proportions on the theatre of all Europe. If there is for the human mind a predetermined order of development, may we not reasonably expect that the phenomena we have thus been noticing on a small scale in a single nation will reappear on the great scale in a continent; that the philosophical study of this history of the past will not only serve as an interpretation of many circumstances in the history of Europe in the Dark and Middle Ages, but will also be a guide to us in pointing out future events as respects all mankind? For, though it is true that the Greek intellectual movement was anticipated, as respects its completion, by being enveloped and swallowed up in the slower but more gigantic movements of the southern European mind, just as a little expanding circle upon the sea may be obliterated and borne away by more imposing and impetuous waves, so even the movement of a continent may be lost in the movement of a world. It was criti

40

THE ORGANIZATION OF HYPOCRISY.

cism, and physical discovery, and intellectual activity, arising from political concentration, that so profoundly affected the modes of Grecian thought, and criticism and discovery have within the last four hundred years done the same in all Europe. To one who forms his expectations of the future from the history of the past-who recalls the effect produced by the establishment of the Roman empire, in permitting free personal intercommunication among all the Mediterranean nations, and thereby not only destroying the ancient forms of thought, which for centuries had resisted all other means of attack, and replacing them by a homogeneous idea, it must be apparent that the wonderfully increased facilities for locomotion, the inventions of our own age, are the ominous precursors of a vast philosophical revolution.

of hypocrisy.

Between that period during which a nation has been governed by its imagination and that in which it submits to reason, there is a melancholy interval. The constitution of man is such that, for a long time The organization after he has discovered the incorrectness of the ideas prevailing around him, he shrinks from openly emancipating himself from their dominion, and, constrained by the force of circumstances, he lives a hypocrite, publicly applauding what his private judgment condemns. Where a nation is making this passage, so universal do these practices become that it may be truly said that hypocrisy is organized. It is possible that whole communities might be found living in this deplorable state. Such, I conceive, must have been the case in many parts of the Roman empire just previously to the introduction of Christianity. Even after ideas have given way in public opinion, their political power may outlive their intellectual, and produce the disgraceful effect we here consider.

It is not to be concealed, however, that, to some extent, this evil is incident to the position of things. Indeed, it would be unfortunate if national hypocrisy could not find a better excuse for itself than individual. In civilized life, society is ever under the imperious necessity of moving onward in legal forms, nor can such forms be avoided without the most serious disasters forthwith ensuing. To absolve communities too abruptly from the restraints of ancient ideas is not to give them liberty, but to throw them into political vagabondism, and hence it is that great statesmen will authorize and even compel observances the essential significance of which has disappeared, and the intellectual basis of which has been undermined. Truth reaches her full action by degrees, and not at once; she first operates upon the reason, the influence being purely intellectual and individual; she then extends her sphere, exerting a moral control, particularly through public opinion; at last she gathers for herself physical and political force. It is in the time consumed in this gradual passage that organized hypocrisy prevails. To bring nations to surrender themselves to new ideas is not the affair of a day.